Sandra Finley

TIME is an ILLUSION said EINSTEIN – (the space-time continuum) (10.5 minute video)

 Empowerment, Perception, fallibility, Linguistics  No Responses »
Mar 192018
 

With thanks to Dan:

Time is one of the most difficult properties of the universe to understand.  . . .   I often contemplate how my life has unfolded and some of the events and people that came my way at seemingly exactly the right time. I know I’m not smart enough to have put it all together. No doubt we are all threads in a greater fabric. A very mysterious place we find our selves in. This is ten minutes, but an interesting clip about the physics of time.   https://youtu.be/VYZQxMowBsw

The video was posted in 2014.

2018-03-18 New Book By Prof. Harry Glasbeek A Must Read

 Corruption  No Responses »
Mar 192018
 

provides readers with an analysis of the legal justifications used to replace moral and ethical values with the crimes of corporate capitalism

I have not yet read.

With thanks to Janet E.

Harry Glasbeek is Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. He has also taught at the universities of Melbourne and Monash in Australia, and the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of ten books including “Wealth by Stealth: Corporate Crime, Corporate Law, and the Perversion of Democracy“.

 

Capitalism: A Crime Story

By Harry Glasbeek

$19.95

A mugger to a stranger, “Give me your wallet or I will beat you to pulp!” It is a crime.

An employer says to a worker: “Adding lung-saving ventilation will reduce my profit. Give me back some of your wages and I will let you keep your lungs!” This is not a crime.

Our assumptions about the world condition us to see these situations as legally different from one another. But what if we, the critics of corporate capitalism, instead insisted on taking the spirit of law, rather than its letter, seriously? It would then be possible to describe many of the daily practices of capitalists and their corporations as criminal in nature, even if not always criminal by the letter and formality of law.

In Capitalism: A Crime Story, Harry Glasbeek makes the case that if the rules and doctrines of liberal law were applied as they should be according to law’s own pronouncements and methodology, corporate capitalism would be much harder to defend.

  • Paperback / softback, 152 pages
  • ISBN 9781771133463
  • Published March 2018
  • EPUB
  • ISBN 9781771133470

CONTENTS

  • A way to fight back
  • Law’s self-portrayal
  • The flexibility of legal reasoning
  • Reprise: Tax minimization
  • Bases for criminalization in a liberal legal system
  • Coercion by means of formal, directly enforceable labour contracts
  • Cascading coercion—not by contract but by sheer economic power
  • The legal neutering of risk and assaults on autonomy
  • Coercion: Statutory regulations that permit assaults on individual autonomy
  • Summation and suggestions for action
  • Notes

<><><><><><><><><>

REVIEWS

Harry Glasbeek has been a fearless, daunting crusader for the public interest in the face of corporate greed, corruption, and criminality. This powerful, readable book proves the problem does not originate with a few bad apples: it’s programmed into the DNA of a system that privileges accumulation over human life.

– Jim Stanford, economist, McMaster University

 

Harry Glasbeek forensically strips away the layers of legal protection accorded to corporations in their pursuit of private profit to reveal the harm inflicted on individuals and institutions that challenge corporate legal privilege. With his revelation of how capitalism has become embedded in law Glasbeek provides a road map to reverse the imbalance within the legal system.

– Margaret Wilson, DCNZM, professor of law and public policy, University of Waikato

 

Capitalism: A Crime Story contests the stories about law told by a wide gamut of capitalist fanatics, from corporate law professionals to legal academics, apologists who incredulously avert their eyes from the deceptive and deviant conduct of corporate capital. Glasbeek illustrates how law’s tangled web shrouds the corporate form, masking the ways corporate capitalist coercion receives privileged treatment under law. Not satisfied to merely pierce the corporate veil, Glasbeek annihilates apologist narratives by rebuking the entrenched techniques of corporate profiteering and refuting the notion that capitalist business behaviour is distinct from the notion of a crime. Corporate capitalist wrongdoing is no mere aberration, it is the norm.

– Adrian A. Smith, Department of Law & Legal Studies, Carleton University

 

In this enthralling and eminently readable book, Harry Glasbeek explains how liberal law strives to reconcile capitalism with liberalism. Thanks to law’s burnishing, capitalism acquires a liberal-hued patina of legitimacy. However, beneath the surface, cherished liberal principles are contorted or simply sacrificed for the sake of capitalism’s ideological needs. In clear and powerful prose, Glasbeek offers us a piercing lens and a transformed language through which to see and to condemn capitalist power. This book is essential reading for those who wish to understand the world in order change it.

– Julian Sempill, senior lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne and author of Power and the Law

 

Harry Glasbeek has done it again: another eloquent and accessible book for non-lawyers and lawyers alike, exposing capitalism’s betrayal of basic liberal values and law’s role as an accessory. From the Westray disaster to the devastation at Lac Mégantic, he shows how the lawlessness of corporations stands in sharp contrast to our expectations that individuals be both free of coercion and responsible for the harms caused by their actions. At this critical juncture we face the imminent loss of a habitable planet, yet Glasbeek shows a way forward to confronting the inherent criminality of capitalism.

– Elizabeth Sheehy, professor of law, University of Ottawa

 

Glasbeek eloquently demonstrates that the theory and application of corporate law is antithetical to our norms and values of individual liberty and autonomy. By exposing the unequal power relationships prevailing under contemporary capitalism he challenges others to view the law as it is, and not as it has been sold to us.

– Peter Grabosky, RegNet: Centre for Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

 

Harry Glasbeek outlines the bias that is built into our laws and regulatory regimes, which favour capitalism and render it legitimate. The lofty sounding ‘rule of law’ and the status granted to lawyers and legal reasoning drives a belief system in which the logic of a layperson loses all credibility. Capitalism: A Crime Story provides readers with an analysis of the legal justifications used to replace moral and ethical values with the crimes of corporate capitalism.

– Margaret Beare, professor of law and sociology, York University and author of Criminal Conspiracies: Organized Crime in Canada

2017-08-17 Cameco wins PROCEDURAL victory, offshore ‘transfer pricing’ tax battle (avoided declaring $4.9 billion income), (doesn’t mean they’ve won the case) Financial Post

 Nuclear  No Responses »
Mar 172018
 

Just checking the progress of the CRA (Revenue Canada) case against Cameco.

Related:   2013-05-01   Cameco’s $800-million tax battle, Globe & Mail

The uranium producer estimates it has avoided declaring $4.9-billion in Canadian income, saving it $1.4-billion in taxes, over the last 10 years.

Cameco has blocked the government’s attempt to force 25 of the company’s senior executives to attend oral interviews on the company’s tax strategies

Drew Hasselback
Drew Hasselback

Cameco’s Cigar Lake mine

 

Cameco Corp. has defeated the Canadian government’s attempt to force about 25 of the company’s senior executives to submit to questioning on how the company uses offshore entities to reduce its tax bill.

The Minister of National Revenue sought a federal court order that would have compelled a long list of the company executives, including current chief executive Tim Gitzel and former CEO Gerry Grandey, to be interviewed by Canada Revenue Agency staff.

The Minister’s request relates to audits of Cameco’s 2010, 2011 and 2012 tax returns. In particular, the CRA says it wants more information on how Cameco uses foreign subsidiaries to reduce its tax bills. The process is called “transfer pricing,” and Canada has rules on when and how it can be done.

Cameco and the Canadian government have already locked-horns over transfer pricing. In a separate and ongoing trial that has yet to be decided by a judge, Cameco is fighting its tax bills for the 2003, 2005 and 2006 tax years. Cameco denies the tax bills and says its dealings with foreign subsidiaries comply with Canadian law. Final arguments in the tax trial are expected in September, with a decision to follow 12 to 18 months after that.

The interview request decision, which was released August 10, is separate from the ongoing tax court trial, but still related to the transfer pricing issue.

In support of the motion for the order to question the executives, the Minister argued in the Federal Court of Canada that the CRA’s auditing power under the Income Tax Act includes the right to conduct on-the-record, oral interviews with all the executives it wants.

Cameco argued that while the CRA’s powers are broad, they’re not unlimited. The company was willing to accommodate the government’s requests in several ways. It was prepared to make a few executives available for interviews, and it offered to respond to written questions. But Cameco said it was unreasonable for the CRA to compel about 25 executives to answer questions in the presence of a court reporter. The judge agreed.

“If the Minister’s position is accepted, the CRA can compel oral interviews from as many persons as they see fit without any procedural limits,” wrote Justice Glennys McVeigh. “The time and cost involved in allowing the Minister to interview more than 25 Cameco personnel scattered across the world is not proportional to the information being sought.”

Financial Post

dhasselback  at    nationalpost.com

twitter.com/vonhasselbach

2018-03-15 Study: How to Understand and Help the Vaccine Doubters

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  1 Response »
Mar 172018
 

With thanks to The Vaccine Reaction

the girl has a bright idea

Steering pro-vaccine messaging away from values like care/harm and fairness and

instead focusing on values of purity and liberty might “provide a potential mechanism for vaccine attitude formation and change.”

A new article in Scientific America titled “How to Understand, and Help, the Vaccine Doubters” frames empathetic understanding of vaccine doubters as a new way to convince said doubters of the folly of their ways. It seeks to explain why parents who question such issues as school vaccine mandates, injection of myriad vaccine chemicals into children, and vaccine pushing by Big Pharma are not swayed by “facts countering these claims.”1

The authors—two epidemiologists and a professor of business ethics—point out that attempts at changing vaccine hesitancy into compliance have previously focused on “educational interventions, appeals to altruism, and statistics,” when the real issue may lay with individual values. They set out to see if people who question the wisdom of vaccines place greater emphasis on different values from those who accept the mainstream doctrine, and they determined that the answer is yes.1

A two-part study was conducted using a “Moral Foundations” questionnaire, a social psychology tool that evaluates how humans subconsciously use their attitudes towards principles like authority, care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, and purity to help them make decisions about what is right or wrong. Because people prioritize different values, the questionnaire highlights which ones are most influential in a person’s decision-making processes. 1

The first study included more than 1,000 parents evaluated for both vaccine attitudes and moral foundations. Results of that study showed that values were similar among all the parents except in the measure of “purity.” Comparing most hesitant to least hesitant parents, they also found a disparity in attitude toward “liberty.” The conclusion was that “hesitant parents are more likely to strongly emphasize values of purity and liberty, and less likely to strongly emphasize values of authority, than non-hesitant parents.”1

Suspecting that people with such leanings might be more susceptible to such “anti-vaccine claims as ‘Vaccines contain poisons/toxins/contaminants’ and ‘Vaccine mandates are excessive government control’,” the second part of the study looked at how the strength of vaccine beliefs—one way or the other—might compare specifically to those core values of purity and liberty. That study confirmed what they had found already, that the higher the score on importance of purity and liberty, the higher the belief in vaccine claims that spoke to those values, “even if the claims themselves are factually inaccurate.” 1

The authors admit that, “accurately identifying a phenomenon doesn’t automatically translate to successful interventions.” Still, their conclusion is that steering pro-vaccine messaging away from values like care/harm and fairness and instead focusing on values of purity and liberty might “provide a potential mechanism for vaccine attitude formation and change.”1

References:

 2 Responses to Study: How to Understand and Help the Vaccine Doubters

  1. Jo

    March 17, 2018 at 11:18 am

    would it be more kind to test all the vaccines required for infants, say, on politicians?
    And since they’re adults, they wouldn’t have to wait for a year or so, for standard schedule on all those goodies.

    I’m SURE Nancy “this wall is too tall” Pelosi & asso. would like to prove the vaccines are safe and effective, not merely profitable.

    THAT WOULD HELP A LOT, IN CONVINCING ‘doubters,’ ‘deniers’ & other scientists the folly of believing doctors, et al., NOT paid-off/detailed/captured by Big Pharma.

2018-03-15 Climate: Trudeau government is banking on nuclear power

 Nuclear  2 Responses »
Mar 162018
 

UPDATE:   add this –   2018-03-21   Leaves no doubt who Natural Resources Canada works for.

 

With thanks to Gordon Edwards:

Friends & Colleagues – This is an English translation of a French-language article.

Ole Hendrickson did this quick translation for the benefit of those who do not read French.

The original French article appears below the translation.

Cheers, Gordon Edwards.

 

Climate:  Trudeau government is banking on nuclear power

 

Justin Trudeau’s government sees nuclear energy as “an important part of Canada’s current clean energy basket”

and is lobbying foreign nations to include it in climate change talks.

 

A text by Fannie Olivier, Radio-Canada, March 15, 2018

 

This is an unexpected turnaround because nuclear energy was not part of the climate plan tabled by Ottawa last year.

 

There is an opportunity to “put nuclear energy at the center of global efforts to combat climate change,” said Kim Rudd, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources, Jim Carr.

 

In a speech to the Canadian Nuclear Association on February 22, of which Radio-Canada consulted the paper version, she pointed out that Canada has joined with the United States and Japan to include nuclear energy in the discussions of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), a forum that looks at the transition to a green economy.

 

“The CEM is meeting again in Copenhagen in May and we have ensured that nuclear energy will have its place in a broad, high-level discussion on a global transition to a low-carbon economy,” he said. Kim Rudd. She added that Canada will host the forum in 2019. “You can already imagine what our priorities will be,” she told industry representatives.

 

In her speech, she praises CANDU reactors, which Canada is seeking to export, and small nuclear reactors, a technology currently under development. Both produce radioactive waste. The CANDUs also generate plutonium, which could be used for military purposes and contribute to nuclear proliferation.

 

A spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada confirmed by email that Ottawa has a positive view of this type of energy.

“Nuclear energy is an important part of Canada’s current clean energy basket and will continue to play a key role in achieving the country’s low-carbon future,” said Jerri Southcott.

Against a current

 

Ecologists do not understand this change of course in Ottawa at all. “I fell out of my chair. I have the impression that we are going back 20 years,” says Steven Guilbeault, from Equiterre. “There is hardly anyone who talks about nuclear as a solution to climate change. ”

 

Many countries have made a commitment in recent years to phase out the use of nuclear power. Germany, in particular, has declared the shutdown of all its nuclear power plants in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan. In 2012, Quebec announced the dismantling of its only plant, Gentilly-2. Ottawa also sold the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) CANDU Reactor Division to the private sector in 2011.

 

In Steven Guilbeault’s view, nuclear energy is expensive, non-renewable and polluting. “It’s very worrying, because this is the first time the Trudeau government has talked about this,” he says.

 

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, Chair of Energy Management at HEC Montréal, sees this sudden interest of the federal government for nuclear energy in another way.

 

“Our societies have so much trouble changing their approaches, I think that saying that we must both fight against climate change and ban nuclear […] is completely utopian,” he said. I think it’s a lesser evil, to say that we will accept nuclear energy to be able to get fossil fuels out of our energy mix more quickly. ”

 

The professor, however, argues that it is imperative that more efforts be made in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors. He also admits that nuclear poses huge challenges in terms of social acceptability.

 

There are four nuclear power plants in operation in Canada: three in Ontario (Bruce, Pickering and Darlington) and one in New Brunswick (Point Lepreau). Ontario has recently made investments of $26 billion over 15 years to refurbish its reactors.

 

Canada remains the world’s second largest producer of uranium, the metal used as fuel in nuclear power plants. The deposits are located in northern Saskatchewan.

 

Climat : le gouvernement Trudeau mise aussi sur le nucléaire

 

Fannie Olivier, Radio-Canada, le 15 mars, 2018

https://tinyurl.com/y95xzcfs

 

Il s’agit là d’un revirement inattendu, car l’énergie nucléaire ne faisait pas partie du plan climat déposé par Ottawa l’an dernier.

Il existe une occasion à saisir de « placer l’énergie nucléaire au centre des efforts mondiaux pour lutter contre les changements climatiques », selon Kim Rudd, secrétaire parlementaire du ministre des Ressources naturelles, Jim Carr.

Dans un discours prononcé devant l’Association nucléaire canadienne le 22 février, dont Radio-Canada a consulté la version papier, elle a signalé que le Canada s’est allié aux États-Unis et au Japon pour que l’énergie nucléaire soit incluse dans les discussions du Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM), un forum qui se penche sur la transition vers une économie verte.

« Le CEM se réunit à nouveau à Copenhague en mai et nous nous sommes assurés que l’énergie nucléaire aura sa place dans le cadre d’une discussion large et de haut niveau sur une transition mondiale vers une économie faible en carbone », a indiqué Kim Rudd. Elle a ajouté que le Canada sera l’hôte du forum en 2019. « Vous pouvez déjà imaginer quelles seront nos priorités », a-t-elle lancé aux représentants de l’industrie.

Dans son allocution, elle vante les mérites des réacteurs CANDU, que le Canada cherche à exporter, et des petits réacteurs nucléaires, une technologie actuellement en développement. Les deux produisent des déchets radioactifs. Les CANDU génèrent par ailleurs du plutonium, qui pourrait être utilisé à des fins militaires et contribuer à la prolifération nucléaire.

Une porte-parole de Ressources naturelles Canada a confirmé par courriel qu’Ottawa voyait d’un bon œil ce type d’énergie.

« L’énergie nucléaire est un élément important du panier d’énergies propres actuel du Canada et elle continuera de jouer un rôle clé dans la réalisation de l’avenir sobre en carbone du pays », a indiqué Jerri Southcott.

Pourtant, le Cadre pancanadien sur la croissance propre et les changements climatiques, document phare du gouvernement Trudeau en environnement présenté en décembre 2016, n’évoque pas l’énergie nucléaire comme une façon de diminuer les gaz à effet de serre (GES) au pays ou à l’étranger.

À contre-courant

Chez les écologistes, on ne s’explique pas du tout ce changement de cap d’Ottawa.

« Ça m’a jeté en bas de ma chaise. J’ai l’impression qu’on retourne 20 ans en arrière, s’étonne Steven Guilbeault, de l’organisme Équiterre. Il n’y a à peu près plus personne qui parle du nucléaire comme d’une solution aux changements climatiques. »

De nombreux pays se sont engagés ces dernières années à cesser progressivement l’utilisation du nucléaire. L’Allemagne, notamment, a proclamé l’arrêt de toutes ses centrales nucléaires dans la foulée de la catastrophe de Fukushima, au Japon. Québec a annoncé en 2012 le démantèlement de son unique centrale, Gentilly-2. Ottawa a par ailleurs vendu la division réacteurs CANDU d’Énergie atomique du Canada limitée (EACL) au secteur privé en 2011.

Aux yeux de Steven Guilbeault, le nucléaire est une énergie coûteuse, non renouvelable et polluante. « C’est très préoccupant, parce que c’est la première fois que le gouvernement Trudeau parle de ça », signale-t-il.

Pierre-Olivier Pineau, de la Chaire de gestion du secteur de l’énergie de HEC Montréal, voit cet intérêt soudain du gouvernement fédéral pour le nucléaire d’un autre œil.

« Nos sociétés ayant tellement de difficulté à changer leurs approches, je crois que se dire qu’il faut à la fois lutter contre les changements climatiques et bannir le nucléaire […] est complètement utopique, a-t-il expliqué. Je pense que c’est un moindre mal, de dire qu’on va accepter du nucléaire pour pouvoir sortir plus rapidement des énergies fossiles de notre parc énergétique. »

Le professeur fait toutefois valoir qu’il est impératif que plus d’efforts soient déployés dans les secteurs des énergies renouvelables et de l’efficacité énergétique. Il admet par ailleurs que le nucléaire pose d’énormes défis sur le plan de l’acceptabilité sociale.

On compte quatre centrales nucléaires en activité au Canada : trois en Ontario (Bruce, Pickering et Darlington) et une au Nouveau-Brunswick (Point Lepreau). L’Ontario a récemment prévu des investissements de 26 milliards de dollars sur 15 ans pour remettre à neuf ses réacteurs.

Le Canada demeure le deuxième producteur mondial d’uranium, le métal utilisé comme combustible dans les centrales nucléaires. Les gisements sont situés dans le nord de la Saskatchewan.

2018-03-13 Bell’s proposal for extrajudicial website blocking

 Media, public interest  No Responses »
Mar 132018
 

You might imagine why I help support Open Media!

From: OpenMedia
Subject: They’re afraid to air our ads

Sandra,

Radio stations are refusing to run our ads educating Canadians about Bell’s proposal for extrajudicial website blocking. Why? Because they’re afraid the ads would give the CRTC ammunition to remove their license.

What a cold and hard reminder of why it’s so critical to keep the Internet free of censorship like this, which makes it easy for a small handful of powerful entities to police what we can and can’t say online.

This is exactly why we can’t back down.

Our last message about this:

This just leaked: In a desperate attempt to front up public support for their Internet censorship proposal, Bell is asking its own employees to file pro-website blocking submissions to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).1

The consequences of Bell’s manipulation could be far reaching:

– If the CRTC takes Bell’s side, it would force your Internet Service Provider to blacklist websites because Bell and a group of other corporations say those websites help promote pirated content. No judicial oversight would be involved in the process.

Can we trust a group of corporations, including shady players like Bell, to police what we can and can’t see online?

Absolutely not. That’s why we need to make sure opposition from the public is so overwhelming the CRTC doesn’t even bat an eye at Bell’s dirty attempt to win their favour. But we’re running out of time—the CRTC’s deadline for public comments is creeping up fast.

Will you donate today so we can buy key ads to flood the airwaves with your message?

Donate to Stop Bell’s Plans for Censorship

Bell is known for using dirty tactics to prop themselves up. In 2015, they paid a fine of $1.25 million after employees were encouraged to post favourable online reviews.2

This time, we can show them their tricks are no match for hundreds of thousands of Internet activists like us.

Thanks for all that you do,
The OpenMedia Team

Footnotes:
[1] Michael Geist: Twitter
[2] Bell Canada reaches agreement with Competition Bureau over online reviews: Competition Bureau
We are an award-winning network of people and organizations working to safeguard the possibilities of the open Internet. We work toward informed and participatory digital policy.
You can follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

You have received this message, because you have subscribed to OpenMedia’s list.  . . .

2018-03-13 Large initiative. Kennedy delivers VACCINE SAFETY PROJECT to Congress

 Robert F Kennedy Jr, Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Mar 132018
 
View this email in your browser

Forward to friends!

Note:  Click on the small text under the title of this posting,  Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  to generate a list of other postings in the same category.
March 13, 2018

Congress Receives Vaccine Safety Project Details Including Actions Needed for Sound Science and Transparency
 

World Mercury Project Note: Last week, 15 dedicated children’s health and medical choice advocates joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Capitol Hill to fulfill our promise to the community to provide crucial vaccine safety information to every member of Congress. Meetings with Congressional Members, Senators, and staff took place over a four-day time period to explain WMP’s six-step Vaccine Safety Project that details the actions necessary to introduce sound science and transparency to our vaccination program. Federally elected officials can no longer ignore the chronic health conditions—tied in no small part to adverse vaccine reactions—that currently affect over half of our nation’s children. Not only are these officials now aware of the conflicts of interest and inadequate science upon which the vaccine program is built, but they have been given a common-sense plan for enacting desperately needed changes that puts children’s health first.

 

By the World Mercury Project Team

The long-term health effects of our vaccine program are inadequately studied and our regulatory bodies are conflicted. Childhood health epidemics have mushroomed along with the childhood vaccine schedule.

Vaccines contain many ingredients, some of which are known to be neurotoxic, carcinogenic and cause autoimmunity. Vaccines injuries can and do happen. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded almost $4 billion for vaccine injuries since 1988.

Common sense dictates that these actions must be taken:

  1. Subject vaccines to a scientifically rigorous approval process.
  2. Require reporting of vaccine adverse events. Automate Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) databases for research.
  3. Ensure all parties involved with federal vaccine approvals and recommendations are free from conflicts of interest.
  4. Reevaluate all vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) prior to the adoption of evidence-based guidelines.
  5. Study what makes some individuals more susceptible to vaccine injury.
  6. Support fully-informed consent and individual rights to refuse vaccination.

The Six Steps to Vaccine Safety

The details regarding each of the six steps to vaccine safety were discussed with members of Congress, Senators and staff to help them understand why they must act now to stop the childhood epidemics.

#1: Subject vaccines to a scientifically rigorous approval.

  • Vaccines are regulated by the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) division as “biologics” and are not always put through the same level of safety testing as new pharmaceuticals, which are regulated under the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER.)
  • Vaccines, which are given to healthy patients, should be tested more rigorously than drugs because they are not given to treat an existing disease.
  • Inadequate testing currently ensures that the true risk/benefit assessments for the safety and cost of vaccines are impossible to calculate accurately.
  • These vaccines are given to about 4 million American infants annually.

#2: Require reporting of vaccine adverse events. Automate Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) databases for research.

Reporting and study of adverse events after receipt of vaccines is currently haphazard and antiquated. Since these two databases are the primary sources of U.S. post-licensure surveillance, serious side effects of vaccination that were unclear or not seen in clinical trials will be missed.

The VAERS is the online system into which doctors and patients report adverse events after vaccination. HHS admits that the system likely records only about 1% of the actual adverse events but even after a three-year HHS/Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) study showed the feasibility of automating reports using electronic medical records, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been non-responsive to “multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.”

  • Clinical trials for vaccines typically only enroll a few thousand patients in total. When vaccines are subsequently approved for use in populations of millions of healthy individuals, it is imperative that rates of known adverse events and any new or rare adverse events are monitored.
  • Without adequate safety follow-up, serious side effects may be missed entirely putting the public at risk (examples of the past importance of safety follow-up include hormone replacement therapy, Vioxx and amphetamines).
  • There has never been a comparative study of broad health outcomes in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) requires healthcare providers to report:

  • Any adverse event listed by the vaccine manufacturer as a contraindication to further doses of the vaccine; or
  • Any adverse event listed in the VAERS Table of Reportable Events Following Vaccination that occurs within the specified time period after vaccination.

But, in practice, this doesn’t happen. There is no consequence for failing to report an injury. There is no mechanism for prosecution of non-compliance and, therefore, no incentive for a busy doctor to report vaccine safety problems.

The VSD is a collaborative project between CDC’s Immunization Safety Office and eight private health care organizations. The VSD was started in 1990 to monitor safety of vaccines and conduct studies about rare and serious adverse events following immunization. However, research is currently hampered by lack of broad access to this publicly-funded database, variability of reporting and the statistical structure of the database.

#3: Ensure all parties involved with federal vaccine approvals and recommendations are free from conflicts of interest.

FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is responsible for licensing vaccines. CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is responsible for adding vaccines to the recommended schedules.

  • CDC or NIH Employees whose names appear on vaccine patents can receive up to $150k in licensing fees per year (in perpetuity).
  • Regarding VRBAC, a House OGR Committee Report found that the “overwhelming majority of members, both voting members and consultants have substantial ties to the pharmaceutical industry,” and “committee members with substantial ties to pharmaceutical companies have been given waivers to participate in committee proceedings.”
  • A similar report on the ACIP found that, “The CDC grants blanket waivers to the ACIP members each year that allow them to deliberate on any subject, regardless of their conflicts, for the entire year.”

A 2009 HHS Office of the Inspector General report found that:

  • “CDC had a systemic lack of oversight of the ethics program.”
  • 97 percent of committee members’ conflict disclosures had omissions.
  • 58 percent had at least one unidentified potential conflict.
  • 32 percent had at least one conflict that remained unresolved.
  • CDC continued to grant broad waivers to members with conflicts.

All vaccine regulatory agencies must rigorously enforce their ethics policies to ensure that our vaccine program is free from financial conflicts of interest.

#4 Reevaluate all vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) prior to the adoption of evidence-based guidelines.

A yes vote by ACIP results in:

  • Mandating the vaccine to millions of children.
  • Immunity from liability for the manufacturers.
  • Inclusion in the Vaccines for Children program.

However, prior to 2012, ACIP did not use evidence-based guidelines to evaluate their vaccine recommendations. Evidence Based Practice is “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of the individual patient. It means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research.” The final ACIP guidelines published in November of 2013 outlined clearly, for the first time, a standardized plan to evaluate the quality and strength of the research behind each recommendation for a vaccine for each population. ACIP’s recommendations include the populations, timing, spacing, number of doses, boosters and appropriate ages for each vaccine to be administered.

The CDC’s infant schedule, given to approximately 4 million babies a year, was largely adopted before these guidelines were in place. Vaccines recommended before the adoption of evidence-based guidelines should not have been “grandfathered” in. Earlier ACIP recommendations should be thoroughly reviewed in light of the new guidelines and current research.

#5 Study what makes some individuals more susceptible to vaccine injury.

The Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) has issued three disturbing reports on the evidence for suspected and/or reported vaccine adverse events.

For 80% of the suspected vaccine adverse conditions investigated, there wasn’t enough research evidence to accept or reject vaccine causation. Of the reviews with sufficient evidence, 72% found that the vaccine did likely cause the injury.

In 2013, the IOM studied the entire Childhood Immunization Schedule and stated:

“No studies have compared the differences in health outcomes… between entirely unimmunized populations of children and fully immunized children… Furthermore, studies designed to examine the long-term effects of the cumulative number of vaccines or other aspects of the immunization schedule have not been conducted.”

The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid out over $3.8 billion in compensation to victims of vaccine injury. The children and adults who have been compensated for injuries have never been studied to determine why they were injured, in an effort to make vaccines safer for everyone. Preventing vaccine injuries should be tackled as zealously as we tackle preventing infectious diseases.

Vaccine safety science, particularly long-term safety science, is inadequate to ensure children’s safety or to accurately assess risks for purposes of informed consent.

#6 Support fully-informed consent and individual rights to refuse vaccination.

The American Academy of Pediatrics statement on the ethics of informed consent includes the following stipulation, “patients should have explanations, in understandable language, of …; the existence and nature of the risks involved; and the existence, potential benefits, and risks of recommended alternative treatments (including the choice of no treatment).”

In the case of vaccination, informed consent is often ignored completely in real world settings.

By law, “all health care providers in the United States who administer, to any child or adult, any of the following vaccines – diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), influenza, pneumococcal conjugate, meningococcal, rotavirus, human papillomavirus (HPV), or varicella (chickenpox) – shall, prior to administration of each dose of the vaccine, provide a copy to keep of the relevant current edition vaccine information materials that have been produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the parent or legal representative of any child to whom the provider intends to administer such vaccine, or to any adult to whom the provider intends to administer such vaccine.”

In practice, particularly when multiple vaccines are administered on the same day, many parents report that they received the Vaccine Information Sheet (VIS) as they left and there was no explanation of information before a vaccine was given. It is also rare that medical history is thoroughly discussed to identify contraindications to a vaccine. For example, a patient with a family history of autoimmunity is likely at increased risk for an autoimmune reaction after vaccination.

The following are examples of the types of information that patients may learn after the fact from the Vaccine Information Sheets:

  • “Severe events have very rarely been reported following MMR vaccination, and might also happen after MMRV. These include: Deafness, long-term seizures, coma, lowered consciousness, brain damage.”
  • Or this from the Polio VIS and several others: “As with any medicine, there is a very remote chance of a vaccine causing a serious injury or death.”

Lack of informed consent encompasses vaccine advertising as well. While television drug ads disclose the side effect risks of that drug at length, vaccine advertising does not. The patient, again, is at a disadvantage.

World Mercury Project won’t stop until decisive action is taken.

Insistence on fully-informed consent and individual rights to refuse a vaccination become imperative given the lack of long-term follow-up and surveillance; only 1% adverse events are captured and reported; vaccine recommendations are tainted by financial conflicts of interest of regulators; the current childhood vaccine schedule was not approved using evidence-based science and policy; the childhood vaccine schedule has never been tested on fully vaccinated vs. unvaccinated; and there is sparse research into which patients are likely to experience an adverse event.

America is in the midst of many childhood epidemics. Over 50% of our children are chronically ill. We owe it to our children to examine what is happening to their health and correct it as soon as possible.

Watch this 8 minute trailer of RFK, Jr.’s Vaccine Safety Project video. The longer 45 minute version is accessible in the members-only section of the World Mercury Project website. A lifetime membership to WMP is only $10 which helps us achieve our goal of ending the childhood epidemics and working for families across the globe.

 

 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “Autism, ADHD, epilepsy, autoimmune disorders, deadly allergies, SIDS, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, learning disabilities and more have been increasing for over 25 years. Over 50% of our children are chronically ill. A new NIH study found that 49.5% of adolescents ages 13 to 18 have a mental disorder. This is unacceptable.”

 

Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the World Mercury Project. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Delivers the Vaccine Safety Project to Congress

By the World Mercury Project Team

Last week,15 dedicated children’s health and medical choice advocates joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Capitol Hill to fulfill World Mercury Project’s promise to the community to provide crucial vaccine safety information to every member of Congress. Meetings with Congressional Members, Senators, and staff took place over a four-day time period to explain WMP’s six-step Vaccine Safety Project that details the actions necessary to introduce sound science and transparency to our vaccination program.

Federally elected officials can no longer ignore the chronic health conditions—tied in no small part to adverse vaccine reactions—that currently affect over half of our nation’s children. Not only are these officials now aware of the conflicts of interest and inadequate science upon which the vaccine program is built, but they have been given a common-sense plan for enacting desperately needed changes that puts children’s health first.

READ MORE
You Make It Possible!

World Mercury Project depends on
generous donations from our community.
Large or small, every donation gets us
closer to achieving our goals. Listen to
what RFK, Jr. has to say in the video
at the link below.

Donate Now
Copyright © 2018 World Mercury Project, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you’ve shown an interest in World Mercury Project.Our mailing address is:World Mercury Project1227 North Peachtree Parkway, #202Peachtree City, GA 30269

2018-03-11 Statistics Canada loses, mishandles hundreds of sensitive census, employment files, CBC

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Mar 112018
 

Some individuals not told of privacy breach even though it could be used for ‘malicious purposes’

Kathleen Harris

Statistics Canada carried out a frantic search of recycling and garbage containers like these ones in a failed bid to recover 587 long-form 2016 census surveys that were in the trunk of a car stolen in Montreal. (David Donnelly/CBC)

The federal agency in charge of collecting, analyzing and securely storing personal data about Canadians lost hundreds of sensitive files during the 2016 census process.

Incident reports obtained by CBC News through Access to Information detail 20 cases of information and privacy breaches by Statistics Canada, including long and short census surveys, home visit logs and personal employment records.

Some confidential documents were left on a subway or sent to the wrong home. Hundreds more were lost in a stolen car.

In that latter case, 587 long-form census forms filled out by First Nations residents were stored in the trunk of an employee’s vehicle that was stolen when he took a weekend trip to Montreal. The incident report does not specify the enumeration district.

The theft was reported to police and municipal officials, but despite frantic searches to recover the documents in recycling and garbage bins, they were never found.

According to the incident report, police believe the stolen vehicle was quickly chopped up for parts and suggest the documents could have been destroyed.

Statistics Canada concluded the privacy breach was not a “material” one because the thief was targeting the vehicle, not the boxes of census documents. The Privacy Commissioner of Canada was not informed of the incident.

While the documents show there was no immediate effort to reach out to those individuals whose privacy was breached, a spokesman for the agency said they were told what happened during a second census.

“The incident was discussed with community leaders, who supported the re-enumeration of their community. During the re-enumeration, the canvassers informed respondents of the incident,” said Guillaume Bérubé in an email. “The re-enumeration was successful and the data from the new questionnaires were incorporated into the census results.”

Other reports detail privacy breaches on two Alberta First Nations reserves (Enoch and Stoney), when forms went missing or were sent to the wrong addresses. In the Stoney incident, Statistics Canada failed to account for 11 long-form questionnaires.

“There is confidential respondent information on these census forms, and it could be viewed by persons not employed by Statistics Canada and used for malicious purposes,” the Statistics Canada incident report warns.

Damage to reputation

“Other possible risks include: perception that Statistics Canada does not protect respondent data, and the possibility of not obtaining this information again from these respondents.”

Bérubé said the individuals in that case were not notified because Statistics Canada determined that there was “no reasonable expectation of serious risk to the individuals concerned.”

In other cases where census surveys were lost or sent by mistake to the wrong addresses, those affected were informed, provided with explanations and apologies and, in some cases, advised of their right to complain to the Privacy Commissioner.

But in the cases involving the Enoch and Stoney reserves, a decision was made not to notify the respondents about the privacy breaches. The incident reports suggest staff felt those already reluctant to take part in the census might be even more wary after learning about the loss of personal information.

There were 20 incident reports of information and privacy breaches by Statistics Canada in 2016. (CBC)

“If we lost their information, we may not be able to gather this information again,” one incident report says.

“We are still in collection on this reserve. At this point, we will not be advising respondents and we will not be re-collecting this information based on direction received from the field operations project team.”

Former federal privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier said StatsCan has a strong track record on ethics and security safeguards, but these incidents highlight a need for greater transparency and accountability.

Understanding that the agency may have a strategic objective in collecting information on reserves, she said, there must always be a clear explanation for why people are, or are not, informed of a privacy breach involving their personal information.

“I feel that StatsCan should ask itself whether indeed it does have, wittingly or unwittingly, a double standard as relates to First Nations,” she said.

Gust of wind takes papers

Other breaches cited in the documents include:

  • An enumerator leaving a bag on a Toronto subway with grid card access, training manuals and forms with addresses and other personal information. It was never recovered.
  • A StatsCan employee losing 16 pages of an assignment list, blown away by a gust of wind in Crossfield, Alta. It included names, addresses and phone numbers but no other identifying information.
  • One StatsCan enumerator bringing along a non-employee who had not taken an oath of secrecy, yet was privy to the collection of personal information.
  • A job recruiter emailing a request for fingerprints and other information to the wrong candidates.
  • An enumerator setting down a bag in front of a six-plex in Toronto while visiting an apartment at the rear of the building. It was gone when the enumerator returned and was never recovered.
  • A lost visitation record book with “remarks” that could affect 304 people.
  • Job candidates’ information being breached when census recruitment envelopes were misplaced. The sheets included selected answers, scores and declarations of past criminal convictions. The agency believes they were misfiled and destroyed in error, but the Privacy Commissioner and Treasury Board Secretariat were advised of the breach.

According to Statistics Canada’s website, the agency is required by law to protect the confidentiality of the information respondents provide on its surveys and censuses. When hired, employees are screened for reliability and made aware of the confidential nature of the materials they will be handling. Enumerators must take an oath of secrecy.

Bérubé said protecting respondent and employee personal information is “of utmost importance” and the agency takes any potential breach extremely seriously.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada confirmed it has not investigated any complaints related to privacy breaches involving the 2016 census. The office considers privacy breaches to be unauthorized access to, or disclosure of, personal information, including personal information that is stolen, lost or mistakenly shared.

A privacy breach also may be a consequence of faulty business procedures or operational breakdowns, according to privacy commissioner spokeswoman Tobi Cohen.

For the 2016 census, StatsCan had about 35,000 positions available across Canada, including 25,000 enumerators, 4,000 crew leaders and crew leader assistants and 6,000 other positions.

Statistics Canada conducts a census through long and short-form questionnaires every four years. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)


Kathleen Harris is a senior writer in the CBC’s Parliament Hill bureau. She covers politics, immigration, justice and corrections. Follow her on Twitter @ottawareporter

2018-03-08 The bees have a question

 March Against Bayer-Monsanto  No Responses »
Mar 082018
 

This posting makes an important point re Monsanto and the other chemical producers:

regulatory capture – – by the industry, of the Government agency responsible for regulating the industry.

It has been an issue for at least 20 years.   There has been no progress made by us (the insurgents!).   This petition names the PMRA (Pest Management Regulatory Agency),  that comes under Health Canada.  Real culprits for a long time, well-known by many.  I tackled it head on, when I was threatened with a lawsuit.  Many have challenged, lobbied, and circulated information.   All to no avail.   With regulatory capture, Big Business and Big Government are making the decisions behind the scenes.  The democracy is badly corrupted.   The Lord of the Manor is Corporate Profits, with no restrictions.

HOWEVER!   the power of social media was in its infancy then.   Today,  thanks to Friends of the Earth for this campaign.  Get on board!   We’re on a new round!

2004-04-10  Tom Wolf, Health Canada scientist threatens to sue me. Response – the mafia uses threat of broken bones.

Sorry about the following call to action, which is very good.  I can’t fix it; I’m out of time for trying.  And I can’t find an on-line version (a URL).

I can forward a copy of the email it’s on,  with the active links for registering dissent, with the Government.  Just send a request (use the Comments at bottom).

Or, contact info for FOE is at the bottom

The Friends of the Earth “issue” page on Bees is at   http://foecanada.org/en/issues/the-bee-cause/.   But I couldn’t find this particular campaign there.

The bees have a question.

 

You might want to ask Canadian government decision-makers the same question.

 

A week ago the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released its report on the three most widely used neonicotinoid pesticides. After reviewing 1500 studies, EFSA concluded, “overall the risk to the three types of bees we have assessed is confirmed.” We expect that the European Union will vote to ban all three in the coming month.

 

Another important player, The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides – a team of independent scientists brought together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature – has been assessing peer-reviewed science on neonics for several years. After two rounds of comprehensive reviews, they say that neonics harm honeybees and many other species, including aquatic insects at the base of the food chain, earthworms and common birds.

 

Just before Christmas when Canadians were all focused on the holidays, Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) revealed their conclusions to five years of review conducted along with United States’ authorities. The North American conclusion, despite the documented poisoning of millions of bees, is that major uses of neonicotinoid pesticides are safe and can continue! Uses like coatings for corn, soy and sunflower seeds.

 

Here’s the question:

 

The bees are asking: How can Canadian authorities spend five years reviewing virtually the same scientific evidence as the Europeans and come up with a totally different conclusion?

 

Perhaps, the Ontario Beekeepers Association put it best: “Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) opted against bees in favour of pesticide manufacturers”.

 

Since the bees cannot ask the PMRA to explain – you and I have to do it for them.

 

 

Beatrice Olivastri, CEO

Friends of the Earth Canada

613 724 8690

beatrice@foecanada.org

 

John Bennett

Senior Policy Advisor

Friends of the Earth Canada

 Older Entries  Newer Entries