“Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for …”
(John Lennon)

The USA National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
which is being described as a “lapdog” rather than a “watchdog”
for unhealthily close ties with the companies that it was supposed to regulate,
and for its tardy response to consumer complaints (1),
did nothing after it became clear that many Toyota cars crashed upon their accelerator pedal getting stuck, thereby killing its passengers (and others). (2)

Did the USA guv’mint need this -
to justify further protectionism
or
any other (financial) regulations?

Is this thalidomide all over again?

Thalidomide had been tested before use.
Thalidomide was created by the Nazis.
Its origins go back to 1938 and one Frances Oldham Kelsey.
Thalidomide was marketed since 1957. Kelsey was only appointed to the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after the 30 April- 1 May 1960 Düsseldorf Congress of neurologists warning of the dangers of thalidomide.
In 1938 the name of Frances Oldham Kelsey, at the ripe old age of 24, appeared at the FDA in connection with the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster.
Upon Kelsey feigning to ignore the April-May 1960 Düsseldorf Congress, USA president John F. Kennedy honoured Kelsey in 1962 with a presidential award for having saved his country from her product.  (3)

Ivo Cerckel
honestmoney@maktoob.com
http://twitter.com/ivocerckel/

NOTES

(1)
From The Times February 25, 2010
Toyota chief was unaware of acceleration problems despite years of complaintsAlexandra Frean US Business Correspondent
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article7040371.ece

(2)
From Times Online February 24, 2010
Toyota chief to face crash victims’ family
Leo Lewis and Alexandra Frean
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article7038946.ece 
SNIP
shame on NHTSA [the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] for not doing your job

(3)
human testing – updated 15 Sep 2009
by Ivo Cerckel
http://bphouse.com/honest_money/human-testing/
[If the link does not work, try to copy it and paste it in your browser]

A Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) official says he expects the EU-style Gulf single currency to materialise although this would take nearly five years, writes Emirates Business 24/7 today. (1)

What is that an “EU-style Gulf single currency”?

Is that a single currency like the euro as described by Dr Fabian Amtenbrink, a professor of European Union law at Erasmus University Rotterdam? (2)

Or is that the real euro with its gold reserves marked to market(-price) on a regular basis?

Oil, the Gulf single currency, is the only commodity in the world that was large enough for gold to hide in.
Oil producers do indeed exchange their petro-dollars, which like the dollar itself have no value, for gold. (3)

Professor Amtenbrink, on the other hand, says that the euro was framed so as to retain its value in order to maintain price stability. He does not say how the floating currency which the euro is retains its value. He evades the point of demonstrating what is the anchor which prevents the euro from floating away. For professor Amtenbrink, it is the law, the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, which provides the anchor for the democratic accountability of the managers of the euro. He can therefore only talk about the foreign exchange (forex) reserves of the euro not of its gold reserves. He does not say that soon after the 01 January 1999 introduction of the euro, European central banks, including the European Central Bank (ECB) and central banks from inside and outside euro area, but excluding the International Monetary Fund (IMF), concluded on 26 September 1999 the Washington Agreement whereby they said that gold would remain an important reserve asset and that they would therefore limit their gold sales. (2, again)

Ivo Cerckel
honestmoney@maktoob.com
http://twitter.com/ivocerckel/

NOTES

(1)
GCC single currency may not materialise, says Saudi firm 
By Staff Writer 
on Sunday, February 21, 2010
http://www.business24-7.ae/Articles/2010/2/Pages/20022010/02212010_068259704df44c96a873b8b3af91222a.aspx

(2)
book review by this blogger on Amazon.com of
Kapteyn & VerLoren van Themaat,
(P.J.G. Kapteyn, A.M. McDonnell, K.J.M. Mortelmans, C. W.A. Timmermans, (eds.)),
“The Law of the European Union and the European Communities” (Paperback),
Wolters Kluwer – Law & Business, April 1, 2009, 4th edition,
in which professor Amtenbrink wrote Sections 1, 2 and 3 of Chapter X “Economic, Monetary and Social Policy”
http://www.amazon.com/Law-European-Union-Communities/product-reviews/9041128166/ref=cm_cr_pr_redirect?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0

(3)
Gulf dinar to be backed by gold hiding in oil
Posted by Ivo Cerckel on 9th September 2009
http://bphouse.com/honest_money/2009/09/09/
[If the link does not work, try to copy it and paste it in your browser]

If its insurer, Lloyd’s of London, had paid
[a higher sum than Distillers Ltd. has paid]
to the British Thalidomide Trust,
Distillers Ltd., the distributor of thalidomide in Britain,
would have had to open its files to Lloyd’s of London.

British guv’mint did not want to open a public inquiry.

Le secret entourant la thalidomide
Les Archives de Radio-Canada
Date de diffusion : 7 novembre 1976
http://rc-archives.cbc.ca/emissions/368-876/page/1/
L’existence du secret entourant la commercialisation de la thalidomide a été révélée en Angleterre à l’automne 1976, selon Fernand Seguin.

Ivo Cerckel
honestmoney@maktoob.com
http://twitter.com/ivocerckel/

The cause of the unprecedented deteriorations in our bodies is NOT the overuse and misuse of  what is left of our limbs.

The cause of the unprecedented deteriorations in our bodies is that we were born with too few cells in our bodies and that at middle age the number of these cells is even more reduced.

That’s what I understand. I’m no quack. Only a thalidomide monster. Here are the quotes:

Janet McCredie, “Beyond Thalidomide – Birth Defects  Explained”, London, The Royal Society of Medicine Press, 2007

§ Late-onset neuropathy in thalidomiders will be recognised as a sensory equivalent of post-polio syndrome p. 405 – 406

Since turning 40, many thalidomide victims have complained of tingling and numbness in their hands and feet.
Some also describe shooting pains.
Others describe increasing deafness, tinnitus or deteriorating vision.

The onset at middle-age of symptoms of sensory neuropathy is parallel with the experience of people who had poliomyeletis (infantile paralysis) and who suffered a second bout of motors symptoms – weakness, paralysis and wasting of muscles – with onset of middle-age.

Thalidomide attacked the embryo, not the infant.
It attacked the sensory, not the motor nerves.
The agent was chemical, not a virus.
But the response in the human body is basically similar.

p. 406
When the thalidomiders reached middle age, they also sustained the second physiological loss of neurons as normal degenerative processes took hold.
In their case, the second reduction of axon numbers may be critical.
They experience late-onset sensory symptoms in their reduced limbs
because
the second drop-out  f sensory axons depletes the population of their peripheral nerves,
perhaps below the threshold level where symptoms occur.

p. 406
Normally, our peripheral nerves contain surplus axons in reserve above the threshold number to balance any nerve damage.
What neurologists term “subclinical neuropathy”
is having less than the normal number of nerve fibres,
but enough escape with symptoms,
i.e., less than normal but more than the threshold at which symptoms appear.

Thalidomiders have coasted along for 45 years with subclinical neuropathy.
At middle age, the additional physiological degeneration of sensory nerves may deplete the axon population to a level below the symptom threshold.

A subclinical neuropathy (then becomes a clinical (symptomatic) neuropathy.

This is occurring in the thalidomiders at present.

Next alinea
There is a practical aspect in which it is important to recognise the sensory neuropathic basis of their disorder.
Medical attendants must understand that these people have neuropathic bones and joints
==>
they run the risk of poor results from surgery.
It is a well-established fact that fractures and surgery in neuropathic bones are slow to heal or may end in non-union.
The thalidomiders who present to doctors with arthritis or skeletal trauma need to be treated  conservatively, as neuropathic bones and joints.
Surgeons need to be cautious in offering joint replacements and other major procedures.
Healing is by no means assured.

p. 408 quote
… for we live, move, have a being and are subject to the actions of the elements and malice of diseases in that other world, the truest Microcosm, the Womb. of our Mother.
end of quote

p.409
The neural crest emerges from erstwhile obscurity to take its place as a highly vulnerable, extremely important stimulator of embryonic growth, and as easy target for malicious sensory neurotoxins.

END OF QUOTES

Ivo Cerckel
honestmoney@maktoob.com
http://twitter.com/ivocerckel/