Jose Dirceu Convicted in Mensalão Corruption case

But the Brazilian Court abstained itself from even hearing evidence that may have incriminated former Brazilian president Luis Inacio da Silva.

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 10, 2012

The Brazilian Supreme Court convicted Jose Dirceu, a minister of former President Lula da Silva, for bribery in the process called Mensalão.

Along with Dirceu were also sentenced the then president of the Workers Party (PT), Jose Genuino, and treasurer, Delubio Soares. The three men who were the strong core of PT back in 2003, have been convicted of using taxpaer money to bribe four other political parties. The same political parties are now allies of the government, and several of their congressmen were — according to the discoveries made in the trial — bought off to support the first Lula government. The three convicted men will also be tried later for a crime known in Brazil as  “crew training”, the equivalent to forming and operating a criminal organization.

The Supreme Court had already convicted politicians from four different parties for passive corruption. On Tuesday, the Court dealt with the now proven corrupters.

The most difficult sentence to agree on, according to the press was that of Jose Dirceu, as the evidence against him was not as obvious as those of the others involved. One of the judges who acquitted Dirceu, Ricardo Lewandowski, warned that the acquittal did not mean that Dirceu was not the head of the plot, but he had not found in acts concrete evidence of his guilt.

Most judges, however, based their decision to convict Dirceu based on the theory of evidence along with the evidence presented by witnesses. They also turned to what happens in criminal organizations and the mafia. In these cases, they say, the bosses “leave no trace” and you have to get to the guilty verdict based on what they called “the crime as a whole.”

The conviction of the political nucleus that participated in the plot, whose responsibility, according to the indictment, fell over Jose Dirceu himself, the judges threw out the claim made by his legal defense that no such plot existed or that it was organized by the Workers Party in order to perpetuate its power in government. In fact, Dirceu’s defense team alleged that the Mensalão case was just isolated criminal behavior.

The local press in Brazil cites as a surprising fact that Jose Dirceu and his accomplices in the Mensalão plot were convicted by a Supreme Court in which 8 of the 11 judges, were appointed by Lula and President Dilma Rousseff. This fact debunks the argument that the trial against Dirceu and his cabal of criminals was just an attempt to ‘hurt’ the image of former president Lula da Silva. The result of the trial is not a move carried out by people from the opposite side of the aisle, but by PT loyalists who have identified themselves as Lula’s magistrate friends.

President Dilma had ordered on Tuesday morning his ministers not to manifest before the expected and Dirceu sentence.

The main stream press in Brazil anxiously expected an official statement from Lula, who in the past said that the Mensalão trial was a move stain his presidency. Lula has now said that the conviction of Dirceu is a sign of ‘hypocrisy’. The former president called Dirceu, José Genoino and Delubio Soares on Tuesday. As it is reported in Brazil, the calls were a gesture of solidarity to comfort the trio convicted by the Supreme, who always had Lula’s back during his 8 years as president of Brazil.

Previous to the conviction of Dirceu and the other PT members, Lula said he considered the live broadcast of the trial as a “political hit” by people who could not stand that a man like himself, reached the presidency of the country.

The loss endured by the Workers Party (PT) is not limited to the conviction of some of its most influential leaders. The significant defeat that the PT suffered last Sunday during the national election for Mayor and Councilmen all over the country is a clear sign of how the party has lost the favor of millions of Brazilians who were Lula’s unconditional supporters for 8 years and who also supported Dilma Rousseff, a woman that came to power mainly due to Lula’s sponsorship.

Leaving out the fact that the judges were not brave enough to at least hear accusations against former president Lula himself, it seems that the conviction of Dirceu is counted as a goal for accountability in Brazil and as a rare victory for The People in the match between them and the Mafia that governs over this country.

In a country like Brazil, it is not outrageous to ask whether the judges who convicted Jose Dirceu now have a target drawn on their backs.

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New Zealand Apologizes for Illegal Domestic Spying

Meanwhile the United States continues to snoop on everyone and doesn’t even admit it.

By TREVOR TIMM | EFF | OCTOBER 9, 2012

Imagine this: A government, faced with public evidence that its foreign spy service was conducting domestic surveillance on its residents—instead of claiming the information is somehow secret and the people responsible are above the reach of the law—admits in public and in the courtroom that it violated basic rights.

That is exactly what happened last week in New Zealand in the controversial copyright infringement case surrounding Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom. At the same time in the US, the government is faced a very similar scenario: overwhelming evidence the National Security Agency (NSA) has illegally spied on Americans. However, not only has the government refused to admit any wrongdoing, it is actively trying to prevent courts from coming to any conclusions.

As EFF has previously reported, the case against Megaupload and Dotcom has been controversial from the start. Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand, while the U.S. government seized Megaupload’s property and executed search warrants on its leased servers based on claims of alleged copyright infringement the day after SOPA was declared dead by Congress. The military-style raid by the New Zealand police was criticized as over-excessive. And the loss of access to the servers has left many innocent users without access to their lawful data.

Then in June, the High Court in New Zealand ruled the warrants executed for the raid in New Zealand were invalid, making the resulting searches and seizures “illegal.” Now add that to the recent news that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB)—New Zealand’s equivalent to the NSA—was illegally spying on Dotcom by monitoring all Internet traffic coming to and from his home.  (The GCSB is legally barred some spying on residents of New Zealand, and a cursory check of government records shown Dotcom has been an official resident since 2010.)

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13,000 People Exposed Vaccines now Contaminated with Rare Fungal Meningitis

By LISA GARBER | NATURAL SOCIETY | OCTOBER 9, 2012

As of Monday, contaminated steroids have sickened 105 people with a noncontagious but deadly form of fungal meningitis, while 13,000 people may have been exposed to the contamination. Eight have died. Health officials attribute the outbreak to spinal steroid injections for back pain. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found fungus in sealed vials of the steroid in question, produced by the Massachusetts-based pharmacy, New England Compounding Center (NECC). The NECC voluntarily recalled all of its products on Saturday and surrendered its license to operate until completion of the FDA’s investigation.

You can find a list of the 76 medical facilities that obtained the steroid at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

 What is Fungal Meningitis?

Meningitis inflames the membranes protecting the brain and spinal cord. Usually brought on by a viral or bacterial infection, fungal infection is rare and not contagious but no less deadly. Symptoms include headache; fever; nausea; stiffness of the neck; and (in the case of fungal infection) confusion, dizziness, and aversion to bright light. Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University Medical Center says that because blood vessels clot or bleed in response to fungal infections, symptoms are rarely mild and can be as severe as small strokes.

Because patients treated earlier have greater chances of survival, health officials encourage people with symptoms to seek aid.

Other Dangers of Pharmaceuticals

About 1 in 10 drugs administered in the U.S. are manufactured in compound facilities, which do not answer to FDA mandates and instead go through state health pharmacy boards before sale.

To be fair, the FDA is complicit in a number of other conditions resultant of vaccines and harmful pharmaceuticals.  In example, after being administered steroids for an asthma attack, Shanyna Isom developed a skin condition wherein she grows fingernails instead of hair. Her condition is the only one recorded in the world and has cost her family over a quarter of a million dollars in medical bills.

Additionally, a report from the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology found states that aluminum hydroxide in vaccines may cause a deadly aluminum overdose for children and adults. Vaccines have also been linked to autism, Guillain-Barre syndrome, paralysis, and death in addition to less severe chronic conditions like allergies and autoimmune diseases.

Governments tighten rules on Vaccine exemptions

“Against the body of a healthy man, Parliament has no right of assault whatever, under pretence of the public health.” – Professor F.W. Newman of Oxford.

“Vaccination is a delusion, its penal enforcement a crime!” – Professor Alfred Russel Wallace in “The Wonderful Century”

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 9, 2012

Despite the fact that vaccines are only supported by unscientific pseudoscience, governments around the world continue to push the envelope so people are literally forced to use the toxic cocktails produced by the large pharmaceutical manufacturers. The United States is always the clearest example of how even when there is no law that mandates people to take vaccines — even if there was one, it would be unconstitutional — government ‘officials’ do their best to poke people against their will.

Through the years, people who are educated enough to know that vaccines are dangerous to human health avoided taking vaccines by using religion and other means to stay away from these pharmaceutical products. But lately, the states have resorted to all kinds of legal; or should I say illegal, resources to obligate children and adults to take the vaccines.

Over the years, the number of people — many of them doctors — who have become educated and have written about the threats posed by vaccines increased, so the main stream media and the health ‘authorities’ have found new ways to scare people and to build strawmen to hurt the reputation of those who are out to educate the public about the dangers and the outrageous increase in the use of vaccinations. While those trying to prevent mass disease caused by vaccines get attacked, this document shows how the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has paid children and their families for injuries presumed to have been caused or aggravated by the vaccine. According to official book keeping, 2,100 families and individuals have received compensation.

Unfortunately for the pharmaceutical establishment and its accomplice health practitioners, the increasing number of educated people includes many physicians who have taken the veil off their faces. The testimony of these honest MD’s is more valuable than ever with states like California forcing children to take vaccinations in order to have access to school.

Along with Washington and Vermont, California began a campaign to make it nearly impossible to refuse vaccinations, by limiting services to children and adults who are against vaccinations. The state of New Jersey is now studying ways to require more parents to vaccinate their children in order to be in school and other community programs.

Although in theory each US state has the prerogative to set its own vaccination policy, the truth is that the federal government managed to impose its own rules on states so the bureaucrats give the green light to initiatives that seek to make the opt out option much harder to utilize. Note again that in the United States there is not a state or federal law that requires anyone to take a vaccine. In fact, parents or guardians are the sole deciders when it comes to medicating their children.

With more parents deciding to educate their children at home, the government has found it even more difficult to force parents to vaccinate their kids, so the ‘officials’ and the main stream press have also sought to denounce home schooling as an archaic, crazy way to raise a child. Today, before children get to the tender age of 10, they must have been vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, hepatitis B; the Haemophilus influenzae bacterium, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, and varicella. In total, a child may receive over 30 shots before he reaches 11 years of age.

The main stream media usually portrays the existence of exemptions as a great favor, but forget to point out that it is an individual’s own business to decide what to do with his or her body. Neither the government nor school officials have any authority whatsoever to force anyone to inject toxic chemicals into a child or themselves. The usual excuse is that someone who has not been vaccinated endangers the health of others, although this argument does not make any sense. The idea that one or more unvaccinated persons threaten the health of the rest is originated from the collectivist point of view that argues for the benefit of the masses which in some people’s minds surpasses that of the individual.

So far, the success of the forceful vaccination campaigns relies on the ignorance of parents who are afraid of not having a school where to drop their children off every morning. These parents do not understand that by leaving their children at the mercy of the State, they are effectively waiving their rights as parents as they hand their children to the government. That is why states like California have sought to create laws that disable parents as the responsible guardians of the their own children, making the youngsters ‘responsible’ for decisions that range from giving consent for the acceptance of vaccines to using contraceptive methods.

Politicians and the media like to swindle the public by blaming the spread of disease on the lack of vaccination, even though reality shows exactly the opposite. Vaccines have never prevented the massive spread of disease, but helped spread it. Behind government vaccination policy stand the powerful pharmaceutical companies that make a kill every year by selling government bureaucrats the idea that not vaccinating can help spread disease to a point where infection can go out of control.

Recently, a California man named Kevin Barret, posted this comment on a so-called scientific magazine article that attempted to push the goodness of vaccinations on its readers:

“The California Health Department used extreme coercion to convince us to vaccinate our three-week-old son for Hepatitis B (a sexually transmitted disease – not much of a risk for infants). Immediately after the shot, he entered a near coma of crying and emotional withdrawal – obvious extreme trauma – that lasted about three days. He was later diagnosed with autism. The suffering we’ve experienced due to our bad decision is indescribable. After studying the issue (I’m a Ph.D. with three M.A.s, so I know how to do research) I think we need a revolution in this country for many reasons, one of which is to stop the medical industry from injecting formaldehyde, mercury and other extreme toxins into our children. My friend the late Lynn Margulis, the greatest biological scientist of the century, said on my radio show that as a general rule, you should NEVER INJECT ANYTHING, EVER – certainly not the stuff in vaccines!!! The skin barrier is there for a reason.”

As it happens often, he was quickly attacked by people who limited themselves to regurgitating main stream media-fed talking points but who failed to provide a single link to a document or independently conducted study that demonstrates whether or not vaccines treat or cure disease. I myself haven’t found one in 9 years of research.

Still, the outfits that promote vaccinations as the solution to each and every disease don’t even hide the fraud behind the fear mongering campaigns that seek to scare people into compliance. Most doctors who knowingly or otherwise push vaccines as the best way to treat or cure disease believe that people will eventually succumb to vaccinations given the fear factor behind outbreaks. That is the opinion of Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who says “people will be more compelled by the fear than by the reason.”

I would say that he is about right, except that the fear comes from the dangers that vaccines pose. People continue to seek second and third opinions regarding the dangers of vaccinations and today more than ever before, adults and parents are more likely to avoid injecting their children with toxins contained in vaccines. Last month, Healthcare Finance News reported on how vaccine sales decline for the first time in decades. “There was a 30 percent drop in the influenza vaccine market in 2011,” which is attributed to a mild flu season. That fact doesn’t decrease revenue for the pharmaceutical companies because government purchase giant amounts of vaccines to stockpile in the event of what officials call ‘dangerous outbreaks’.

The real reason behind of it all is the realization by millions of people who the scare mongering coming from governments and pharmaceutical conglomerates in 2009 was at the very least an attempt to make a quick buck through the sale of vaccines whose effectiveness and safety have always been questionable.

As explained by doctor James Garth Wilkinson in 1876, “compulsory vaccination is an instance of law, which inflicts disease and possible death on the human body and propagates and disseminates deadly infection upon animals and humanity. This is surely an instance of a law which is not based on wisdom or sanity and is a menace to the health and security of humanity and the State. This amazing act is the homicidal insanity of a whole profession. This is blood assassination.”

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UK Austerity to cut 10 billion pounds in Social Benefits

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 9, 2012

The British Minister of Economy, George Osborne, said Monday that he intends to cut another 10,000 million pounds in spending by cutting the expenses on social benefits by 2016-17. Osborne said the goal is to reduce the deficit.

While speaking to a crowd of Tories, Osborne said that he wants to eliminate aid to large families and housing subsidies for people who are under 25 years of age.

These cuts would be in addition to the reduction of 18,000 million pounds taken from government obligations through the approval of a bill announced in 2010, which affected pensions and subsidies and has involved hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the public sector.

In his speech to the militants “Tories” who met during the annual Conservative Party gathering, the Minister of Economy insisted on saying that while the wealthiest people should bear the  brunt of the crisis, it is also “fair” that the cuts are distributed throughout the whole population, including citizens who are dependent on state-sponsored programs. Osborne refused in multiple occasions to impose higher taxes on the richest people in the UK.

He promised however, to limit the income of citizens receiving social benefits, as well as aid given to the unemployed, the young, single mothers, disabled and low-income families; so that these people do not receive anymore help than those who go out looking for work.

Osborne announcement of the reduction of social benefits was immediately received with criticism dependent groups, while the minister said he will rule out raising taxes on high incomes. How is it that the wealthiest will bear their brunt of the crisis then?

He also dismissed the idea of ​​a new tax on mansions of more than two million pounds (2.47 billion euros), an idea first introduced by the Liberal Democrats, partners in the coalition government.

The minister warned the people that he would combat tax evasion in order to increase revenues. He said that he would fight “mercilessly” tax evasion and penalize those who attempt to evade payment by way of accounting maneuvers.

“We will finish what we started,” Osborne said to his fellow party allies, as he reminded the crowd about the government’s plan to reduce the deficit and debt which he associated with cutting help to the neediest people, while the size of government remains the same.

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