july 02:
A model law developed for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and provided to state legislatures last year would give authorities the right to enforce quarantines, vaccinate people, seize and destroy property without compensation, and ration medical supplies, food and fuel in a public-health emergency.
James Hodge of the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities, which drafted the law, says it would be used only in extreme cases. He says he is encouraged that so many states have adopted all or parts of the law.
"There's nothing in this act that's not constitutionally possible," Hodge says.

30 July 2002
The controversy over the Government's £32m smallpox vaccine contract with a Labour donor reignited last night when new research showed ministers may have bought the wrong drug.

After a drug raid on Robertson army barracks last month, 47 men tested positive to a range of drugs including marijuana, amphetamines and opiates.
Last year at the Amberley RAAF base near Ipswich in Queensland, 22 air defence guards were placed on probation after they admitted using illegal drugs.
In October, an Amberley guard was fined after he pleaded guilty to bashing a colleague who blew the whistle on drug use at the base. Another Amberley guard will appear in court on November 25 to face drugs and firearms charges.


The Times front-page report is a bombshell. Just before the preemptive 2003 march by the world’s only superpower into the desert of a fourth rate but superbly geo-strategically located Arab country, Iraq apparently offered the Bush Administration everything it wanted and more, no strings attached.
Many of us, unfamiliar with the inner sanctum of neoconservative thought, might still not understand why such a war-preventing offer would have been rejected out of hand. But while the Iraqi offer may have sounded good on the surface, think about it. They were just trying to appease us! Appeasement is bad! Remember Chamberlain? Come on, people!

If Perle had pursued the Iraqi offer, we could have achieved everything we have today in Iraq, without the expense of lives, soldiers, American tax revenues, and international contempt. Granted, Halliburton, Bechtel and Worldcom would probably have had to compete for the contracts, against European and Russian companies that do the same thing. There would be no new replenishment orders for replacement and new development weapons to the big American defense contractors. Now, if you are a big-state–loving, national capitalism kind of neoconservative, like Perle and the rest, where’s the profit in that?

"We ask 2 million Americans to give us $100," Dr Dean said. "We believe 2 million Americans will borrow $100 simply for the pleasure of sending this President back to Crawford, Texas."

FORMER prisoner of war Jessica Lynch screamed and struggled with Iraqi doctors trying to anaesthetise her after one of them said they were going to amputate her leg, according to excerpts from her soon-to-be-released authorised biography.
The surgery never took place, and Lynch later heard that it was planned so she could be taken more easily to Baghdad, "probably for a propaganda video",


Australia's oil refiners are expected to be called upon to build up voluntary stockpiles of petroleum products to overcome government fears that the country's fuel reserves are too small and could pose a national security threat.

Instead, the President added with rare rhetorical passion: "Communism and militarism, and rule by the capricious and corrupt, are the relics of a passing era . . .

Mr Bush's warnings were aimed not only at America's traditional enemies – notably Iran and Syria – but also its longstanding friends, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both of which were urged in polite but insistent terms to "show the way towards democracy".

"The most intriguing sign that the US is getting serious about Middle East reform came last year with an improbable appointment to an obscure office buried in the US State Department.
The new deputy assistant secretary of state in charge of a little-known development project turned out to be Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of Vice-President Dick Cheney.
If the appointment smacked of nepotism, doubt soon gave way to praise, as Ms Cheney began to establish herself as a pivotal figure in a radical shift of US foreign policy. The program she runs, the Middle East Partnership Initiative, is a crucial component of the policy revolution outlined last week by President George W. Bush.
She was less clear about how exactly recalcitrant regimes might be nudged towards democratic nirvana, and other administration officials have indicated that Mr Bush is not at this stage threatening consequences for Saudi Arabia should King Fahd and his cohorts fail to introduce satisfactory reforms. "

mred- u know, at some point, things start to look a lil nepotistic. chenyes daughter in a key mideast post, colin powels son at the fcc. prescott bush's son as president. and his grandson president, and another grandson guvna.
they must have pretty good jeans
i wonder if saddam employed his sons for the same reason. and kim jong il's dad. and and and.


On the shimmering shores of the Dead Sea, Liz Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, emerged yesterday as the new rising star in the Middle East.
She has been armed with a budget of more than $100 million and charged with sparking an Arab renaissance to undermine the influence of extremists and to encourage democracy and equality for women.

The Department of Health has defended its decision to select a smallpox vaccine which has not been proved effective against the virus held by Iraq.
The Lister vaccine is the wrong choice to protect the country from the threat of a smallpox attack by terrorists, a leading American authority on the subject has claimed.
Steve Prior, of the Potomac Institute, who has carried out new research on the smallpox threat, said that he believes Britain's vaccine choice is "indefensible".

Instead, the newspaper carries an interview with Mr Smith in which he says he stands by his account. In a new twist he alleges that he was threatened to keep quiet by a "hooded gunman" after Diana, the Princess of Wales, made it known that she had recorded his claims.