Paranotes 2000
by Al Hidell

West Nile Virus and the Feds
New York City and several New England communities have been repeatedly sprayed with pesticides, the long term effects of which may include immune system and liver damage, lowered sperm counts, and disruption of the endocrine system. The stated purpose of the spraying was to prevent the spread of an arbovirus known as West Nile Virus (WNV) by killing the mosquitoes that carry it. Officially, WNV is a very dangerous and deadly virus, never before seen in North America, whose appearance here was mysterious and unexpected.

So, how dangerous is WNV? The relatively benign nature of WNV is suggested by the fact the vast majority of people who become infected recover without treatment and without experiencing symptoms. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the largest known WNV epidemic occurred in Romania in 1996. Out of the entire population, an estimated 100,000 were infected, yet only 400 people became ill, and just 15 (all over the age of 65) died. Certainly, the elderly and anyone with a weakened immune system should take precautions, but even in these "high-risk" groups, the statistical risk is quite low. Among the general population, the chance of death from WNV is virtually nil.

Never before seen in North America? True, if you don't count Federal bio-warfare labs. Just three miles from Long Island, NY, the government's Plum Island Exotic Animal Disease Lab breeds and experiments with dangerous bio-warfare toxins. It has been reported that Plum Island has been cited by the NY State Attorney General for dumping experimental animal carcasses and releasing live experimental animals into the environment. There is no evidence that the Lab is responsible for New York City's WNV outbreak, but it may be significant that WNV was first identified in NYC by a Zoo pathologist who was trained at Plum Island.

Furthermore, the U.S. Army is known to have genetically-engineered its own version of at least one arbovirus, Japanese Encephalitis, which it patented in 1996 and licensed exclusively to the biotech firm Oravax. A year before the NYC WNV outbreak, a group including Oravax Vice President Dr. Thomas Monath met with President Clinton in an attempt to get the government to purchase and stockpile large quantities of Oravax vaccines. Along with Dr. Monath, who was previously a top researcher at the Army's Ft. Dietrick bio-warfare lab, were New York City's Office of Emergency Management Commissioner, and the head of the CIA. The group also included Dr. Joshua Lederberg, the former president of Rockefeller University (another site of federal bio-warfare research). In 1994, Dr. Lederberg headed the Pentagon Gulf War Illness study which concluded that American service personnel in the Gulf had not been exposed to biological warfare materials. While chairing the Pentagon study, he also served as Director of American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), an organization which has admitted to shipping 70 bio-warfare samples to Iraq, including West Nile Virus. (www.baltech.org/lederman and www.nospray.org)

NutraSweet, Brain Cancer Link To Be Studied
In August 2000, British scientists began a three-year study into the artificial sweetener aspartame, marketed as NutraSweet, and its possible link to brain cancer. FDA approval of aspartame in soft drinks in 1983 was followed by a statistically-significant increase in human brain tumors. Some activists claim that aspartame also produces a host of other problems, including poor memory, confusion, seizures, blindness, and birth defects. Indeed, the National Soft Drink Association (NSDA, whose members include Coca Cola and Pepsi) stated flatly in a secret 1983 report, "We object to the approval of aspartame for unrestricted use in soft drinks." Recently, an NSDA spokesman explained that the 1983 report was based on early health concerns that have since been answered to the industry's satisfaction. NutraSweet's parent company Monsanto claims that "overwhelming scientific evidence confirms the safety of aspartame," despite the fact that one of its own studies reported 12 brain tumors in 320 aspartame-treated rats. Another possible explanation for the rise in brain tumors since the early 1980s is the increasing use of cellular phones, although that industry, too, claims its products are safe. (On the British research and the 1983 NSDA report, see www.the-times.co.uk/news/. On dangers of aspartame, see www.bevnet.com/bev/board)

Got Cancer?
As if NutraSweet and cell phones weren't enough to worry about, serious questions have been raised about the safety of dairy products produced by genetically-treated cows. In 1994, the FDA approved the use of a genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH), which is now widely used by the U.S. dairy industry to increase cows' milk production. Prior to that time, the little-known category of cancer known as lymphatic cancer was comparatively rare. In the five years following the approval of rbGH, these cancers increased 20 times, the most dramatic short-term increase of any single cancer in the history of epidemiology. To put the increase in perspective, lymphatic cancer now accounts for more cancer deaths than breast, prostate, lung, and pancreatic cancers combined. Of course, correlation does not mean causation, and there may be other risk factors involved. However, the FDA's own data indicate that lab animals treated with rbGH developed enlarged spleens, and the spleen is the first line of defense in the lymphatic system. Furthermore, the use of rbGH (manufactured by multinational chemical corporation Monsanto, which also makes NutraSweet) has been banned in Canada and several European countries. (www.notmilk.com)

Eugenics by Another Name
America's dramatic drop in crime rates during the 1990s may have its roots in a 1970s Supreme Court decision. Last year, economists Steven Levitt and John Donohue III presented a controversial explanation for the crime drop: Legalized abortion wiped out many potential criminals. Their 45-page study suggests that, after abortion was made legal in a 1973 Supreme Court decision, it was disproportionately used by women at high risk of having children who grow up to become criminals. "Teenagers, unmarried women, and African Americans are all substantially more likely to seek abortions," they write. The "crime bust" of the 1990s, they say, corresponds to the time when children, had they been born instead of aborted in the 1970s, would have been reaching the peak ages of criminal activity: 18-24. The economists have stated that they are not advocating abortion or promoting any political or racial agenda. Nevertheless, their data suggest that abortion is actually a form of Eugenics, the controversial "science" of social engineering through selective breeding and deadly public policies, which began in Britain but reached its height under the German Nazi regime. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Traffic in Body Parts Rampant
In April 2000, the Orange County Register reported that donated human remains are processed into medical products that generate hundreds of millions of dollars for U.S. companies, despite laws banning profit from body parts. Although most grieving families believe that such donations are charitable and non-profit in nature, materials harvested from the dead are expected to produce industry revenues of $1 billion by 2003. The 1984 National Organ Transplant Act banned profit from the sale of human tissue, but allowed the charging of handling and processing fees, which the law does not limit. While the public usually focuses on vital organs like hearts or kidneys, body parts are often put to far less vital uses, including cosmetic lip and penis augmentation. All in all, the average cadaver is worth $110,000.00 - $220,00.00 to the for-profit tissue banks, which pay their CEOs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. There are also, the report notes, several nonprofit tissue banks whose leadership make far less. 

Suspicious Death Roundup
On April 18, 2000, a key witness in the investigation into the death of Princess Diana was found dead under mysterious circumstances. The badly burned body of James Andanson was found in a burnt-out car in the woods of southern France. Andanson was one of the leading paparazzo who had been trailing Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed. He was also the owner of a white Fiat Uno, the type of vehicle thought to have clipped Diana's car just prior to the fatal crash. According to investigators, the paint did not match that recovered from the scrape marks on Diana's car. (www.sunday-times.co.uk). 

On April 29, 2000, Carlos Ghigliotti, 42, a thermal imaging analyst, was found dead in his office of an apparent heart attack. Ghigliotti had just finished work for the House Government Reform Committee analyzing infrared footage of the Waco siege. In October of 1999, he had stated that the footage showed that the FBI had fired shots into the Waco compound. "The death of Carlos is a tremendous loss for our case," said attorney Michael Caddell, who at the time represented survivors of the Waco tragedy in a wrongful death lawsuit against the government. The survivors ultimately lost the lawsuit. (www.worldnetdaily.com). 

On June 4, 2000, John Millis, the staff director of the House Intelligence Committee, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a Fairfax City, VA motel. Police ruled the death a suicide. He had recently been placed on administrative leave by the Committee, and at the time of his death was reportedly under investigation by the Committee for "improper behavior." On February 15, Millis, a former CIA operations officer, had publicly criticized former CIA Director John Deutch, calling him the worst director in the Agency's history. (The Washington Times)

Most Wars Over Money
While mainstream analysts and historians tend to focus on ethnic, political and religious issues, most of the world's armed conflicts are actually fought for economic gain. A World Bank study released earlier this year confirmed that most wars are about the control of profitable commodities such as diamonds, drugs, and oil, rather than moral or ideological motives. The Bank, which studied 47 civil wars that took place from 1960-1999, found that the single biggest risk factor for the outbreak of war was the presence of valuable commodities. For example, Sierra Leone's current civil war is primarily about the control of the nation's diamond mines. In Nigeria, the violent secessionist movement involves control of an oil-producing region. The study, however, was careful to focus exclusively on the motivations of rebel and separatist groups, creating the false impression that economic gain is too crude a motivation for advanced sovereign nations like our own. (New York Times)

The Real Energy Crisis
As this 2001 winter approached, the big news story was the rise in gasoline prices and the expected upward spiraling of home heating costs. As usual, the media focused on foreign oil suppliers and seemingly uncontrollable "market forces." Of greater significance may be the fact that these price hikes have come after a period of unprecedented and competition-reducing merger activity in the energy industry. In addition to this anticompetitive consolidation, another factor is the effort of 24 states in the last five years to "deregulate" the electric utility industry, with the purported goal of lowering prices for consumers. The first state to deregulate was California. Now, it is experiencing chronic power shortages and outages, and energy prices have shot up from the normal $30 per megawatt to as much as $1,400 per megawatt. For consumers, deregulation has meant that the companies that sell power can now charge whatever they like, while under regulation, rate increases had to be shown to be necessary and approved by the state. Energy-intensive industries are being forced to shut down and lay off workers because they simply cannot afford to run. At a July 18, 2000 press conference, California Public Utility Commissioner Carl Wood admitted that deregulation had been a "mistake" that had turned into a "crisis." As occurred with cable TV, when politicians start talking about "deregulation," "free markets," and "helping consumers," you'd better hang on to your wallet. (New Federalist, www. larouchepub.com)

"Kramer" a Mason
Masonic influence in politics is widely debated, but its role in the world of comedy remains largely unknown. Inspired by the Masonic teachings of fellow comedian and 33rd degree Mason Red Skelton, Michael Richards (Kramer of Seinfeld) quietly became a Mason in 1996. Richards states: "I was already interested in the Craft from reading Manly Hall's The Secret of All Ages, Albert Pike's Morals and Dogma, and Albert Mackey's Symbolism of Freemasonry. So, when I met Red and found out about his strong ties to Freemasonry, I was very impressed." He continues, "It was through Red's lovable nature, Masonic and all, that I really wanted to be a Mason." Recently, Richards completed the role of Mr. Micawber in an upcoming TNT production of Dickens' David Copperfield, a part last performed by the Mason W.C. Fields in 1935.

King conspiracy found
On December 8, 1999, the Associated Press reported that a Tennessee jury hearing a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s family found that the civil rights leader was the victim of a vast conspiracy. The King family had sued Lloyd Jowers, a retired Memphis businessman, who claimed six years ago that he paid someone other than James Earl Ray to kill King. During the trial, King family attorney William Pepper successfully argued that Jowers was part of a conspiracy involving the Mafia and the US military. 

The assassination, according to Pepper, was carried out because of King's increasingly militant opposition to the Vietnam war and his plans for a massive "poor peoples' march" on Washington, DC. The King family hopes the verdict will lead to a new investigation.

EgyptAir rocket report
On Monday, November 1, NewsMax.com editor Christopher Ruddy reported that US air traffic controllers were diverting planes to new flight paths just hours after EgyptAir flight 990 crashed. Listening to control tower radio traffic piped through the headset on his own London-bound flight, Ruddy overheard one controller advising pilots to follow new altitude coordinates. When a crew member asked why, he was told, "There are rockets being fired in the area."

The incident wouldn't be the first time air traffic control radio chatter indicated some sort of missile activity off Long Island's coast, where TWA Flight 800 also went down. On April 26, 1999, TWA 800 researcher Michael Hull reported an episode that took place on November 16, 1996. "Pakistan International Airlines Flight 712 left Kennedy bound for Frankfurt. One of the pilots reported an orange light, which he described as a 'rocket,' coming from the left-hand side to the right-hand side of the airplane. Boston apparently confirmed two unidentified blips on radar. The tapes were turned over to the FBI and NTSB since the object(s) rose directly out of Long Island Sound... The government dismissed the incident as a meteorite observation." Hull also documents a close encounter between a missile-like object and an Aug. 9, 1997, Swissair flight bound for Zurich, Switzerland. "Swissair has revealed that an unidentified flying object almost collided with one of its planes over the United States. The captain and his co-pilot said an oblong and wingless object shot past at great speed, only fifty meters away from their Boeing 747. American authorities said it was probably 'a weather balloon.'" 

On March 5, 1999, Canada's CBC News stated, "A Swissair [Flight 127] pilot reported his jet was nearly hit by an unidentified flying object, possibly a missile, near the area off New York where a TWA plane crashed in 1996." A transcript of the conversation between Swissair 127 pilots and ground controllers includes a controller stating, "Swissair 127 ... he had a UFO or a rocket or something almost hit him in my airspace." (www.newsmax.com)

Cancer patients may have been given AIDS
In December, genetic therapy researchers discovered that they may have accidentally exposed over 24 young cancer patients to the virus that causes AIDS. The possible exposure was covered-up until early February, when federal regulators were informed, and the researchers began contacting patients and their parents about the possible infections. Researchers at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis and the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston broke their silence only when it became clear that the potentially deadly contamination of their gene-based treatments was about to become public. The AIDS scare came on the heels of the FDA's January shut-down of the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious gene therapy program after the agency uncovered serious lapses in patient protection which may have contributed to the death of an 18-year old volunteer. (Washington Post, 2/11/2000)

Livermore Lab whistleblower murdered
Police detectives are accusing Lawrence Livermore Laboratory of stonewalling an investigation into the slaying of a designer who uncovered a serious flaw in the lab's troubled $1 billion weapons testing program. Lee Scott Hall, 54, was beaten and repeatedly stabbed in the bedroom of his Livermore home October 20, 1999. He was a lead designer on the $1.2 billion National Ignition Facility, which will monitor the nation's nuclear stockpile without the need for underground testing. For a year, during which the nuclear weapons program was rocked by allegations of Chinese espionage and serious cost overruns, Hall had been trying to bring attention to a miscalculation in a multimillion-dollar laser beam installation that is part of the Ignition Facility. 

Livermore Det. Sgt. Scott Robertson says, "If you live by yourself, and you really have no family, and you don't associate with your neighbors, and the only associations you have are at work ‹ well, it's a real whodunit." Robertson and his partner, Det. Charlie Garrison, are frustrated at what they say is a lack of cooperation by the lab. "We are not getting the whole picture from the lab," said Garrison. Garrison himself is not telling reporters everything he knows, as is common during an ongoing criminal investigation. He says, "There's more to it, too, and I just can't comment on it." Hall's car, which he always parked in his garage, was found a block away. In it were his wallet, from which nothing apparently had been removed, and his lab security ID. The keys have never been found. In addition, the police did not find anything of value missing from Hall's home, so there is no reason to think he was the victim of a robbery. "The guy had an enemy," said one investigator.

"Was his work connected to his death?" Garrison asks. "I can't tell you for sure... Maybe there are some things others above his co-workers don't want to be made public." (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/15/2000)

Contrails update
In February, a new explanation emerged for the so-called "contrails" (or "chemtrails") that have been reported in the skies over several states in the last two years. Recently, the Spotlight newspaper reported the claim of an Air Force veteran that the Pentagon has been using Air Force and Air Force National Guard aircraft to release anti-bacteriological warfare chemicals into the skies. The source - who while on active duty was attached to the top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) - believes that the operations are part of the "unconventional pathogen countermeasures program" of the government's Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In other words, they are part of the military's plans to deal with biological attacks against the United States. The sprayings, indicated by what appear to be straight lines and "X's" of dissipating clouds, have been linked by some observers to increases in flu-like illnesses among those living in recently-sprayed areas. DARPA Director Lawrence H. Dubois has declared that the Agency is "not doing any large-scale or outdoor testing" of this type. (www.contrailconnection.com)

Y2K caused major intelligence blackout
In January, a Defense Department official acknowledged that there was a major intelligence blackout on New Year's Eve, one caused by a Y2K bug. The bug emerged at Fort Belvoir, VA, in government computers which translate signals coming from US spy satellites. Until the bug was fully repaired three days later, a satellite that takes pictures over such hot spots as Russia and the Middle East was effectively "blind." During the blackout, reporters were assured that our defense and intelligence systems had experienced no Y2K problems. After the blackout was fixed, reporters were told that it had lasted only two hours, and had "no major impact" on US national security. Finally, on January 4, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre admitted that "It was a significant source of information in our national intelligence capabilities. It was not an unimportant dimension," while national media reported that the blackout actually lasted three days, not two hours. The Pentagon, incidentally, spent some $3.6 billion dollars readying its computers to deal with Y2K. (ABC News)

Panama Canal threat?
On January 1, 2000, control of the vital strategic waterway known as the Panama Canal was transferred from the United States to China. US control was actually relinquished to Panama, part of a controversial deal negotiated in the late 1970s by President Carter. However, a company with alleged links to the Chinese military (Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.) now operates ports on both ends of the Canal, which some fear gives China effective control of the waterway. When asked about the situation, President Clinton acknowledged the fact of Chinese control, but stated "I think the Chinese will be bending over backwards to make sure that they run it in a competent and able manner... And I would be very surprised if any adverse consequences flowed from the Chinese running the Canal."

If US commercial and military ships were prevented from using the Panama Canal, they would have to travel an additional 9,000 miles around South America. So, it is understandable that having any country other than the United States control the Canal has raised concern. 

However, according to the New Federalist newspaper, criticism of the control transfer is part of a larger effort to prevent US-Chinese cooperation and paint China as our new global enemy. The December 28, 1999 issue points out that Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. is actually a British company, whose employees in Panama are mostly British and Australian. In addition, Hutchison already administers 12 of the world's most important ports, resulting in no apparent security concerns. The "China threat" to the Canal is a smokescreen, says the New Federalist. The real threat, according to the LaRouchian publication, comes from Columbian narcoterrorist guerrillas, who have already made several deadly military incursions into Panama. (NewFederalist.com)