The Latest Staged Play

Hooman Majd has a very interesting post over on HuffingtonPost (It's a Fake, Jan 9, 2008):

The Pentagon's version of the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning, involving U.S. Navy warships and Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats is, at the very least highly suspicious. On Tuesday, the Navy released video footage and an audiotape to back its claims that the Iranian boats acted in a threatening and provocative manner, but neither the video nor the audio are particularly convincing as proof that Iran had hostile intentions. The video, which shows what is claimed are Iranian boats speeding around U.S. ships, doesn't show any of the boats hurtling directly towards any of the navy ships, nor does it show what the Pentagon claimed the Iranians then did, namely dropped "white boxes" in the water. (I would have opened fire at those, wouldn't you?) The audio tape is even less convincing, mainly because the person speaking doesn't have an Iranian accent and moreover, sounds more like Boris Karloff in a horror movie than a sailor in the elite branch of Iran's military. (The tape is also separate from any video.) Any Iranian can immediately identify Persian-accented English, particularly if the speaker has had little contact with the West, as is the case with Revolutionary Guardsmen and sailors. Iranians, you see, have difficulty with two consonants such as "p" and "l" next to each other; even Iranians who have lived in America for years will often pronounce "please" as "peh-leeze", or in this case, "explode" as "exp-eh-lode". On the tape, "explode" is pronounced perfectly, albeit as if the speaker was a villain addressing a superhero. Further, it is unimaginable, given what is known about the Revolutionary Guards (and I have met many), that one of its corps would speak in a such a manner, even if the accent were correctly Persian....

Sibel Edmonds Explosive Revelations in the Times

The Times (UK, For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets, Jan 6, 2008):

...Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions. Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations....

...She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.

One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.

A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.

“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”

It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a number of rogue states by Khan.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.

Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks.

Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”

The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.

Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.

“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.

“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”

One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defence information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.

“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.

Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.

Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.” In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”....

...In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.

One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.

Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch (Jan 7., 2008, Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb A Real 9/11 Cover-Up?) develops an interesting analysis in light of the mysterious Minot-Barksdale live nuke flight:

...If Edmonds' story is correct, and Al-Qaeda, with the aid of Turkish government agents and Pakistani intelligence, with the help of US government officials, has been attempting to obtain nuclear materials and nuclear information from the U.S., it casts an even darker shadow over the mysterious and still unexplained incident last August 30, when a B-52 Stratofortress, based at the Minot strategic air base in Minot, ND, against all rules and regulations of 40 years' standing, loaded and flew off with six unrecorded and unaccounted for nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

That incident only came to public attention because three as yet unidentified Air Force whistleblowers contacted a reporter at the Military Times newspaper, which ran a series of stories about it, some of which were picked up by other US news organizations.

An Air Force investigation into that incident, ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, claimed improbably that the whole thing had been an "accident," but many veterans of the US Air Force and Navy with experience in handling nuclear weapons say that such an explanation is impossible, and argue that there had to have been a chain or orders from above the level of the base commander for such a flight to have occurred.

Incredibly, almost five months after that bizarre incident (which included several as yet unexplained deaths of B-52 pilots and base personnel occurring in the weeks shortly before and after the flight), in which six 150-kiloton warheads went missing for 36 hours, there has been no Congressional investigation and no FBI investigation into what happened.

Yet in view of Edmonds' story to the London Times, alleging that there has been an ongoing, active effort for some years by both Al Qaeda and by agents of two US allies, Turkey and Pakistan, to get US nuclear weapons secrets and even weapons, and that there are treasonous moles at work within the American government and nuclear bureaucracy aiding and abetting those efforts, surely at a minimum, a major public inquiry is called for....

And now for some history:

Ewen MacAskill and Ian Traynor reported on The Guardian (September 18, 2003, Saudis consider nuclear bomb):

...Saudi Arabia, in response to the current upheaval in the Middle East, has embarked on a strategic review that includes acquiring nuclear weapons, the Guardian has learned....

...A strategy paper being considered at the highest levels in Riyadh sets out three options:

· To acquire a nuclear capability as a deterrent;

· To maintain or enter into an alliance with an existing nuclear power that would offer protection;

· To try to reach a regional agreement on having a nuclear-free Middle East.

Until now, the assumption in Washington was that Saudi Arabia was content to remain under the US nuclear umbrella. But the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US has steadily worsened since the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington: 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi....

...In 1988, Saudi bought from China intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching any part of the Middle East with a nuclear warhead.

Four years ago, Saudi Arabia sent a defence team to Pakistan to tour its secret nuclear facilities and to be briefed by Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb....

Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large for UPI, reported on the Washington Times (October 22, 2003, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia in secret nuke pact, repost on GlobalSecurity):

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on "nuclear cooperation" that will provide the Saudis with nuclear-weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil, according to a ranking Pakistani insider.

The disclosure came at the end of a 26-hour state visit to Islamabad last weekend by Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, who flew across the Arabian Sea with an entourage of 200, including Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal and several Cabinet ministers....

..."It will be vehemently denied by both countries," said the Pakistani source, whose information has proven reliable for more than a decade, "but future events will confirm that Pakistan has agreed to provide [Saudi Arabia] with the wherewithal for a nuclear deterrent." ....

...But the CIA believes Pakistan already has shared its nuclear know-how, working with North Korea in exchange for missile technology.

A Pakistani C-130 was spotted by satellite loading North Korean missiles at Pyongyang airport last year. Pakistan, which is estimated to have between 35 and 60 nuclear weapons, said this was a straight purchase for cash and strongly denied a nuclear quid pro quo.

"Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia," the Pakistani source said, "see a world that is moving from nonproliferation to proliferation of nuclear weapons."

The APS Diplomatic News Service (Nov 10, 2003, Saudi-Pakistani Nuclear Linkage Marks The Opening Of A Sunni Muslim Security Umbrella) had this information:

...in 1999, a Saudi defence delegation led by Defence Minister Prince Sultan visited Pakistan to tour its secret nuclear facilities at Kahuta and to be briefed by Dr. Abdul Qader Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. That visit raised alarms in the West because a tour of the super-secret Kahuta facility was denied even to elected Pakistani prime ministers (like Benazir Bhutto) by the country's military establishment. A paper by the South Asia Analysis Group dated Oct. 1 claimed there were "reports emerging but not confirmed that Pakistan has stored some nuclear weapons in storage in Saudi Arabia, but to remain under Pakistani control".

On Oct. 20, Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-in-chief of United Press International (UPI) and a veteran American journalist with excellent connections in Pakistan, reported that a "ranking" and "unimpeachable Pakistani source" had informed him that "Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have concluded a secret agreement on nuclear cooperation" - during the visit by Crown Prince Abdullah to Islamabad at the head of a 200-member delegation including Foreign Minister Prince Saud. De Borchgrave added that the source claimed: "It will be vehemently denied by both countries... but future events will confirm that Pakistan has agreed to provide KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) with the wherewithal for a nuclear deterrent".

Subsequent to the de Borchgrave article, another report by Global Information Systems/Defence and Foreign Affairs Weekly, written by Yossef Bodansky and Gregrory R. Copley, said their "highly reliable" sources in Islamabad and Riyadh reported on Oct. 21 that Islamabad and Riyadh had "reached a secret but definitive agreement to station nuclear weapons on Saudi soil, fitted to a new generation of Chinese-supplied long-range (4,000 to 5,000 km) ballistic missiles which would be under Pakistani command, but clearly with some form of joint Saudi-Pakistani command and control".

Like de Borchgrave, Bodansky and Copley claimed that the deal was struck during Abdullah's visit to Pakistan, adding that they had also discussed the issue at an unreported one-to-one meeting on the margins of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Oct. 15. The GIS/Defence and Foreign Affairs weekly pointed out that basing nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia would give Islamabad a second-strike capability to deter an Indian nuclear or conventional attack. For Saudi Arabia it eases concerns about Israel. During the Saudi delegation's visit, Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal said in Islamabad on Oct. 19 that Indian-Israel military cooperation was a "worrying element" which could unleash instability and arms race in the region.

The Center for Defense Information had this interesting revelation on June 30, 2005 (Saudi Nuclear Intentions and the IAEA Small Quantities Protocol):

Saudi Arabia’s recent signing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Small Quantities Protocol on June 16, 2005, raises larger issues of possible nuclear ambitions on the Arabian Peninsula....

...The controversy centers on Saudi Arabia’s request to the IAEA to sign the Small Quantities protocol in May, after an internal IAEA document came to light calling for a change in the status of the Protocol over concerns it may pose a proliferation risk. The Protocol allows states considered to be of low risk to opt out of more intensive inspection regimes in return for a declaration of their nuclear activities. In addition, the Protocol allows for the possession of up to 10 tons of natural uranium or 20 tons of depleted uranium, and 2.2 pounds of plutonium without reporting. While it does not appear that Saudi Arabia aspires to develop a domestic weapons grade uranium or plutonium-processing ability, 10 tons of natural uranium is still enough by most standards to produce between one and four nuclear devices (depending on their design)....

...There is a slew of evidence that Saudi Arabia sought to acquire nuclear capabilities as early as 1975 when a nuclear research center at Al-Suleiyel was created. Further evidence points to a transfer of up to $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 until just prior to the first Gulf War in a deal to further the Iraqi nuclear program in exchange for weapons, should the program prove successful. There was apparently also an offer on the table to pay for reconstruction of the Osirak reactor destroyed by Israel, whose covert nuclear capabilities make it a mutual concern of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Lastly, several high-level exchanges between Saudi and Pakistani officials and a general warming of relations between these two countries points to Saudi Arabia not only having the intent, motivation, and impetus to procure nuclear weapons, but now also the means.

Interestingly enough, any nuclear threat Saudi Arabia may face from Iran may actually have been proliferated by those whose nuclear program was also funded by the Saudis and whose help the Saudis are now seeking: Pakistan. After the mid-1994 defection to the United States of a former Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Muhammad Khilewi, thousands of documents were uncovered, some of which hinted at an agreement by which Saudi Arabia partially funded Pakistan’s bomb project in exchange for retaliation with these nuclear weapons in the event of nuclear aggression against the Saudis. In 1999, the reciprocity of this nuclear alliance became even more apparent as Saudi Second Deputy Prime Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz visited Pakistan’s Kahuta uranium enrichment plant with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and both were personally briefed by Dr A.Q. Khan. Then, in 2002, a son of Crown Prince Abdullah attended the firing of the Ghauri, Pakistan’s new nuclear-capable medium-range missile. Further attesting to the cordial nature of the alliance, Nawaz Sahrif, the prime minister of Pakistan deposed by Pervez Musharraf’s 1999 coup, was given amnesty in Saudi Arabia through a deal worked out between Islamabad and Riyadh.

Other evidence for having nuclear intentions stems from Saudi Arabia’s 1988 purchase of between 50 and 60 Chinese CSS-2 missiles. While these missiles are now largely considered obsolete, it is the purchase of a nuclear capable missile with a 3,500 km range and 2,500 kg capacity that is damaging to Saudi claims of innocence. Apparently of concern is the gross inaccuracy of the Chinese missile, rendering it completely ineffective for use with traditional warhead payloads. This points to a possible conclusion that one intended use could be with nuclear warheads, whose destructive radius negates the inherent inaccuracy of the missile. In addition, there has been recent speculation of prospective purchases of more modern Chinese missile systems (such as the CSS-5 and CSS-6) by Saudi Arabia.

G. Parthasarathy (a former High Commissioner to Pakistan) reported in The Hindu Business Line on Oct 25, 2002 (Pervez the proliferator):

...The US has a track record of feigning amnesia in dealing with nuclear or missile proliferation by it friends such as Pakistan and China. When the Reagan administration needed Pakistan's assistance to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, President Zia-ul-Haq sent his highly capable Chief of Staff, Gen K.M. Arif, to tell Washington that Pakistan's support would be forthcoming only if no queries were raised about its nuclear weapons programme. The Reagan administration duly obliged. For nearly a decade Washington turned a Nelson's eye to Pakistan's moves to acquire nuclear weapons capability and build a nuclear arsenal with Chinese assistance.

Similarly, when China supplied M 11, and medium-range M 9 missiles to Pakistan, the Clinton administration claimed that as it had not been able to conclusively determine such supplies were taking place, it would not implement American laws requiring sanctions against both China and Pakistan. Gen Powell will, no doubt, find equally convoluted reasons for avoiding sanctions required to be imposed on Pakistan by the US law....

...There is now ample evidence to establish that not only did China provide nuclear weapon designs to Pakistan in the 1980s, but it also augmented and sustained Pakistan's nuclear-enrichment facilities by the supply of critical components such as ring magnets more recently. Less than two years after Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit to China, in December 1988, China commenced supply of nuclear-capable M 11 missiles to Pakistan.

It has assisted Pakistan not only by supplying missile components, but also by establishing a missile production unit described as the National Development Complex at Fatehjang in Punjab province. This complex produces the M 9 missiles with a range of around 750 km (christened "Shaheen I" by the Pakistanis) and the intermediate range M 18 missiles (Shaheen II). China has, thus, given Pakistan the delivery systems for missiles that can target most population centres in India. These are realities that cannot be ignored by India in dealing with China.

Pakistan's missile collaboration with North Korea started in the 1990s, when Ms Benazir Bhutto made a secret visit to Pyongyang. Pakistan's nuclear scientist, Dr A.Q. Khan, also visited Pyongyang on a number of occasions. It is now evident that the two sides agreed that in return for North Korea's supply of its nuclear-capable 1200-km range "Nodong" missile, Pakistan would provide the equipment and know-how for Pyongyang to develop gas centrifuge facilities to produce weapons grade enriched uranium. It is inconceivable that such an agreement could have been arrived at between two close allies of China without Beijing's knowledge and approval.

This deal enabled North Korea to go ahead with a nuclear weapons programme, even while pretending to adhere to conditions set by the US and Japan not to develop nuclear weapons capabilities, and subject its plutonium producing facilities to international inspections. There are reports indicating that the nuclear-missile trade between Islamabad and Pyongyang is routed across the Karakoram Highway through China.

In these circumstances, queries do arise about whether there are any other parts of the world to which the China-Pakistan missile/nuclear collaboration extends.

Even when Beijing and Riyadh did not have diplomatic relations, China supplied Saudi Arabia with intermediate range (2000 km) CSS 2 ballistic missiles in the mid-1980s. Unlike in the 1980s, China today needs oil supplies from West Asia. Saudi Arabia is the logical source. At the same time, the otherwise tight-fisted Saudis, who prefer to spend their surplus money in spreading Wahabi extremism rather than financing economic development, have been more than generous in their economic assistance to Pakistan. It was Saudi Arabia that bailed out Pakistan, when its economy was on the verge of collapse following its May 1998 nuclear weapons tests, with supplies of oil at highly concessional credit terms....

AFX (repost on Forbes, March 28, 2006, Saudia Arabia working on secret nuclear program with Pakistan help - report):

Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear program, with help from Pakistani experts, the German magazine Cicero reported in its latest edition, citing Western security sources.

It says that during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia.

Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them slipped off from pilgrimages, sometimes for up to three weeks, the report quoted German security expert Udo Ulfkotte as saying.

According to Western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998.

Cicero, which will appear on newstands tomorrow, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan's nuclear weapons 'because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program.'

The magazine also said satellite images indicate that Saudi Arabia has set up a program in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles.

According to some Western security services, long-range Ghauri-type missiles of Pakistani-origin are housed inside the silos.

See Chris Deliso's blog entry on AntiWar.com for some Dennis Hastert & Bill Clinton antics (Hastert, Helicopters, Textron, Turkey, Cash…, August 14, 2005). Lynn Grant's Hastert’s Turkish Allies Tied to Bin Laden (August 15, 2005, repost on Information Clearinghouse) is a must read.

Also note that much of the mujihadeen insurgency against the Soviets was financed by the CIA, and the Saudis - through "charity" donations (see the BBC, The Saudi Connection, How Jihad Made Its Way to Chechnya, How Saudi wealth fueled holy war, and Peter Dale Scott's Al Qaeda, U.S. Oil Companies, and Central Asia). Note that beginning in the late 1990s/early 2000s, Turkey began to feel the influx of Saudi charity - between $6 billion and $12 billon, and that the Saudis have been directly funding the Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

Autism Continues to Rise, Vaccines Without Mercury

Jia-Rui Chong from the Los Angeles Times reports (Jan 8, 2008, Mercury's removal doesn't stop autism's rise, study shows, repost on the Chicago Tribune):

The prevalence of autism in California children continued to rise after most vaccine manufacturers started to remove the mercury-based preservative thimerosal in 1999, suggesting that the chemical was not a primary cause of the disorder, according to a study released Monday.

The analysis found that from 2004 to 2007, when exposure to thimerosal dropped significantly for 3 to 5 year olds, the autism rate continued to increase in that group from 3.0 to 4.1 per 1,000 children.

"If mercury exposure in vaccines was a major cause of autism, then the number of . . . affected kids should have diminished once they were no longer exposed to thimerosal," said Dr. Robert Schechter, lead author of the study and a medical officer at the state Department of Public Health. "That is not what we found."....

...Over the last two decades, the number of cases has boomed across the country for still-unexplained reasons. Psychiatrists estimated that 20 years ago there were 0.2 to 0.5 cases for every 1,000 children. Last year, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were 6.6 cases per 1,000 schoolchildren, based on a study of 8-year-olds.....

...The researchers looked at all reported cases in the state starting with children born in 1989. They found the number of cases per 1,000 children has been steadily increasing from that point to March 2007, the end point of the study....

...The National Autism Assn. criticized the study, saying that some children may still be exposed to mercury through either flu shots or trace amounts in other vaccines. The group also said that some vaccines containing thimerosal had expiration dates as late as 2005 and may have been used up to that point.

Heart Disease & Vitamin D "Insufficiency"

Martin Mittelstaedt on the Toronto Globe & Mail (Jan 8, 2008, Vitamin D insufficiency linked to heart disease) reports on this stunning medical research:

...Although it is well known that vitamin D is needed for good bone health, a study released yesterday found that not having enough of the sunshine vitamin is also linked to a higher risk of heart disease.

The research, based on a group of white Americans living near Boston, found that those with low levels of vitamin D in their blood were 62 per cent more likely to develop heart failure, strokes and other circulatory problems than those with more of the nutrient.

Those with both high blood pressure and low vitamin D status had about twice the risk of developing serious cardiac-related problems.

"Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased cardiovascular risk, above and beyond established cardiovascular risk factors," said Thomas Wang, the study's lead author and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"The higher risk associated with vitamin D deficiency was particularly evident among individuals with high blood pressure."

He said the finding raises the possibility that people may be able to reduce their risk of heart disease by treating vitamin D deficiency through supplements or lifestyle
changes....

...The new U.S. study, which is appearing in the current issue of Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, was based on blood tests of 1,739 people from the Framingham, Mass., area, where the annual period during which people can't naturally produce vitamin D is about the same as in Toronto. About 28 per cent of participants were considered to have inadequate vitamin D status....

...To test the hypothesis that vitamin D is linked to heart disease, researchers analyzed the amounts of the nutrient in blood samples taken between 1996 and 2001 from healthy individuals of an average age of 59 who didn't exhibit signs of heart disease.

Over a follow-up period of about five years, 120 participants developed heart failure and other cardiac-related problems. Those with low vitamin D status were found to be at far higher risk of these ailments.

According to the study, one possibly explanation is that vitamin D receptors are found in cells throughout the heart and in other parts of the circulatory system, including the inside lining of blood vessels. The genes in these cells may malfunction when they don't get enough of the nutrient. Low vitamin D status may also cause an increase in inflammation....

...In light of the finding, the association {American Heart Association} recommends that people try to get adequate amounts of the vitamin through diet. Vitamin D is found naturally in salmon, mackerel, sardines and cod liver oil. It is also added to milk and some other foods.

The new finding is one of many recent discoveries about the health effects of vitamin D. Last year, U.S. researchers found that taking vitamin D supplements reduced the risk of cancer. In response to the study, and other research showing the vitamin may have an anti-cancer effect, the Canadian Cancer Society began recommending people take up to 1,000 international units of the vitamin daily. A cup of milk contains about 100 IU.

Marine Mammal Protection - Persian Gulf

Kaveh L Afrasiabi has an interesting piece on the Asia Times Online today:

A federal judge in Los Angeles has imposed rigid limits on the navy's use of mid-frequency sonar off the coast of southern California. The sonar is suspected of causing disruption to whale and dolphin navigation systems.

The ruling, in response to a case brought by environmentalists, bans sonar within 12 nautical miles of the California coast, increases the navy's "shut down" zone for sonar use near marine mammals, and mandates the navy monitor for marine mammals one hour prior to sonar exercises as well as during them.

The court's finding, with "near certainty" that US naval sonic "mitigation schemes" are "grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure", has direct bearing on the navy's operations in the Persian Gulf, which include active sonar training "under actual conditions".

The navy's surface ships and submarines stationed in the Persian Gulf use sonar to detect Iran's Russian-made diesel submarines. And given the mass stranding of several species of whales following US naval exercises in, among other places, the Bahamas, the Canary Islands, Hawaii, North Carolina, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, and the US Virgin Islands, these operations could be called challenged....

...Recently, the US Navy went on record in support of the use of "all US environmental laws worldwide", but this was before the California decision....

...The US Navy's use of high intensity, mid-frequency sonar is probably behind the alarming rate of self-stranding dolphins and whales on Iran's beaches. The Persian Gulf is the habitat of 40 different types of dolphins and the largest living mammal, the blue whale, and both species are endangered by US sonar activities. These activities, per the US court ruling, "cause irreparable harm" to marine mammals. Many more mammals may have died in deeper waters and, in the absence of any systematic study and data, we may be witnessing only the tip of the iceberg with beached mammals....

...From the prism of international (environmental) law, US naval activities that harm the national resources of Iran and other Persian Gulf countries are prime for litigation in national and international courts. This is not to mention the pollution caused by the shipping noise as well as "military solid wastes" connected to explosives, munition fragments and other toxic material dumped into the Persian Gulf each time the US Navy holds a maneuver....

...Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad recently unveiled a cooperative plan for the Persian Gulf that prioritizes environment, and it would be a pity for Arab states of the Gulf Cooperation Council to ignore it....

...But the US has a special role to play. At a minimum, it can train Persian Gulf fishermen whose nets are partly responsible for the death of marine mammals, on how to install noisemakers ("pingers") to deter cetaceans from fishnets. In some cases, such as harbor porpoises in the Gulf of Maine, the use of pingers has significantly reduced the number of mammals becoming entangled....

U.S. Marines Shot At & Killed Innocent Civilians

Jay Price reports for the News & Observer (Raleigh, NC; Witness: Marines fired on harmless civilians, Jan 8, 2008):

CAMP LEJEUNE — After they were attacked by a car bomb, a Marine Special Operations unit drove down an Afghan highway for several miles shooting at — and apparently killing — motorists who posed them no threat, said the first witness Tuesday in an unusual hearing into the incident.

A former counterintelligence Marine with the unit said that as the convoy was returning to its base the turret gunner in the Humvee in front of him shot at “at least five and fewer than twenty” vehicles.

The Marine, former Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Travers, described seeing flashes of ugly scenes as he drove past cars careening off the road. Other cars were stopped, he said, with slumped occupants, including the frightened face of a child in the back seat of a car.

“I really felt that there were a lot of people that died that day who didn’t need to,” he said. “They were just driving their cars.”

Travers' account was similar to that given by civilian witnesses to an Afghan human rights group after the March 4 incident. As many as 19 people were killed and up to 50 wounded, according to earlier reports....

...None of the 30 Marines on the patrol has been charged with a crime. The hearing was ordered to examine the facts and evidence....

...The hearing, called a court of inquiry, is believed to be the first of its type help by the Marines in more than 50 years. Information that comes out of it could lead to legal charges, but the hearing is an administrative procedure to sort out the facts and evidence.

Argentina, Brazil, Operation Condor

The Mercopress has the story of dissident "tracking" stations for Argentina, staged in Brazil (Argentina under Plan Condor had tracking stations in Brazil, Jan 7, 2008):

The 1976-1983 Argentine dictatorship held information bases in San Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which were meant to “detect people connected to the subversion”, according to a legal prosecution started in Argentina, reported the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper on Sunday.

The probe, which investigated the existence of Argentine bases in neighboring countries during the 1970s and 80s under the framework of the Cóndor Plan, a military scheme organized by Latin American regimes in the 70s and 80s to eliminate political dissidents, was opened at the request of Argentina’s prosecutor office.

The case concluded last December 18, when one policeman and seven military officers, among them former Army commander Cristino Nicolaides, were convicted of human rights violations.

The document, based on the testimony of the Argentine Army Intelligence Battalion 601 prison warden Néstor Norberto Cendón, revealed the Argentine bases were connected to this military unit, an interrogation and torture centre located in Buenos Aires city.

The bases were in charge of intercepting members of the Montoneros guerilla group in foreign territory, and of keeping the Argentine military authorities informed of their movements.

Cendón declared the Army’s intelligence also had bases in Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay as part of a military operation against the Montoneros, called “Murciélago,” as part of the Cóndor Plan.

A week ago, another Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de Sao Paulo, published declarations by General Agnaldo Del Nero Augusto admitting the neighboring country’s collaboration in the detention of Argentine and other leftist militants as part of the Cóndor Plan.

Del Nero Augusto denied that Argentine detainees had been killed by his government but admitted Brazil’s collaboration in intelligence and training tasks with other dictatorships.

“We didn’t kill. We detained them and handed them over. That’s no crime”, he said, adding that “when we were tipped that a suspect was coming into Brazil the praxis was to arrest him and send him back to his country of origin. I believe that is what happened with the two Argentine-Italians, both Montoneros”.

General Del Nero Augusto was defiant about the actions of the time, “they were members of a communist subversive organization trying to enter the country. What crime is to have them detained?” The detainees were handed to Argentina where they joined the long list of thousands of disappeared.

The Brazilian general said the Condor plan was a “necessary” response to the Revolutionary Coordination Junta of subversive groups from the area which was organized in Paris following the downfall of Chilean Socialist president Salvador Allende.

“We were forced to react” against an organization which included Argentina’s ERP, Uruguay’s Tupamaros; Chile’s MIR and Bolivia’s ELN insisted General Del Nero Augusto.

However he underlined that the Brazilian participation in the Plan Condor was “limited to collaborating with information, handing over foreign agents and monitoring subversives”. The general said that “terrorist groups ignore and violate the rule of the law yet they demand democratic guarantees”.

“Our mistake was not declaring the state of war, just saying “we’re at war” and that would have been the end of all of it”.

A few days later, another Brazilian military officer played down his country’s participation in the Cóndor Plan, and argued that they would not have deported the rebels if they had known they were to be killed.