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Germ Warfare. Are we next? We certainly are not safe.

Posted by Donna Burns on August 11, 2009 at 9:46am

Biological Warfare and the National Security StateA ChronologyBy Tom BurghardtURL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14708Global Research, August 9, 2009Antifascist Calling...The history of bioweapons research in the United States is a history of illicit--and illegal--human experiments.From the Cold War to the War on Terror, successive American administrations have turned a blind eye on dubious research rightly characterized as having "a little of the Buchenwald touch."While the phrase may have come from the files of the Atomic Energy Commission as Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Eileen Welsome revealed in her 1999 book, The Plutonium Files, an investigation into secret American medical experiments at the dawn of the nuclear age, it is as relevant today as the United States pours billions of dollars into work on some of the most dangerous pathogens known to exist in nature.That Cold War securocrats were more than a little concerned with a comparison to unethical Nazi experiments is hardly surprising. After all, with the defeat of the Axis powers came the triumphalist myth-making that America had fought a "good war" and had liberated humanity from the scourge of fascist barbarism.Never mind that many of America's leading corporations, from General Motors to IBM and from Standard Oil to Chase National Bank, were sympathizers and active collaborators with the Third Reich prior to and even during World War II, as documented by investigative journalists Charles Higham in Trading With The Enemy, and Edwin Black in IBM and the Holocaust. Like much else in American history, these were dirty little secrets best left alone.Soon enough however, these erstwhile democrats would come to view themselves as mandarins of a new, expanding American Empire for whom everything was permitted. In this context, the recruitment of top German and Japanese scientists who had conducted grisly "medical" experiments whilst waging biological war against China and the Soviet Union would be free of any moralizing or political wavering.As the Cold War grew hotter and hotter, America's political leadership viewed "former" Nazis and the architects of Japan's Imperial project not as war criminals but allies in a new undertaking: the global roll-back of socialism and the destruction of the Soviet Union by any means necessary.This tradition is alive and well in 21st century America. With the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and subsequent anthrax mailings as a pretext for an aggressive militarist posture, the national security state is ramping-up research for the production of genetically-modified organisms for deployment as new, frightening weapons of war.According to congressional testimony by Dr. Alan M. Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, with very little in the way of effective oversight or accountability, tens of billions of dollars "have been appropriated for bioweapons-related research and development activities." Pearson reveals that approximately $1.7 billion "has been appropriated for the construction on new high containment facilities for bioweapons-related research."By high containment facilities I mean facilities that are designed for work with agents that may cause serious or potentially lethal disease through exposure to aerosols (called Biosafety Level 3 or BSL-3 facilities) and facilities that are designed for work with agents that pose a "high individual risk of life-threatening disease, which may be transmitted via the aerosol route and for which there is no available vaccine or therapy" (called Biosafety Level 4 or BSL-4 facilities).Prior to 2002, there were three significant BSL-4 facilities in the United States. Today twelve are in operation, under construction, or in the planning stage. When completed, there will be in excess of 150,000 square feet of BSL-4 laboratory space (as much space as three football fields). The number of BSL-3 labs is also clearly growing, but ascertaining the amount of growth is difficult in the absence of accurate baseline information. There are at least 600 such facilities in the US. (Alan M. Pearson, Testimony, "Germs, Viruses, and Secrets: The Silent Proliferation of Bio-Laboratories in the United States," House Energy and Commerce Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, October 2007)Chillingly, one consequence of this metastatic growth "is that the very labs designed to protect against bioweapons may become a source for them." As the 2001 anthrax attacks amply demonstrated, the threat posed by a biological weapons' incident may be closer to home than any of us care to think. Pearson writes, "Nor should we ignore the possibility that a US biologist may become disgruntled or turn rogue while working in one of these labs."According to Edward Hammond, the Director of the now-defunct Sunshine Project, while "biological arms control is currently in ... its worst crisis since the signing of the Bioweapons Convention (BWC) in 1972," the American Bioweapons-Industrial Complex has "embarked on the exploitation of biotechnology for weapons development." Indeed, Hammond relates that active programs utilizing genetic engineering techniques have "been employed in offensive biowarfare programs in order to make biowarfare agents more effective."But increases in state subsidies for such work have generated new risks to the public. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report faulted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for lax security at three of the nation's five BSL-4 labs currently in operation that "handle the world's most dangerous agents and toxins that cause incurable and deadly diseases." Agents such as Ebola, Marburg and smallpox are routinely studied at these facilities. And yet, as GAO auditors found,Select agent regulations do not mandate that specific perimeter security controls be present at BSL-4 labs, resulting in a significant difference in perimeter security between the nation's five labs. According to the regulations, each lab must implement a security plan that is sufficient to safeguard select agents against unauthorized access, theft, loss, or release. However, there are no specific perimeter security controls that must be in place at every BSL-4 lab. While three labs had all or nearly all of the key security controls we assessed, our September 2008 report demonstrated that two labs had a significant lack of these controls. (Government Accountability Office, Biosafety Laboratories: BSL-4 Laboratories Improved Perimeter Security Despite Limited Action by CDC, GAO-09-851, July 2009)As Global Security Newswire revealed in June, a "recently completed inventory at a major U.S. Army biodefense facility found nearly 10,000 more vials of potentially lethal pathogens than were known to be stored at the site."The 9,220 samples--which included the bacterial agents that cause plague, anthrax and tularemia; Venezuelan, Eastern and Western equine encephalitis viruses; Rift valley fever virus; Junin virus; Ebola virus; and botulinum neurotoxins--were found during a four-month inventory at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., according to Col. Mark Kortepeter, the center's deputy commander. (Martin Matishak, "Thousands of Uncounted Disease Samples Found at Army Biodefense Lab," Global Security Newswire, June 18, 2009)The GSN report states that while "half of the newfound material was destroyed after being recorded," inventory control officer Sam Edwin told reporters that "the other half was deemed worthy for further scientific use, cataloged, and stored in the center's containment freezers."More pertinently, what happens when the state itself turns "rogue" and under cover of national security and the endless "war on terror" creates the "acute risk" in the form of out-of-control laboratories "designed to protect against bioweapons" that instead, have "become a source for them"?Bioweapons and National Security: A ChronologySource Notes: This chronology has drawn from dozens of books, articles and declassified government documents in its preparation. Notable in this regard is Michael Christopher Carroll's Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Germ Laboratory; Linda Hunt, Secret Agenda; Bob Coen and Eric Nadler, Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail; the National Security Archive's documentary history of U.S. Biological Warfare programs and The Sunshine Project.* August 1945: Operation Paperclip, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program to import top Nazi scientists into the United States. Linda Hunt relates in her book, Secret Agenda, that Reich Health Leader (Reichsgesundheitsführer) Dr. Kurt Blome, was saved from the gallows due to American intervention. Blome admitted he had worked on Nazi bacteriological warfare projects and had experimented on concentration camp prisoners with bubonic plague and sarin gas at Auschwitz. After his acquittal at the 1947 Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, Blome was recruited by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and advised the Pentagon on biological warfare. Walter Paul Emil Schreiber, a Wehrmacht general who assigned doctors to experiment on concentration camp prisoners and disbursed state funds for such experiments was another Paperclip recruit; in 1951, Schreiber went to work for the U.S. Air Force School of Medicine. Hubertus Strughold, the so-called "father of space medicine" discussed--and carried out--experiments on Dachau inmates who were tortured and killed; Strughold worked for the U.S. Air Force. Erich Traub, a rabid Nazi and the former chief of Heinrich Himmler's Insel Riems, the Nazi state's secret biological warfare research facility defects to the United States. Traub was brought to the U.S. by Paperclip operatives and worked at the Naval Medical Research Institute and gave "operational advice" to the CIA and the biowarriors at Ft. Detrick.* September 1945: General Shiro Ishii's Unit 731, a secret research group that organized Japan's chemical and biological warfare programs is granted "amnesty" by Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur in exchange for providing America with their voluminous files on biological warfare. All mention of Unit 731 is expunged from the record of The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. During the war, Unit 731 conducted grisly experiments, including the vivisection of live prisoners, and carried out germ attacks on Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. According to researcher Sheldon H. Harris in Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up, Unit 731 scientists performed tests on prisoners with plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other infectious diseases. Their work led to the development of what was called a defoliation bacilli bomb and a flea bomb used by the Imperial Army to spread bubonic plague across unoccupied areas of China. The deployment of these lethal munitions provided the Imperial Army with the ability to launch devastating biological attacks, infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells and populated areas with anthrax, plague-infected fleas, typhoid, dysentery and cholera. Rather than being prosecuted as war criminals, Unit 731 alumni became top bioweapons researchers. Ishii himself became an adviser at USAMRIID at Ft. Detrick.1950: A U.S. Navy ship equipped with spray devices supplied by Ft. Detrick, sprayed serratia marcescens across the San Francisco Bay Area while the ship plied Bay waters. Supposedly a non-pathogenic microorganism, twelve mostly elderly victims die.* Early 1950s: Army biological weapons research begins at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC). Vials of anthrax are transferred from Ft. Detrick to Plum Island. This information is contained in a now declassified report, "Biological Warfare Operations," Research and Development Annual Technical Progress Report, Department of the Army, 1951.* 1951: Racist experiments are carried out. U.S. Army researchers deliberately expose African-Americans to the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus to discern whether they are more susceptible to infections caused by such organisms than white Europeans. Also in 1951, black workers at the Norfolk Supply Center in Virginia were exposed to crates contaminated with A. fumigatus spores.* 1952: According to 1977 hearings by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research into Project MKULTRA, we discover the following: "Under an agreement reached with the Army in 1952, the Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick was to assist CIA in developing, testing, and maintaining biological agents and delivery systems. By this agreement, CIA acquired the knowledge, skill, and facilities of the Army to develop biological weapons suited for CIA use."* 1953: Frank Olson, a chemist with the Army's top secret Special Operations Division at Ft. Detrick was involved with biological weapons research and was tasked to the CIA for work on MKULTRA. In 1953, as Deputy Acting Head of Special Operations for the CIA, Olson is a close associate of psychiatrist William Sargant who was investigating the use of psychoactive drugs as an interrogation tool at Britain's Biological Warfare Centre at Porton Down. After being dosed with LSD without his knowledge by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the Agency's liaison to Ft. Detrick, Olson undergoes a severe psychological crisis. The scientist begins questioning the ethics of designing biological organisms as weapons of war. This does not sit well with his Agency and Army superiors. On November 24, 1953, Olson and a CIA minder, Robert Lashbrook, check into New York's Staler Hotel. He never checked out. According to Lashbrook, Olson had thrown himself through the closed shade and window, plunging 170 feet to his death. But because of his knowledge of CIA "terminal experiments" and other horrors conducted under MKULTRA, the Olson family believes the researcher was murdered. When Olson's son Eric has his father's body exhumed in 1994, the forensic scientist in charge of the examination determines that Olson had suffered blunt force trauma to the head prior to his fall through the window; the evidence is called "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide." Norman G. Cournoyer, one of Olson's closet friends at Ft. Detrick also believes the scientist was murdered. When asked by the Baltimore Sun in 2004 why Olson was killed, Cournoyer said, "To shut him up. ... He wasn't sure we should be in germ warfare, at the end."* 1955: Following a CIA biowarfare test in Tampa Bay, Florida, the area experiences a sharp rise in cases of Whooping Cough, including 12 deaths. The Agency had released bacteria it had obtained from the U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Warfare Center at the Dugway Proving Grounds.* 1956-1958: More racist experiments. The U.S. Army conducted live field tests on poor African-American communities in Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. Mosquitoes were released into neighborhoods at ground level by "researchers" or by helicopter; residents were swarmed by the pest; many developed unknown illnesses and some even died. After the tests, Army personnel posing as health workers photographed and tested the victims, then disappeared. While specific details of the experiments remain classified, it has been theorized that a strain of Yellow Fever was used to test its efficacy as a bioweapon.* 1962: A declassified CIA document obtained by the National Security Archive relates the following: "In November 1962 Mr. [redacted] advised Mr. Lyman Kirkpatrick that he had, at one time, been directed by Mr. Richard Bissell to assume responsibility for a project involving the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, then Premier, Republic of Congo. According to Mr. [redacted] poison was to have been the vehicle as he made reference to having been instructed to see Dr. Sidney Gottlieb in order to procure the appropriate vehicle." Gottlieb was the chief scientific adviser for the CIA's MKULTRA program.* June 1966: The U.S. Army's Special Operations Division dispenses Bacillus subtilis var niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million people were exposed when Army operatives dropped light bulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.* December, 1967: The New York Times reports, "Fatal Virus Found in Wild Ducks on L.I." A virus never seen before in the Western hemisphere, began with ducks in Long Island at a site opposite Plum Island; the virus devastates the area's duck industry and by 1975 has spread across the entire continent.* 1971: The U.S. Department of Agriculture proclaims that "Plum Island is considered the safest in the world on virus diseases." USDA's proof? "There has never been a disease outbreak among the susceptible animals maintained outside the laboratory since it was established."* 1975: PIADC begins feeding live viruses to "hard ticks," including the Lone Star tick (never seen outside Texas prior to 1975). The Lone Star tick is a carrier of the Borelia burgdorferi (Bb) bacteria, the causal agent of Lyme Disease. The first cases of the illness are reported in Connecticut, directly across from the facility. Current epidemiological data conclusively demonstrate that the epicenter of all U.S. Lyme Disease cases is Plum Island. It is theorized that deer bitten by infected ticks swam across the narrow waterway separating the island from the mainland.* September 1978: A PIADC news release relays the following: "Foot and Mouth Disease has been diagnosed in cattle in a pre-experimental animal holding facility at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center." A documented outbreak has occurred.* 1979: An internal investigation of the FMD incident reveals massive, widespread failures in the containment systems at PIADC. A USDA Committee report recommends that "Lab 101 not be considered as a safe facility in which to do work on exotic disease agents until corrective action is accomplished."* 1979: Despite containment failures and poor practices, USAMRIID undertakes the investigation of the deadly Zagazig 501 strain of Rift Valley Fever at PIADC. Producing symptoms similar to aerosolized hemorrhagic fevers such as Marburg and Ebola virus, the Army inoculates sheep that should have been destroyed as a result of the FMD outbreak with an experimental Rift Valley Fever vaccine. The experiments are conducted outdoors, in violation of the lab's primary directive prohibiting such work. During a 1977 Rift Valley outbreak in Egypt, some 200,000 people are infected and 700 others die excruciating deaths. A survey of blood serum taken before 1977 proved that the virus was not present in Egypt prior to the epidemic. By 2000, rampant outbreaks of the disease have occurred in Saudi Arabia and Yemen with the virus poised to unfurl its tentacles into Europe.* 1982: A Federal review begun after the FMD outbreak concludes: "We believe there is a potentially dangerous situation and that without an immediate massive effort to correct deficiencies, a severe accident could result... [L]ack of preventive maintenance, [and] pressures by management to expedite programs have resulted in compromising safety."* 1983: Six PIADC workers test positive for African Swine Fever virus. The workers are not notified of the test results which are conducted clandestinely during routine annual physical exams.* 1991: USDA privatizes PIADC. A New Jersey firm, Burns & Roe Services Corporation low bids other competitors and is awarded the contract. In cost-cutting moves, the contractor scales back on safety and security measures in place for decades.* June 1991: An underground cable supplying Lab 257 shorts out but is not replaced since there is no money left in the budget.* August 1991: Hurricane Bob, a category 3 storm similar to Hurricane Katrina, slams into Plum Island, knocking down overhead power lines that connect Lab 257. The underground cable which was Lab 257's primary power source has not been repaired. Freezers containing virus samples defrost, air seals on lab doors are breached and animal holding room vents fail. PIADC's "fail safe" mechanism of "air dampers" to seal off the facility also fail. Melted virus samples mix with infected animal waste on lab floors as swarms of mosquitoes fill the facility.* September 1991: The USDA denies that any system failures occurred during the hurricane. Whistleblowing workers in Lab 257 at the time of the blackout are fired in further cost-cutting moves and several subsequently develop mysterious undiagnosed diseases.* 1992: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cite PIADC with hundreds of safety violations. When OSHA returned five years later, none of the violations have been corrected and discover 124 new violations.* July 1992: Although USDA officially denies that PIADC conducts biological warfare research, fourteen officials from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pentagon visit Plum Island. Internal documents reveal that that the visit was "to meet with [Plum Island] staff regarding biological warfare." According to Carroll, "the visitors were part of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency reviewing the dual-use capabilities of the facility."* Spring 1995: Lab 257 is closed. Although scheduled to be fully decontaminated and demolished in 1996 Carroll reports: "Lab 257 still stands today, rotting from weathered decay, harboring who knows what deep within."* August 1999: The first four human cases of West Vile virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen never diagnosed in North America are diagnosed on Long Island. Horse farms within a five-mile radius of one another, directly opposite Plum Island, report horses dying following violent seizures. An investigation reveals that 25% of the horses in this small, localized area test positive for West Nile. The outbreak begins in August 1999 when birds, including half the exotic bird species in the Bronx Zoo begin dying mysteriously. The virus has an affinity for birds and the vector is soon identified as the mosquito. In 1999, the disease was confined to the New York City area, however by 2002, the Centers for Disease Control reports all but 6 of the lower 48 states reported West Nile virus in birds, mosquitos, animals or human populations. CDC estimates that some 200,000 people are infected nationally. During the initial outbreak in 1999, veterinary pathologist Tracey McNamara suspected a casual relationship between the bird die-offs and the human cases; CDC rebuffs her concerns. Through her persistent efforts, it is determined that the virus was indeed West Nile, a pathogen that had never been seen in North America. The CDC announces that West Nile virus was in the nation's blood supply when transplant patients who had no prior exposure to the pathogen develop the disease. The USDA's response? Deny, deny, deny? However, Jim House, a former PIADC scientist, believes that West Nile samples existed prior to 1999 on Plum Island. He told Carroll, "There were samples there, and it wasn't answered clearly to the public. They didn't honestly tell how many samples they had and that's when people started to get upset. When Carroll filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a catalog of germs held in the Plum Island virus library, he was turned down on grounds of "national security."* September 1999: The New York Times reports that due to "the growing threat of biological terrorism" against America's food supply, USDA "is seeking money to turn the Plum Island Animal Disease Center ... into a top security laboratory where some of the most dangerous diseases known to man or beast can be studied."* 1999: A Cold War-era document is declassified proving that in the early 1950s USAMRIID shipped twelve vials of weaponized anthrax (enough to kill one million people) to PIADC. In 1993 Newsday revealed that previously unclassified documents demonstrated Pentagon plans to disrupt the Soviet economy by spreading diseases to kill pigs, cattle and horses.* 1999: Plans to "upgrade" PIADC by building a BSL-4 lab are killed when Congress pulls funding after a public outcry.* September 2001: After the anthrax attacks, despite USDA denials that anthrax was ever present on the island, FBI investigators include the following questions in their polygraph examination of scientists under investigation: "Have you ever been to Plum Island?" "Do you know anyone who works at Plum Island?" "What do they do there?"* December 2002: The New York Times reports "a three-hour power failure at the Plum Island Animal Disease Center last weekend renewed concerns about the safety of the high-security government laboratory." According to the Times, "the loss of power and failure of all three backup generators raised fears for the first time that the containment of infectious pathogens could have been seriously compromised at the laboratory."* June 2003: President George W. Bush transfers control of PIADC to the Department of Homeland Security. The airspace over the island is unrestricted and the gates leading to Lab 101 remain open and unguarded.* May 2004: In a sign that work on Plum Island is being shifted to "other sites," including those run by private contractors, DHS announces an $18 million grant to study Rift Valley fever, avian influenza and brucellosis.* August 2004: DHS confirmed that an FMD outbreak "had spread briefly" in "two previously undisclosed incidents earlier this summer," The New York Times reports. A DHS spokesperson said the virus remained "within the laboratory's sealed biocontainment area" and that there "had be no risk" to human or animals. An investigation into the cause "was continuing."* 2004: At the Medical University of Ohio, a researcher is infected with Valley Fever at the center's BSL-3 facility; Valley Fever is a biological weapons agent.* February 2005: University of Iowa researchers conduct unauthorized genetic engineering experiments with the select agent Tularemia (rabbit fever). The Sunshine Project reports that researchers mixed genes from Tularemia species and introduced antibiotic resistant characteristics into the samples.* March 2005: When a containment facility fails, workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are exposed to tuberculosis when the BSL-3 "fail-safe" systems malfunction; a blower pushes contaminated air out of the work cabinet, infecting the workroom. The facility had been inspected one month prior to the accident by U.S. Army.* Summer 2005: At the same Ohio facility a serious accident occurs when workers are infected with an aerosol of Valley Fever.* October-November 2005: Dozens of samples thought to be harmless are received by the University of California at Berkeley. In fact, they are samples of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a BSL-3 bioweapons agent due to its transmission as an aerosol. The samples are handled without adequate safety precautions; however, the community is never notified of the incident.* August 2005: The whistleblowing watchdog group Tri-Valley Cares obtains documents in May 2009 proving that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had conducted "restricted experiments" with "select biological agents" at the facility. In 2005, LLNL "inadvertently" released anthrax at the lab in another incident that lab officials attempted to cover-up; five individuals were infected with the deadly pathogen.* April 2006: Three Texas A&M "biodefense" researchers are infected with Q Fever, a biological weapons agent. Rather than reporting the incident to the CDC as required by law, Texas A&M officials cover-up the accident.* August 2006: DHS announces that PIADC is "not on the rebuilding list" and a new site to study infectious diseases is being considered.* January 2009: DHS announces that the new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility will be built in Manhattan, Kansas.* July 2009: Government Accountability Office investigators charge that DHS relied on "a rushed, flawed study" to locate the $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens "in a tornado-prone section of Kansas." Among other concerns, the GAO cites DHS's "flawed and outdated methodology" in its criticism. Those concerns are: "the ability of DHS and the federal government in general to safely operate a biosafety facility such as the proposed NBAF; the potential for a pathogenic release through accidents, natural phenomena, and terrorist actions; our May 2008 testimony that concluded that DHS had not conducted or commissioned a study to determine whether FMD research could be conducted safely on the U.S. mainland; natural phenomena such as tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes that could cause catastrophic damage to the NBAF and result in the release of a pathogen; the possibility that an infected mosquito vector could escape, allowing a pathogen such as Rift Valley Fever virus to become permanently established in the United States; the economic effects of a release or a perceived release on the local, state, and national livestock industry."Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

HAWAI`I TO THE US - "GO HOME! - NO AKAKA BILL!"

Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 11, 2009 at 6:43am

SAYING "NO!" TO THE AKAKA BILLWill They Listen?August 7, 2009Dear Representative Abercrombie,Dear Senator Akaka,Dear Senator Inouye,One hundred and sixteen years ago, our kupuna (ancestors) stood up for what was pono (righteous) and they signed the Ku`e Petitions of 1897-1898 protesting the illegal annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States of America.It is with great respect and honor that we, the undersigned, the descendants of the original signatories and others who are in sympathy with said descendants, continue on the foundation laid by our kupuna and ADD our names to the existing Ku`e Petitions of 1897-1898.By following in the footsteps of our kupuna, we protest any and all further acts of injustice towards the Hawaiian Islands and its people and we CONTINUE to protest against the illegal annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States of America.For more information on the original Ku`e Petitions of 1897-1898 please visit them here.Our ancestors were always against annexation to the US The US knew about it. There is no lawful treaty of annexation/cession. We are not a tribe; we are a nation and proud of it. The US continuously violates the laws of occupation and our declared neutrality.My ancestors signed the original petitions and I stand with them The US must de-occupy our country, the still existing Kingdom of Hawai`i.Aloha also means goodbye....Aloha and go home.Mr. D.M.K. Tane Inciong, IIPearl City, O`ahu

Latest

Posted by Ululani on August 11, 2009 at 5:30am

For my family and friends who like know:

Whereever there are drama queens... there is drama so me being blunt I am very blunt about drama queens who try to DISTURB THE BONES.This time once again some bones were dissed here: http://www.maoliworld.com/forum/topics/we-are-the-achilles-tendon-ofSome of my ohana served and/or are serving the U.S. military and were dissed. Read closely. WHEN THEY ARE DISSED FOR THE WORLD TO SEE... SO ARE THEIR KUPUNA. I am blunt.However before I am blunt I always ask my kupuna to forgive me for what I say and/or state. They do not like it when people step on, expose, and/or bleach their bones in a BAD way so they are okay with me being blunt about it LOLBoth try to dig up dirt on other people just as they try to dig up our kupunas' bones. Both also try to include themselves. Conklin with the "He Hawai'i au" and her with her trying to include herself with other ali'is' and their kuleana. A huge No-No. Very pilau which my kupuna no like so "they" have me be blunt about it LOLPeople are entitled to their opinion but as usual some people have the mentality that people think the same way that they do just like some oppressors. Nowadays some oppressed are becoming oppressors themselves EXPECTING others to think and/or agree with them. However my kupuna taught me to ku'e --- to stand and to THINK differently. I always choose my kupuna who helped to raise me. Some people though... so pilau LOLI can see why some Hawaiians distance themselves from THIS. From dis kine dramaz. However I still donate to those less fortunate in some way. Despite the pilau people. It would be easy to be selfish. However it is much more difficult to donate DESPITE the pilau LOLWell I'm re-posting what I wrote to Kalani.Warning... it's very blunt and is dedicated to my kupuna (which is stating the obvious since everything that I write is for my kupuna LOL:)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"It's like Ken Conklin... disordered and disorganized copying and pasting. That and some incoherent ramblings. My ali'i ohana told me to ignore her and you know I am po'o pa'a ki ki.She does a disservice to some messages though. For example she compounds it by "reporting" pro-oiwi oiwi to the police. What a f*cking nuisance not just to ali'i but to the world. No wonder some people think she crazy and what? They think she crazy then they UNFAIRLY extrapolate that ali'i are crazy to fight for their rights to their title. Some further extrapolate some of her dumb ass antics to ALL HAWAIIANS so not only do we deal with SOME dumb ass Americans... we have her dumb ass self doing and/or posting SOME dumb ass statements.It's too bad too though because oiwi SHOULD fight for their title. Unfortunately its people like her who RUIN it for them. That's pilau people for you. People like her carry the recessive PILAU gene while the dominant non-pilau genes expose their stupidity.Watch. She going "report" more pro-oiwi oiwi to the HONOLULU POLICE DEPARTMENT. What a DUMB ASS. No wonder so many people laughing at her because instead of communicating and RELATING she basically talks to her dumb ass self.She's just like Ken Conklin in that BOTH step on the iwi in a BAD, BAD WAY. Not just by posting disparaging statements about SOME ALI'I but also by insulting STEPHANIE [who live in KOHALA and who has done SO much for Hawaiians.[ Just like Ken. [They both disparage the IWI AND OIWI.]She also utilizies the Internet to BLEACH, MAIM, and STEP ON THE IWI. Just LIKE KEN. Epitomes of Umiamaka. DECEIVERS.She's in the same category as him. They are on permanent ignore by MANY.Latahs!"-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The truth hurts doesn't it.

I can tell because of how they react: They dig for dirt or rather they TRY to dig up dirt on other people (both alive and dead)... like how they dig up our kupunas' bones.That is probably why our kupuna told us not to expose our bones UNLESS some people ack stupid. I show a few bones but not all because I know pilau people like dem will try to dig them up. Pilau!Anyway I will post some pics laters. I went to da beach on Sunday that's why after I worked. The water in the gulf was about 90 degrees which is very warm. Not very big waves though so only body surfing. I can't wait to go surfing with my younger brother when I go home.I have so much work to do before I come home again. Of course whenever I come home I get inundated with phone calls for my work LOL I'm bringing my laptop and cell phone with me. My younger brother has a laptop though so I can use his laptop too. Ironically life without a laptop and cell phone would be fine by me. Unfortunately in order to survive AND donate to my causes I must utilize them LOL Twitter too. I have four Twitters --- two for my work and two for my causes and they ALL annoy me hahaMore importantly... my kupuna will feel the Mana in Lana when I am at home. Get it? haha But they KNOW when I am at home.Someone else also asked me to help with something. E kala mai but I'm trying to finish "Hawai'i the Fake State." When I'm pau with it I will be giving my copy away to another oiwi for free. I have to send a gift to the person who gave my copy to me though.Even though he said No Need... I'm sending him something which is the Hawaiian Way.... even though I look, talk, and sometimes act haole LOL Unfortunately some people are superficial and judge people by their looks and/or on how their name looks... instead of on their mana and/or how much they value the iwi LOLWhen I go back home again I hope to get another tattoo. Hopefully from Dodge. Hopefully he not busy but I want to get "I love aku palu." It has a very deep meaning to me and to aku palu LOLLatahs!!!

Edited to add:

Do you see how some pilau are and come to MY page to try to harass... like Conklin LOL Known for his anti-Hawaiian mana'o that single out and target Hawaiians based on their national origin and who posts inaccurate information about me on his webpage. Why he mentions my inoa seems strange considering.My kupuna have directed me NOT to respond to her.However to my Among relatives on my maternal line... I am a mo'opuna of one of my kupuna, Bessie Among. Well known to be a strong oiwi woman. She is the daughter of Rachel (daughter of Pale Kauwe) who the person below called UGLY. Aue!To my paternal side from Kaupo Maui... I am a mo'opuna of another kupuna who shall remain nameless since some people who come to my page like to try to dig up dirt like how they dig up the bones of my kupuna and try to bleach them. Aue!

Of course it makes me laugh because Boyd Mossman is one my cousins on my Maui side and I obviously disagree with him and how he treats our cousins through Wakea, Papa, and Haloa... yet somehow mentioning someone else is supposed to do something to me LOL Just like "Ku" coming after Kalani and I are supposed to what... scare us? Puhlease.Hint: Boyd Mossman is one of my cousins on my Maui side. I want to slap his face for allowing some Hawaiians to drown and for supporting the Akaka Bill. Mentioning someone else who is supposedly related to me does NOTHING to me but make me laugh.The person below would know that ALL Hawaiians are cousins through Wakea, Papa, and Haloa but as usual some people like make any kine.Other cousins through Wakea, Papa, and Haloa that I disagree with are as follows:Haunani Apoliona for selling us outMicah Kane for advocating that woodframe houses be built instead of BLOCK STUCCO.Senator Daniel Akaka for acting as though he speaks for all Hawaiians when he does not and for selling us outJust to name a few ;) However I realize that it is popular to DISAGREE WITH IMMATURITY LOLI believe in the TOTAL independence of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Obviously I do not associate myself with anyone who disagrees LOL Some of whom are my cousins through Wakea, Papa, and Haloa so more I LAUGH.P.S. I do not wish to "connect" with ANYONE. MY PIKO AND IWI ALREADY CONNECT ME TO MY OHANA-s. Some people are so annoying. If only some people would STOP stepping on, exposing, and bleaching other people's kupunas' bones then THIS kine dramaz would not exist but as usual some people INSIST on stepping on, exposing, and bleaching other people's kupunas' bones. LEAVE THE BONES ALONE:http://www.oha.org/pdf/kwo06/0602/18.pdf'O Lana Ululani Robbins ko'u INOA.

SAY "NO!' TO THE AKAKA BILL

Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 10, 2009 at 6:00am

DO YOUR PART TODAY TO TELL THE US CONGRESS "NO!" TO THE AKAKA BILL

Add Your Name Here - StopAkakaPetition.comRemember, The Akaka Bill Creates Only VICTIMS, Not Beneficiaries

WAR TO END ALL WARS? Think again.

Posted by Donna Burns on August 9, 2009 at 11:14am

War begets war...or the saying goes. I was told as a child that WW2 was a war to "end all wars". Think again. This article spells it out for those who actually thinks the US is about justice, equality, and peace.--------------------Perpetual War for Perpetual WarGet ready for a “lasting military presence” in IraqBy Jeff HuberAugust 08, 2009 "American Conservative" -- -U.S. Army Col. Timothy R. Reese says it’s time for the U.S. to “declare victory” in Iraq and “go home.” It was time to declare victory and go home in January 2007, when the Bush administration decided to ignore the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and charged off on its cockamamie “surge” strategy.The original stated objective of the surge was political reconciliation in Iraq. By September 2007, when it was clear that the political objective was not in sight, Gen. David Petraeus pulled a bait-and-switch and announced that the military objectives of the surge were being met. Petraeus hagiographer Thomas E. Ricks slipped Freudian in February 2009 when he confessed that Petraeus’s goal was never to end the Iraq conflict but to trick Congress and the American public into extending it indefinitely by achieving short-term results though bribing Iraq’s militias.According to Colonel Reese, chief of the Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, the surge’s real objectives still haven’t been met and never will be. In a recent memorandum, Reese asserts that “the ineffectiveness and corruption” of Iraq’s government ministries is “the stuff of legend.” The government is “failing to take rational steps to improve its electrical infrastructure and to improve their oil exploration, production and exports.” There is “no progress towards resolving the Kirkuk situation,” transition the Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi Security Forces “is not happening” and “the Kurdish situation continues to fester.” Violent political intimidation is “rampant.” Iraq’s security forces are a disaster. The officer corps is corrupt. Enlisted men are neglected and mistreated. Cronyism and nepotism are rampant. Laziness, lack of initiative, and absence of basic military discipline are endemic. Iraq’s military leadership is incapable of leading; it can’t plan ahead, it can’t stand up to the Shiite political parties, it can’t stick to its agreements.The U.S. military in Iraq has accomplished “all that can be expected,” Reese says.Gen. Ray Odierno’s propaganda officer, Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberlem, told the New York Times that Reese’s memo “does not reflect the official stance of the U.S. military.” The memo “Reflects one person’s personal view at the time we were first implementing the Security Agreement post-30 June,” Abaelem said. “Since that time many of the initial issues have been resolved and our partnerships with Iraqi Security Forces and [government of Iraq] partners now are even stronger than before 30 June.”Right. We shaved our monkey in Iraq for six years and change, but since June 30 everything’s gone hunky dory.Oddly enough, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on July 29 that the relatively low levels of violence in Iraq might allow commanders to “moderately accelerate” troops reductions. He added, though, that Odierno would have to recommend speeding up the withdrawal before any decision is made. That pretty much tells you how things work in the Department of Defense. Gates isn’t in charge of his four-stars; they’re in charge of him.Odie is on record as wanting to keep 35,000 U.S. troops in Iraq through 2015, so, predictably enough, on August 4 he rejected the idea of an accelerated pullout, saying that the surge hasn’t reached its goals yet and we need to “stay the course.” (Yes, he really used that moronic Bush-era mantra.) The Desert Ox doesn’t seem particularly concerned about the Status of Forces Agreement that requires all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki doesn’t appear to be overly committed to the agreement either. In a July 23 appearance at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, Maliki opened the door for indefinite U.S. presence in his country, saying, “If Iraqi forces need more training and support, we will reexamine the agreement at that time, based on our own national needs.”Even Reese isn’t all that committed about U.S. forces leaving Iraq. In his memo, he says that during the withdrawal period the U.S. and Iraqi governments “should develop a new strategic framework agreement that would include some lasting military presence at 1-3 large training bases, airbases, or key headquarters locations.”Lasting military presence. That’s been the objective of the neoconservatives all along. In their September 2009 manifesto Rebuilding America’s Defenses Cheney’s pals at the infamous Project for the New American Century argued, “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The neocons’ Pax Americana vision has translated into the Pentagon’s “long war,” a strategy that does not seek to win wars but rather to create a sequel to the Cold War in which Islamofacism substitutes for communism and puny Iran, whose defense budget is less than one percent of ours, replaces the Soviet juggernaut.That might be justified if military applications overseas were making us safer from terrorism, but they are not. In 2008 the highly respected national security analysts at Rand Corporation released a report titled How Terrorist Groups End. The study involved a comprehensive analysis of terror organizations that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006. 83 percent of the groups ended as a result of policing and political action. Military force accounted for a mere 7 percent of success against terrorists. Rand analysts recommend that the best course of counterterrorism actions should involve “a light U.S. military footprint or none at all.” We’re almost certainly, as Donald Rumsfeld suspected in 2004, making multiple new terrorists for every one we capture or kill. We have discovered a new style of warfare: reverse attrition. The more enemy we attrite the more enemy we have.All the talk about withdrawing from Iraq is an Orwellian card trick. Reese says our “lasting military presence” should not “include the presence of any combat forces save those for force protection needs or the occasional exercise.” Why would we need to leave noncombat forces behind? So they can cook and clean for the combat forces that provide them force protection? The exercises we might do with the Iraqis would involve practicing for the invasions of Iran and Syria, which is the real reason the warmongery wants to keep an enduring base of operations in Iraq. There’s no need to conduct defensive exercises. None of Iraq’s neighbors is capable of invading and occupying it or crazy enough to try.President Obama’s promise to remove all U.S combat troops from Iraq by August 2010 was also a see-through canard. As Gareth Porter revealed in March, the “advisory and assistance brigades” that will remain after that date will in fact be combat brigades augmented by a handful of advisers and assistants. The Cold War justified defense spending for a half-century. Now, the Pentagon is trying to validate its existence with another long war in the Middle East.Sun Tzu famously said, “No nation ever profited from a long war.” The 27- year Peloponnesian War ended Athens’ reign as a superpower. The Thirty Years’ War Balkanized the Holy Roman Empire, dividing German power among multiple smaller states. The 46-year Cold War forced the Soviet Union to change its name back to Russia.Don’t expect us to withdraw from Iraq or the Bananastans any time soon. The American warmongery, a confluence of Big War, Big Energy, Big Jesus, Big Israel, Big Brainwash, and Big Brother, is trying to entangle us in a state of constant armed conflict that will carry on into the next American century. There’s no need for anyone to challenge our hegemony; all they have to do is sit back and watch us collapse under the weight of our own stupidity.

FAKE STATE PROTESTS ON "VOICES OF TRUTH - ONE-ON-ONE WITH HAWAI`I'S FUTURE"

Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 9, 2009 at 8:43am

Mahalo nui for the mountain of positive feedback we’ve received on our newest Voices Of Truth segment featuring our visit with Ramsay Taum.Ramsay’s message is especially important for us now. In less than two weeks, on August 21st, the fake state of Hawai`i will attempt to celebrate it’s supposed legitimacy.Free Hawai`i supporters plan counter demonstrations in cities all over the world to express outrage over the continued illegal US occupation of Hawai`i and to expose the 50th state as a fake and a lie.Stay tuned to FreeHawaii.Info and Free Hawai`i TV between now and August 21st for breaking news and updates.And be sure and visit HawaiiFakeState.com for more details.Hawai`i, it’s culture and people are guided by our kupuna and ancestors, rather than a foreign political power as you’ll see this week on Voices Of Truth – One-On-One With Hawai`i's Future.MONDAY, August 10th At 6:30 PM – Maui – Akaku, Channel 53MONDAY, August 10th At 7:00 PM & FRIDAY, August 14th At 5:30 PM – Hawai`i Island – Na Leo, Channel 53THURSDAY, August 13th At 8:30 PM & FRIDAY, August 14th At 8:30 AM - Kaua`i – Ho`ike, Channel 52SATURDAY, August 15th At 8:00 PM – O`ahu, `Olelo, Channel 53“Cultural Revolutions – A Visit With Ramsay Taum”The past still exists right beside the present for Ramsay Taum. A noted cultural and sustainability expert, he knows the value of our kupuna and the cost if these elders pass without gaining their knowledge and insights. Yet he shows us how the past is always with us including those who have gone before. As you’ll find out, it’s much more than a “revolutionary” way of thinking - Watch It Here.Voices Of Truth interviews those creating a better future for Hawai`i to discover what made them go from armchair observers to active participants. We hope you'll be inspired to do the same.If you support our issues on the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network, please email this to a friend to help us continue. A donation today helps further our work. Every single penny counts.Donating is easy on our Voices Of Truth website via PayPal where you can watch Voices Of Truth anytime.For news and issues that affect you, watch Free Hawai`i TV, a part of the Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network.Please share our Free Hawai`i Broadcasting Network videos with friends and colleagues. That's how we grow. Mahalo.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION PUSHING FLU VACCINE.

Posted by Donna Burns on August 9, 2009 at 7:54am

This is a very long article...but good to read. If you have keiki especially. Even if you don't.------------------Global Research Editor's noteWe bring to the attention of our readers this 2005 article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published by Rollingstone.com.The article sheds light on the collusion between Big Parma and the US government and the dangers associated with vaccines produced by major pharmaceutical companies. This article is of particular relevance to the current debate on the H1N1 swine flu virus and plans by the WHO, The Obama Administration and Big Pharma to develop a swine flu vaccine.The article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. documented "the government's efforts to conceal alarming data about the dangers of vaccines."For a review of Global Research articles on the H1NI Swine Flu Pandemic, click here.Michel Chossudovsky, July 23, 2009--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandalIn June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.Vaccine manufacturers had already begun to phase thimerosal out of injections given to American infants -- but they continued to sell off their mercury-based supplies of vaccines until last year. The CDC and FDA gave them a hand, buying up the tainted vaccines for export to developing countries and allowing drug companies to continue using the preservative in some American vaccines -- including several pediatric flu shots as well as tetanus boosters routinely given to eleven-year-olds.The drug companies are also getting help from powerful lawmakers in Washington. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents -- including the Simpsonwood transcripts -- and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the "Eli Lilly Protection Act" into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 -- but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders. "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to Frist.Even many conservatives are shocked by the government's effort to cover up the dangers of thimerosal. Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana, oversaw a three-year investigation of thimerosal after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. "Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is directly related to the autism epidemic," his House Government Reform Committee concluded in its final report. "This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding a lack of safety data regarding injected thimerosal, a known neurotoxin." The FDA and other public-health agencies failed to act, the committee added, out of "institutional malfeasance for self protection" and "misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry."The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed. I was drawn into the controversy only reluctantly. As an attorney and environmentalist who has spent years working on issues of mercury toxicity, I frequently met mothers of autistic children who were absolutely convinced that their kids had been injured by vaccines. Privately, I was skeptical.I doubted that autism could be blamed on a single source, and I certainly understood the government's need to reassure parents that vaccinations are safe; the eradication of deadly childhood diseases depends on it. I tended to agree with skeptics like Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California, who criticized his colleagues on the House Government Reform Committee for leaping to conclusions about autism and vaccinations. "Why should we scare people about immunization," Waxman pointed out at one hearing, "until we know the facts?"It was only after reading the Simpsonwood transcripts, studying the leading scientific research and talking with many of the nation's pre-eminent authorities on mercury that I became convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real. Five of my own children are members of the Thimerosal Generation -- those born between 1989 and 2003 -- who received heavy doses of mercury from vaccines. "The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological or immune-system damage," Patti White, a school nurse, told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931.Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the twenty-year-old autistics?" Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative "load" of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It's a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received -- but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.What is most striking is the lengths to which many of the leading detectives have gone to ignore -- and cover up -- the evidence against thimerosal. From the very beginning, the scientific case against the mercury additive has been overwhelming. The preservative, which is used to stem fungi and bacterial growth in vaccines, contains ethylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Truckloads of studies have shown that mercury tends to accumulate in the brains of primates and other animals after they are injected with vaccines -- and that the developing brains of infants are particularly susceptible. In 1977, a Russian study found that adults exposed to much lower concentrations of ethylmercury than those given to American children still suffered brain damage years later. Russia banned thimerosal from children's vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit."You couldn't even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe," says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. "It's just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage."Internal documents reveal that Eli Lilly, which first developed thimerosal, knew from the start that its product could cause damage -- and even death -- in both animals and humans. In 1930, the company tested thimerosal by administering it to twenty-two patients with terminal meningitis, all of whom died within weeks of being injected -- a fact Lilly didn't bother to report in its study declaring thimerosal safe. In 1935, researchers at another vaccine manufacturer, Pittman-Moore, warned Lilly that its claims about thimerosal's safety "did not check with ours." Half the dogs Pittman injected with thimerosal-based vaccines became sick, leading researchers there to declare the preservative "unsatisfactory as a serum intended for use on dogs."In the decades that followed, the evidence against thimerosal continued to mount. During the Second World War, when the Department of Defense used the preservative in vaccines on soldiers, it required Lilly to label it "poison." In 1967, a study in Applied Microbiology found that thimerosal killed mice when added to injected vaccines. Four years later, Lilly's own studies discerned that thimerosal was "toxic to tissue cells" in concentrations as low as one part per million -- 100 times weaker than the concentration in a typical vaccine. Even so, the company continued to promote thimerosal as "nontoxic" and also incorporated it into topical disinfectants. In 1977, ten babies at a Toronto hospital died when an antiseptic preserved with thimerosal was dabbed onto their umbilical cords.In 1982, the FDA proposed a ban on over-the-counter products that contained thimerosal, and in 1991 the agency considered banning it from animal vaccines. But tragically, that same year, the CDC recommended that infants be injected with a series of mercury-laced vaccines. Newborns would be vaccinated for hepatitis B within twenty-four hours of birth, and two-month-old infants would be immunized for haemophilus influenzae B and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis.The drug industry knew the additional vaccines posed a danger. The same year that the CDC approved the new vaccines, Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck's vaccine programs, warned the company that six-month-olds who were administered the shots would suffer dangerous exposure to mercury. He recommended that thimerosal be discontinued, "especially when used on infants and children," noting that the industry knew of nontoxic alternatives. "The best way to go," he added, "is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives."For Merck and other drug companies, however, the obstacle was money. Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics. Faced with this "cost consideration," Merck ignored Hilleman's warnings, and government officials continued to push more and more thimerosal-based vaccines for children. Before 1989, American preschoolers received eleven vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of twenty-two immunizations by the time they reached first grade.As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines. "What took the FDA so long to do the calculations?" Peter Patriarca, director of viral products for the agency, asked in an e-mail to the CDC in 1999. "Why didn't CDC and the advisory bodies do these calculations when they rapidly expanded the childhood immunization schedule?"But by that time, the damage was done. At two months, when the infant brain is still at a critical stage of development, infants routinely received three inoculations that contained a total of 62.5 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 99 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin. Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.Officials responsible for childhood immunizations insist that the additional vaccines were necessary to protect infants from disease and that thimerosal is still essential in developing nations, which, they often claim, cannot afford the single-dose vials that don't require a preservative. Dr. Paul Offit, one of CDC's top vaccine advisers, told me, "I think if we really have an influenza pandemic -- and certainly we will in the next twenty years, because we always do -- there's no way on God's earth that we immunize 280 million people with single-dose vials. There has to be multidose vials."But while public-health officials may have been well-intentioned, many of those on the CDC advisory committee who backed the additional vaccines had close ties to the industry. Dr. Sam Katz, the committee's chair, was a paid consultant for most of the major vaccine makers and was part of a team that developed the measles vaccine and brought it to licensure in 1963. Dr. Neal Halsey, another committee member, worked as a researcher for the vaccine companies and received honoraria from Abbott Labs for his research on the hepatitis B vaccine.Indeed, in the tight circle of scientists who work on vaccines, such conflicts of interest are common. Rep. Burton says that the CDC "routinely allows scientists with blatant conflicts of interest to serve on intellectual advisory committees that make recommendations on new vaccines," even though they have "interests in the products and companies for which they are supposed to be providing unbiased oversight." The House Government Reform Committee discovered that four of the eight CDC advisers who approved guidelines for a rotavirus vaccine "had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine."Offit, who shares a patent on one of the vaccines, acknowledged to me that he "would make money" if his vote eventually leads to a marketable product. But he dismissed my suggestion that a scientist's direct financial stake in CDC approval might bias his judgment. "It provides no conflict for me," he insists. "I have simply been informed by the process, not corrupted by it. When I sat around that table, my sole intent was trying to make recommendations that best benefited the children in this country. It's offensive to say that physicians and public-health people are in the pocket of industry and thus are making decisions that they know are unsafe for children. It's just not the way it works."Other vaccine scientists and regulators gave me similar assurances. Like Offit, they view themselves as enlightened guardians of children's health, proud of their "partnerships" with pharmaceutical companies, immune to the seductions of personal profit, besieged by irrational activists whose anti-vaccine campaigns are endangering children's health. They are often resentful of questioning. "Science," says Offit, "is best left to scientists."Still, some government officials were alarmed by the apparent conflicts of interest. In his e-mail to CDC administrators in 1999, Paul Patriarca of the FDA blasted federal regulators for failing to adequately scrutinize the danger posed by the added baby vaccines. "I'm not sure there will be an easy way out of the potential perception that the FDA, CDC and immunization-policy bodies may have been asleep at the switch re: thimerosal until now," Patriarca wrote. The close ties between regulatory officials and the pharmaceutical industry, he added, "will also raise questions about various advisory bodies regarding aggressive recommendations for use" of thimerosal in child vaccines.If federal regulators and government scientists failed to grasp the potential risks of thimerosal over the years, no one could claim ignorance after the secret meeting at Simpsonwood. But rather than conduct more studies to test the link to autism and other forms of brain damage, the CDC placed politics over science. The agency turned its database on childhood vaccines -- which had been developed largely at taxpayer expense -- over to a private agency, America's Health Insurance Plans, ensuring that it could not be used for additional research. It also instructed the Institute of Medicine, an advisory organization that is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to produce a study debunking the link between thimerosal and brain disorders. The CDC "wants us to declare, well, that these things are pretty safe," Dr. Marie McCormick, who chaired the IOM's Immunization Safety Review Committee, told her fellow researchers when they first met in January 2001. "We are not ever going to come down that [autism] is a true side effect" of thimerosal exposure. According to transcripts of the meeting, the committee's chief staffer, Kathleen Stratton, predicted that the IOM would conclude that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject a causal relation" between thimerosal and autism. That, she added, was the result "Walt wants" -- a reference to Dr. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization Program for the CDC.For those who had devoted their lives to promoting vaccination, the revelations about thimerosal threatened to undermine everything they had worked for. "We've got a dragon by the tail here," said Dr. Michael Kaback, another committee member. "The more negative that [our] presentation is, the less likely people are to use vaccination, immunization -- and we know what the results of that will be. We are kind of caught in a trap. How we work our way out of the trap, I think is the charge."Even in public, federal officials made it clear that their primary goal in studying thimerosal was to dispel doubts about vaccines. "Four current studies are taking place to rule out the proposed link between autism and thimerosal," Dr. Gordon Douglas, then-director of strategic planning for vaccine research at the National Institutes of Health, assured a Princeton University gathering in May 2001. "In order to undo the harmful effects of research claiming to link the [measles] vaccine to an elevated risk of autism, we need to conduct and publicize additional studies to assure parents of safety." Douglas formerly served as president of vaccinations for Merck, where he ignored warnings about thimerosal's risks.In May of last year, the Institute of Medicine issued its final report. Its conclusion: There is no proven link between autism and thimerosal in vaccines. Rather than reviewing the large body of literature describing the toxicity of thimerosal, the report relied on four disastrously flawed epidemiological studies examining European countries, where children received much smaller doses of thimerosal than American kids. It also cited a new version of the Verstraeten study, published in the journal Pediatrics, that had been reworked to reduce the link between thimerosal and autism. The new study included children too young to have been diagnosed with autism and overlooked others who showed signs of the disease. The IOM declared the case closed and -- in a startling position for a scientific body -- recommended that no further research be conducted.The report may have satisfied the CDC, but it convinced no one. Rep. David Weldon, a Republican physician from Florida who serves on the House Government Reform Committee, attacked the Institute of Medicine, saying it relied on a handful of studies that were "fatally flawed" by "poor design" and failed to represent "all the available scientific and medical research." CDC officials are not interested in an honest search for the truth, Weldon told me, because "an association between vaccines and autism would force them to admit that their policies irreparably damaged thousands of children. Who would want to make that conclusion about themselves?"Under pressure from Congress and parents, the Institute of Medicine convened another panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program. In February, the new panel, composed of different scientists, criticized the way the VSD had been used in the Verstraeten study, and urged the CDC to make its vaccine database available to the public.So far, though, only two scientists have managed to gain access. Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.As the federal government worked to prevent scientists from studying vaccines, others have stepped in to study the link to autism. In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.At the state level, many officials have also conducted in-depth reviews of thimerosal. While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. "After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism," says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. "The fact that Iowa's 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children's vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone." Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two other states.But instead of following suit, the FDA continues to allow manufacturers to include thimerosal in scores of over-the-counter medications as well as steroids and injected collagen. Even more alarming, the government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates. In China, where the disease was virtually unknown prior to the introduction of thimerosal by U.S. drug manufacturers in 1999, news reports indicate that there are now more than 1.8 million autistics. Although reliable numbers are hard to come by, autistic disorders also appear to be soaring in India, Argentina, Nicaragua and other developing countries that are now using thimerosal-laced vaccines. The World Health Organization continues to insist thimerosal is safe, but it promises to keep the possibility that it is linked to neurological disorders "under review."I devoted time to study this issue because I believe that this is a moral crisis that must be addressed. If, as the evidence suggests, our public-health authorities knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children, their actions arguably constitute one of the biggest scandals in the annals of American medicine. "The CDC is guilty of incompetence and gross negligence," says Mark Blaxill, vice president of Safe Minds, a nonprofit organization concerned about the role of mercury in medicines. "The damage caused by vaccine exposure is massive. It's bigger than asbestos, bigger than tobacco, bigger than anything you've ever seen."It's hard to calculate the damage to our country -- and to the international efforts to eradicate epidemic diseases -- if Third World nations come to believe that America's most heralded foreign-aid initiative is poisoning their children. It's not difficult to predict how this scenario will be interpreted by America's enemies abroad. The scientists and researchers -- many of them sincere, even idealistic -- who are participating in efforts to hide the science on thimerosal claim that they are trying to advance the lofty goal of protecting children in developing nations from disease pandemics. They are badly misguided. Their failure to come clean on thimerosal will come back horribly to haunt our country and the world's poorest populations.NOTE: This story has been updated to correct several inaccuracies in the original, published version. As originally reported, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations before 1989, but the article failed to note that they were innoculated a total of eleven times with those vaccines, including boosters. The article also misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms - an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. Finally, because of an editing error, the article misstated the contents of the rotavirus vaccine approved by the CDC. It did not contain thimerosal. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.An earlier version of this story stated that the Institute of Medicine convened a second panel to review the work of the Immunization Safety Review Committee that had found no evidence of a link between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the IOM convened the second panel to address continuing concerns about the Vaccine Safety Datalink Data Sharing program, including those raised by critics of the IOM's earlier work. But the panel was not charged with reviewing the committee's findings. The story also inadvertently omitted a word and transposed two sentences in a quote by Dr. John Clements, and incorrectly stated that Dr. Sam Katz held a patent with Merck on the measles vaccine. In fact, Dr. Katz was part of a team that developed the vaccine and brought it to licensure, but he never held the patent. Salon and Rolling Stone regret the errors.CLARIFICATION: After publication of this story, Salon and Rolling Stone corrected an error that misstated the level of ethylmercury received by infants injected with all their shots by the age of six months. It was 187 micrograms ? an amount forty percent, not 187 times, greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury. At the time of the correction, we were aware that the comparison itself was flawed, but as journalists we considered it more appropriate to state the correct figure rather than replace it with another number entirely.Since that earlier correction, however, it has become clear from responses to the article that the forty-percent number, while accurate, is misleading. It measures the total mercury load an infant received from vaccines during the first six months, calculates the daily average received based on average body weight, and then compares that number to the EPA daily limit. But infants did not receive the vaccines as a ?daily average? ? they received massive doses on a single day, through multiple shots. As the story states, these single-day doses exceeded the EPA limit by as much as 99 times. Based on the misunderstanding, and to avoid further confusion, we have amended the story to eliminate the forty-percent figure.Correction: The story misattributed a quote to Andy Olson, former legislative counsel to Senator Bill Frist. The comment was made by Dean Rosen, health policy adviser to the senator. Rolling Stone and Salon.com regret the error.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kennedy Report Sparks Controversy"Deadly Immunity," our story about the link between mercury in vaccines and the dramatic rise in autism among children [RS 977/978], sparked intense reaction from the medical establishment and several leading news organizations. The story, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- part of an ongoing collaboration with Salon.com -- documented the government's efforts to conceal alarming data about the dangers of vaccines.What is most striking is the lengths to which major media outlets have gone to disparage the story and to calm public fears -- even in the face of the questionable science on the subject. In a segment on World News Tonight titled "A Closer Look," ABC pointed out that Kennedy is "not a scientist or a doctor" and dismissed his extensive evidence as nothing more than "a few scientific studies." The network also trotted out its medical editor, Dr. Timothy Johnson, to praise the "impeccably impartial Institute of Medicine" and to again state that Kennedy is not a scientist.The New York Times, in a front-page story on the subject, devoted only one line to Kennedy's article, which it said accused public-health officials and drugmakers of "conspiring" to hide the data on autism -- a word that our story neither used nor implied. (The Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed attacking the article, was even more misleading, using the word "conspiracy" four times.) The Times then went on, for more than a full page, to portray concerns over vaccines as nothing more than the misguided fears of parents who suffer from "scientific illiteracy," unable to understand the medical studies that prove immunizations to be safe. It depicted studies reviewed by the Institute of Medicine as definitive without even bothering to address the host of serious questions raised about their validity: conflicting diagnoses of autism, mixed-up data from HMOs and research skewed to exclude many sick kids.Rolling Stone and Salon fact-checked the article thoroughly before publication, insisting on primary documentation for every statement in the story, and posted links to the most significant materials online to enable readers to judge for themselves. The final article contained six errors. These ranged from inadvertently transposing a quote and confusing a drug license for a patent to relying on a figure that incorrectly calculated an infant's exposure to mercury over six months, rather than citing the even more dangerous amount injected on a single day. (The mistakes were corrected online as soon as they were discovered and can be viewed in detail at both RollingStone.com and Salon.com.)It is important to note, however, that none of the mistakes weaken the primary point of the story. The government's own records show that it has failed to do the science necessary to put to rest reasonable concerns about vaccines. If the scientists had simply done their job rather than covering their tracks, there would be no controversy today. Instead, the government cannot even provide a definitive figure of the number of cases of autism among American children -- a number obviously critical to any serious scientific investigation -- and yet expects the public to believe that it has ruled out any link between vaccines and an illness it does not even track."Science," as one doctor in our story insisted, "is best left to scientists." But when the scientists fail to do their job, resorting to closed-door meetings and rigged studies, others in society have not only a right but a moral obligation to question their work. In the coming years, further research may indeed demonstrate that mercury in vaccines is not responsible for the rise in autism. For now, though, we can only raise a very real and legitimate alarm -- and hope that the government's well-documented mishandling of its own research did not needlessly jeopardize the health of hundreds of thousands of children.

HAWAI`I THE 50th STATE - CELEBRATING A LIE

Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 8, 2009 at 8:31am

HAWAI`I THE 50th STATE - CELEBRATING A LIEHonolulu Star-Bulletin - August 7, 2009The "Jubilee of Statehood," was supposed to be a humdinger of an event. But the mood had changed considerably since 1959, so the state's celebration commission decided to downplay the jubilant part of jubilee.You see, over the last few decades Hawaiians became increasingly aware that there was something wrong with statehood. The more that was discovered about the shady circumstances that led to statehood, the more statehood looked like a massive con job. The people of Hawai`i (and the world, for that matter) were hoodwinked.The passage of the Apology Resolution in 1993 by Congress and signed by the president, had obvious implications: It confirmed that Hawai`i was being unlawfully possessed by the U.S.; that the Kingdom of Hawai`i never ceased to be; and that the people of Hawai`i had the lawful right (indeed, patriotic duty) to restore their country.The Republic of Hawai`i was unlawful; the annexation of Hawai`i by the U.S. was unlawful; the Territory of Hawai`i was unlawful; and the State of Hawai`i was and is unlawful.This is radically different from Hawai`i being the 50th state. The dilemma for the state is: celebrating the jubilee of a lie.Oliver DukelowKahakuloa Village, Maui

Free Photo Editing Software and Free Graphing Software

Posted by Ululani on August 8, 2009 at 5:30am

For my family and friends who like KNOW:

I have written about this before.There is free software called Photoscape. I like to post about it because when I found it I was glad because it is easier to use than Photoshop, is free, and does the basics of photo editing. I use it for my work too.Sometimes I use Photoshop to alter my pictures because people like Ken Conklin like to deface my pictures and to deface MY pictures is to deface my KUPUNA. That is why I ALWAYS alter pictures of me in SOME way because I KNOW got pilau people lidat LOL There are some UMIAMAKA DAS WHY LOLSo of course when some people think that I look a certain way and make fun of me when they have a HUGE BELLY AND ARE BALD... it makes me laugh. I still don't call them or tell them that they "fat" though.However I like to see Hawaiians online and offline. Because when they are visible... so are our kupuna. Just as long as they no STEP ON THE IWI in a BAD way LOLOf course ever since I was a little girl my Hilo Grandma would always tell me to learn about the computer. I was only four years old LOL and am known to be po'o pa'a ki ki but she wanted me to... and I did.Anyway Photoscape is FREE. You can use it to alter pictures... brighten, reduce size, crop, add text, add frames, etc. You can even make a collage of different photos together like this

and it's FREE.Here is the link to download the software:http://photoscape.org/ps/main/index.phpEnjoy!Well it looks like I will be coming home again soon. Of course my mom always has Hawaiian food ready for me *LOL* The only thing is that I going have to bring my laptop with me so that I can still work while I'm on the road. Going by hard though... because IMHO Hawai'i small kine RESTRICTING to HAWAIIANS LOLI going try be there though for certain things. I going TRY to bring my Super Duper Canon G-1 digital video camera. I also going try to get more memory cards for my Exilim because right now I only have 12 GB total.Fortunately I can work when I am at home as long as I have my laptop and cell phone so it's all good. It's just that whenever I am at home I am INUNDATED with phone calls for work LOL It never fails.Oops... for FREE graphing software that I found out from someone else... here is the link:http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/CreateAGraph/default.aspx?ID=af542ccd108b4c3982271d9a145e8bbfI use it for market reports for my work but you can use it for whatevers.Latahs!P.S. Thanks to Guy Aina for two copies of "Hawaii The Fake State." I was trying to buy a paperback copy from Amazon.com but they only have the Kindle version which I NO LIKE. So thanks!!! I going give the second copy to my two eldest nieces, Makanamaikalanimai and Mahinaokalani :-)

Hawaii - A Voice For Sovereignty Special Screenings Throughout The Hawaiian Archipelago

Posted by Kaleo Farias on August 7, 2009 at 2:00pm

Aloha kaua e Maoliworld,,This is a campaign to help educate and illustrate the dignity and intellect of the great Hawaiian People. Let's make the Queen our model as how she would do it, in her name we will do it for her and her people.Hawaii: A Voice For Sovereignty the documentary epic film about the Hawaiian Culture, the Spirituality and the connection to the land will be released soon theatrically. The private premiere of the film at the Capitol Bldg. in Washington, DC and the public premiere at the Maui Film Festival and Audience Award Best Hawai'i Film has proven that this film is solid for the history and representation of the Kanaka Maoli People. There will be special screenings of a preview of the film throughout the islands to celebrate the Oral History of the voice of the Kanaka Maoli People over the last century during the celebratory time of Statehood for the State of HI., before and during the week of Aug. 21, 2009. The goal is to get the message of the people out internationally. The film will be distributed in Hawai'i by Aloha Nui Distributors as soon as all qualifications have been met to move the promotion of the film forward. Orders for the DVD are available now to ensure a copy of the film after the premiers screening which will be announced soon. Your pre-orders of the film will assist in the promotion of the screening of the film throughout Hawaii and for the entry of the Academy Awards. Mahalo for your support to make this global tour a success and help the voice of the Kanaka Maoli People be heard.To pre-order please go to www.catherinebauknight.com or contact Aloha Nui Distributors at 808.489.7065 or 808.393.8678 to ensure a copy of the film, which will be announced soon. You can also email Aloha Nui Distributors at alohanuidistributors@gmail.com. The Dvds are priced at $20.00 a peice, plus shipping & handling.Mahalo,Catherine BauknightProducer, Hawaii A Voice For SovereigntyOthila Media Productions

I must thank those who voted for Obama and BRAGGED and boasted about it.

Posted by Ululani on August 7, 2009 at 10:00am

For my family and friends:

If you voted for Obama I must thank you for voting for President Obama:http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090806/BREAKING01/908060324/Obama+backs+Akaka+bill+as+promisedVoting for him sure helped huh?Letters to him PLEADING with him sure helped huh?Like I mentioned before some of our so-called "best and brightest" ARE going to get US killed.Or rather... they ARE getting us killed.I state "killed" because land, food, water, and air help us to LIVE.Land being an important one because when WE lose OUR land WE lose OUR roots.Thus without land... WE die. Make sense?!?!?!And yes... if and WHEN WE GO DOWN I BLAME YOU for voting for HIM. YOU helped make it possible.This is not to say that Republicans are innocent. They are far from it. Like my mother used to tell me ever since I was a little girl, "They all crooks!" Even though I am a registered Republican... I agree with my mommy, She does not vote and has never voted in American elections. Props to people like her.But to vote for Obama. Some oiwi voted for him then bragged AND boasted about it. Lifting their head REALLY high.Eat one's words.I would rather eat stones!!!(Ae ka stress... yes LOL)Latahs!

FIFTY YEARS OF STATEHOOD? OR FIFTY YEARS OF LIES?

Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 7, 2009 at 2:52am

FIFTY YEARS OF STATEHOOD?OR FIFTY YEARS OF LIES?

You Decide! HawaiiFakeState.com

akaka bill

Posted by Tina matildo botelho on August 6, 2009 at 8:48pm

so whats up some one tell me whts going on now tell me good news not bad news and all of us should hoponopono.

"Affirming & Exercising Your Hawaiian National Rights" Part 3

Posted by Kaleo Farias on August 6, 2009 at 2:41pm

E Kala Mai Everyone! Due to the overwhelming response, via email and phone calls, we have decided to make Affirming & Exercising Your Hawaiian National Rights a full two day event instead of one. The dates will be August 14th-15th, 2009 from 8am-4pm on the Iolani Palace Grounds. Click on Events to get all of the detailed information. See you there!!!Bruddah Kaleo

BE COOL & STAY IN SCHOOL

Posted by Namaka'eha on August 6, 2009 at 10:33am

Don't stop believeing in yourself. You can do no matter how long it takes! For decades, Kanaka Maoli have been told otherwise. STOP believing those CRAP and finish school. BE AKAMAI. Learn about our true history of what happened!Long ago, I heard this comment in high school, you will never make it cause you aint smart. HMMMMM...Guess what to that teacher who made the statement.....Stop talking crap about my people and EMPOWER rather than DEMEAN others! A winner is one who persist and never gives up!namaka'eha

THE GREAT HIROSHIMA COVER UP. WHO'S NEXT?

Posted by Donna Burns on August 6, 2009 at 8:46am

I know this is a very long article. 70,000 Japanese died in this blast...and don't you think they deserve the time taken to read about this horror. Footage was kept from public view for years. Only bits and pieces are allowed to be viewed. This happened in 1946. The nuclear test in the Marshall Islands (see previous blog video) was in 1946. The US didn't learn enough when they killed 70,000 in '45...so did it again in '46.Then in 1959...they...the same people...rammed Statehood down our throats...in order to allow the US military to dominate our landscape. For what? You figure it out.-------------------------The Great Hiroshima Cover-UpAnd the Nuclear Fallout for All of Us TodayBy Greg MitchellAugust 06, 2009 "Huffington Post" -- In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan 64 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years, all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I first probed the coverup back in 1983 in Nuclear Times magazine (where I was editor), and developed it further in later articles and in my 1995 book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America and in a 2005 documentary Original Child Bomb.As editor of Nuclear Times in the early 1980s, I met Herbert Sussan, one of the members of the U.S. military film crew, and Erik Barnouw, the famed documentarian who first showed some of the Japanese footage on American TV in 1970. In fact, that newsreel footage might have disappeared forever if the Japanese filmmakers had not hidden one print from the Americans in a ceiling.The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF. I have a VHS copy of all of it today.When that footage finally emerged, I spoke with and corresponded with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military film-makers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades."I always had the sense," McGovern told me, "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child....They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done -- at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because...we were sorry for our sins."Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.In 2005, Editor & Publisher (where I am editor) broke the news that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. But suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world. The common view abroad, and among many U.S. historians, is that Russia's entry into the war (long scheduled and carried out on August 8) would have forced a Japanese surrender long before any U.S. invasion took place. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower himself later said it was not necessary to hit Japan "with that awful thing."The atomic cover-up also reveals what can happen in any country that carries out deadly attacks on civilians in any war (such as Japan's policy in China in World War II) and then keeps images of what occurred from its own people.The Japanese Newsreel FootageOn August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 civilians instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow. Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others. Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the U.S. readied plans for occupying the defeated country -- and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.But the Japanese also wanted to study it. Within days of the second atomic attack, officials at the Tokyo-based newsreel company Nippon Eigasha discussed shooting film in the two stricken cities. In early September, just after the Japanese surrender, and as the American occupation began, director Sueo Ito set off for Nagasaki. There his crew filmed the utter destruction near ground zero and scenes in hospitals of the badly burned and those suffering from the lingering effects of radiation.On Sept. 15, another crew headed for Hiroshima. When the first rushes came back to Toyko, Akira Iwasaki, the chief producer, felt "every frame burned into my brain," he later said.At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years "the world...knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction."Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.Then, on October 24, 1945, a Japanese cameraman in Nagasaki was ordered to stop shooting by an American military policeman. His film, and then the rest of the 26,000 feet of Nippon Eisasha footage, was confiscated by the U.S. General Headquarters (GHQ). An order soon arrived banning all further filming. It was at this point that Lt. Daniel McGovern took charge.Shooting the U.S. Military FootageIn early September, 1945, less than a month after the two bombs fell, Lt. McGovern -- who as a member of Hollywood's famed First Motion Picture Unit shot some of the footage for William Wyler's "Memphis Belle" -- had become one of the first Americans to arrive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a director with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, organized by the Army the previous November to study the effects of the air campaign against Germany, and now Japan.As he made plans to shoot the official American record, McGovern learned about the seizure of the Japanese footage. He felt it would be a waste to not take advantage of the newsreel footage, noting in a letter to his superiors that "the conditions under which it was taken will not be duplicated, until another atomic bomb is released under combat conditions."McGovern proposed hiring some of the Japanese crew to edit and "caption" the material, so it would have "scientific value." He took charge of this effort in early January 1946, even as the Japanese feared that, when they were done, they would never see even a scrap of their film again.At the same time, McGovern was ordered by General Douglas MacArthur on January 1, 1946 to document the results of the U.S. air campaign in more than 20 Japanese cities. His crew would shoot exclusively on color film, Kodachrome and Technicolor, rarely used at the time even in Hollywood. McGovern assembled a crew of eleven, including two civilians. Third in command was a young lieutenant from New York named Herbert Sussan.The unit left Tokyo in a specially outfitted train, and made it to Nagasaki. "Nothing and no one had prepared me for the devastation I met there," Sussan later told me. "We were the only people with adequate ability and equipment to make a record of this holocaust...I felt that if we did not capture this horror on film, no one would ever really understand the dimensions of what had happened. At that time people back home had not seen anything but black and white pictures of blasted buildings or a mushroom cloud."Along with the rest of McGovern's crew, Sussan documented the physical effects of the bomb, including the ghostly shadows of vaporized civilians burned into walls; and, most chillingly, dozens of people in hospitals who had survived (at least momentarily) and were asked to display their burns, scars, and other lingering effects for the camera as a warning to the world.At the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, a Japanese physician traced the hideous, bright red scars that covered several of the patients -- and then took off his white doctor's shirt and displayed his own burns and cuts.After sticking a camera on a rail car and building their own tracks through the ruins, the Americans filmed hair-raising tracking shots that could have been lifted right from a Hollywood movie. Their chief cameramen was a Japanese man, Harry Mimura, who in 1943 had shot Sanshiro Sugata, the first feature film by a then-unknown Japanese director named Akira Kurosawa.The Suppression BeginsWhile all this was going on, the Japanese newsreel team was completing its work of editing and labeling all their black and white footage into a rough cut of just under three hours. At this point, several members of Japanese team took the courageous step of ordering from the lab a duplicate of the footage they had shot before the Americans took over the project.Director Ito later said: "The four of us agreed to be ready for 10 years of hard labor in the case of being discovered." One incomplete, silent print would reside in a ceiling until the Occupation ended.The negative of the finished Japanese film, nearly 15,000 feet of footage on 19 reels, was sent off to the U.S. in early May 1946. The Japanese were also ordered to include in this shipment all photographs and related material. The footage would be labeled SECRET and not emerge from the shadows for more than 20 years.The following month, McGovern was abruptly ordered to return to the U.S. He hauled the 90,000 feet of color footage, on dozens of reels in huge footlockers, to the Pentagon and turned it over to General Orvil Anderson. Locked up and declared top secret, it did not see the light of day for more than 30 years.McGovern would be charged with watching over it. Sussan would become obsessed with finding it and getting it aired.Fearful that his film might get "buried," McGovern stayed on at the Pentagon as an aide to Gen. Anderson, who was fascinated by the footage and had no qualms about showing it to the American people. "He was that kind of man, he didn't give a damn what people thought," McGovern told me. "He just wanted the story told."In an article in his hometown Buffalo Evening News, McGovern said that he hoped that "this epic will be made available to the American public." He planned to call the edited movie Japan in Defeat.Once they eyeballed the footage, however, most of the top brass didn't want it widely shown and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was also opposed, according to McGovern. It nixed a Warner Brothers feature film project based on the footage that Anderson had negotiated, while paying another studio about $80,000 to help make four training films.In a March 3, 1947 memo, Francis E. Rundell, a major in the Air Corps, explained that the film would be classified "secret." This was determined "after study of subject material, especially concerning footage taken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is believed that the information contained in the films should be safeguarded until cleared by the Atomic Energy Commission." After the training films were completed, the status would be raised to "Top Secret" pending final classification by the AEC.The color footage was shipped to the Wright-Patterson base in Ohio. McGovern went along after being told to put an I.D. number on the film "and not let anyone touch it -- and that's the way it stayed," as he put it. After cataloging it, he placed it in a vault in the top secret area."Dan McGovern stayed with the film all the time," Sussan later said. "He told me they could not release the film [because] what it showed was too horrible."Sussan wrote a letter to President Truman, suggesting that a film based on the footage "would vividly and clearly reveal the implications and effects of the weapons that confront us at this serious moment in our history." A reply from a Truman aide threw cold water on that idea, saying such a film would lack "wide public appeal."McGovern, meanwhile, continued to "babysit" the film, now at Norton Air Force base in California. "It was never out of my control," he said later, but he couldn't make a film out of it any more than Sussan could (but unlike Herb, he at least knew where it was).The Japanese Footage EmergesAt the same time, McGovern was looking after the Japanese footage. Fearful that it might get lost forever in the military/government bureaucracy, he secretly made a 16 mm print and deposited it in the U.S. Air Force Central Film Depository at Wright-Patterson. There it remained out of sight, and generally out of mind. (The original negative and production materials remain missing, according to Abe Mark Nornes, who teaches at the University of Michigan and has researched the Japanese footage more than anyone.)The Japanese government repeatedly asked the U.S. for the full footage of what was known in that country as "the film of illusion," to no avail. A rare article about what it called this "sensitive" dispute appeared in the New York Times on May 18, 1967, declaring right in its headline that the film had been "Suppressed by U.S. for 22 Years." Surprisingly, it revealed that while some of the footage was already in Japan (likely a reference to the film hidden in the ceiling), the U.S. had put a "hold" on the Japanese using it -- even though the American control of that country had ceased many years earlier.Despite rising nuclear fears in the 1960s, before and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, few in the U.S. challenged the consensus view that dropping the bomb on two Japanese cities was necessary. The United States maintained its "first-use" nuclear policy: Under certain circumstances it would strike first with the bomb and ask questions later. In other words, there was no real taboo against using the bomb. This notion of acceptability had started with Hiroshima. A firm line against using nuclear weapons had been drawn -- in the sand. The U.S., in fact, had threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions.On Sept. 12, 1967, the Air Force transferred the Japanese footage to the National Archives Audio Visual Branch in Washington, with the film "not to be released without approval of DOD (Department of Defense)."Then, one morning in the summer of 1968, Erik Barnouw, author of landmark histories of film and broadcasting, opened his mail to discover a clipping from a Tokyo newspaper sent by a friend. It indicated that the U.S. had finally shipped to Japan a copy of black and white newsreel footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese had negotiated with the State Department for its return.From the Pentagon, Barnouw learned in 1968 that the original nitrate film had been quietly turned over to the National Archives, so he went to take a look. Soon Barnouw realized that, despite its marginal film quality, "enough of the footage was unforgettable in its implications, and historic in its importance, to warrant duplicating all of it," he later wrote.Attempting to create a subtle, quiet, even poetic, black and white film, he and his associates cut it from 160 to 16 minutes, with a montage of human effects clustered near the end for impact. Barnouw arranged a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and invited the press. A throng turned out and sat in respectful silence at its finish. (One can only imagine what impact the color footage with many more human effects would have had.) "Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945" proved to be a sketchy but quite moving document of the aftermath of the bombing, captured in grainy but often startling black and white images: shadows of objects or people burned into walls, ruins of schools, miles of razed landscape viewed from the roof of a building.In the weeks ahead, however, none of the (then) three TV networks expressed interest in airing it. "Only NBC thought it might use the film," Barnouw later wrote, "if it could find a 'news hook.' We dared not speculate what kind of event this might call for." But then an article appeared in Parade magazine, and an editorial in the Boston Globe blasted the networks, saying that everyone in the country should see this film: "Television has brought the sight of war into America's sitting rooms from Vietnam. Surely it can find 16 minutes of prime time to show Americans what the first A-bombs, puny by today's weapons, did to people and property 25 years ago."This at last pushed public television into the void. What was then called National Educational Television (NET) agreed to show the documentary on August 3, 1970, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of dropping the bomb."I feel that classifying all of this filmed material was a misuse of the secrecy system since none of it had any military or national security aspect at all," Barnouw told me. "The reason must have been -- that if the public had seen it and Congressmen had seen it -- it would have been much harder to appropriate money for more bombs."The American Footage Comes OutAbout a decade later, by pure chance, Herb Sussan would spark the emergence of the American footage, ending its decades in the dark.In the mid-1970s, Japanese antinuclear activists, led by a Tokyo teacher named Tsutomu Iwakura, discovered that few pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings existed in their country. Many had been seized by the U.S. military after the war, they learned, and taken out of Japan. The Japanese had as little visual exposure to the true effects of the bomb as most Americans. Activists managed to track down hundreds of pictures in archives and private collections and published them in a popular book. In 1979 they mounted an exhibit at the United Nations in New York.There, by chance, Iwakura met Sussan, who told him about the U.S. military footage.Iwakura made a few calls and found that the color footage, recently declassified, might be at the National Archives. A trip to Washington, D.C. verified this. He found eighty reels of film, labeled #342 USAF, with the reels numbered 11000 to 11079. About one-fifth of the footage covered the atomic cities. According to a shot list, reel #11010 included, for example: "School, deaf and dumb, blast effect, damaged Commercial school demolished School, engineering, demolished.School, Shirayama elementary, demolished, blast effect Tenements, demolished."The film had been quietly declassified a few years earlier, but no one in the outside world knew it. An archivist there told me at the time, "If no one knows about the film to ask for it, it's as closed as when it was classified."Eventually 200,000 Japanese citizens contributed half a million dollars and Iwakura was able to buy the film. He then traveled around Japan filming survivors who had posed for Sussan and McGovern in 1946. Iwakura quickly completed a documentary called Prophecy and in late spring 1982 arranged for a New York premiere.That fall a small part of the McGovern/Sussan footage turned up for the first time in an American film, one of the sensations of the New York Film Festival, called Dark Circle. It's co-director, Chris Beaver, told me, "No wonder the government didn't want us to see it. I think they didn't want Americans to see themselves in that picture. It's one thing to know about that and another thing to see it."Despite this exposure, not a single story had yet appeared in an American newspaper about the shooting of the footage, its suppression or release. And Sussan was now ill with a form of lymphoma doctors had found in soldiers exposed to radiation in atomic tests during the 1950s -- or in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.In late 1982, I met Sussan and Erik Barnouw -- and talked on several occasions with Daniel McGovern, out in Northridge, California. "It would make a fine documentary even today," McGovern said of the color footage. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a movie of the burning of Atlanta?"After he hauled the footage back to the Pentagon, McGovern said, he was told that under no circumstances would the footage be released for outside use. "They were fearful of it being circulated," McGovern said. He confirmed that the color footage, like the black and white, had been declassified over time, taking it from top secret to "for public release" (but only if the public knew about it and asked for it).Still, the question of precisely why the footage remained secret for so long lingered. Here McGovern added his considerable voice. "The main reason it was classified was because of the horror, the devastation," he said. "The medical effects were pretty gory. The attitude was: do not show any medical effects. Don't make people sick."But who was behind this? "I always had the sense," McGovern answered, "that people in the AEC were sorry they had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. But the AEC, they were the ones that stopped it from coming out. They had power of God over everybody," he declared. "If it had anything to do with nukes, they had to see it. They were the ones who destroyed a lot of film and pictures of the first U.S. nuclear tests after the war."Even so, McGovern believed, his footage might have surfaced "if someone had grabbed the ball and run with it but the AEC did not want it released."As Dark Circle director Chris Beaver had said, "With the government trying to sell the public on a new civil defense program and Reagan arguing that a nuclear war is survivable, this footage could be awfully bad publicity."TodayIn the summer of 1984, I made my own pilgrimage to the atomic cities, to walk in the footsteps of Dan McGovern and Herb Sussan, and meet some of the people they filmed in 1946. (The month-long grant was arranged by the current mayor of Hiroshima, Tad Akiba.) By then, the McGovern/ Sussan footage had turned up in several new documentaries. On September 2, 1985, however, Herb Sussan passed away. His final request to his children: Would they scatter his ashes at ground zero in Hiroshima?In the mid-1990s, researching Hiroshima in America, a book I would write with Robert Jay Lifton, I discovered the deeper context for suppression of the U.S. Army film: it was part of a broad effort to suppress a wide range of material related to the atomic bombings, including photographs, newspaper reports on radiation effects, information about the decision to drop the bomb, even a Hollywood movie.The 50th anniversary of the bombing drew extensive print and television coverage -- and wide use of excerpts from the McGovern/Sussan footage -- but no strong shift in American attitudes on the use of the bomb.Then, in 2003, as adviser to a documentary film, Original Child Bomb, I urged director Carey Schonegevel to draw on the atomic footage as much as possible. She not only did so but also obtained from McGovern's son copies of home movies he had shot in Japan while shooting the official film.Original Child Bomb went on to debut at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, win a major documentary award, and debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage reached part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended. Americans who saw were finally able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race -- and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today.Greg Mitchell is the editor of E&P. His latest book is "Why Obama Won." His email is: gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com

HAWAI`I NATIONAL PATRIOT SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE AKAKA BILL

Posted by Free Hawai`i on August 6, 2009 at 7:00am

As a native Hawaiian who has not been represented by the Senators who are trying to pass the Akaka Bill, (S.1011,) my immediate family and I urge you to vote NO to that insidious bill.When the bill was first proposed, a hearing was held in Honolulu and the testimony was overwhelming against it for a variety of reasons. Because of that, hearings on the neighbor islands were cancelled.We want to ratify or reject that bill before it is taken to your committee.Our voices have been purposely shunned by these snollygosters who prefer to dictate to us rather than represent us. These small interest elites are an abhorrence to the democratic system and might be in it for personal pecuniary interests rather than defend the concerns of those most affected by it.There are issues to be resolved even before considering the actions they are proposing. We vehemently reject this bill and conditions it wants to set up for us. Our concerns, circumstances, the situation that confronts it, need to be addressed first.There are legal international ramifications that must be settled and abided by; such as violations of the laws of occupation, neutrality, and the lack of a lawful treaty of annexation/cession which the US is unable to present. The multi-ethnic Hawaii nationals overwhelmingly voted against cession to the USA in 1897 and we support their choice. We love our country as much as the US Americans love theirs.There is a political and moral thing to do and that is vote NO on S.1011.Mahalo,TanePearl City, O`ahu

WHAT US IS WILLING TO DO TO THE MARSHALLESE...THEY ARE WILLING TO DO TO US!

Posted by Donna Burns on August 6, 2009 at 6:13am

This video about the displacement of a thriving community of Marshallese is appalling. Think of the devastation...seeing your child suffering with radioactive reprocussions. The US just moved them out of their island...and they STILL got zapped with the radiation. Wake up everyone...these are the same people that we would be UNDER...IF the Akaka Bill passes. Wake up and OPPOSE the Akaka Bill...and pray for the Marshallese who took this assault.--------------------------Atom Bomb Blows up an Atoll in the Marshall Islands.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvj7MscvSrg&feature=player_embedded

SEND IN TESTIMONY OPPOSING THE AKAKA BILL BEING "HEARD" STARTING TOMORROW!!!

Posted by Donna Burns on August 5, 2009 at 9:52pm

If you believe that the native americans/Indians have been treated fairly by the United States and by the Dept. of the Interior...don't OPPOSE the Akaka bill. If you believe that Queen Lili'uokalani had no rights and was legally kept in her personal prison by outsiders...Don't oppose the Akaka Bill. If you believe that the United States has really helped Hawai'i by building up the largest military presence here in the world, Don't oppose the Akaka Bill. If you believe that Kanaka Maoli/Hawaiians gave up their land, their rights, their right to self-determination years ago...Don't oppose the Akaka Bill.But...If you think that the United States since the first outsiders placed their selfish feet on lands they didn't own...then massacred the native Americans has NO right to harm the original people of the continent of North America. If you think the US has no right to back an illegal overthrow of a sovereign and peaceful nation in the middle of the pacific ocean. If you think that you, as a Kanaka Maoli, have the right to live in the land of your and your ancestors' birth... for thousands of years before outside contact. If you think the US has no right to your land...no right to intrude on your government, no right to harm your people, no right to oppress and dominate us...as Kanaka Maoli...Then...SAY NO TO THE AKAKA BILL...AND SEND IN YOUR TESTIMONY TO SAY SO.------------------Aloha mai,AKAKA Bill hearings will be held on Thursday, August 6, 2009 (tomorrow) at 8:15 am HI time. You can watch in OPPOSITION by going to: http://www.indian.senate.gov.Testimony in OPPOSITION to the AKAKA BILL (Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009) can be emailed to testimony@indian.senate.gov.Testimony will be accepted from August 6 to August 21, 2009. Testimony in OPPOSITION received during this time period will be entered into the hearing record. Any testimony submitted after the hearing record closes, will NOT be recorded. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that your voice in OPPOSITION is heard and OPPOSING testimony is submitted during the time period stated above.Please note that email is the preferred sending method, as the mail processing procedures to the Senate may delay your testimony in OPPOSITION. You can submit your testimony electronically in a Word document or PDF file, attached to your email. In the subject line of your email, please put “S. 1011 Testimony for the Record”.Below is an example testimony in OPPOSITION, please feel free to “cut and past” the testimony below OR feel free to revise and use the testimony in OPPOSITION below for formatting.____________________________________________________________________________August 6, 2009The Honorable Byron L. Dorgan, ChairmanThe Honorable John Barrasso, Vice ChairmanU.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, MembersCommittee on Indian Affairs, United States Senate838 Hart Office Building Washington , DC 20510RE: OPPOSITION TO S. 1011 Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009Dear Honorable Dorgan, Honorable Barrasso, and Members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs,I thank you for allowing me to submit this testimony in OPPOSITION to S. 1011, which seeks to express the policy of the United States regarding the United States relationship with Native Hawaiians and to provide a process of the recognition by the United States of the Native Hawaiian governing entity.The main reasons for OPPOSING S. 1011: Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2009 is as follows:The lack of hearings held in Hawai‘i that would allow the Hawaiian people to present testimony on the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. In 2000, two (2) days of hearings were held on Oahu Island , all other hearings were cancelled. The current and past bills addressing the “United States relationship with Native Hawaiians to provide a process of the recognition by the United States of the Native Hawaiian governing entity” were subsequently redrafted and amendments were added as concessions to the previous federal administration and the state of Hawai‘i with no input or testimony from the Hawaiian people. Essentially, no hearings were ever held in Hawai‘i on the current legislation before the 2009 Congress. The Hawaiian people seek the right to a “fair and democratic” process that includes hearings on S. 1011 throughout the islands that comprise the state of Hawaii . For 9 years, Hawaiians have requested that the island wide hearings cancelled in 2000 be rescheduled so that the hundreds of Hawaiians who want to testify can be included and their concerns heard.S. 1011 disenfranchises the Hawaiian people by ensuring that persons residing on the U.S. continent, many of whom have no contact or relationship with Hawaiian culture or Hawaii , will control the electoral process. By including a huge American continental population, the drafters of S. 1011 have guaranteed that the Hawaiians of Molokai, Maui, Kauai , Hawaii Island and Lanai will be outvoted at their own Constitutional Convention. Most importantly, the Hawaii based native Hawaiians such as the Hawaiian Homesteaders who are the sole beneficiaries of the Ceded Lands and Hawaiian Homelands trusts will be outvoted by a margin of 10 to 1.The effort being pursued in the US Congress “violates the most fundamental principles of democracy and human rights”. In the 9 years during which time the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act has evolved, the Hawaii Federal Delegation made several concessions to previous federal and state administrations, the goal of which is to maintain the political status of the Hawaiian peoples as wards of the United States and state of Hawaii, and to ensure that the vast land and fiscal resources of the Hawaiian people are utilized for federal and state priorities.The Administration of President Barrack Obama came to office promising open government dedicated to “Truth and Justice for all Peoples”. I call upon the Obama Administration, and the Democrats in the U.S. Congress to live with the integrity of their own words. I call for the Congressional Committee to hold hearings on the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act in Hawaii to provide the Hawaiian peoples their right to participate in the process and to seek amendments to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act.Therefore, I strongly urge you to OPPOSE S. 1011, until Congressional hearings are scheduled and held in Hawaii, on all islands, and on the U.S. Continent, in all States where a significant population of Hawaiians reside, in order to provide the Hawaiian Peoples their “right to a “democratic fair, free, and impartial process of self-determination”, and to empower them with the ability to determine the culturally appropriate mechanism for their own self-governance.Mahalo nui loa (thank you),NameAddress

"Affirming & Exercising Your Hawaiian National Rights" Part 2

Posted by Kaleo Farias on August 5, 2009 at 7:24pm

Aloha kaua e to you all Kanaka Maoli's out there,Go to www.aloharevolution.com/petition and place your name on a lawsuit against the united States and the FAKE State of Hawaii. As you well all know, all of us is the injured party of 1893. To date there is the possibility for over a half a million plaintiffs to be involved in this case. Please click on this link above and carefully read what is being offered to all of you. If your kupuna or ancestors were part of the Hawaiian Kingdom, then you are absolutely a heir or a beneficiary in this case. This is what we have all been waiting for. Let's do this. It's time for the "Rubber to meet the Road." A hui ho! Malama pono. Mahalo Nui!!!Bruddah Kaleo

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Germ Warfare. Are we next? We certainly are not safe.

HAWAI`I TO THE US - "GO HOME! - NO AKAKA BILL!"

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SAY "NO!' TO THE AKAKA BILL

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I must thank those who voted for Obama and BRAGGED and boasted about it.

For my family and friends:

FIFTY YEARS OF STATEHOOD? OR FIFTY YEARS OF LIES?

akaka bill

"Affirming & Exercising Your Hawaiian National Rights" Part 3

BE COOL & STAY IN SCHOOL

THE GREAT HIROSHIMA COVER UP. WHO'S NEXT?

HAWAI`I NATIONAL PATRIOT SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE AKAKA BILL

WHAT US IS WILLING TO DO TO THE MARSHALLESE...THEY ARE WILLING TO DO TO US!

SEND IN TESTIMONY OPPOSING THE AKAKA BILL BEING "HEARD" STARTING TOMORROW!!!

"Affirming & Exercising Your Hawaiian National Rights" Part 2

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