Society's ChildS


Black Cat

Scandalous Misconduct by EPA: Lawsuit Filed for Exposing Subjects to Diesel Exhaust

Image
Exclusive to WUWT by David W. Schnare

Statement of ATI's Lead Counsel

on

American Tradition Institute v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

(US District Court, Easter District of Virginia No. 1:12-cv-1066)

There are few occasions in life that emerge directly from the core of an individual and almost never are those memorialized in a law suit. On Friday, September 21, 2012, I took five copies of a complaint to the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, filing one of them with the court and having each of the rest stamped and then sent to four senior government officials, Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and EPA General Counsel Scott Fulton. I sent them summons to appear and defend themselves in part because of my first name.

I was named after David Steiner, a man who died of starvation in Buchenwald concentration camp on May 3, 1945. Tattooed on his body was the number 59059. He was witness to horrors that, today, we have a hard time even contemplating, something that I thought would never exist on this planet again - the abhorrent practice of giving human subjects poisons in order to determine what subsequently happens to them.

I have always been deeply affected by the circumstances of my great-uncle's death. It is a heavy burden to carry the name of such a victim. As I matured, I committed my life to giving to our civilization that which David Steiner was never able to give himself. I have given 37 years of service to the United States, most of that in an effort to protect human health and the environment as a professional at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

I was able to secure a position of responsibility and trust at EPA in large part because the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offered me the opportunity to obtain graduate degrees and prepare myself for a career in public service. Until a few weeks ago, I had been a strong supporter of each. Then Steven Milloy asked me to represent him and other members of the American Tradition Institute who have stories much like mine, or otherwise cannot countenance such human experimentation.

Steve's story is worse than death. His uncle, Zoran Galkanovic, was incarcerated at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Upon threat of death, Mr. Galkanovic was forced to rise each morning and identify those individuals at the concentration camp too ill to work, knowing they would subsequently be executed that very day. Because of the inhumanity forced on Mr. Galkanovic, Mr. Milloy has accepted as a family responsibility the fight against any government who subjects its citizens to inhumane treatment. Who knew it would be our government? Who knew it would be the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? Who knew that human experimentation would be done on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? Who knew it would be an official body of that University that approved this research?

Pirates

Pathetic: Ground Zero pastor 'funneled cash from $4.8million 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina donations to pay his mortgage, credit card bill and son's private college fees'

Image
© APAccused: Rev. Carl Keyes allegedly spent donations intended for 9/11 victims and Hurricane Katrina relief efforts on unrelated things
A pastor is accused of using cash from a $4.8m fund he started to help victims of 9/11 and hurricane Katrina to pay off his mortgage, credit card bills and his son's tuition fees, it was revealed on Monday.

As New Yorkers grieved in the aftermath of horrific terrorist attacks on the twin towers, Rev. Carl Keyes was plotting his rise to wealth.

Donors poured $2.5 million into the minister's charities, Urban Life Ministries and Aid for the World, but much of the fund never made it past his pocket, it has been claimed.

Far from helping the needy, Keyes' alleged new-found fortune went on treating himself and his family, and pouring money into his crumbling church.

He is accused of taking credit for the work of others at ground zero, embellishing his involvement and fabricating phoney demonstrations of his efforts as a good Samaritan.

Keyes' pot of wealth seemed ever increasing with generous donors contributing to what they believed to be a genuine cause, with more opportunities to raise relief money coming four years later.

At least another $2.3 million was collected for efforts along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, in the poorest corners of West Virginia and Tennessee, and even in remote African villages.

Megaphone

How Do You Take Your Poison?

Image
© Mr.Fish
We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will be administered. Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history's most savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth's ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to stop it.

If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched charade of a two-party democratic election at least be clear about what you are doing. You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or Republican voter in this political theater, giving legitimacy to a corporate agenda that means your own impoverishment and disempowerment. All the things that stand between us and utter destitution - Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security, public education, federal grants-in-aid to America's states and cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered meals for seniors - are about to be shredded by the corporate state. Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent.

Pistol

Flight Attendant Attempts to Sneak Revolver Past Airport Security


A Republic Airlines flight attendant was detained and then charged with disorderly conduct after she attempted to pass through security at the Philadelphia International Airport with a loaded .38 revolver in her purse, triggering an incident in which police accidentally discharged the weapon while securing it, authorities said.

According to officials, at 6:33 a.m. today, the flight attendant entered a Terminal C security checkpoint lane with a loaded .38 caliber Smith and Wesson Airweight revolver in her purse.

Cell Phone

Riot Breaks Out at Foxconn's iPhone 5 Casing Factory

Police called to break up riot at Taiyuan plant.
Image
© Foxconn

A Foxconn plant has been closed following a riot that apparently took place at the facility late on Sunday. Engadget reports that the incident went down at the Taiyuan plant, the same site as the March salary strike that saw staff stop working and demand a pay raise.

The reason for the riot is not immediately clear. Engadget points to unofficial news reports that say the whole thing was started as a result of security guards hitting a worker at 10 p.m. Sunday. Indeed, Reuters cites an unconfirmed report on Sina Weibo that claims four or five guards beat a worker 'almost to death'. Another post claims guards beat up two workers from Henan province. However, despite these reports, Foxconn told Reuters in a statement that the incident that triggered the riot involved only employees. Foxconn said it was a result of a personal dispute between employees. What's more, the component manufacturer said the dispute was not work-related. A senior official from the Taiyuan city government is quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying employees from Shandong Province clashed with staff from Henan Province and sparked the riot.

Whatever the reason, it was enough to close the plant down. Reports indicate that 5,000 police were on site to break up the mayhem. Though Foxconn hasn't said how long the plant will stay closed, an employee told Reuters that the company would be closed for up to three days. The Taiyuan plant employs almost 80,000 people.

Cowboy Hat

Arizona Sheriff Who Exposed Obama Administration on Border Arrests is Dead

Image
© Cochise County Sheriff's OfficeSheriff Larry Dever
On Tuesday, night, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever was killed in a single vehicle crash while on his way to join his sons on a family hunting trip near White Horses Lake, according to the Coconino County Sheriff's Office (CCSO).

The Tucson Sentinel reports that an unidentified driver was actually following Sheriff Dever on the lonely Forest Service road, but lost sight of his 2008 Chevrolet pickup for a brief period.

Then, the driver "saw what appeared to be a cloud of dust, and as he came closer he learned that the vehicle had rolled over and was resting on its wheels."

The witness told 911 operators: "he did not detect any signs of life from the single occupant of the vehicle," according to a CCSO press release.

Sheriff Dever leaves behind a wife, six children and 11 grandchildren.

2 + 2 = 4

Quebec Students Call for Free Education Now that Tuition Hike is Off the Table

Image
© Graham Hughes / Canadian PressQuebec students march through Montreal on May 20, 2012.
Canada, Montreal - One Quebec student group says that with tuition hikes officially off the table, it will now champion the idea of free education.

The new Parti Quebecois government scrapped a controversial increase in post-secondary tuition fees this week and a hardline student group is now turning to free education as its long-term goal.

CLASSE, which speaks for 100,000 Quebec students, says free education is entirely achievable and used a march attended by several hundred people on Saturday to highlight the issue.

"Our struggle for accessibility to higher education is not yet over," said Jeremie Bedard-Wien, a spokesman for CLASSE.

Free education is not a position that is shared by the province's two other major student associations and with the proposed hike by the former Liberal government formally cancelled, Quebec has the lowest tuition in the country again.

But CLASSE says it wants education to be completely accessible by being entirely free.

It's an opinion that has limited political support.

The PQ government has said it favours indexing tuition to inflation but has promised to call a symposium on the issue.

Dollar

Charities Deceive Donors Unaware Money Goes to a Telemarketer


Carol Patterson was waiting for a call from her doctor. When the phone rang on that afternoon in August 2011 at her home in Cortland, Ohio, it wasn't a physician on the other end. A woman named Robin said she was representing the American Diabetes Association.

Image
InfoCision telemarketers at work in one of the company's Ohio offices.
Robin didn't ask for money. She asked Patterson to stamp and mail pre-printed fundraising letters to 15 neighbors. Both of Patterson's parents and one grandmother had been diabetic, so she agreed to do it, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.

"I thought since it does run in the family, it wouldn't hurt for me to help," says Patterson, 64, a retired elementary school teacher. She guessed, based on what she knew about charity fundraising, that about 70 to 80 percent of the money she brought in would be used for diabetes research.

The truth was almost the exact opposite. The vast majority of funds Patterson, her neighbors and people like them throughout the country would raise -- almost 80 percent -- would never be made available to the Diabetes Association. Instead, that money collected from letters sent to neighbors would go to the company that employed Robin and an army of other paid telephone solicitors: InfoCision Management Corp.

Pistol

Houston Cop Shoots, Kills Wheelchair-Bound Double Amputee

Image
© Agence France-Presse/Stan Honda
US, Texas - A police officer in Houston has shot and killed a double amputee in a wheelchair after the man threatened his partner with what turned out to be a pen.

­The shooting happened in a group home, the owner of which called the police saying the man was causing a disturbance.

Police representatives said that when two officers arrived, the disabled man cornered one policeman and threatened him with a metal object.

Another officer opened fire, saying was forced to take action, "fearing for his partner's safety and his own safety", after the man refused to calm down and remain still, police told AP.

Later, the metal object that the one-armed, one-legged, wheelchair-bound man was waving turned out to be a pen.

Beer

Drunk Moscow driver crashes into bus stop, kills '5 disabled teens, their teachers'

Image
© RIA Novosti / Iliya PitalevAmbulances on the site of a road accident on Minskaya street which clained seven lives
Russia - Seven people were killed, including several disabled teens, after a drunk driver ran his speeding car into a bus stop in the Russian capital.

­The car plowed the bus stop and literally tore it out of the ground. However, this did not stop the out-of-control vehicle, with a speed 120 kilometers per hour. The car dragged the ruined bus stop for about 10 meters, pulling everyone who was waiting for the bus under it.

Seven people were killed at the scene and at least one person was injured.

Police have already identified all the bodies, but are not revealing the names of the dead in the interests of the investigation, the Moscow police press service said.

Due to the fact the information is undisclosed, there is uncertainty concerning the age of the victims.

According to the Moscow police version posted on their website, there are four adults and three teenagers.

However, there is a possibility that among the dead were two teachers at an assisted living facility - a wife and husband - and their five students, all minors.