Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright

London Telegraph | September 20, 2007
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

"This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy.

The Fed's dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen year low, touching with weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.

There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97bn to just $19bn in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries.

The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit - expected to reach $850bn this year, or 6.5pc of GDP.

Mr Redeker said foreign investors have been gradually pulling out of the long-term US debt markets, leaving the dollar dependent on short-term funding. Foreigners have funded 25pc to 30pc of America's credit and short-term paper markets over the last two years.

"They were willing to provide the money when rates were paying nicely, but why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.

"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem," he said.

Mr Redeker said the biggest danger for the dollar is that falling US rates will at some point trigger a reversal yen "carry trade", causing massive flows from the US back to Japan.

Jim Rogers, the commodity king and former partner of George Soros, said the Federal Reserve was playing with fire by cutting rates so aggressively at a time when the dollar was already under pressure.

The risk is that flight from US bonds could push up the long-term yields that form the base price of credit for most mortgages, the driving the property market into even deeper crisis.

"If Ben Bernanke starts running those printing presses even faster than he's already doing, we are going to have a serious recession. The dollar's going to collapse, the bond market's going to collapse. There's going to be a lot of problems," he said.

The Federal Reserve, however, clearly calculates the risk of a sudden downturn is now so great that the it outweighs dangers of a dollar slide.

Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan said this week that house prices may fall by "double digits" as the subprime crisis bites harder, prompting households to cut back sharply on spending.

For Saudi Arabia, the dollar peg has clearly become a liability. Inflation has risen to 4pc and the M3 broad money supply is surging at 22pc.

The pressures are even worse in other parts of the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates now faces inflation of 9.3pc, a 20-year high. In Qatar it has reached 13pc.

Kuwait became the first of the oil sheikhdoms to break its dollar peg in May, a move that has begun to rein in rampant money supply growth.

"Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States," he said.

The Saudi central bank said today that it would take "appropriate measures" to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg.

Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran
Fox News, Wall Street Journal instructed to launch PR blitz for upcoming military strike

Prison Planet | September 4, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

Dick Cheney has ordered top Neo-Con media outlets, including Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, to unleash a PR blitz to sell a war with Iran from today, according to Barnett Rubin, the highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University.

The New Yorker magazine reports that Rubin had a conversation with a member of a top neoconservative institution in Washington, who told him that "instructions" had been passed on from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day.

"It will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects, writes Rubin, "It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this?they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is ?plenty.?

Rubin subsequently confirmed with a second source that the propaganda coup had been launched and the individual, another top Neo-Con at a major think tank, had this to say about it: ?I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I'm not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic.?

An organized mass media campaign to propagandize for a military strike on Iran mirrors exactly what happened in late 2002 in preparation for the invasion of Iraq and would be seen as par for the course in anticipation of an attack that presidential candidate Ron Paul amongst other expert observers fear will take place within 12 months .

The issuance of orders for Neo-Con mass media arms to push for an assault on Iran also puts the U.S. on red alert for a terror attack, whether real or manufactured, which Dick Cheney has already promised will immediately be blamed on Iran no matter who the real culprits are.

On August 1st, 2005 the American Conservative reported that Cheney had tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan involved a massive air strike on Iran which included the use of nuclear weapons.

The publication reported that, "The response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States," meaning that any such attack will immediately be blamed on Iran and any evidence to the contrary will be buried.

The London Times reported on Sunday that the Pentagon had finalized plans for a 3 day blitz designed to annihilate 1,200 targets in Iran and destroy the country's military capability.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for ?pinprick strikes? against Iran's nuclear facilities. ?They're about taking out the entire Iranian military,? he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: ?Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.? It was, he added, a ?very legitimate strategic calculus?.

Rhetoric regarding a potential military attack on Iran has heated again over the past week, with President Bush having warned of the risk of a "nuclear holocaust" if the country was allowed to acquire nuclear capability.

In a speech last Monday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that a diplomatic push by the world's powers to rein in Tehran's nuclear program was the only alternative to "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad subsequently stated that a U.S. attack on Iran was "impossible" due to U.S. troops being tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yesterday, he claimed to have proof that the U.S. were not planning to attack, bizarrely citing his mathematical skills as an engineer and faith in God.

A January poll by Ipsos found that 40% of Americans thought it likely that Iran would be attacked by the end of the year. The U.S. has stationed three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, the Nimitz, a nuclear-powered carrier, John C. Stennis Strike Group, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, a relief carrier.

The U.S. government is openly funding and supporting the activities of Jundullah , a Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist group formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11, to carry out bombings in Iran and destabilize Ahmadinejad's power base.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard military was recently declared to be a terrorist organization by the White House, another ominous sign that an attack is being readied.

 

U.S. under U.N. law in health emergency
.. end head -->.. deck -->Bush's SPP power grab sets stage for military to manage flu threats
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Posted: August 28, 2007
11:15 p.m. Eastern

.. byline -->By Jerome R. Corsi
.. end byline -->.. copywrite only show on NON commentary pages as per joseph meeting 8/23/06 ------>.. copyright -->© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America summit in Canada released a plan that establishes U.N. law along with regulations by the World Trade Organization and World Health Organization as supreme over U.S. law during a pandemic and sets the stage for militarizing the management of continental health emergencies.

The "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza" was finalized at the SPP summit last week in Montebello, Quebec.

At the same time, the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, has created a webpage dedicated to avian flu and has been running exercises in preparation for the possible use of U.S. military forces in a continental domestic emergency involving avian flu or pandemic influenza.

With virtually no media attention, in 2005 President Bush shifted U.S. policy on avian flu and pandemic influenza, placing the country under international guidelines not specifically determined by domestic agencies.

The policy shift was formalized Sept. 14, 2005, when Bush announced a new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza to a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, in New York.

The new International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza was designed to supersede an earlier November 2005 Homeland Security report that called for a U.S. national strategy that would be coordinated by the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Agriculture.

The 2005 plan, operative until Bush announced the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, directed the State Department to work with the WHO and U.N., but it does not mention that international health controls are to be considered controlling over relevant U.S. statutes or authorities.

Under the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, Bush agreed the U.S. would work through the U.N. system influenza coordinator to develop a continental emergency response plan operating through authorities under the WTO, North American Free Trade Agreement and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

WND could find no evidence the Bush administration presented the Influenza Partnership plan to Congress for oversight or approval.

The SPP plan for avian and pandemic influenza announced at the Canadian summit last week embraces the international control principles Bush first announced to the U.N. in his 2005 International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza declaration.

The SPP plan gives primacy for avian and pandemic influenza management to plans developed by the WHO, WTO, U.N. and NAFTA directives – not decisions made by U.S. agencies.

The U.N.-WHO-WTO-NAFTA plan advanced by SPP features a prominent role for the U.N. system influenza coordinator as a central international director in the case of a North American avian flu or pandemic influenza outbreak.

In Sept. 2005, Dr. David Nabarro was appointed the first U.N. system influenza coordinator, a position which also places him as a senior policy adviser to the U.N. director-general.

Nabarro joined the WHO in 1999 and was appointed WHO executive director of sustainable development and health environments in July 2002.

In a Sept. 29, 2005, press conference at the U.N., Nabarro made clear that his job was to prepare for the H5N1 virus, known as the avian flu.

Nabarro fueled the global fear that an epidemic was virtually inevitable.

In response to a question about the 1918-1919 flu pandemic that killed approximately 40 million people worldwide, Nabarro commented, "I am certain there will be another pandemic sometime."

Nabarro stressed at the press conference that he saw as inevitable a worldwide pandemic influenza coming soon that would kill millions.

He quantified the deaths he expected as follows: "I'm not, at the moment at liberty to give you a prediction on numbers, but I just want to stress, that, let's say, the range of deaths could be anything from 5 to 150 million."

In a March 8, 2006, U.N. press conference that was reported on a State Department website, Nabarro predicted an outbreak of the H5N1 virus would "reach the Americas within the next six to 12 months."

On Feb. 1, 2006, NORTHCOM hosted representatives of more than 40 international, federal and state agencies for "an exercise designed to provoke discussion and determine what governmental actions, including military support, would be necessary in the event of an influenza pandemic in the United States."

NORTHCOM and other governmental websites document the growing role the Bush administration plans for the U.S. military to be involved in continental domestic emergencies involving health, including avian flu and pandemic influenza.

NORTHCOM participated in a nationwide Joint Chiefs of Staff-directed exercise – code-named Exercise Ardent Sentry 06 – to rehearse cooperation between Department of Defense and local, state and federal agencies, as well as the Canadian government.

A pandemic influenza crisis was one of the four scenarios gamed in Exercise Ardent Sentry 06, involving a scenario of a plague in Mexico reaching across the border into Arizona and New Mexico.

As has been customary in SPP documents and declarations, the Montebello, Canada, announcement of the North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza acknowledges in passing the sovereignty of the three nations.

The announcement says, "The Plan is not intended to replace existing arrangements or agreements. As such, each country's laws are to be respected and this Plan is to be subordinate and complementary to domestic response plans, existing arrangements and bilateral or multilateral agreements."

Still, the SPP plan argues the risk from avian and pandemic influenza was so great to North America that the leaders of the three nations were compelled "to work collectively and with all levels of government, the private sector and among-non-governmental organizations to combat avian and pandemic influenza."

Moreover, the SPP plan openly acknowledges, "The WHO's international guidance formed much of the basis for the three countries' planning for North American preparedness and response."

WND previously reported NORTHCOM has been established with a command center at Peterson Air Force Base, tasked with using the U.S. military in continental domestic emergency situations.

WND also has reported President Bush signed in May two documents, National Security Presidential Directive-51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive-20, which give the office of the president extraordinary powers to declare national emergencies and to assume near-dictatorial powers.

Following the Montebello summit last week, the SPP North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza was published on a made-over SPP homepage redesigned to feature agreements newly reached by trilateral bureaucratic working groups.

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Bush To Veto Ban On Mercury In Vaccines

Infowars.net | July 20, 2007
Steve Watson

President Bush is to veto a bill that would ban mercury in flu vaccines for children despite its known links to autism and other neurological disorders and despite the fact that he pledged in 2004 to support such a move when campaigning for re-election.

The White House stated on Tuesday that President Bush would veto the FY 2008 HHS-Labor-Education Appropriations Bill because of the cost and "objectionable provisions" such as a measure to ban the use of childhood flu vaccines that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, a press release from Autism advocacy group Safe Minds on the PRNewswire-USNewswire states.

Bush is calling for an amendment that would remove the children's safety provision from the bill.

Safe Minds warns:

"Under the current administration, mercury has been and will continue to be knowingly injected into the youngest of American citizens. The controversial mercury-containing preservative thimerosal has been linked by thousands of parents as being the cause of their children's mercury poisoning and autism."

The flu vaccine, which continues to be manufactured with mercury, is recommended for all pregnant women, infants and children despite the fact that the Institute of Medicine in 2001 recommended against the policy of
exposing these same sensitive groups to thimerosal containing vaccines.

Mercury is the second most toxic metal known to man behind Uranium. Thimerosal is used in vaccines not because it is good for you, but purely because it prevents vaccine contamination. Yet some have questioned why thimerosal is even considered for vaccines because there are obviously safer alternatives to preventing contamination. Questions also remain about how pharmaceutical companies conduct vaccine research and how the government regulates those companies.

During Bush's reelection campaign in 2004 he stated:

"I support the removal of Thimerosal from vaccines on the childhood national vaccine schedule. During a second term as President, I will continue to support increased funding to support a wide variety of research initiatives aimed at seeking definitive causes and/or triggers of autism. It is important to note that while there are many possible theories about causes or triggers of autism, no one material has been definitely included or excluded."

Despite this he now plans to veto a bill that would remove Thimerosal because of "costs". What costs would these be? Do the costs of big pharmaceutical companies and fat government kickbacks outweigh the costs of the healthy brains of every child in America? Seemingly so.

Furthermore, though Bush stated that the evidence for links between mercury laden vaccines and autism are not concrete, there are scores of studies and testimony from credible figures asserting the exact opposite.

Starting in the early nineties, government regulators dramatically increased the amount of Thimerosal exposure to babies by adding two new vaccines to the roster of mandatory immunizations children must have before enrolling in school. The combination of the Hepatitis B vaccine and the HiB vaccine more than doubled the amount of mercury children.

Mercury expert Dr. Boyd Haley of the University of Kentucky has testified before Congress and the Pentagon as well as the FDA as one of the nation's leading experts on Thimerosal and mercury poisoning, revealing that his research leads him to believe that some children are genetically predisposed to storing mercury in their brains, leading to neurological disorders, including autism.

The combination of the Hepatitis B vaccine and the HiB vaccine more than doubled the amount of mercury children in the 90s. "If you take a ten-pound baby in, and it gets four shots on that one day, which is a common practice - that's equivalent to giving a 100-pound person forty shots in one day," said Haley.

Haley has also proposed that Thimerosal in infant vaccines was also the most likely toxic agent involved in Gulf War syndrome and autistic spectrum disorders. Think about this, they are injecting into babies something that is breaking down the bodies of full grown combat veterans.

While the FDA questioned thimerosal's safety in the 80s, noting that it was "not safe for 'over-the-counter' topical use because of its potential for cell damage", and while it was removed from animal vaccines for the same reason, the government regulatory committees did nothing to question its use in childhood vaccines.

It's too dangerous for cats and dogs but the government is happy for our babies to be pumped full of the stuff on a regular basis.

Dr Haley has also pointed out that it is also well known by any good biochemist that thimerosal and aluminum react dangerously when combined together. Given that Aluminum is a compound added to many vaccines as a catalyst you would think the government would have heeded this warning, yet it has still done nothing.

Despite the continued reports doubting the link between Thimerosal and autism, more studies have continued to verify the link. As reported in the Capitol Times recently:

A study done at the University of Washington in 2006 showed that baby primates exposed to injected thimerosal (50 percent mercury), at a rate equal to the 1990s childhood vaccine schedule, retained twice as much inorganic mercury in their brains as primates exposed to equal amounts of ingested methylmercury. We know from autometallographic determination that inorganic mercury present in the brain, following the dealkylation of organic mercury, is the toxic agent responsible for changes in the microglial population and leads to neuroinflammation.

In other words thimerosal, inorganic mercury, leads to neuroinflammatory disease which is proven to be the underlying medical condition of autism.

Furthermore In a study done at the University of Arkansas last year, autistic children were found to have significantly lower levels of the antioxidant glutathione. Glutathione is the major antioxidant needed for the elimination of mercury at the cellular level.

Moreover, Professor Philippe Grandjean, from Harvard University and the University of Southern Denmark, considered the foremost scientific authority on the development of children's brains, has recently claimed that the average human IQ is plummeting primarily due to IQ points in the population being chemically destroyed via low level mercury exposure in children.

The links between the ingestion of mercury and neurological breakdown are clear and proven. Professors all over the world are telling us outright that it is literally destroying people's brains. Even if you choose to believe, in the face of all the evidence, that the links are still somewhat questionable, the solution is still obvious. GET IT OUT OF THE VACCINES NOW.

Safe Minds also point out that according to the EPA, one in every six women of childbearing age already has blood levels of mercury high enough to cause neurological damage to their unborn children due to environmental exposures alone.

"Injecting even more mercury into the bodies of pregnant women, infants and children when it is not a necessary component of vaccines is just bad medicine," said Lyn Redwood, president of Safe Minds and parent of a mercury-injured child. "It defies logic that a flu vaccine must be disposed of as a hazardous waste if it is not used, but somehow injecting the same mercury-containing vaccine into a baby is safe."

iPhone a Trojan Horse For Government Surveillance?
Backdoor spyware module allows state, corporations and hackers to listen in ..> ..>

Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Friday, July 20, 2007

 

An alarming white paper concludes that the Apple iPhone contains a backdoor spyware module that allows hackers or the government to conduct secret surveillance of the user, part of an established trend of corporations and the state working hand in hand to eavesdrop on citizens via widely-used software and hardware products.

Earlier this week, a technology group in Russia released the results of their attempts to reverse engineer the iPhone, concluding that the product has "A built-in function which sends all data from an iPhone to a specified web-server. Contacts from a phonebook, SMS, recent calls, history of Safari browser - all your personal information can be stolen."

The module could act as a backdoor for trojan developers or AT & T, said the report, adding that "government structures" would have access to the information.

Since AT & T displayed no hesitation in handing over information about their subscribers to the U.S. government as part of the controversial and illegal NSA wiretapping scandal, it would be no surprise to learn that included in the trendy new must-have gadget is a spyware module that allows the government to listen in to your conversations.

AT & T were chosen by Apple as the exclusive service provider for the iPhone, at present all other cellphone companies are blocked from offering any kind of service compatible with the iPhone.

The revelation is also not without precedent - a plethora of companies now include backdoor access in both software and hardware products that allow the state to step in and conduct warrantless covert surveillance, a blanket violation of the 4th Amendment.

Digital cable TV boxes, such as Scientific Atlanta, have had secret in-built microphones inside them since their inception in the 1990's and these originally dormant devices were planned to be activated when the invasive advertising revolution arrived - 2006 marked that date.

The advent of digital video recording devices such as TiVo (Sky Plus in the UK) introduced the creation of psychological algorithm profiles - databases on what programs you watched, how long you watched them for, which adverts you liked or didn't like. This information was retained by TiVo and sold to the highest bidders - an example being Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the 2003 Super Bowl half-time show - TiVo were able to compile lists of how many people had rewound the clip and how many times they had replayed it.

Two way communications systems like OnStar also have the ability to tap into private conversations as Americans become increasingly conditioned, by means of the private sector, to having their every movement, web session and conversation tracked and catalogued by big brother.

Last year we reported on how Google were planning to use microphones in the computers of an estimated 150 million-plus Internet active Americans to spy on their lifestyle choices and build psychological profiles which will be used for surveillance and minority report style invasive advertising and data mining.

"The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that's adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject," reported the Register.

The report cites the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.

"Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage."

The Echelon program has collected information in violation of the 4th Amendment from American citizen's phone calls since the early 90's at least. In addition, a 2001 European Parliament report stated that "within Europe all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted" by the NSA.

The fact that Echelon barely even merited a mention during the recent furore created by the original USA Today NSA spying piece goes to show how utterly useless our media are in recalling what has already been admitted and proven.

In 1999 the Australian government admitted that they were part of an NSA led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to "every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission."

The use of the iPhone as another means of carte-blanch invasive surveillance underscores the fact that corporations and government are joined at the hip when it comes to their disregard of the right to privacy as enshrined in the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. ..end-->

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It's Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun by Richard C. Cook

Global Research, June 14, 2007

It's official. Mark your calendars. The crash of the U.S. economy has begun. It was announced the morning of Wednesday, June 13, 2007, by economic writers Steven Pearlstein and Robert Samuelson in the pages of the Washington Post, one of the foremost house organs of the U.S. monetary elite. Pearlstein's column was titled, "The Takeover Boom, About to Go Bust" and concerned the extraordinary amount of debt vs. operating profits of companies currently subject to leveraged buyouts. In language remarkably alarmist for the usually ultra-bland pages of the Post, Pearlstein wrote, "It is impossible to predict when the magic moment will be reached and everyone finally realizes that the prices being paid for these companies, and the debt taken on to support the acquisitions, are unsustainable. When that happens, it won't be pretty. Across the board, stock prices and company valuations will fall. Banks will announce painful write-offs, some hedge funds will close their doors, and private-equity funds will report disappointing returns. Some companies will be forced into bankruptcy or restructuring." Further, "Falling stock prices will cause companies to reduce their hiring and capital spending while governments will be forced to raise taxes or reduce services, as revenue from capital gains taxes declines. And the combination of reduced wealth and higher interest rates will finally cause consumers to pull back on their debt-financed consumption. It happened after the junk-bond and savings-and-loan collapses of the late 1980s. It happened after the tech and telecom bust of the late '90s. And it will happen this time." Samuelson's column, "The End of Cheap Credit," left the door slightly ajar in case the collapse is not quite so severe. He wrote of rising interest rates, "As the price of money increases, borrowing and the economy might weaken. The deep slump in housing could worsen. We could also discover that the long period of cheap credit has left a nasty residue." Other writers with less prestigious platforms than the Post have been talking about an approaching financial bust for a couple of years. Among them has been economist Michael Hudson, author of an article on the housing bubble titled, "The New Road to Serfdom" in the May 2006 issue of Harper's. Hudson has been speaking in interviews of a "break in the chain" of debt payments leading to a "long, slow economic crash," with "asset deflation," "mass defaults on mortgages," and a "huge asset grab" by the rich who are able to protect their cash through money laundering and hedging with foreign currency bonds. Among those poised to profit from the crash is the Carlyle Group, the equity fund that includes the Bush family and other high-profile investors with insider government connections. A January 2007 memorandum to company managers from founding partner William E. Conway, Jr., recently appeared which stated that, when the current "liquidity environment"—i.e., cheap credit—ends, "the buying opportunity will be a once in a lifetime chance." The fact that the crash is now being announced by the Post shows that it is a done deal. The Bilderbergers, or whomever it is that the Post reports to, have decided. It lets everyone know loud and clear that it's time to batten down the hatches, run for cover, lay in two years of canned food, shield your assets, whatever. Those left holding the bag will be the ordinary people whose assets are loaded with debt, such as tens of millions of mortgagees, millions of young people with student loans that can never be written off due to the "reformed" 2005 bankruptcy law, or vast numbers of workers with 401(k)s or other pension plans that are locked into the stock market. In other words, it sounds eerily like 2000-2002 except maybe on a much larger scale. Then it was "only" the tenth worse bear market in history, but over a trillion dollars in wealth simply vanished. What makes today's instance seem particularly unfair is that the preceding recovery that is now ending—the "jobless" one—was so anemic.  Neither Perlstein nor Samuelson gets to the bottom of the crisis, though they, like Conway of the Carlyle Group, point to the end of cheap credit. But interest rates are set by people who run central banks and financial institutions. They may be influenced by "the market," but the market is controlled by people with money who want to maximize their profits. Key to what is going on is that the Federal Reserve is refusing to follow the pattern set during the long reign of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in responding to shaky economic trends with lengthy infusions of credit as he did during the dot.com bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of 2001-2005. This time around, Greenspan's successor, Ben Bernanke, is sitting tight. With the economy teetering on the brink, the Fed is allowing rates to remain steady. The Fed claims their policy is due to the danger of rising "core inflation." But this cannot be true. The biggest consumer item, houses and real estate, is tanking. Officially, unemployment is low, but mainly due to low-paying service jobs. Commodities have edged up, including food and gasoline, but that's no reason to allow the entire national economy to be submerged. So what is really happening? Actually, it's simple. The difference today is that China and other large investors from abroad, including Middle Eastern oil magnates, are telling the U.S. that if interest rates come down, thereby devaluing their already-sliding dollar portfolios further, they will no longer support with their investments the bloated U.S. trade and fiscal deficits.  Of course we got ourselves into this quandary by shipping our manufacturing to China and other cheap-labor markets over the last generation. "Dollar hegemony" is backfiring. In fact China is using its American dollars to replace the International Monetary Fund as a lender to developing nations in Africa and elsewhere. As an additional insult, China now may be dictating a new generation of economic decline for the American people who are forced to buy their products at Wal-Mart by maxing out what is left of our available credit card debt. About a year ago, a former Reagan Treasury official, now a well-known cable TV commentator, said that China had become "America's bank" and commented approvingly that "it's cheaper to print money than make cars anymore." Ha ha. It is truly staggering that none of the "mainstream" political candidates from either party has attacked this subject on the campaign trail. All are heavily funded by the financier elite who will profit no matter how bad the U.S. economy suffers. Every candidate except Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich treats the Federal Reserve like the fifth graven image on Mount Rushmore. And even the so-called progressives are silent. The weekend before the Perlstein/ Samuelson articles came out, there was a huge progressive conference in Washington, D.C., called "Taming the Corporate Giant." Not a single session was devoted to financial issues. What is likely to happen? I'd suggest four possible scenarios: Acceptance by the U.S. population of diminished prosperity and a declining role in the world. Grin and bear it. Live with your parents into your 40s instead of your 30s. Work two or three part-time jobs on the side, if you can find them. Die young if you lose your health care. Declare bankruptcy if you can, or just walk away from your debts until they bring back debtor's prison like they've done in Dubai. Meanwhile, China buys more and more U.S. properties, homes, and businesses, as economists close to the Federal Reserve have suggested. If you're an enterprising illegal immigrant, have fun continuing to jack up the underground economy, avoid business licenses and taxes, and rent out group houses to your friends. Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they don't want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes? Maybe we'll finally have a revolution either from the right or the center involving martial law, suspension of the Bill of Rights, etc., combined with some kind of military or forced-labor dictatorship. We're halfway there anyway. Forget about a revolution from the left. They wouldn't want to make anyone mad at them for being too radical. Could there ever be a real try at reform, maybe even an attempt just to get back to the New Deal? Since the causes of the crisis are monetary, so would be the solutions. The first step would be for the Federal Reserve System to be abolished as a bank of issue and a transformation of the nation's credit system into a genuine public utility by the federal government. This way we could rebuild our manufacturing and public infrastructure and develop an income assurance policy that would benefit everyone. The latter is the only sensible solution. There are monetary reformers who know how to do it if anyone gave them half a chance.

so as long as we're just throwing ideas out here, how about mating the increasing technology of the police car with the increasing number of laws, and mandating that the police have to provide a printed version of the law that they claim you are in violation of?  it would be an easy search on their dashboard computer, narrowed down between local and federal law, and they could type "parking ticket" or "unpermitted protest", a little strip of the pertinent paragraphs would print out, and both cite and present evidence.  this would a) prevent police from using color of law and intimidation that's unfounded, b) make laws very real for people who view them as something ethereal that doesn't concern them, and c) would make people learn to turn their frustration against the lawmakers instead of the easier more immediate target of the moustached enforcers.   

the militarization of the police comes into play here, but perhaps tomorrow?  for now, let's have some seltzer.

Bush Re-Authorizes Martial Law Provisions
Americans have officially been living under a dictatorship since at least 1933

Prison Planet | May 23, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson, Steve Watson & Alex Jones
President George W. Bush has sparked much alarm by openly declaring himself to be a dictator in the event of a national emergency under new provisions that will effectively nullify the U.S. constitution, but such an infrastructure has been in place for over 70 years and this merely represents a re-authorization of the infrastructure of martial law.

New legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a "catastrophic event", the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive , which also places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security", was signed earlier this month without the approval or oversight of Congress and seemingly supercedes the National Emergency Act which allows the president to declare a national emergency but also requires that Congress have the authority to "modify, rescind, or render dormant" such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately.

Journalist Jerome Corsi , who has studied the directive also states that it makes no reference to Congress and "its language appears to negate any requirement that the president submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists."

In other words the new directive excludes Congress altogether from governance in a state of emergency.

While alluding to the "enduring constitutional government", the directive actually ensures the end of constitutional government as each branch, the executive, legislative and judicial, are stripped of equal authority and must answer directly and solely to the President.

The mainstream media has not reported on the directive and the White House has refused to comment.

Earlier this month it was reported that a high-level group of government and military officials has been quietly preparing an emergency survival program named "The Day After," which would effectively end civil liberties and implement a system of martial law in the event of a catastrophic attack on a U.S. city.

Though anathema to any notion of liberty or freedom, this new legislation has not come out of the blue, it is merely an open declaration of the infrastructure of martial law that the federal government has been building since the turn of the last century, which was first publicly codified in the 1933 war powers act under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Senate Report 93-549, which was presented at the first session of the 93rd Congress, outlines just a handful of the declared national emergencies or martial law declarations that preceded the latest one.

"Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency. In fact, there are now in effect four presidentially-proclaimed states of national emergency: In addition to the national emergency declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, there are also the national emergency proclaimed by President Harry S. Truman on December 16, 1950, during the Korean conflict, and the states of national emergency declared by President Richard M. Nixon on March 23, 1970, and August 15, 1971."

In alliance with these open declarations of martial law and the 1947 National Security Act, bills such as the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and the Military Commissions Act have all put the final jigsaw pieces in place to complete an infrastructure of dictatorship since 9/11.

We're already living under an infrastructure of martial law and have been since 1933, all that remains for it to be fully implemented is a big enough natural disaster, mass terror attack or other catastrophe that will cause the necessary carnage and panic that affords the federal government enough leeway to implement open dictatorship with the least possible resistance.

New revelations that Bush has openly declared himself to be a dictator are both shocking and demand immediate attention, but they only represent a re-authorization of the tyranny that Americans have been living under for at least the past 74 years.

Infowars.net | May 31, 2007
Steve Watson

President Bush's reaction to the loss of close ally, ultra globalist and PNAC war hawk Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank has been to nominate one of his best friends, closest allies and ultra globalist PNAC war hawks, Robert Zoellick for the position.

Like Wolfowitz, Zoellick is a member of the hawkish neo-conservative think tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC) who pushed hard to invoke the notion that evil foreign enemies who hated America should be preemptively dealt with.

Zoellick and PNAC famously wrote a letter to former President Clinton asking him to go to war with Iraq in 1998, and later in 2000 predicted a "catastrophic and catalyzing New Pearl Harbor like event" would help shape U.S. military interventionism in the middle east and allow for global domination for the next century.Zoellick is also a member of the unelected policy makers and rampant globalization advocate groups the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. He is also a regular at the powerful global policy defining Bilderberg Group meetings, having attended in 1991, 2003 and 2006 and currently attending the 2007 Bilderberg meeting which begins today in Istanbul, Turkey.

Zoellick has served under Bush Sr as White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President and also worked under Bush family lawyer and big oil playboy James Baker during his tenure as Secretary of State.

While serving in the Bush Sr. administration, Zoellick was also instrumental in sealing the NAFTA accord with Mexico, serving as a special assistant to Bush in his relations with President Salinas of Mexico who had serious reservations on the deal but was eventually strong armed into acceptance by constant pressure from Zoellick.

He was also instrumental in promoting the Central American Free Trade Agreement as U.S. Trade Representative between 2001 and 2005 and has consistently pushed the "free trade" agenda (i.e., legalized robbery and looting and the monopolization of the global economy).

Zoellick also played a key role in the U.S.-W.T.O. dispute against the European Union over genetically modified foods . The move sought to force genetically modified crops and food on the EU, which would not otherwise accept them, or be slow to do so.

Zoellick also has key ties with the corporate elite having serving as an executive at Goldman Sachs and also as a paid consultant on the Enron advisory board , owning Enron shares worth between $15,000 and $50,000, which he sold before the energy giant went bankrupt. Zoellick also served on the boards of such corporations as Alliance Capital, Jones Intercable, Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group.

By Julie Scelfo..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Newsweek

Updated: 9:06 p.m. CT Nov 3, 2006

Using blood samples collected from more than 1,500 healthy men age 45 to 79 in the Boston area over a period of 17 years (originally gathered as part of the Massachusetts Male Aging Study), scientists at the New England Research Institutes (NERI) measured both total testosterone and "bio-available" testosterone, the portion of the hormone readily available to cells. Then they compared men of the same age in different decades. "We see about a 1 percent decrease per calendar year across men of the same age born at different times," says NERI biostatistician Thomas G. Travison, lead author of the study. "In other words, a typical 50-year-old today would have about 20 percent lower [testosterone] than his father would have had 20 years ago. What was most surprising about the result was that we were able to explain so little of it."

Scientists have known for years that testosterone rates in men begin declining naturally in the third decade of life, but this is the first study to document an overall generational decrease. "This is what would be termed provocative information," says Dr. Marc Blackman, chief of the endocrine section in the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. "If this is true [in the wider population] and unchecked, men are getting a double hit—one due to natural aging, and now a cohort-related effect."

Exactly what's behind that effect isn't known. The researchers looked at the rise in obesity (which decreases T levels), and the drop in smoking (which actually increases T levels) as possible culprits. Neither accounts for the change. Scientists say other health or environmental factors could be contributing to the problem. "One potential villain here would be chemicals in the environment used as pesticides, insecticides or fungicides that have estrogeniclike activity," says Dr. S. Mitchell Harman, director and president of the Kronos Longevity Research Institute in Arizona. These compounds contain molecules that function like estrogen and signal the pituitary gland to inhibit testosterone secretion. "In low doses, we don't see much of an effect in an individual. But looked at in the wider population, there could be a noticeable and important effect."

Severe loss of testosterone can cause male hypogonadism, a condition in which male sex glands fail to secrete adequate levels of hormones, resulting in loss of skeletal muscle and bone mass and impairment of sexual activity. But even smaller deficiencies have been associated with increased rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It's not known whether the level of change detected in the new study has any negative health effects.

The NERI study has also prompted scientists to take another look at controversial research, conducted around the world for decades, indicating that men have lower sperm counts now than similar-aged men had in the past. Skeptics, including Dr. Shalender Bhasin, chief of endocrinology at Boston Medical Center and a leading expert on testosterone, had long questioned the idea that the drop in semen quality was a generational phenomenon. With the new study documenting a similar change in T levels, however, Bhasin says he is reconsidering.

Using blood samples collected from more than 1,500 healthy men age 45 to 79 in the Boston area over a period of 17 years (originally gathered as part of the Massachusetts Male Aging Study), scientists at the New England Research Institutes (NERI) measured both total testosterone and "bio-available" testosterone, the portion of the hormone readily available to cells. Then they compared men of the same age in different decades. "We see about a 1 percent decrease per calendar year across men of the same age born at different times," says NERI biostatistician Thomas G. Travison, lead author of the study. "In other words, a typical 50-year-old today would have about 20 percent lower [testosterone] than his father would have had 20 years ago. What was most surprising about the result was that we were able to explain so little of it."

Scientists have known for years that testosterone rates in men begin declining naturally in the third decade of life, but this is the first study to document an overall generational decrease. "This is what would be termed provocative information," says Dr. Marc Blackman, chief of the endocrine section in the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. "If this is true [in the wider population] and unchecked, men are getting a double hit—one due to natural aging, and now a cohort-related effect."

Exactly what's behind that effect isn't known. The researchers looked at the rise in obesity (which decreases T levels), and the drop in smoking (which actually increases T levels) as possible culprits. Neither accounts for the change. Scientists say other health or environmental factors could be contributing to the problem. "One potential villain here would be chemicals in the environment used as pesticides, insecticides or fungicides that have estrogeniclike activity," says Dr. S. Mitchell Harman, director and president of the Kronos Longevity Research Institute in Arizona. These compounds contain molecules that function like estrogen and signal the pituitary gland to inhibit testosterone secretion. "In low doses, we don't see much of an effect in an individual. But looked at in the wider population, there could be a noticeable and important effect."

Severe loss of testosterone can cause male hypogonadism, a condition in which male sex glands fail to secrete adequate levels of hormones, resulting in loss of skeletal muscle and bone mass and impairment of sexual activity. But even smaller deficiencies have been associated with increased rates of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It's not known whether the level of change detected in the new study has any negative health effects.

The NERI study has also prompted scientists to take another look at controversial research, conducted around the world for decades, indicating that men have lower sperm counts now than similar-aged men had in the past. Skeptics, including Dr. Shalender Bhasin, chief of endocrinology at Boston Medical Center and a leading expert on testosterone, had long questioned the idea that the drop in semen quality was a generational phenomenon. With the new study documenting a similar change in T levels, however, Bhasin says he is reconsidering.

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

Published: November 28, 2006

..NYT_INLINE_IMAGE_POSITION1 -->Researchers have found that high blood levels of a certain dioxin commonly found in the general male population may be associated with decreased testosterone levels and a not necessarily beneficial inhibition of prostate growth. Dioxins are a toxic byproduct of various industrial processes that are ingested in the fat of meats and dairy products.

 

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Dioxins-a-Threat-to-Testosterone-Levels-41255.shtml

By: Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

Dioxins are toxic halogenated (usually with chlorine) organic compounds that affect the immune system, teeth and respiratory systems amongst others. Main sources of dioxins are herbicides, plastics, resins and bleaches. Dioxins can persist in the fat tissue of the body for several decades.

Now, scientists have discovered that high blood levels of dioxins may be linked with lowered testosterone levels and a not necessarily beneficial limitation of prostate growth, thus disturbing male endocrine and reproductive systems.

Dioxins enter the human organism mainly through the fatty meats, milk and dairy products. Levels of the dioxin TCDD (the main component of the herbicide Agent Orange) were measured in 964 veterans of Operation Ranch Hand when during the Vietnam War were sprayed herbicides.

 

Heavy mobile use 'damages sperm' <o:p>

BBC News | October 24, 2006

Heavy use of mobile phones may damage men's fertility, a study has suggested.

..> ..>

Researchers found those men who used a phone for four hours or more a day had fewer sperm and those they had moved less well and were of poorer quality.

The Ohio study involving 364 men was presented to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in New Orleans.

But a UK expert said it was unlikely the phones were to blame, as they were in use and not near the testes, and it may be being sedentary was the cause.

It was found that the heaviest users, those who used their phones for more than four hours a day had the lowest average sperm counts, at 50 million per millilitre (ml) and the least healthy sperm.

Men who used their phones for between two and four hours a day averaged sperm counts of 69 million per ml and had moderately healthy sperm.

Those who said they did not use mobile phones at all had the highest average sperm counts, of 86 million per ml, and their sperm was of the highest quality seen.

'Used without thinking twice'

Dr Ashok Agarwal, who led the research, told the New Orleans conference the study did not prove mobiles damaged fertility, but said it showed more research was warranted.

"There was a significant decrease in the most important measures of sperm health and that should definitely be reflected in a decrease in fertility, which is seen worldwide.

"People use mobile phones without thinking twice what the consequences might be.

"It is just like using a toothbrush, but mobiles could be having a devastating effect on fertility.

"It still has to be proved, but it could be having a huge impact because mobiles are so much part of lives."

He suggested radiation from mobile phones might harm sperm by damaging DNA, affecting the cells in the testes which produce testosterone or the tubes where sperm is produced.

 

 

Drug traces found in water pose problem for wildlife

Pharmaceuticals passing unaltered from humans into nation's waterways

Baltimore Sun | October 17 2005
By Tom Pelton

Over the last two years, scientists working on the Potomac River have netted 111 smallmouth bass with bizarre sexual traits. The fish were males but had eggs growing inside their testes.

Researchers found many of these gender-bending bass downstream from sewage treatment plants in water tinged with a chemical called ethinylestradiol - the active ingredient in birth control pills.

More studies are necessary, biologists say, but evidence is mounting that trace levels of prescription drugs in rivers and streams may be harming fish, tadpoles, frogs, mussels and oysters. The pharmaceuticals are passing unaltered through people's bodies and sewage plants into waterways.

In Georgia and Mississippi, scientists recently discovered that the antidepressant Prozac, in water downstream from sewage plants, can kill tadpoles, stunt the growth of others and befuddle the survivors so they swim in circles and can't flee from predators.

In Pennsylvania, a biologist reported that small amounts of Prozac may cause mussels and clams to discharge their sperm and eggs prematurely, dooming their offspring. And in Texas, a researcher found that the sexual organs of male minnows shrank when they were lowered into a river tainted with birth control drugs.

"We might just be seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the cumulative impact of all this," said Dr. Thomas Burke, associate chairman of health policy at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Pollution concerns
He said concerns about pharmaceutical pollution are likely to become more urgent as a growing human population consumes a multiplying number of medications.

"This is an important area we have to study more," Burke said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working with other federal offices to investigate whether the government should require better sewage filtration systems to remove drugs before water is discharged, according to the agency.

Pharmaceuticals are not regulated as pollutants, and most sewage plants are not designed to break them all down.

One stumbling block to adding better filtration systems is the cost, which could reach $100 million to install advanced technology on each large sewage treatment plant, said Shane Snyder, research manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

"The water industry has no problem spending the public's money to put in new [filter] technology," Snyder said. "But the cost might mean that fewer schools can be built or fewer hospitals."

Vicki Blazer, a fish pathologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, began investigating smallmouth bass in the Potomac River a few years ago when fishermen reported that their catch was falling.

She worked with natural resources officials in Maryland and West Virginia, who used devices that fired electric shocks into the Potomac River to stun hundreds of fish in 2003 and 2004.

Blazer said she dissected 184 male bass, and found that 111 of them -- or about 60 percent -- had eggs growing inside their sexual organs. All nine male bass netted downstream from the Hagerstown sewage plant had this sexual abnormality. Fish like these almost never show up in clean rivers, she said.

Blazer is looking into the possibility that the birth control drugs caused the sexual confusion. She also found several other pollutants in the river, including triclosan, a disinfectant used in soap, and trifluralin, a farm pesticide. Any of these chemicals could be disrupting fish hormonal systems, she said.

In an effort to pin down which is causing the mutations, Blazer's colleagues have shocked an additional 100 fish during the last month at five places along the lower Potomac River in Maryland, including downstream from the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant near Washington.

The study is important, Blazer said, because fish with deformed sex organs might not reproduce as well. People also draw drinking water from the Potomac, and the same chemicals that could be harming fish populations might also be hurting humans, she said.

"We use the fish as indicators of ecosystem health, which eventually can translate into human health," she said. "Other researchers have raised concerns about declining sperm counts in human males and increases in testicular cancer." (The purification process used by municipal water systems removes most of these drugs from drinking water, but not all of them, experts say.)

In the Baltimore area, Lynn Roberts, an environmental chemist at the Johns Hopkins University, received a $500,000 EPA grant to test for drugs in the water pouring out of the city's Back River sewage treatment plant, which leads into a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.

Working with doctoral students Kevin Bisceglia and Jim Yu, she found 39 of the 52 chemicals they tested for, including the painkillers Diclofenac and Naproxen; the anti-seizure drug Phenytoin; and Nonylphenol, a compound formed from the decay of spermicides and other products.

They also found caffeine and evidence of what might have been cocaine flowing into the river, she said.

"We are trying to predict what may be entering the environment, and we hope to know what could pose toxic consequences," Roberts said, standing on a pier in the Back River.

The concentrations are often extremely low, about .1 part per billion, the equivalent of plopping an aspirin into a tank holding 1.3 million gallons of water. But other scientists have found that some chemicals can affect the bodies of animals at even lower levels.

The Prozac factor
Marsha Black, a professor of environmental health at the University of Georgia, found that minuscule levels of Prozac in rivers - .05 parts per billion - can slow the growth of tadpoles.

The public's use of Prozac has been soaring in recent years, with 54 million people taking the drug today, a rise of more than 50 percent in the last four years, researchers said. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey in 2002 found Prozac in 28 of 44 streambeds tested nationally.

Black said she was inspired by this study to find whether frogs and tadpoles were being drugged. Amphibian populations have been plummeting over the last quarter century, with at least 34 species vanishing since 1980 and nearly a third of the 5,743 known varieties threatened with extinction, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

Black took fertilized frog eggs and dropped them in 75 plastic tanks in her lab. Then she added water, with half of the tanks infused with the same concentrations of Prozac's active ingredient, fluoxetine, found by a colleague in a river in Mississippi.

She watched the tadpoles grow over 166 days and found that 40 percent of those raised with the drug died, compared with 16 percent of the tadpoles without the medication, said Emily Rogers, a doctoral student who helped with the research.

The drugged tadpoles seemed dazed and confused, and grew to be about 40 percent smaller than those in clean water. "We had some funny swimmers," Black said, "some fellas who could not keep their orientation in the water and would swim around in circle."

In a different experiment, Bryan Brooks, a biologist at Baylor University, placed several dozen fathead minnows into cages and lowered them into Pecan Creek in Denton, Texas, down from a waste plant. The water tested positive for low levels of birth control medications, Brooks said.

After three months, Brooks said he noticed that the sexual organs of the male minnows shrank, the distinctive fat pads behind their heads melted away, and the strong vertical gray lines painting their sides vanished, making them look like females.

At Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, biologist Peter Fong added low levels of Prozac to tanks of water holding clams and mussels. He said he discovered that the antidepressant spurred a premature discharge of sperm and eggs. Shellfish in the wild would doom their offspring if they spawned like this in the wrong season, Fong said.