-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Tainted Blood Scandal Arkansas Merchants of Death by Paul Craig Roberts If news stories trickling out of Canada are true, impeachment is too good for Bill Clinton. Drawing and quartering would be more appropriate. According to these reports, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are conducting a criminal investigation of an illegal blood collection scheme with links to then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. During the 1980s, "hot blood" contaminated with hepatitis C and HIV was taken from Arkansas prisoners and sold to Canada, where the plasma ended up in blood products for hemophiliacs. According to Mark Kennedy, an investigative reporter for the Ottawa Citizen, the prisoners' plasma was sold to Canada for about $50 a unit, and the revenues were split between Health Management Associates, the private firm that ran the blood program for Cummins State Prison in Grady, Arkansas, and the Arkansas Department of Corrections. Allegations of Governor Clinton's involvement surfaced on the Canadian TV program "Bynon" on October 15. According to Dr. Michael Galster, a doctor in private practice who treated Cummins' prisoners for the state, the FDA shut down Health Management Associates three times during the 1980s for its improper practices. The blood program, however, was too profitable to stay shut. Each time, HMA was able to regroup and continue the blood program. According to Dr. Galster, a 1986 public inquiry into HMA's operations produced a deposition that HMA was kept in business by Governor Clinton's intervention in its behalf. According to Dr. Galster, one deposition alleges that Clinton told HMA officials, who boasted of their contacts to him, that if they would pay $100,000 to a designated judge, "he would see to it that their contract would be renewed for the next two years." Dr. Galster says that news reports show that Clinton defended HMA on dozens of occasions from media attacks on its practices. The suffering caused in Canada by contaminated U.S. blood has been a major political issue in that country for the past five years or more. A commission headed by Justice Horace Krever was established to determine how prison plasma ended up in Canadian veins. The failure of Canada's regulatory authority is a hotly debated issue, as is compensation by the government of the victims. Dr. Galster says that during the 1980s he often noticed prisoners with Band-Aids over the vein in their arm. Unable to find reports of blood work in their files, he questioned the prisoners, who responded to his inquiries by explaining that they had just donated blood. Dr. Galster knew the prisoners were too ill to be blood donors. But it did not occur to him that the state prison would be involved in profiteering on dirty blood, and he assumed that HMA had a method of filtering or cleansing the plasma. It was only years later when he read a Canadian report tracing the contaminated blood to Arkansas that he put two and two together. The result was a fictional novel, "Blood Trail," written under the pen-name of Michael Sullivan. Dr. Galster thought that his thinly disguised novel would prompt U.S. journalists to investigate. But he found that he over-estimated the investigative inclinations of the U.S. media, at least where Mr. Clinton is concerned. Galster began investigating himself, and found the truth to be a more amazing story than his fiction. Dr. Galster has turned the documents he has uncovered over to the Mounties, who might or might not be permitted by the Canadian government to bring charges where they belong. No doubt Galster is interested in promoting his book, but he seems genuinely outraged that public officials were part of a business that did not mind infecting and killing people if a dollar could be made. At any rate, Galster's evidence has reinvigorated a debate and an investigation that the Canadian government had hoped was over. Ottawa reporter Mark Kennedy shows no signs of letting go of the story. Recently, he interviewed two of the Arkansas officials who ran the prison plasma business. He was stunned when they defended the business as a way of providing prisoners with "pocket money." Dr. Galster says prisoners have told him, and are willing to testify, that they were paid in narcotics for their blood. Some prisoners were so drained of plasma that they were left on the point of death, a condition that Dr. Galster says is cited in the FDA reports. Canadian reporters are amazed that their U.S. counterparts have ignored this story. Distributed by Creator's Syndicate, Dec. 31, 1998 Information Warfare Computer Virus Hits House Impeachment Proceedings Class.D macro virus is uninvited guest Pasadena -- December 8: The House of Representatives gained an uninvited guest this week for impeachment hearings -- the macro computer virus called "Class.D." Nearly the entire Windows network of the House has been infected with the virus which contaminates document files produced by Microsoft Word. The House relies on a variety of anti-virus software programs, none of which immediately detected the virus's spread through its Word files. "Class.D" is a type of virus that just about any 16-year old adept with computers could have written in ten minutes. As such, it is sufficiently buggy to be intermittently noticeable to the unsuspecting user. Something was thought to be afoot on House computers when network users found they could no longer access the Microsoft Visual Basic editor. "Class.D." interferes with this in an attempt to make its code more difficult to examine -- with only mixed success. "Class.D" contains one display: On the 31st of the month it will tell the user its name and its author, "VicodinES." The "Class" family of macro viruses are rather average nuisance infectors now plaguing corporate installations. The House sample is sufficiently new so that a number of anti-virus programs either do not detect it at all or do so unreliably. Removal of the virus from contaminated documents can be slow going. The House information security team continues to work to staunch the "Class.D" infection but would not comment on it other than to admit its presence on the network. Currently, it is not known how "Class.D" came to be on the network although there are many potential portals for entry in an institution as large as the House. "How did you find out?" asked Jason Poblete, a House press secretary. Notes: One reader from jpmorgan.com writes of his experience with "Class.D:" "The [Class.D version has its trigger set to the 14th of the month, calling the user a 'big stupid jerk.' This gives us a nice image of everyone in the House getting called a jerk [or at least the people to whom the copies of the operating system are registered to] . . . Anyway, from your story [it's possible the House doesn't] have a solution yet . . . and Monday is the 14th." Crypt Newsletter Deflation Continues Commodity Index at 20 Year Low Oil slides below $10/barrel World oil prices slid further below $10 a barrel yesterday, touching a new 12-year low in London. Overall commodity prices have dropped to their lowest level for 21 years in recent days, putting exporting nations under great pressure as their revenues tumble. Brent blend oil futures, a world benchmark price, fell 11 cents to $9.87 a barrel in late trading on London's International Petroleum Exchange yesterday, less than half the level of a year ago. Oil prices have lost more than $1.50 a barrel in less than a month. US prices dropped below $11 by around midday, slipping to $10.85 a barrel from $11.16. The continuing fall in oil prices is undermining the economies of leading petroleum exporters. Some members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries have seen their revenues fall more than 40 per cent this year, with collective oil earnings for the group likely to fall by some $50bn from last year's level. The weakness of the global economy has also depressed the market for commodities across the board with wheat and base metals prices dropping - many to their lowest levels for 10 years. The Bridge/CRB Futures Price Index, the benchmark for world commodity prices, declined to 191.37 late yesterday after closing at 191.39 the day before, its lowest since 1977. The index comprises futures prices from the main commodity sectors, including livestock, coffee, cocoa, sugar, grains, energy, base and precious metals. Copper has led the base metals sector downwards on the London Metal Exchange, the main trading arena. The benchmark copper contract is trading at its lowest for more than 11 years at just above $1,500 a tonne. In the middle of last year, it was more than $2,500 a tonne. "The picture is of weakened demand because of the Asian crisis, signs of a slowdown in Europe and expectations of a slowdown in North America," Kevin Crisp, commodities strategist at J.P. Morgan in London, said yesterday. "Oil inventories are too high and most producers want cuts in output to support the price," one energy analyst said yesterday. "But Opec has put off the decision until March." Warm weather is also depressing heating oil and natural gas prices. Forecasts of a colder than usual winter in the northern hemisphere had led traders to expect a drawdown in stocks during the next few months. However, temperatures in the US north-east - crucial to the US heating oil market - are currently 20 per cent higher than normal. US heating oil demand is 3.5 per cent lower than this time last year, according to the US Energy Department. Metals producers know the market is oversupplied but most are reluctant to cut output in case the price rallies and they are left with a lower market share, according to one analyst. The slump in agricultural commodity prices has hit US farmers, especially in the northern plains states where wheat accounts for 45 per cent of output. Wheat prices are trading at around 280 cents a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, down from 370 cents at the beginning of the year. The Financial Times, Dec. 11, 1998 Land of Ira Magaziner Another Iridium Delay Japanese supplier can't deliver handsets Iridium, the world's first hand-held satellite phone operator, which was forced to delay its launch by a month in October, has suffered a further setback: one of its two handset suppliers is unable to deliver any telephones because of technical problems. There have also been delays in the handsets from the other manufacturer reaching the cellular operators in countries which sell the Iridium service. The result, six weeks after the $5bn Iridium service was officially launched, is that limited supplies of phones have only just gone on sale in much of Europe and the US, according to cellular phone dealers, and Iridium's service partners. However, Orange, Iridium's only UK service provider, said yesterday that it would not start selling the service until the beginning of February because of the delays in receiving handsets. It added that an unspecified number of orders had been received. Iridium, which is based in Washington, said software problems in the complex handsets, being experienced by Kyocera, the Japanese telecommunications equipment manufacturer, were partly to blame. Iridium said that the poor sales were due to supply difficulties and not to customer indifference to the service, which allows phone calls to be made or received virtually anywhere in the world. "Demand far exceeds supply," the company said. The telephones sell for around $3,000. In addition, Motorola, the US electronics group and a significant shareholder in Iridium, has shipped 10,000 handsets since the service launched on November 1, although it could not say how many had arrived with retailers. BearCom, the biggest telecoms reseller in the US, said it had sold 200 handsets, with a further 100 orders to be completed. "There have been problems with supply, but the handsets are beginning to come through now," the company said. However, The Car Phone Warehouse, one of the largest UK phone retailers, said that Iridium had postponed the delivery date of the handsets at least twice. It did not know when it would finally receive a delivery. Iridium has budgeted an advertising and marketing campaign worth $140m in its launch year to publicise the service and build the Iridium brand. Its target markets include business travellers and offshore industries. This latest setback comes after a series of mishaps for the fledgling satellite mobile phone industry. In the summer, ICO Global Communications, a UK-based operator hoping to launch a rival service to Iridium, had a disappointing public listing after the US group suffered a failure of one of its satellites. This was followed by the destruction of almost a fifth of the satellite constellation belonging to Globalstar, another rival operator, shortly after launch. Then, in September, Iridium announced the postponement of its service opening for a month because of technical difficulties. The Financial Times, Dec. 11, 1998 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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