Scoop Feedback: Thank Goodness For Scoop

Wednesday, 23 October 2002, 9:44 am
Opinion: Scoop Feedback

In This Edition: Thank Goodness For Scoop - Maree Howard Thank You! - More Thanks To Maree - On The Latest From The Irrepressible David Miller.. - "Titless Wonders" TV One Sat Oct 12 2002 - When Will We Learn? - Ballistics Registry - Us Deports Canadian To Syria

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Thank goodness For Scoop

Hi there

Heard about Scoop on BFM on Saturday and couldn't wait to get to work to check it out. I have recently been sourcing my international news from the UK Observer website as I am increasingly disappointed with the so called news fed to us via traditional mediums of newspaper, television and radio in NZ.

Very glad to have an NZ internet medium to check out, I will tell people about this site and help to spread the word.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Regards, Karla Lavery

Maree Howard THANK YOU!

RE: Howard's End: ACC’s Deeds Do Not Match Words

This is a Thank you e mail for Maree Howard.......

You are telling it like it is Maree Thank you so much.. We have been removed from ACC for 3 years now, lost our home as we couldn’t afford mortgage payments.. We even left the area we lived in to retain a little dignity.

We still religiously take our 3 month medical certificates to ACC, 7 Drs and 2 specialists say unfit for work. 1 ACC pet Dr, Dr Mark [name deleted] after a poke here a prod there, no xrays, and several hundred dollars fee, said direct to my husband that he was going to get him off ACC before the examination.

Stress has been so bad over the past few years, hubby has had 2 heart attacks, sleeps very little because of the pain.. We have no hope no prospects no money...

Not somewhere you expect to be in your early 50's. He tried to end it all a couple of years ago, several days in intensive care .

He has a determination now that someone is going to pay for what ACC have done is what is keeping him going...

It is folk like you that is helping us to believe that one day this may happen. Thank you so much Maree you are our Hero.. I know you are very busy and have probably heard it all most of the cases are so much alike that it is just so sickening.

We have so much evidence of lies and deceipt but no one wants to know. we have written to the ministers, ombudsman, police, medical council, etc etc, but we are just going round and round... Its a big game that we just afford to play. Legal fees now must be around $15,000..

Maree please keep the pressure on for us, I can see folk starting to get the message...

Thank you so much.

kind regards D&E H

More Thanks To Maree

RE: Howard's End: ACC’s Deeds Do Not Match Words

Just a quick line to say thanks very much to Maree for her wonderful
artical yesterday (Monday) on culture at ACC. As a long term stock so much of what
you say hit home.

This continued exposure of how they lie and cheat is
helpful in several ways . On an individual level it gives me strength to
not let them wear me down and comfort that I know they do these things to
all long term claimants !!

But perhaps more importantly this reporting
will eventually help to enforce a full inquiry that will hold to account
GARY WILSON and individual case managers that abuse and bully the most vulnerable
amoung us .

SO MAREE HOWARD again thank you so much for your fantastic
work research and truth !!!

Thankyou .
MARK

On The Latest From The Irrepressible David Miller..

RE: Why New Zealand Needs Intelligence Above All Else

Please, David Miller, find another career. Or at least take a course in journalism, or something. Let’s paraphrase the latest column (David Miller Online - Bali: Why New Zealand Needs Intelligence Above All Else) – “it’s really important we find out stuff, ‘cause if we knew when things were going to happen, we wouldn’t be there, and then we wouldn’t get hurt”. Really?!

Now let’s get real. There is NOTHING that will prevent attacks of the kind that occurred in Bali. Sure, if you spend a kazillion dollars on the cloak-and-dagger-wannabes that pass as ‘intelligence’, you’ll stop a few before they happen. And it’s important that we spend some of this money, just like it’s important we sustain some kind of military. There really are evil individuals and institutions out there, and to deny need for a military (in the way some peacenik idealogues would argue) is to post a large sign that says “Kick Me” (or “Kill Me”, take your pick).

But how much do you think Israel spends on Mossad? How’s their success rate looking at stopping suicide bombings? Why on earth are we any different? And it’s stupid to pretend otherwise.

As for the so-called pan-Islamic-state threat - the odds of some radical groups managing to forge and sustain any kind of effective government without a large and pressing external threat (eg US-led neo-colonialism) are virtually zilch. How effective and influential was the Taleban on a local or global political scale? The only reason they managed to acquire power in the first place is that they were backed and financed by the US, and facing an overwhelming external threat in the shape of the Soviet army. US “intelligence” CREATED the Taleban as a political force. And ditto for a host of other dodgy global regimes.

As has been pointed out by others, the most dangerous religious terrorist force on the planet is the so-called “Christian” US – armed with high technology, malleable morals and the blind zealotry of their “goodness”. And that’s just danger de-jour, with China et al lining up to take their place.

It seems to me the world was/is edging closer to true democracy through the likes of the UN and the newly-formed WCC, and that, imperfect as those institutions certainly are, our greatest collective hope is through supporting the cause of global unity in the face of tyrants, not state-sponsored terrorism, as practiced by Israel and the numerous dirty regimes supported overtly and covertly by the US in the name of a buck. And to participate in that world, kiwis are forced going to lose the simple-minded naivette that living in a remote Pacific paradise has produced. And we’re going to have to learn to think.

Thank God that David Miller is not the sharpest knife in Scoop’s drawer! Now will someone please set the table, and please… use the good cutlery..

Andrew Hubbard

"Titless Wonders" TV One Sat Oct 12 2002

Recent screening of the film starkly entitled "Titless wonders" will undoubtedly give courage and strength to those women who have travelled this horrific journey and the others doomed to travel a similar road. My heart goes out to women such as Jan Bolwell and Kat Larking who demonstrate such bravery.

Wonderful it would be if we marked Breast Cancer Month, not with growing statistics and sad epitaphs, but by progress in prevention of this scourge. The shear madness of allowing this poisoning - for that is essentially what it is - is beyond belief. Men such as Professor Samuel Epstein have spent a life time fighting to put 'prevention' of cancer, rather than spending ever more millions on looking for a 'cure,' on government agendas.[1] The 'big secret' of which Gaylene Preston speaks is not cancer, it's the fact that we are capable of preventing much of it!

For fear of crossing the agrochemical companies, we refuse to ban pesticides and herbicides which add to our cancer burden. Between 1976 and 1986 the breast cancer rate in Israel dropped by 34% after just two common pesticides were banned.[2] Denmark has begun the road back to healing and hopes to be completely organic by 2003. Are we willing to take this route? No. We add even more risk by plunging into the GE-biotech morass and investing hard-earned dollars to 'Keep our Options Open,' options which will forever remove that faint possibility our government may see the light and, like Denmark, go organic.

Just as a cabinet memo from the tobacco industry, sent to Jenny Shipley in the 1990's, successfully delayed changes to the Smoke-free Environment Act[3], so continued pressure from biotech and agrochemical industries will delay our changing to safe sustainable organic production. As Ross Hume so rightly said, "too often cancer research has focussed on finding the last straw. It's time we looked at all the straws."[4] How many books such as "Silent Spring" or "Our Stolen Future" does it take to convince people that research aimed at environmental factors offers the only hope of preventing these devastating diseases? Until we wake up, human health will continue to suffer on the anvil of profit.

Sincerely

Dr Robert Anderson
Member Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics
http://www.psrg.org.nz

1. The Politics of Cancer Revisited East Ridge Press, 1998. Prof. Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
2. The Cancer Conspiracy. Dr T. Jeffreys pp51
3. NZ Herald April 13 2000
4.Communication to Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream 245.

When Will We Learn?

The recent announcement by the French government that they have stopped gene therapy trials[1] after a three-year-old boy contracted Leukaemia continues to illustrate the formidable dangers of this technology. Whether we are inserting genes into plants, animals or ourselves the end result can be, and often is, a shocking scenario.

This is by no means the first of hundreds that have been injured or killed by the technology. The first admitted case was 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger who died in September 1999. Because cases are not reported correctly, or often not at all, the figures may be much worse.

The potential for gene therapy to cause cancer was predicted by top geneticists such as Professor Cummins and others years ago. Failures such as Gelsinger and the French boy confirm such dangers.

The virus used to introduce the required gene into the patient, the adenovirus, is one of the earliest used. Although considered "safe and without side effects" these vectors are causing severe, and often, fatal side effects. Undaunted, researchers continue to engineer new versions of these virus vectors and to experiment with them. Several other side effects, long predicted by many geneticists, have now come to light.[2,3]

Some of the doctors using the latest techniques on Parkinson's sufferers[4] are also paid consultants for the Neurologix Inc, a private company owning patent rights on the techniques used in the therapy. Because the researchers demonstrated that it works in laboratory rats or monkeys does not mean it will work with human beings. Rather than pursue this dangerous technology why not pursue the recent findings that Co-enzyme Q10 slows the progression of this disease?[5] Then again perhaps not, you can't patent Q10.

This highlights, yet again, the dangers of unregulated, profit-driven genetic engineering whether in medicine or agriculture. Of the almost 900 submissions ERMA recently received against putting human and other genes into cows, only 7 were in favour, yet they allow this dubious research to proceed. As Professor Traavik said recently in his report to the UK Government, "with genetic engineering we may see a BSE in Technicolor." How long will it be before our Government sees the light - or colours?

Sincerely
Dr Robert Anderson
Member Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics
http://www.psrg.org.nz

1."Blow for gene therapy as France halts trials" Paris Reuters Oct 3 2002
2. The hazards of gene therapy.. "Slipping Through the Regulatory Net" Prof's. Traavik, Cummins, and Ho M.W. 3rd World network Biotechnology Series, Penang 2001
3. "Gene therapy oversold by scientists who disregard the risks" Dr Angela Ryan ISIS News, 9/10 2001
4. AP Friday, 11 October 2002:40, Washington., Dr. During, a researcher at the University of Auckland and Dr Kaplitt are authors of the Science study in which the researchers demonstrated in laboratory rats that transferring the brain chemical gene could greatly improve Parkinson's symptoms. Researchers used rats and monkeys with encouraging results.
5. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) October 15, 2002, 'Archives of Neurology'.

Ballistics Registry

Dear Editor,

Should there be a Ballistics Registry for every gun? Critics make four arguments against storing a sample bullet fired by every gun and storing the groove pattern in a computer database.

First, they say it would not cover existing guns. Well, that could be fixed by requiring all sales and gun registration renewals to supply a current sample, e.g., by firing into the sand at your local police station. Gradually, most legal guns would be covered.

Second, they say the pattern on the bullet is changed by time and by deliberate alteration. Many firings will wear the groove pattern, but many guns are not fired that much. Deliberate alterations will often make the gun less accurate, perhaps sparing lives. Perhaps more important, even if the pattern changes, many guns can still be ruled out as possible sources for a bullet, helping people prove they're innocent, just as DNA has freed innocent people even when the guilty party hasn't contributed a sample.

Third, they say a registry would not help when guns are stolen. No doubt stolen guns are more likely to be used in crime than legal guns, but legal guns are used to commit crimes, and in accidents too. Many gun crimes are crimes of passion (or stupidity), not calculation. Even the records of guns that were stolen can be useful. Perhaps the thief was caught, but not the gun. The thief can be questioned further about what happened to it, and additional penalties could be attached to stealing a gun later used in a crime. If the gun was stolen far away, that may provide clues to the current criminal.

Fourth, they say it is like fingerprinting ordinary people rather than criminals. It is not. The gun is fingerprinted, not the owner. Does the government know the VIN of your car or truck? Of course they do. Why not your gun too?

Yes, a Ballistics Registry will cost money. So do guns. A Registry may aid the solution of many future crimes, speeding justice both for the guilty, and the innocent.

Tom Trottier

US deports Canadian to Syria

Dear Editor,

Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer, was returning to Canada when he was arrested at a layover in New York Sept 26, and deported October 11 by the US to Syria. He avoided military service in Syria by leaving when he was a child with his family to Canada. Now he is missing in Syria, probably in prison, perhaps being tortured to teach him a lesson.

This is against all international law. If deported, he should have been sent to Canada, or to the country he was last in, Switzerland.

Does the US remember that Canadian officials hid US embassy officials in Iran after the US embassy was stormed? Does the US know the job Canadians have been doing in Afghanistan to fight Al-Qaeda for the last year? Why is the US treating Canadians so badly and so illegally?

The US should find Mr. Arar in Syria and return him to his family.

Tom Trottier

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