Prominent researcher apologizes for pushing fluoride

Barry Forbes
The Tribune, Mesa, AZ
Sunday, December 5, 1999

“Why’d you do it, Doc? Why’d you toss the fluoride folks overboard?” I had just tracked down Dr. Hardy Limeback, B.Sc., Ph.D in Biochemistry, D.D.S., head of the Department of Preventive Dentistry for the University of Toronto, and president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research.

(Whew.)

Dr. Limeback is Canada’s leading fluoride authority and, until recently, the country’s primary promoter of the controversial additive. In a surprising newsmaker interview this past April, Dr. Limeback announced a dramatic change of heart. “Children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste,” he counseled. “Or drink fluoridated water.
And baby formula must never be made up using Toronto tap water. Never.”

Why, I wondered? What could have caused such a powerful paradigm shift?

“It’s been building up for a couple of years,” Limeback told me during a recent telephone interview. “But certainly the crowning blow was the realization that we have been dumping contaminated fluoride into water reservoirs for half a century. The vast majority of all fluoride additives come from Tampa Bay, Florida smokestack scrubbers. The additives are a toxic byproduct of the super-phosphate fertilizer industry.”

“Tragically,” he continued, “that means we’re not just dumping toxic fluoride into our drinking water. We’re also exposing innocent, unsuspecting people to deadly elements of lead, arsenic and radium, all of them carcinogenic. Because of the cumulative properties of toxins, the detrimental effects on human health are catastrophic.”

A recent study at the University of Toronto confirmed Dr. Limeback’s worst fears. “Residents of cities that fluoridate have double the fluoride in their hip bones vis-a-vis the balance of the population. Worse, we discovered that fluoride is actually altering the basic architecture of human bones.”

Skeletal fluorosis is a debilitating condition that occurs when fluoride accumulates in bones, making them extremely weak and brittle. The earliest symptoms? “Mottled and brittle teeth,” Dr. Limeback told me. “In Canada we are now  spending more money treating dental fluorosis than we do treating cavities. That includes my own practice.”

One of the most obvious living experiments today, Dr. Limeback believes, is a proof-positive comparison between any two Canadian cities. “Here in Toronto we’ve been fluoridating for 36 years. Yet Vancouver – which has never fluoridated – has a cavity rate lower than Toronto’s.”

And, he pointed out, cavity rates are low all across the industrialized world – including Europe, which is 98% fluoride free. Low because of improved standards of living, less refined sugar, regular dental checkups, flossing and frequent brushing. Now less than 2 cavities per child Canada-wide, he said.

“I don’t get it, Doc. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ran a puff piece all across America saying the stuff was better than sliced bread. What’s the story?” “Unfortunately,” he replied, “the CDC is basing its position on data that  is 50 years old, and questionable at best. Absolutely no one has done research on fluorosilicates, which is the junk they’re dumping into the drinking water.” “On the other hand,” he added, “the evidence against systemic fluoride in-take continues to pour in.”

“But Doc, the dentists.”

“I have absolutely no training in toxicity,” he stated firmly. “Your well-intentioned dentist is simply following 50 years of misinformation from public health and the dental association. Me, too. Unfortunately, we  were wrong.”

Last week, Dr. Hardy Limeback addressed his faculty and students at the  University of Toronto, Department of Dentistry. In a poignant, memorable meeting, he apologized to those gathered before him. “Speaking as the head of preventive dentistry, I told them that I had unintentionally mislead my colleagues and my students. For the past 15  years, I had refused to study the toxicology information that is readily available to anyone. Poisoning our children was the furthest thing from my mind.”

“The truth,” he confessed to me, “was a bitter pill to swallow. But swallow it I did.”

South of the border, the paradigm shift has yet to dawn. After half a century of delusion, the CDC, American Dental Association and Public Health stubbornly and skillfully continue to manipulate public opinion in favor of fluoridation.

Meantime, study after study is delivering the death knell of the deadly toxin. Sure, fluoridation will be around for a long time yet, but ultimately its supporters need to ready the life rafts. The poisonous waters of doubt and confusion are bound to get choppier.
“Are lawsuits inevitable?” I asked the good doctor. “Remember tobacco,” was his short, succinct reply.

Fair Use

 Probe urged into fluoride in water link to cancer

The Irish Examiner 09 Jan 2002

By Fionnuala Quinlan

THE Government has been urged to investigate the link between bone cancer and fluoridated drinking water after a study found 40% more people in the Republic contract the disease than in the North.

Research carried out at Boston University of School of Public Health, using data from the Irish National Cancer Registry and its northern equivalent, found 40% more people suffer from the rare bone cancer osteosarcoma in the Republic than the North, where water is not fluoridated.

Irish Dentists Opposing Fluoridation warn that the research is consistent with existing studies which have linked osteosarcoma to fluoridated drinking water.

Spokesman Dr Don MacCauley said that while the Irish study did not conclusively link the cancer to fluoridation, it underscored the need for urgent research into the health effects of adding 2,000 gallons of hydrofluosilic acid to drinking water in the Republic.

“The legislation, which permits fluoridation in this country requires the Minister of Health to carry out health studies into the effects of nearly 40 years of this mass-medication. This research has never been done,” Dr MacCauley said.

“Another fluoride health alert is screaming but when will the Minister of Health start listening? When will the minister fulfil his duty and carry out the health studies required by law?

“It is outrageous that there are still no plans for health studies.

“Instead, Minister Martin has delegated his responsibilities to a pro-fluoride sham of a forum, which cannot even get its act together to report on time,” Dr MacCauley said.

The report by the Government’s Forum on Fluoridation was due for publication at the end of October, but it has been postponed until later this month.

Fluoride has also been linked to cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, hip fractures and thyroid disorders, while an American study found fluoride exposure could produce lower IQ levels in children.

Ireland is the only country in Europe to insist that drinking water be fluoridated.

“In spite of all the evidence about the dangers of fluoride, Ireland has never carried out a survey. That is illegal,” Dr MacCauley said.

Director of the National Cancer Registry Dr Harry Comber said osteosarcoma was a relatively rare cancer of the bones which usually affected children and teenagers up to age of 20.

However, he cautioned against drawing firm conclusions from the osteosarcoma research in the Republic and the North because he said the disease was relatively rare and the populations on both sides of the Border were quite small.

A spokesman for the Department of Health was yesterday unavailable for comment.

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Once Again, the Kooks Are Vanquished

by Paul Carpenter

Gazette’s Introductory Note:  In January, 1999,  the City Council of Allentown, PA voted to fluoridate the city’s drinking water after  heated public controversy.  The following article by columnist Paul Carpenter appeared in the Allentown Morning Call in late January.

Doctors recommend Camels by a margin of 2 to 1.

Not only that, but the federal government enthusiastically supports the tobacco industry with enormous subsidies and official studies proving that smoking is good for you and that critics of the tobacco industry are a bunch of kooks.

I didn’t make that up. In my youth, as far as the American Medical Association and the government were concerned, there was something wrong with anyone who said smoking was harmful.

I was happily smoking up a storm at that time — Camels, you betcha — and some kook researchers came up with outrageous claims about a link with cancer and heart disease. I clearly remember the term that federal officials then used to describe those claims: “pseudo science.”

The tune has changed, of course. Eventually, the kooks’ claims about the virulence of smoking could not be ridiculed away. In the meantime, one wonders how many were killed by the poisons in tobacco smoke.

During Allentown’s fluoridation debate, I again heard the term “pseudo science,” this time to describe the claims of anti-fluoridation kooks.

As I noted Friday, the feds and the American Dental Association finally won their 40-year fight to get Allentown to join other righteous communities that add the industrial toxic waste known as fluorides to water.

Dentists recommend it by a margin of 2 to 1, you know. The ADA says it prevents cavities, and dentists will be glad to give up cavity-fixing profits out of the kindness of their hearts.

One of the things I mentioned in Friday’s article was a claim by one of the anti-fluoridation people who spoke during the public portion of Wednesday’s City Council meeting. (Following that portion, council approved fluoridation in a 5-2 vote.)

Rosemarie Doward said the ADA itself had admitted that dentists’ profits increase when their area is fluoridated. (I said that may be because a dentist gets $57 for fixing a cavity while raking in up to $700 per tooth for fixing fluorosis, a discoloration problem caused by fluoridation.)

That’s a kook’s claim if ever there was one, but I later tracked down the ADA publication upon which Doward based her statement.

The nice people at Lehigh Valley Hospital keep back copies of the Journal of the American Dental Association, and there it was on page 364 of Volume 84, February 1972.

The net income of dentists in fluoridated areas and “fluoride-deficient” areas were compared, JADA said, and the income in fluoridated areas is 17 percent higher. That crass admission was embarrassing back in 1972, obviously, and the ADA never again released such data.

Also Friday, I mentioned a California dentist, David Kennedy, who founded an anti-fluoridation group, Citizens for Safe Drinking Water.

I telephoned Kennedy in San Diego and he didn’t seem like a kook. His grandfather was a dentist, his father is a dentist and he is a dentist.

“I used to support fluoridation,” he said. “When the science became clear that it was not a benefit, I stopped supporting it.”

Kennedy said respected studies in America, Europe and elsewhere have revealed links to cancer, bone fractures and other problems, but are being ignored here. “From the very beginning, it (fluoridation) is a scam. It’s a way to dispose of a hazardous waste (by) claiming a benefit,” he said. “There is a profit motive for the ADA. The ADA is paid by companies that have a fluoridated product.”

Kennedy also noted that the only country in Europe that still has widespread fluoridation is Ireland. Take a wild guess which European country now has the worst dental health.

While you’re at it, consider that the fluoridation industry is pouring $50 million a year into campaigns to get California communities fluoridated. That’s because only 15-1/2 percent of Californians are forced to drink fluoridated water, compared with half of the people across the nation.

Take another wild guess about how California’s dental health, including cavities, compares with that of the nation as a whole.

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Study: showering boosts concentrations of potentially hazardous trihalomethanes

 

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

May 2, 2002

CHAPEL HILL — Trihalomethanes — byproducts of interaction between chlorine used to disinfect water and organic matter found in raw water — increase significantly in the bloodstream after showering, a new study shows. Public health experts suspect the chemicals may boost the risk of cancer and contribute to reproductive problems such as miscarriage.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, involved 50 women living in Georgia and Texas. It showed that showering shifted the distribution of trihalomethanes (THMs) in blood toward that found in the tap water in volunteers’ houses.

Another finding was that the distribution of trihalomethane species — there are four chlorinated and brominated forms — detected in the women’s blood reflected differences of type and concentration in their respective local tap water.

A report on the research appeared in April in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Primary authors are Amy M. Miles, a former public health graduate student at UNC and now an environmental engineer at Research Triangle Institute, and Dr. Philip C. Singer, professor of environmental sciences and engineering at UNC.

“Chlorination of tap water was one of the most important improvements made in public health, and it saves countless lives each year by reducing risk from bacterial contamination,” Miles said. “Water-borne diseases used to be a major cause of death and illness, and they still are in some parts of the world without chlorination.”

Despite its obvious benefits, if chlorination creates its own lesser but significant risks, as many scientists believe, it needs to be studied further, she said. Many water treatment plants are switching to alternative disinfectants to reduce trihalomethane concentrations in drinking water.

The new study aimed to evaluate whether health workers could use drinking water concentrations of THM to predict concentrations in people’s blood, Miles said.

Researchers picked Corpus Christi, Texas, and Cobb County, Ga., to investigate, she said. That’s because water supplies in the former showed moderately high levels of chloroform, the most highly chlorinated THM, and, in the latter, lower total THM concentrations but a higher proportion of brominated species, which are believed to be potentially more hazardous.

Through blood sample analysis, researchers measured THMs in the blood of 25 women at each site before and soon after they showered and compared those levels to concentrations found in tap water at their houses.

“Concentrations of THMs were about 1,000 times lower in blood than in tap water, but after the showers, median levels in blood increased by a factor of four,” Miles said. “This showed THMs were getting into the blood as a result of water use. It could not address, however, whether the concentrations were harmful or were linked to any particular health problem.”

Future studies by Singer and colleagues will examine various trihalomethane exposures more closely, including those caused by inhaling the compounds from air inside houses, she said.

Report co-authors are Drs. David L. Ashley and Michele C. Lynberg of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Pauline Mendola of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Peter H. Langlois of the Texas Department of Health and J.R. Nuckols of Colorado State University.

Support for the research came from the American Water Works Association Research Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA.

 

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Why the War Against Pot? 

by Hardly Waite, Gazette Senior Editor

Have you ever wondered why the United States spends vast piles of money and squanders immeasurable amounts of human talent and natural resources in the effort to combat a benign substance like marijuana?

Have you wondered why the US is now the only industrialized country to criminalize a substance that is obviously far less harmful than the majority of legally sold pharmaceuticals?

Kate Silver, writing in the Nov. 13, 2001 Las Vegas Weekly, has some answers.

In case you haven’t guessed, like everything else in the USA, it has to do with money. It has a lot to do with the end of the Cold War, Silver says.  When the Cold War ended, ” enormous needs for certain technology and personnel were eradicated. Once America declared its infamous War on Drugs, those needs were refilled.” It provided a new “enemy” and thus created a vast number of new government jobs and a major new source of technological endeavors to be managed by government bureaucrats. It turned the Cold War inward and allowed us to wage war on our own people at a tidy profit. Silver also points out that as a very nice side-effect,  “many powerful Political Action Committees donate money to campaigns to push their own agenda, keeping marijuana illegal.”

“Outside of a dog, a countertop water filter is man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to drink water.”–Groucho Marx.Model 77–“The World’s Greatest $77 Water Filter.”

The toll of this war is, of course, enormous in terms of  “jobs, relationships, money and time lost for the crime of smoking a joint.”  Marijuana arrests take a lot of manpower and a lot of time. “In 2000, police arrested 734,498 people for marijuana violations–the highest ever recorded by the FBI. Of those, 88 percent were for possession. The remaining 88,456 were charged with sale/manufacture.”

You probably have noticed that government officials long ago gave up trying to justify the War on Dope with anything resembling logic.  Pot has just been added to the ever-growing list of “enemies” we’re expected to fight without asking why.

Silver concludes: “Las Vegas Weekly contacted a police source in hopes of getting an argument against legalization, and providing a semblance of balance. Sadly enough, the only reasoning the source could give for pot being illegal is, well, because it’s illegal.”

 

Bee Bea Sharper on Drugs

Year of the passage of the Harrison Tax Act, which started the U. S. “War on Drugs”: 1914

Year in which the non-medical sale or possession of marijuana was made illegal in the U.S.: 1937.

Year of the Nixon Administration’s Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act, which begins the current era of drug-related legislation: 1970.

According to Nixon, drug abuse was “America’s public enemy number: one.”

Amount spent on the Drug War by the Nixon Administration in 1969: $65,000,000.

Amount spent on the Drug War by the Clinton Administration in 1999: $17,700,000,000.

Percentage of high school seniors who in 1999 said they could find marijuana “fairly easily”: 88.9%

The total number of Americans behind bars in 1970: 200,000.

The total number of Americans serving time for non-violent drug offenses in 2000: 450,000.

Approximate percentage of federal inmates in 2000 who are drug offenders: 60%.

Fraction of these federal drug prisoners who are non-violent, first-time offenders: 1/2.

Amount the U.S. will spend  to keep drug law violators behind bars in the year 2000: $24,000.000.

Change in marijuana use among eighth graders during the height of Clinton’s 1991-1996 anti-marijuana crusade: up 300%.

Number of regular American illegal drug users in 2000: 12,000,000.

Cost of putting a single drug user in prison for five years: $500,000.

Number of drug offenders who could be treated with the money it costs to incarcerate a single non-violent drug offender for five years: more than 100.

Percentage of 12th graders who say it is harder under current drug laws to buy marijuana than to buy beer: 25%.

Number of “drug war orphans”–children with one or both parents serving time for a drug offense–in the year 2000: 1,000,000 plus.

According to FBI figures, number of Americans arrested for marijuana violations alone in 2000: 734,498. 

Likelihood  that “drug war orphans” will themselves end up on prison, as compared to other children: 5 times.

Percentage of the U. S. population that is African American: 12%.

Percentage of total  U. S. drug users who are African American: 13%.

Percentage of total U. S. citizens who are arrested for drug offenses that are African American: 35%.

Percentage of total U. S. citizens that are convicted of drug offenses that are African American: 55%.

Percentage of total U. S. citizens who are incarcerated for drug offenses that are African American: 74%.

Rate at which black men are sent to state prisons for drug offenses as compared with white men: 13 times.

Percentage of Americans who in a 2001 survey said they thought the war on drugs was a failure: 72%.

Average federal sentence for a drug offence in 1997: 78 months.

Average federal sentence for manslaughter in 1997: 30 months.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the number of Americans being drugged as treatment for depression in 1987: 1.7 million.

Number of Americans being drugged for treatment of depression in 1997: 6.2 million.

Of every 100 Americans, the number that are now being treated for clinical depression: 2.3.

Percentage of emergency room visits by older Americans that are caused by adverse reaction to legally prescribed drugs: 11%.

Percentage of Americans 65 and over who according to one study are taking at least one prescription drug: 90%.

Average number of prescription drugs being taken by Americans sixty-five and over: 4.

Number of Americans who die each year from taking legal prescription drugs, not not counting the many thousands who die of medical “accidents” and mistakes: 100,000.

Number who die each day: 270.

Number of Americans who die each day as compared with Americans who die in traffic accidents: Double.

Percentage of Americans who currently take at least one prescription drug: 65%.

Annual expenditure by Americans for prescription drugs: $250 billion.

Amount of “attention deficit drugs” taken by American children as compared with European children: 300%.

Amount spent by the pharmaceutical industry each year to “enlighten” physicians and help with their expenses: $ hundreds of millions.

CANCER RISK FROM INDUSTRIAL CHEMICAL RISES, STUDY FINDS

By Ralph Vartabedian


Reprinted here from Rachel’s Democracy and Health News #886.  Aug. 3, 2006.


[Rachel’s introduction: Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is commonly found in drinking water, air, and soil. A new report from the National Research Council says evidence is growing that TCE causes cancer. What are the implications?]

After a detailed study of the most widespread industrial contaminant in U.S. drinking water, the National Research Council will report today that evidence is growing stronger that the chemical causes cancer and other human health problems.

The 379-page report clears a path for federal regulators to formally raise the risk assessment of trichloroethylene, known as TCE, a step that has been tied up by infighting between scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department.

California has some of the nation’s worst TCE contamination, including vast tracts of groundwater in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys that are a drinking source for more than 1 million Southern Californians. The state’s 67 Superfund sites with TCE contamination are clustered in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties.

If the risk posed by TCE is significantly higher than previously thought, it could prompt lower limits for TCE in water, as well as stricter cleanups of hundreds of military bases and other polluted facilities. The contamination occurred because TCE, a chemical solvent, was widely dumped into the ground.

Already, some EPA offices are forcing tougher cleanups based on evidence that the chemical poses a greater-than-expected cancer risk.

The EPA attempted to issue a risk assessment in 2001 that found TCE to be two to 40 times more carcinogenic than previously thought, but that action was opposed by the Defense Department, the Energy Department and NASA. The Pentagon has 1,400 properties contaminated with TCE.

The Bush administration sent the matter to the National Research Council for study, based on military assertions that the EPA had overblown the risks. But the new report does not support that criticism.

“The committee found that the evidence on carcinogenic risk and other health hazards from exposure to trichloroethylene has strengthened since 2001,” the report said.

The report urged federal agencies to complete their assessment of TCE risks as soon as possible “with currently available data,” meaning they should not wait for additional basic research, as suggested by the Defense Department.

The report is to be formally released today by the National Research Council. An early copy was provided to The Times by the Natural Resources News Service, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that investigates environmental issues. The authors of the study also briefed members of Congress on Wednesday.

“It is the strongest report on TCE that we have had,” said Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), whose district includes hundreds of homes that have air filtration systems to eliminate TCE vapors from the ground. “The fact that we have this TCE-laden drinking water used by millions of people is abominable.”

Hinchey and others in Congress are demanding stronger cleanup standards and lower limits for the chemical in drinking water. Currently, the EPA allows 5 parts per billion; that could be lowered to as little as 1 part per billion for drinking water if the risk assessment sidetracked in 2001 is adopted, according to an analysis by the Air Force.

It would drive up cleanup costs by billions of dollars but potentially save thousands of lives, scientists say. The report’s authors told Congress on Wednesday that they did not think the EPA should throw out its 2001 draft risk assessment and start over. Instead, they hope the TCE analysis can be completed within six months to a year.

Dr. Gina Solomon, an environmental health expert who served on a scientific advisory board that reviewed the original assessment, said the new report could have a profound effect on the issue.

“That is a very strong statement, a ringing endorsement of the EPA’s 2001 draft risk assessment,” said Solomon, an associate clinical professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and a staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Solomon said the report also rejected a key position of the chemical industry and Pentagon environmental experts that TCE was not dangerous at low levels of exposure.

Federal regulators should stick with the current scientific model that the cancer risk posed by TCE is proportional to the level of exposure, the National Research Council said.

In its report, the council found the evidence of TCE risk was greatest for kidney cancer, but not as high for liver cancer. It did not study other diseases that could be connected, including leukemia.

The report found merit in the Pentagon’s criticism of EPA methodology on epidemiology, which is the study of how disease is distributed in the population. It called for a new survey of prior research.

The report from the National Research Council has been awaited by communities exposed to TCE across the country.

“We can’t afford any more delays,” said Jerry Ensminger, a former Marine drill sergeant who served at Camp Lejuene, where drinking water supplies were tainted. His daughter died at age 9 in 1976 from leukemia, which Ensminger blamed on TCE exposure.

Ensminger said he was heartened by the report’s conclusions, but remained concerned about whether the government would move quickly to deal with the chemical contamination.

“I want to know why the Bush administration does not err on the side of life when it comes to the environment,” he said.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2006

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

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The Greatest Civic Sin


Posted April 29th, 2012
War

The Greatest Civic Sin

by Charley Reese

Oct. 14, 2002

There is a certain poem by Rudyard Kipling. I can’t quote it exactly, but the relevant two lines are something like “When they ask why they died, tell them it was because their fathers lied.”

Kipling’s son died on his 18th birthday in World War I. I believe the bitter little poem was directed at himself, for Kipling had been an imperial enthusiast and had used his influence to get his son a commission, despite his son being underage and medically disqualified. Kipling was never the same after. The illusions about patriotism and honor and glory vanished for him, as they did for millions who died in that stupid war.

A lot of America’s sons have died because “their fathers lied.” The U.S. government lied through its teeth about the Tonkin Gulf resolution, an authorization for war based on a nonexistent attack, which Lyndon Johnson used as an excuse to pour American troops into Vietnam.

Franklin Roosevelt lied when he campaigned and promised he would never send American boys to fight in a foreign war. Long before he said it, he and Winston Churchill were plotting to get America into the war. Woodrow Wilson had campaigned on the slogan “He kept us out of the war,” and then promptly got us into the war after the J.P. Morgan interests told him all of their loans would be jeopardized if the British were defeated.

The World’s Greatest $77 Water Filter.

I have come to believe that the greatest civic sin is to lie to the people. It ought to be considered the unforgivable sin. It undercuts the very basis of self-government. That concept, pioneered by America’s Founding Fathers, says that the people can make the right decisions in the long run provided they are given the facts. If they are lied to, they are denied the opportunity to make the right decisions. They are, rather than choosing their destiny, being manipulated by others for hidden reasons.

That’s why I’ve become so anti-war, which is not the same thing as being a pacifist. I will support any war in the genuine defense of this country, but I have not seen an honest war in my lifetime or read of one since the War Between the States. Even World War II was based on lies. It’s true that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It is also true that the Roosevelt administration maneuvered them into a position in which they had no choice but to attack the United States. The Japanese certainly did not wish to go to war with the United States if it could have been avoided. Even the Third Reich never had any interest in conquering the world as Americans were told repeatedly during the war.

Both the “War to End All Wars” and the “War for Democracy” were based on lies. They were both wars involving a conflict of empires and would-be empires, which did not concern the United States. Peace and democracy had nothing to do with the wars.

I served in the U.S. Army, 18 months on active duty and the rest in the Army Reserve. I’m glad, though, that I wised up in time to discourage my children from joining. The all-volunteer Army, which is really a mercenary Army, was adopted to make it easier for the United States to go to war. The sons and daughters of the powerful and influential, of course, don’t volunteer. Our soldiers are mostly minorities and lower-middle-class kids. They are wonderful Americans, but they are, as far as the American elite is concerned, expendable. They can be lied to.

We have become a nation of liars. The politicians lie, journalists lie, corporate CEOs lie, and stockbrokers and other salesmen lie. Advertisers lie. Businesses lie. Preachers and priests and rabbis lie. And because of those lies, the young in our own and in other countries die or have their lives blighted by wounds, disease and poverty. As Thomas Jefferson said, if God is just, we’re in trouble.

 

War Is Just A Racket


Posted April 29th, 2012
War

War Is Just A Racket

by Major General Smedley Butler

Editor’s Note:  The following is an excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by legendary General Smedley Butler, U.S. Marine Corps. 

 “The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.”
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

 

More Smedley Butler.

 

When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators

by Tom Regan

Posted September 06, 2002

Reprinted from Christian Science Monitor

More than 10 years later, I can still recall my brother Sean’s face. It was bright red. Furious. Not one given to fits of temper, Sean was in an uproar. He was a father, and he had just heard that Iraqi soldiers had taken scores of babies out of incubators in Kuwait City and left them to die. The Iraqis had shipped the incubators back to Baghdad. A pacifist by nature, my brother was not in a peaceful mood that day. “We’ve got to go and get Saddam Hussein. Now,” he said passionately.

I completely understood his feelings. Although I had no family of my own then, who could countenance such brutality? The news of the slaughter had come at a key moment in the deliberations about whether the US would invade Iraq. Those who watched the non-stop debates on TV saw that many of those who had previously wavered on the issue had been turned into warriors by this shocking incident.

Too bad it never happened. The babies in the incubator story is a classic example of how easy it is for the public and legislators to be mislead during moments of high tension. It’s also a vivid example of how the media can be manipulated if we do not keep our guards up.

The invented story eventually broke apart and was exposed. (I first saw it reported in December of 1992 on CBC-TV’s Fifth Estate – Canada’s “60 Minutes” – in a program called “Selling the War.” The show later won an international Emmy.) But it’s been 10 years since it happened, and we again find ourselves facing dramatic decisions about war. It is instructive to look back at what happened, in order that we do not find ourselves deceived again, by either side in the issue.

Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990. As the BBC reported: “The country’s ruler, Sheik Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, fled into exile in his armour plated Mercedes, across the desert to neighbouring Saudi Arabia.”

The Kuwait government had to find a way to “sell the war” to the American public, who were interested, but not deeply involved. So under the auspices of a group called Citizen for a Free Kuwait, which was really the Kuwait government in exile (the group received almost $12 million from the Kuwaiti government, and only $17,000 from others, according to author John R. MacArthur) the American PR firm Hill & Knowlton was hired for $10.7 million to devise a campaign to win American support for the war. Craig Fuller, the firm’s president and COO, had been then-President George Bush’s chief of staff when the senior Bush has served as vice president under Ronald Reagan. The move made a lot of sense – after all, access to power is everything in Washington and the Hill & Knowlton people had lots of that.

It’s wasn’t an easy sell. After all, Kuwait was hardly a “freedom-loving land.” Only a few weeks before the invasion, Amnesty International accused the Kuwaiti government of jailing dozens of dissidents and torturing them without trial. In an effort to spruce up the Kuwait image, the company organized Kuwait Information Day on 20 college campuses, a national day of prayer for Kuwait, distributed thousands of “Free Kuwait” bumper stickers, and other similar traditional PR ventures. But none of it was working very well. American public support remained lukewarm the first two months.

According to MacArthur’s book “Second Front,” the first mention of babies being removed from incubators appeared in the Sept. 5 edition of the London Daily Telegraph. The paper ran a claim by the exiled Kuwait housing minister that, “babies in the premature unit of one of the hospitals had been removed from their incubators, so that these, too, could be carried off.” Two days later, the LA Times carried a Reuter’s story that quoted an American (first name only) who said, among other things, that babies were being taken from incubators, although she herself had not seen it happen.

From there it began to pick up steam, as one media unit after another started repeating the story without checking it. Sensing an opening, the Hill & Knowlton people jumped on the story.

The key moment occurred on October 10, when a young woman named Nayirah appeared in front of a congressional committee. She told the committee, “I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

Hill & Knowlton immediately faxed details of her speech to newsrooms across the country, according to CBC’s Fifth Estate’s documentary. The effect was electric. The babies in incubator stories became a lead item in newspapers, and on radio and TV all over the US.

It is interesting that no one – not the congressmen in the hearing, or any journalist present – bothered to find out the identity of the young woman. She was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, and actually hadn’t seen the “atrocities” she described take place. (When later confronted with the lack of evidence for her claims, the young woman said that she hadn’t been in the hospital herself, but that a friend who had been there had told her about it.) Similar unsubstantiated stories appeared at the UN a few weeks later, where a team of “witnesses,” coached by Hill&Knowlton, gave “testimony” (although no oath was ever taken) about atrocities in Iraq. It was later learned that the seven witnesses used false names and even identities in one case. In an unprecedented move, the US was allowed to present a video created by Hill & Knowlton to the entire security council.

But no journalist bothered to look into these witnesses’ claims. As Susan B. Trento wrote in her book, “The Power House,” an in-depth look at Hill & Knowlton, “The diplomats, the congressmen, and the senators wanted something to support their positions. The media wanted visual, interesting stories.”

On November 29, 1990, the UN authorized use of “all means necessary” to eject Iraq from Kuwait. On January 12, 1991, Congress authorized the use of force.

The story was later discredited by organizations like Middle East Watch, Amnesty International, and various other groups and media organizations

As Trento comments in her book, whether or not Hill & Knowlton’s efforts were effective, or even needed, is open to debate. The US government had already launched a huge campaign to convince the American people to support war against Iraq. But the PR campaign definitely made an impact.

It’s a different media world today than the one of 1992. Back then, CNN and the regular broadcast channels, as well as newspapers, were reporting the news. Today, there are many more TV and cable news channels, as well as the Internet, all demanding to be fed 24×7. It would be, in fact, much easier for someone to get a fabricated story circulated even faster. And it would be just as easy for the Iraqis to do it in the Arab world, as it would be for those that oppose them to do it in the West.

In his excellent book on war reporting “The First Casualty (of War is the Truth),” British journalist Phillip Knightly shows how important it is for the media to remain vigilant. While war with Iraq may truly be inevitable, it serves us all well if we make sure the reasons we go are legitimate ones, and not ones cooked up by richly funded public relation firms.

 

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