Beast System: Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

[oneofmany]

Condom distribution policy starting in elementary school at Provincetown, Mass.

Condom distribution policy starting in elementary school at Provincetown, Mass.​

Sex education starts early, especially if you go to elementary school in Provincetown, Mass.

That’s because the school committee has unanimously adopted a condom distribution policy beginning as early as first grade.

According to the Provincetown Banner, the program requires that students speak to a school nurse or trained counselor before receiving condoms.

The committee also directed school leaders not to honor demands from parents who object to their kids receiving protection.

Some members on the committee were wary because the program requires that students speak to school officials first.

But Beth Singer, the school’s superintendent, said she wanted to guarantee younger students get information on how to use condoms because there is no age limit.

“We’re talking about younger kids,” said Singer. “They have questions they need answered on how to use them, when to use them.”

 

[oneofmany]

G20 Cop Gets Owned By G20 Protestor

G20 Cop Gets Owned By G20 Protestor

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Obama internet 'kill switch' bill approved

The architect of the bill ... US Senator Joe Lieberman​

Obama internet 'kill switch' bill approved​

The US senators pushing a controversial new bill that some fear would give President Barack Obama the powers to seize control of and even shut down the internet have rejected claims it would give Obama a net "kill switch".

The bill, titled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, has been unanimously approved by the US Homeland Security committee and will be put to a vote on the Senate floor shortly.

Lobby groups and academics quickly rounded on the bill, which seeks to grant the President broad emergency powers over the internet in times of national emergency.

Any internet firms and providers must "immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by a new section of the US Department of Homeland Security, dubbed the "National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications".

The critics said that, rather than combat terrorists, it would actually do them "the biggest favour ever" by terrorising the rest of the world, which is now heavily reliant on cyberspace.

Australian academics criticised the description in the bill's title of the internet as a US "national asset", saying any action would disrupt other countries as most of the critical internet infrastructure is located in the US.

This week, 24 privacy and civil liberties groups sent a letter raising concerns about the legislation to the sponsors, including that it could limit free speech and free inquiry, Computerworld reported.

"We are concerned that the emergency actions that could be compelled could include shutting down or limiting internet communications," the letter reads.

But the architects of the plan, committee chairman Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins, have this week released a "Myth v. Reality" document that hits back at these criticisms.

They say the threat of a catastrophic cyber attack is real and not a matter of "if" but "when". Cyber crime was also costing the US economy billions of dollars annually and the bill would "modernise the government's ability to safeguard the nation's cyber networks from attack and will establish a public/private partnership to set national cyber security priorities".

The senators rejected the "kill switch" claim, arguing that the President already had authority under the Communications Act to "cause the closing of any facility or station for wire communication" when there is a "state or threat of war".

They said under the new bill the President would be far less likely to use the broad authority he already has under current law to take over communications. It would provide "a precise, targeted and focused way for the President to defend our most sensitive infrastructure".

Any action would be limited to 30-day increments and the President must use the "least disruptive means feasible" to respond to the threats. Action extended beyond 120 days would need Congressional approval.

The bill would not give the President the authority to take over the entire internet, target specific websites or conduct electronic surveillance.

"Only specific systems or assets whose disruption would cause a national or regional catastrophe would be subject to the bill's mandatory security requirements," the senators wrote.

 

[oneofmany]

U.S. government panel now pushing "vaccinations for all!" No exceptions…

U.S. government panel now pushing "vaccinations for all!" No exceptions…​

(NaturalNews) An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that every person be vaccinated for the seasonal flu yearly, except in a few cases where the vaccine is known to be unsafe.

"Now no one should say 'Should I or shouldn't I?'" said CDC flu specialist Anthony Fiore.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous. If accepted by the CDC, this recommendation will then be publicized to doctors and other health workers.

The CDC nearly always accepts the advisory committee's recommendations.

Current CDC recommendations call for the yearly vaccination of all children over the age of six months, all adults over the age of 49, health care workers, people with chronic health problems and anyone who cares for a person in one of these groups. These recommendations cover 85 percent of the US population.

Excluded are adults between the ages of 19 and 49 who do not come into close contact with people in high-risk groups. The new recommendation, if adopted, would close that gap, bringing an end to a 10-year campaign by supporters of universal vaccination. In the past, the advisory committee has been reluctant to recommend universal vaccination for fear that it might produce vaccine shortages that place members of higher risk groups in danger. Yet even with current recommendations, only 33 percent of the public gets vaccinated every year, leaving millions of doses to be disposed of.

The H1N1 swine flu scare of the past year played a major role in the committee's about face, both because the disease killed many people falling outside the current recommended vaccine demographic and because it raised public awareness of and demand for vaccines.

 

[oneofmany]

Target Tehran? Israel, US 'prepare to attack Iran'

Target Tehran? Israel, US 'prepare to attack Iran'

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[oneofmany]

Police open fire on peaceful protesters at G20

Police open fire on peaceful protesters at G20

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Australian pair escape charges over Aborigine death

Australian pair escape charges over Aborigine death​

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian Aborigines have expressed anger after two security guards escaped charges over an elder who "cooked" to death in the back of a prison van.

Ben Taylor, co-chair of Western Australia's Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, said the community would mount protests to seek justice for the man, who died of heatstroke during a four-hour, non-stop trip in January 2008.

"They are killing our people off. It's the 21st century and we're still getting nowhere and that's very sad," he said Monday, according to AAP news agency.

"The poor man was cooked alive. This is a black fella who died in custody, they just cover it up and life goes on."

The 46-year-old elder, known only as Mr Ward, died in temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) as he was driven across Western Australia state to face a drink-driving charge in a van with broken air-conditioning.

State director of public prosecutions Joe McGrath told Ward's widow over the weekend that charges would not be laid against the two guards employed by security firm GSL, now known as G4S, who were in charge of the van.

The case was referred to McGrath last year by coroner Alastair Hope, who found the state's Department of Corrective Services, security officers Graham Powell and Nina Stokoe and their employer had all contributed to Ward's death.

But McGrath said after a thorough investigation, no one had been found criminally negligent.

"I'm acutely aware that the death was tragic, avoidable and rightly creates outrage in the wider Australian community," he said, adding that a Sydney lawyer had reviewed and supported his decision.

Co-chair Marc Newhouse said the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee would seek an independent review of the investigation by a retired judge, and called for the Department of Corrective Services to terminate G4S's contract.

"Mr Ward died under the most horrendous, torturous conditions, conditions that were criminal," he said.

 

[oneofmany]

Australia and the 'N' word

Australia and the 'N' word

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US: 6-year-old Indian-origin girl 'terror suspect'

US: 6-year-old Indian-origin girl 'terror suspect'​

Washington, Jun 28: United States has identified the most unlikely terror suspect - a six-year-old girl.

US homeland security department has put 6-year-old Indian origin American, Alyssa Thomas, on the 'no-fly' list on the suspicion that the girl has ties with terrorists.

The girl's parents learned that she was on the 'no fly' list during a recent trip from Cleveland to Minneapolis.

Alyssa, her father, Santhosh Thomas and her mother were allowed to make their trip but they were directed to clear up the matter with the homeland security department.

A letter from the government notified Alyssa that nothing will be changed and that they won't confirm nor deny any information they have about her or someone else with the same name.

 

[oneofmany]

VA hospital may have infected 1,800 veterans with HIV

VA hospital may have infected 1,800 veterans with HIV​

(CNN) -- A Missouri VA hospital is under fire because it may have exposed more than 1,800 veterans to life-threatening diseases such as hepatitis and HIV.

John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis has recently mailed letters to 1,812 veterans telling them they could contract hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) after visiting the medical center for dental work, said Rep. Russ Carnahan.

Carnahan said Tuesday he is calling for a investigation into the issue and has sent a letter to President Obama about it.

"This is absolutely unacceptable," said Carnahan, a Democrat from Missouri. "No veteran who has served and risked their life for this great nation should have to worry about their personal safety when receiving much needed healthcare services from a Veterans Administration hospital."

The issue stems from a failure to clean dental instruments properly, the hospital told CNN affiliate KSDK.

Dr. Gina Michael, the association chief of staff at the hospital, told the affiliate that some dental technicians broke protocol by handwashing tools before putting them in cleaning machines.

The instruments were supposed to only be put in the cleaning machines, Michael said.

The handwashing started in February 2009 and went on until March of this year, the hospital told KSDK.

The hospital has set up a special clinic and education centers to help patients who may have been infected. However, Carnahan said he feels more should be done and those responsible should be disciplined.

"I can only imagine the horror and anger our veterans must be feeling after receiving this letter," Carnahan said. "They have every right to be angry. So am I."

This is not the first time this year a hospital has been in hot water for not following proper procedures.

In June, Palomar Hospital in San Diego, California, has sent certified letters to 3,400 patients who underwent colonoscopy and other similar procedures, informing the patients that there may be a potential of infection from items used and reused in the procedures.

 

[oneofmany]

Lady Gaga and the New World Order

Lady Gaga and the New World Order​

Lady Gaga's music videos are undoubtedly elaborate – but is there any truth to one blogger's claims that they are loaded with occult references and masonic symbolism?


You might think that by know you've read more than enough online exegesis of Lady Gaga's videos but you haven't even scratched the surface until you've read the work of The Vigilant Citizen. This anonymous Canadian blogger explained last year's Paparazzi video with reference to the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind-control programme, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the Eye of Horus and the goat-god Baphomet, concluding that Gaga was indubitably an "Illuminati puppet". Bad Romance apparently "offers a chilling description of a music industry ruled by the elite". In Alejandro, she "flashes in her fans' faces the symbols of their own oppression".

The Vigilant Citizen has a good claim to be the world's most distinctive music critic. On his website, vigilantcitizen.com, he describes himself as a graduate in communications and politics and a producer for "some fairly well-known 'urban' artists". He has spent five years researching "Theosophy, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism". All of these interests converge in his insanely detailed analyses of the symbolism of pop videos and lyrics. Thus Pink's MTV awards performance mimics a Masonic initiation; Jay-Z's Run This Town trumpets the coming of the New World Order (NWO); and the video for Black Eyed Peas' Imma Be Rocking That Body advances "the transhumanist and police state agenda".

What's surprising is the methodical, matter-of-fact, occasionally humorous tone of his essays. He does not write like a swivel-eyed loon rambling about Obamunism (although, inevitably, there's an unsavoury fascination with Jewish influence). To those who don't study occult symbolism, he concedes, it might all seem "totally far-fetched and ridiculous", but for those in the know "I was simply stating the obvious". His examinations are certainly exhaustive. Scrolling down his densely illustrated posts, you may find yourself thinking, "Say, Lady Gaga really does very often cover up one eye. And a lot of pop stars really do pretend to be robots."

But the Vigilant Citizen can't encounter a predictable pop trope without interpreting it as part of an occult music-industry plot to brainwash the masses. The ostensibly meaningless "Bum bum be-dum" refrain in Rihanna's Disturbia, for example, is decoded as: "You good-for-nothing, idiotic person, let yourself become dumb, stop thinking and let yourself be hypnotised and possessed." It's something of a stretch.

Nonetheless, his eccentric readings have attracted a large and passionate following: several posts have received more than 1,000 comments. Some readers recently took it upon themselves to analyse Muse's seemingly sympathetic album The Resistance, with its references to the "third eye" and MK-ULTRA, concluding sadly that the band were "definitely tools of NWO", assigned to make real conspiracy theorists look ridiculous.

Although the Vigilant Citizen insists he is neither a political conservative nor a religious fundamentalist, he is heir to such off-piste 60s pop critics as the Reverend David A Noebel, author of Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles, and Gary Allen, who theorised that post-Rubber Soul Beatles material was so technically sophisticated that it must have been "put together by behavioural scientists in some think tank". Leftwing thinkers at the time had their own take on pop as mind control. Peter Watkins' 1967 movie Privilege starred Manfred Mann's Paul Jones as a puppet of the state, pacifying the populace with catchy patriotic tunes. In such analysis, the villains may change but the mechanisms remain the same.

The Vigilant Citizen's work is a fascinating glimpse into the current resurgence (witness the Tea Party movement) of what academic Richard Hofstadter diagnosed in 1964 as "the paranoid style", with its obsession with plots and "refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence". To the Vigilant Citizen, a pop star appearing "vacuous, incoherent and absent-minded" must be "a tribute to mind control" rather than them actually being vacuous, incoherent and absent-minded. Sometimes, surely, pop music is just pop music. Or is that what the Illuminati want us to think?

 

[oneofmany]

Banned Trailers Return for Latest Gulf Disaster

Banned Trailers Return for Latest Gulf Disaster​

VENICE, La. — In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, they became a symbol of the government’s inept response to that disaster: the 120,000 or so trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to people who had lost their homes.

The trailers were discovered to have such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again.

Some of the trailers, though, are getting a second life amid the latest disaster here — as living quarters for workers involved with the cleanup of the oil spill.

They have been showing up in mobile-home parks, open fields and local boatyards as thousands of cleanup workers have scrambled to find housing.

Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, Alpha 1, said that in the past two weeks he had sold more than 20 of the trailers to cleanup workers and the companies that employ them in Venice and Grand Isle, La.

Even though federal regulators have said the trailers are not to be used for housing because of formaldehyde’s health risks, Mr. Mason said some of these workers had bought them so they could be together with their wives and children after work.

“These are perfectly good trailers,” Mr. Mason said, adding that he has leased land in and around Venice for 40 more trailers that are being delivered from Texas in the coming weeks. “Look, you know that new car smell? Well, that’s formaldehyde, too. The stuff is in everything. It’s not a big deal.”

Not everyone agreed. “It stunk to high heaven,” said Thomas J. Sparks, a logistics coordinator for the Marine Spill Response Corporation, as he stood in front of the FEMA trailer that was provided to him by a company working with his firm. Mr. Sparks said the fumes in the trailer from formaldehyde, a widely used chemical in building materials like particle board, were so strong that he had asked his employer to provide him with a non-FEMA trailer.

The trailers — which are being resold for $2,500 and up — started down their road to infamy after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, when FEMA officials ordered nearly $2.7 billion worth of trailers and mobile homes to house victims of the storm.

Within months, some of these residents began complaining about breathing problems and burning eyes, noses and throats. One man who had complained about fumes was found dead in his trailer in June 2006.

Federal officials later discovered that formaldehyde — an industrial chemical that can cause nasal cancer, aggravates respiratory problems and may be linked to leukemia — was present in many of these housing units in amounts that exceeded federal limits. Scientists have since concluded that the high levels of formaldehyde found in the trailers probably resulted from cheap wood and poor ventilation. FEMA has produced other models and later batches of the trailers that do not have the health risks that the trailers built for Hurricane Katrina victims did.

But federal officials have struggled to figure out what to do with the contaminated trailers, which have cost nearly $130 million a year to store and maintain, according to federal records. As a result, the government decided to sell the trailers in 2006.

The trailers have found a ready market in the gulf.

“The price was right,” said Buddy Fuzzell, an executive with Cahaba Disaster Recovery, a contracting firm that bought 15 trailers for about 45 cleanup workers.

Several buyers said in interviews that they were unaware of any prohibition on using the trailers for housing.

In an April hearing, members of the House Energy Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection raised concerns that the trailers would end up being used for housing. More than 100,000 trailers have been sold so far in public auctions.

The trailers are “not intended to be used as housing,” said David Garratt, FEMA’s associate administrator for mission support. “Subsequent owners must continue to similarly inform subsequent buyers for the life of the unit.”

These rules are not being followed in many cases, however. Officials with the inspector general’s office of the General Services Administration said Wednesday that they had opened at least seven cases concerning buyers who might not have posted the certification and formaldehyde warnings on trailers they sold.

Federal records indicate that of the hundreds of companies and individuals who have bought the trailers, dozens are in Louisiana. They include Henderson Auctions, which bought 23,636 units for $18 million, and Kite Brothers RV, which bought 6,511 mobile homes and travel trailers for $16 million.

On Henderson Auctions’ Web site, a spokeswoman is quoted in a news video saying that people who live on the street or in their cars would much rather live in the trailers and that the formaldehyde has dissipated after four or five years.

Caren Auchman, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration, said in an e-mail message that her agency was taking steps to ensure that the units were not used for housing.

Most of the workers in the gulf are not living in the trailers but in newer quarters provided by BP, its subcontractors or by state or federal agencies.

Still, housing remains tight. In June, Mr. Mason’s firm and another consulting firm began proposing a plan to large contractors in the region to put about 300 of the trailers on barges for offshore worker housing.

Officials from BP and the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health, which is BP’s subcontractor that is handling most of the air sampling in the region, said they had no plans to move forward with the proposal.

But others are not hesitating.

John Sercovich, the owner of Bud’s Boat Rentals in Belle Chasse, La., said that he thought the trailer he bought for some of his workers to stay in was more than adequate.

“We couldn’t have afforded it any other way,” he said.

Standing in a small field surrounded by a new shipment of the trailers, Mr. Mason declined to say whether he informed buyers of the formaldehyde risks or kept warning labels on the trailers.

One of Mr. Mason’s trailers, shown to a reporter, had an overpowering smell of formaldehyde inside and none of the required placards on the outside or inside indicating the formaldehyde risk or that it was not supposed to be used for housing. The trailer did, however, have a note taped inside to call FEMA.

Mr. Mason, who is based in Texarkana, Tex., added that all of his customers have been happy and that he planned to lease land for 50 more trailers that he would rent out to workers.

“Bottom line,” he said, “I’m providing a service.”

 

[oneofmany]

Drones Over America: Tyranny at Home

Drones Over America: Tyranny at Home​

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” — James Madison

The U.S. government has a history of commandeering military technology for use against Americans. We saw this happen with tear gas, tasers and sound cannons, all of which were first used on the battlefield before being deployed against civilians at home. Now the drones—pilotless, remote controlled aircraft that have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan—are coming home to roost.

Drones, a $2 billion cornerstone of the Obama administration’s war efforts, have increasingly found favor with both military and law enforcement officials. “The more we have used them,” stated Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “the more we have identified their potential in a broader and broader set of circumstances.”

Now the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is facing mounting pressure from state governments and localities to issue flying rights for a range of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to carry out civilian and law-enforcement activities. As the Associated Press reports, “Tornado researchers want to send them into storms to gather data. Energy companies want to use them to monitor pipelines. State police hope to send them up to capture images of speeding cars’ license plates. Local police envision using them to track fleeing suspects.” Unfortunately, to a drone, everyone is a suspect because drone technology makes no distinction between the law-abiding individual and the suspect. Everyone gets monitored, photographed, tracked and targeted.

The FAA, citing concerns over the need to regulate air traffic and establish anti-collision rules for the aircrafts and their operators, has thus far been reluctant to grant broad approval for the use of UAVs in American airspace. However, unbeknownst to most Americans, remote controlled aircraft have been employed domestically for years now. They were first used as a national security tool for patrolling America’s borders and then as a means of monitoring citizens. For example, back in 2006, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was testing out a SkySeer drone for use in police work. With a 6.5-foot wingspan, the lightweight SkySeer can be folded up like a kite and stored in a shoulder pack. At 250 feet, it can barely be seen with the naked eye.

As another news story that same year reported, “one North Carolina county is using a UAV equipped with low-light and infrared cameras to keep watch on its citizens. The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air—close enough to identify faces—and many more uses, such as the aerial detection of marijuana fields, are planned.” In 2007, insect-like drones were seen hovering over political rallies in New York and Washington, seemingly spying on protesters. An eyewitness reported that the drones “looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters.”

Drone technology has advanced dramatically in the ensuing years, with surveillance drones getting smaller, more sophisticated and more lethal with each evolution. Modeling their prototype for a single-winged rotorcraft on the maple seed’s unique design, aerospace engineering students at the University of Maryland have created the world’s smallest controllable surveillance drones, capable of hovering to record conversations or movements of citizens.

Thus far, the domestic use of drones has been primarily for surveillance purposes and, as far as we know, has been limited in scope. Eventually, however, police departments and intelligence agencies will make drones a routine part of their operations. However, you can be sure they won’t limit themselves to just surveillance.

Police today use whatever tools are at their disposal in order to anticipate and forestall crime. This means employing technology to attain total control. Technology, which functions without discrimination because it exists without discrimination, tends to be applied everywhere it can be applied. Thus, the logical aim of technologically equipped police who operate as technicians must be control, containment and eventually restriction of freedom.

In this way, under the guise of keeping Americans safe and controlled, airborne drones will have to be equipped with an assortment of lethal and nonlethal weapons in order to effectuate control of citizens on the ground. The arsenal of nonlethal weapons will likely include Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs), which are used to break up protests or riots by sending a piercing sound into crowds and can cause serious hearing damage; high-intensity strobe lights, which can cause dizziness, disorientation and loss of balance and make it virtually impossible to run away; and tasers, which administer a powerful electric shock.

Since June 2001, over 350 people, including women, children and elderly individuals, have died in the U.S. after being shocked with “non-lethal” tasers. “Imagine how incidents would skyrocket,” notes Paul Joseph Watson for PrisonPlanet.com, “once the personal element of using a Taser is removed and they are strapped to marauding surveillance drones, eliminating any responsibility for deaths and injuries that occur.”

“Also available to police,” writes Watson, “will be a drone that can fire tear gas as well as rubber pellets to disperse anyone still living under the delusion that they were born in a democratic country.” In fact, the French company Tecknisolar Seni has built a drone armed with a double-barreled 44 mm Flash-Ball gun. The one-kilo Flash-Ball resembles a large caliber handgun and fires so-called non-lethal rounds, including tear gas and rubber impact rounds to bring down a suspect. Despite being labeled a “non-lethal weapon,” this, too, is not without its dangers. As David Hambling writes for Wired News, “Like other impact rounds, the Flash-Ball is meant to be aimed at the body—firing from a remote, flying platform is likely to increase the risk of head injury.”

One thing is clear: while the idea of airborne drones policing America’s streets may seem far-fetched, like something out of a sci-fi movie, it is no longer in the realm of the impossible. Now, it’s just a matter of how soon you can expect them to be patrolling your own neighborhood. The crucial question, however, is whether Americans will be able to limit the government’s use of such surveillance tools or whether we will be caught in an electronic nightmare from which there is no escape.

 

[oneofmany]

Not lovin' it: U.S. chicken McNuggets 'contain SILLY PUTTY chemical'

Not lovin' it: U.S. chicken McNuggets 'contain SILLY PUTTY chemical'​

Chicken nuggets sold in U.S. branches of McDonald's contain a chemical used in Silly Putty.

'McNuggets' sold to American fast food lovers contain dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent used in Silly Putty.

They also have more calories and fat than those sold in the chain's British restaurants, according to a CNN study.

Four American McNuggets total 190 calories, 12 grams of fat and two grams of saturated fat. The equivalent portion in Britain clocks in at 170 calories, nine grams of fat and one gram of saturated fat.

U.S. McNuggets also contain a petrol-based chemical called tertiary butylhydroquinone (tBHQ) as well as dimethylpolysiloxane. British McNuggets contain neither.

A spokeswoman for McDonald's put the transatlantic differences down to the local methods of food preparation.

Lisa McComb, McDonald's global media relations manager, said that in the U.S. McNuggets are coated and then cooked, while in Britain they are cooked and then coated.

The result, she explained, is that British McNuggets absorb less oil and have less fat.

Labeling also plays a part in giving nuggets sold in Britain the appearance of being healthier than those sold in the U.S., she said, as ground celery and pepper are listed on the American packaging as simply 'spices'.

'You would find that if you looked at any of our core food items, you'd see little, regional differences,' she said. 'We do taste testing of all our food items on an ongoing basis.'

Ms McComb added that dimethylpolysiloxane is used for safety reasons to prevent the oil from foaming.

Marion Nestle, a New York University professor and author of What To Eat, told CNN that tertiary butylhydroquinone and dimethylpolysiloxane in the McNuggets probably pose no health risk to consumers.

 

[oneofmany]

With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932

With the US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932​

"The economy is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession," said Robert Reich, former US labour secretary. "All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing."

"Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year. So what are we doing about it? Less than nothing," he said.

California is tightening faster than Greece. State workers have seen a 14pc fall in earnings this year due to forced furloughs. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting pay for 200,000 state workers to the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour to cover his $19bn (£15bn) deficit.

Can Illinois be far behind? The state has a deficit of $12bn and is $5bn in arrears to schools, nursing homes, child care centres, and prisons. "It is getting worse every single day," said state comptroller Daniel Hynes. "We are not paying bills for absolutely essential services. That is obscene."

Roughly a million Americans have dropped out of the jobs market altogether over the past two months. That is the only reason why the headline unemployment rate is not exploding to a post-war high.

Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.

The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7pc to 58.5pc. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63pc three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.

The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.

"Legions of individuals have been left with stale skills, and little prospect of finding meaningful work, and benefits that are being exhausted. By our math the crop of people who are unemployed but not receiving a check amounts to 9.2m."

Republicans on Capitol Hill are filibustering a bill to extend the dole for up to 1.2m jobless facing an imminent cut-off. Dean Heller from Vermont called them "hobos". This really is starting to feel like 1932.

Washington's fiscal stimulus is draining away. It peaked in the first quarter, yet even then the economy eked out a growth rate of just 2.7pc. This compares with 5.1pc, 9.3pc, 8.1pc and 8.5pc in the four quarters coming off recession in the early 1980s.

The housing market is already crumbling as government props are pulled away. The expiry of homebuyers' tax credit led to a 30pc fall in the number of buyers signing contracts in May. "It is cataclysmic," said David Bloom from HSBC.

Federal tax rises are automatically baked into the pie. The Congressional Budget Office said fiscal policy will swing from
a net +2pc of GDP to -2pc by late 2011. The states and counties may have to cut as much as $180bn.

Investors are starting to chew over the awful possibility that America's recovery will stall just as Asia hits the buffers. China's manufacturing index has been falling since January, with a downward lurch in June to 50.4, just above the break-even line of 50. Momentum seems to be flagging everywhere, whether in Australian building permits, Turkish exports, or Japanese industrial output.

On Friday, Jacques Cailloux from RBS put out a "double-dip alert" for Europe. "The risk is rising fast. Absent an effective policy intervention to tackle the debt crisis on the periphery over coming months, the European economy will double dip in 2011," he said.

It is obvious what that policy should be for Europe, America, and Japan. If budgets are to shrink in an orderly fashion over several years – as they must, to avoid sovereign debt spirals – then central banks will have to cushion the blow keeping monetary policy ultra-loose for as long it takes.

The Fed is already eyeing the printing press again. "It's appropriate to think about what we would do under a deflationary scenario," said Dennis Lockhart for the Atlanta Fed. His colleague Kevin Warsh said the pros and cons of purchasing more bonds should be subject to "strict scrutiny", a comment I took as confirmation that the Fed Board is arguing internally about QE2.

Perhaps naively, I still think central banks have the tools to head off disaster. The question is whether they will do so fast enough, or even whether they wish to resist the chorus of 1930s liquidation taking charge of the debate. Last week the Bank for International Settlements called for combined fiscal and monetary tightening, lending its great authority to the forces of debt-deflation and mass unemployment. If even the BIS has lost the plot, God help us.

 

[oneofmany]

Iran's president: US a global 'dictatorship'

Iran's president: US a global 'dictatorship'​

ABUJA, Nigeria – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that the U.S. is a "dictatorship" as it tries to control world affairs.

Ahmadinejad made the comments Wednesday night during a speech at the Iranian Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. He is in Nigeria for a summit of an organization known as the D-8, or the Developing Eight nations.

In full, Ahmadinejad says the U.S. is "the self-proclaimed leader, and everybody should know that a self-proclaimed leadership is (a) dictatorship. I am going to say, on behalf of you, that the years of dictatorship are over."

Nigeria, a nation of 150 million people, is split between Christians and Muslims. A large crowd of Muslims filled the embassy for the speech.

 

[oneofmany]

School sports day ban for father with no criminal records check

School sports day ban for father with no criminal records check​

A school turned a father away from his son's first sports day after banning parents who have not been checked by police from mixing with pupils.

The taxi driver had gone to watch his son, a year seven pupil, compete in sprints and egg-and-spoon races.

But teachers refused to let him spectate because they did not believe he had undergone checks by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Rather than argue, the 'mortified' father left quietly so he would not embarrass his son as he took part in the games at the 1,200-pupil De Lisle Catholic Science school in Loughborough, Leicestershire.

The school's policy says that any parent who has not passed the checks is banned from attending events in which pupils take part. The rules are aimed at shielding children from paedophiles.

But critics say they have gone far beyond their original remit. For example, parents picking up groups of children from school or hosting foreign exchange pupils have to undergo checks or face fines.

Yesterday the father said that he regularly underwent Criminal Records Bureau checks for his job as a taxi driver.

The father, who did not want to be named to protect his son's identity, told a Talksport radio programme: 'I couldn't believe it when they told me I wasn't allowed in because I didn't have the relevant CRB checks.

'I'd called the school that morning to ask if it would be OK if I came along and they said it would be no problem. But when I got to the school the assistant head teacher said that as I hadn't had a CRB check then I couldn't watch.

'Rather than kick up a fuss and embarrass my son I just turned around and walked away. I was fuming. She made me feel like it was wrong to want to watch my son take part in his first sports day.

'I'm a taxi driver and I have to have regular CRB checks as part of my licence. I've never had any trouble.

'What is the world coming to when parents can't watch their own kids take part in what is a big day in their young lives? I'm all for protecting kids, but surely there has to be a place for common sense.'

The school said in a statement: 'We fully appreciate that one parent was upset by our policy regarding the attendance of parents at sports days.

'As standard procedure, all our policies are subject to regular review and are changed to meet the needs of our students.

'We regret that on this occasion one parent was upset and we look to review our policy appropriately.'

A spokesman for Leicestershire County Council told Talksport: 'Parents should have access to school activities.

'We certainly do not issue any guidance to say parents should have a CRB check to attend school sports days.

'The day-to-day running of the school is a matter for the school and its governors, but we are contacting the school to discuss their policy with them.'

 

[oneofmany]

Rangel eyes draft return

Rangel eyes draft return​

Rep. Charles Rangel yesterday again called for bringing back the national draft -- right at the Times Square recruiting station.

For the third time since the Iraq War began, the Harlem Democrat announced his plans to introduce a bill requiring all Americans to serve in the armed forces.

"If you love your country, be prepared to serve," said Rangel, a Korean War veteran.

Congress should stop funding the war and, instead, use tax dollars to bring troops home, he said.

Rangel, who this year was stripped of his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the bill calls for men and women 18-42 to sign up for the draft during wartime. It will likely be introduced next week.

 

[SonoAgope]

Beast System Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

There is no question that a monarchy is more efficient and effective as a governmental system than other forms of government. It simply suffers from two serious flaws: 1-Actons Law. 2-How do you select the monarch?

Mutual accountability is the foundation of a republic, and is, to my knowledge, the best solution to 1. It neccesarily solves 2 as well. At a a pretty serious cost to effeciency.

 

[oneofmany]

Virtual Slavery on Facebook

Virtual Slavery on Facebook

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RJpwW95xYR8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RJpwW95xYR8&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[oneofmany]

Iroquois denied sovereignty

Iroquois denied sovereignty

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hbVs-oIGewo&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hbVs-oIGewo&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[Lamarr]

U.S. Authorities Shut Down WordPress Host With 73,000 Blogs

After the U.S. Government took action against several sites connected to movie streaming recently, nerves are jangling over the possibility that this is just the beginning of a wider crackdown. Now it appears that a free blogging platform has been taken down by its hosting provider on orders from the U.S. authorities on grounds of “a history of abuse”. More than 73,000 blogs are out of action as a result.

‘Operation In Our Sites‘ targeted several sites including TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net. In almost unprecedented action, the domain names of 7 sites were seized and indications are that others – The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload – narrowly avoided the same fate.

 

[oneofmany]

Army suicides hit record number in June

Army suicides hit record number in June​

Thirty-two soldiers took their own lives last month, the most Army suicides in a single month since the Vietnam era. Eleven of the soldiers were not on active duty. Of the 21 who were, seven were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Department of Defense said.

Army officials say they don't have any answers to why more and more soldiers are resorting to suicide.

"There were no trends to any one unit, camp, post or station," Col. Chris Philbrick, head of the Army's suicide prevention task force, told CNN. "I have no silver bullet to answer the question why."

Last year, a record-breaking 245 soldiers committed suicide. The Army seems on track to surpass that number this year, as 145 soldiers have taken their lives in the first half of 2010.

Tim Embree of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America testified Wednesday before the House Veterans Affairs Committee that many soldiers fear seeking help.

"The heavy stigma associated with mental health care stops many service members and veterans from seeking treatment," he said. "More than half of soldiers and Marines in Iraq who tested positive for a psychological injury reported concerns that they will be seen as weak by their fellow service members."

He pointed out that the statistics don't include the number of veterans who end their own lives. That figure surged 26 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to the Veterans Affairs Department.

The Army has a 24-hour suicide prevention hotline, and has videos and other resources on its website. The Army's new suicide prevention video features a soldier talking about his own failed suicide attempt after his wife said she wanted to divorce him. The rifle he used to try to kill himself didn't fire, he says, and he later found out his comrade had disabled it because he was worried about him.

 

[oneofmany]

Iroquois Defeated by Passport Dispute

Iroquois Defeated by Passport Dispute​

WESTBURY, N.Y. — The 23 players on the Iroquois national lacrosse team expected to spend this week vying for a world championship.

Instead, they spent Friday night divvying up their gear in the driveway outside a Hilton hotel here, having officially declared defeat in their weeklong dispute with the British government over whether they should be allowed to travel using their tribal passports.

“I felt it was coming, but I didn’t want to believe it until I actually heard it,” said Ron Cogan, 31, who played defense for the team.

The team, known as the Nationals, forfeited its first game Thursday night against England. Unless the team departed for the tournament by Friday evening, it would have had no choice but to forfeit its next game, scheduled for Saturday afternoon against Japan.

“You can’t go into a world competition and ask a team to tie one hand behind its back,” said Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga Nation, one of the six nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy.

But the team was willing to try, at least until its second forfeit appeared inevitable. The team turned a guest room at the Comfort Inn near Kennedy Airport into a diplomatic command center of sorts, and team officials made a last-ditch effort to get the visas, traveling to the British consulate in Manhattan on Friday to make a final plea. The team dined at the Cheesecake Factory at the Mall at the Source here while awaiting word on their status Friday night.

“We’d rather be playing there than sitting here,” said the team’s captain, Gewas Schindler, 34, who plays attack. “It’s hard to talk about, really.”

Discussing their saga had been all the team had been able to do the past few days while it remained marooned, forbidden from flying to the tournament because British officials would not accept its tribal documents in lieu of American or Canadian passports because of security concerns. The Iroquois passports are partly handwritten and lack the holograms and other technological features that guard against forgeries.

The dispute has superseded lacrosse, prompting diplomatic tap-dancing abroad and reigniting in the United States a centuries-old debate over the sovereignty of American Indian nations. The Iroquois refused to accept United States passports, saying they did not want to travel to an international competition on what they consider to be a foreign nation’s passport.

“It’s a tough one,” Lyons said. “We’re dealing with new regulations that have come about since 9/11, and we understand that.”

The British government first objected to the team’s travel plans last week, when it said the Iroquois players would not be allowed to travel to the tournament in Manchester, England, unless the United States vouched for their tribal passports and guaranteed the team would be allowed to re-enter the country.

The United States refused to do so until Wednesday, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton granted the team a one-time waiver to travel without United States passports.

But later Wednesday, British officials informed the team it would not receive visas after all, dealing a blow to the team’s hopes and angering several lawmakers who had lobbied on the team’s behalf. Representative Dan Maffei, Democrat of New York, called the situation an “international embarrassment” and went so far as to question England’s ability to host the 2012 Olympics.

American diplomats discussed the case with their British counterparts on Wednesday and Thursday, but the State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley signaled Friday that the team was out of luck.

“From our standpoint, we’ve done what we can do,” Crowley told reporters in Washington. “It would appear to us at this point that the U.K. has made their final determination.”

The British government indicated that was the case. A spokeswoman for the United Kingdom Border Agency said British officials had not changed their position.

That broader issue of the validity of tribal passports — which experts in American Indian law say have been allowed for international travel for several decades, even if the letter of the law forbids them to be used as replacements for United States passports — remains unresolved.

The National Congress of American Indians wrote to British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday to urge him to allow the Iroquois to travel. Jefferson Keel, the lieutenant governor of the Chickasaw Nation and the National Congress’s president, said in a telephone interview that the fight over the passports ws indicative of skepticism in some parts of the world about the sovereignty of Indian nations.

“I just didn’t understand why a country would go through all these hoops to deny an indigenous team the opportunity to compete in an international game,” he said.

He added that the National Congress hoped to work with federal officials to help develop a system of tribal identification documents that are deemed secure — an effort already under way in some Indian nations. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, wrote to Clinton on Friday with a similar request.

Meanwhile, until late Friday evening, the team continued to wait, hoping for a change of heart from the British. But their bad luck continued. The team’s bus got lost on the way to dinner. At 5 p.m. Friday — an informal deadline set by Lyons for getting clearance or giving up — the team was still driving around Nassau County.

“Almost time to say the heck with it?” a voice from the back of the bus said.

The team did just that a few hours later. After dinner, the team drove to the Hilton Garden Inn and held a team meeting in the driveway.

After 10 minutes or so, the players walked off and formed a receiving line to embrace one another. The last off the bus was Ansley Jemison, the team’s general manager. “We pulled the plug,” he said.

Jemison said that team officials had not given up their hope of receiving visas. But he said they did not reasonably expect that British officials would be able to consider the additional documentation they submitted until Monday or Tuesday, and they did not want to keep their players cooped up in a hotel until then.

The news came as no surprise to the players, who described themselves Friday as both disappointed (for not being able to go to the tournament) and relieved (for not having to live out of hotel rooms any longer).

What they said they all shared, however, was a certain pride in the issue at hand.

“We fought a battle that was bigger than lacrosse,” said Marty Ward, a 25-year-old goalie. “It brought indigenous people back to the forefront. It let everyone know that we’re still here — we haven’t gone anywhere.”

 

[oneofmany]

Woman allegedly mocked during airport strip search

Woman allegedly mocked during airport strip search​

Shileen Flynn, 29, had already missed one flight and lost her luggage when she says she found herself in a room at the Vancouver airport, naked and squatting, while two crude border agents strip-searched her.

It was December, 2009, days after a suspected al-Qaida member tried to ignite an explosive device aboard a Detroit-bound flight. Flynn had just returned home to Vancouver from a trip to Seattle, and was on her way to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to start a new job as a public relations officer.

She was a day behind schedule, having missed her flight from the U.S. the night before, and had to catch the next plane to Germany so she could then catch a flight to Spain and start work the next morning. Somewhere along the way, the airline lost her luggage.

She was talking to her mom on a pay phone when a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer approached her.

“All of a sudden, the guy comes over to me and says, 'Can I talk to you?' I said, 'Of course, why not?'” said Flynn.

She said he asked her where she was travelling and why she was using a pay phone. He told her to take off her sunglasses so he could see her eyes. She slipped them off, looked at the officer, and then pushed them back down.

His tone became aggressive, she said.

“He said, 'No take your sunglasses off!'” said Flynn.

As he searched her carry-on bag and asked more questions, a bystander offered her a card for a lawyer, but the officer sent him away, Flynn alleges.

More officers arrived with a police dog who walked up to Flynn, sniffed her, walked away, came back over to her again, hesitated a moment, then left.

Then they brought her to a room with two female CBSA officers for a strip search.

Flynn — a frequent traveller who has been strip-searched twice before — said this time was different. She said the women made her bend over a table, open her legs, and squat and cough. They asked her personal questions, like when she last had sex, Flynn said.

She fought back tears throughout the ordeal.

“I thought, if I start crying, they're gonna think I'm guilty,” she said.

“As soon as they finished the strip search, I started bawling.”

One guard told her if she didn't stop crying, she'd be detained, Flynn said. When she explained why she was crying, Flynn said a guard piped up: “How do you think I feel? I just had lunch. You make me feel sick.”

“It's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me in my life,” said Flynn, who cried the whole way to Frankfurt. “It was totally demeaning and degrading. ... I've done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.”

As soon as she got to Spain, she called her father, Charlie Flynn, who reported what happened to CBSA.

CBSA launched an internal investigation, interviewing Shileen and the officers involved.

After months of back and forth, Charlie received a letter from CBSA that read: “We have fully investigated the incident and concluded that the BSOs involved in examination of your daughter followed established guidelines and conducted themselves in a professional manner.”

“They keep saying that I'm lying,” said Shileen.

With no mention of the alleged verbal harassment by the border service officers, the letter explained that a strip search can be conducted if an officer “has reasonable grounds to suspect that a person has secreted contraband on or about their body,” as long as a senior officer approves the search, and the suspect is informed of their rights.

“It was sickening to watch and see what they were doing. They then went into full cover-up in the investigation and simply lied when convenient to cover up any wrongdoing,” Charlie told QMI Agency.

On May 18, the CBSA told Charlie there would be a new investigation and that someone would call to answer his questions about their detaining polices. As of Monday morning, he hasn't heard back from anyone.

Mark Holland, federal Liberal critic for public safety and national security, has been helping the Flynns with their case.

While he declined to comment specifically on what happened to Shileen Flynn, he said the case highlights the need for greater transparency and independence in CBSA's complaints process.

“It's like a black hole that people fall through all the time,” Holland told QMI Agency.

CBSA employees investigate complaints, and report to the agency's president, said Holland.

Holland said the government should overhaul the complaints system and appoint an independent officer to investigate cases like Flynn's.

The results of those investigations should be made public, and the officer should be given power to implement mandatory policy changes, he said.

Currently, the CBSA's admissibility branch, which operates independently from the rest of the agency, handles complaints.

If a person isn't satisfied with the branch's conclusions, they can appeal the decision to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal.

QMI Agency placed multiple calls and e-mails to CBSA Friday and Monday seeking information about their complaints process and comment regarding Flynn's allegations, but as of Monday afternoon, has not heard back.

Charlie, meanwhile, is considering pursuing criminal charges or perhaps filing a lawsuit.

Shileen just wants to protect others from experiencing what she experienced.

“All I want from this is that it never happens to anyone else,” she said.

 

[oneofmany]

[Updated] 37 states join probe into Google Wi-Fi data collection

[Updated] 37 states join probe into Google Wi-Fi data collection​

A multistate investigation is raising more questions about how Google Inc. may have improperly gathered people's private information through their unsecured wireless networks while collecting data for its Street View feature.

Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal, who has been leading the month-old investigation, sent a third letter to Google on Wednesday asking, among other things, whether it had tested the feature's software before putting it to use. Doing so, he said, should have uncovered any glitches responsible for the unwarranted collection of e-mails, passwords and other personal data of those who failed to protect their networks with passwords.

"Google’s responses continue to generate more questions than they answer," he said in a statement. "Now the question is how it may have used -- and secured -- all this private information."
Blumenthal, who is running for Sen. Christopher J. Dodd's seat, also said that attorneys general from 37 states and the District of Columbia have officially joined the probe, including those from Texas, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Massachusetts. Eight states would not be identified because their laws bar them from disclosing investigations, he said.

The office of California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown has not yet responded to a question about whether the state is a participant.

"As we've said before, it was a mistake for us to include code in our software that collected payload data, but we believe we did nothing illegal," a spokesperson for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said in a statement. "We're continuing to work with the relevant authorities to answer their questions and concerns."

The investigation, which follows similar probes in Germany and Australia, is also considering whether federal and state laws need to be changed or updated as a preventative measure.

The Street View function was launched in 2007 and since expanded to most major cities in the U.S, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. It uses vehicles to photograph street layouts in every direction to give Web users a 360-degree view of streets and roadways.

But the vehicles were also equipped to detect Wi-Fi access points, which Google hadn't disclosed until recently, in order to help computers figure out where they are without having to use a GPS system.

At the same time, Google said it mistakenly picked up 600 gigabytes of data from unsecured networks over the last three years.

 

[oneofmany]

Kucinich, Paul: Pull Troops From Pakistan

Kucinich, Paul: Pull Troops From Pakistan​

Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are teaming up to force a debate on the House floor next week aimed at compelling the Obama administration to pull U.S. military forces from Pakistan.

There are about 200 military personnel in Pakistan, and up to 120 are assigned to train the Pakistani military in the volatile tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that U.S. special operations forces were now accompanying members of the Pakistan military’s Frontier Corps on humanitarian missions.

Kucinich, a liberal Ohio Democrat, said he decided to introduce the resolution after reading the Journal article.

Citing the War Powers Act, Kucinich said the Obama administration has failed to properly notify Congress about the U.S. forces in Pakistan.

Congressional leaders would like to avoid a debate on the U.S. presence in Pakistan. But by introducing a privileged resolution, Kucinich was able to force the House leadership to give him time on the floor along with Paul, a Texas Republican who has opposed the war in Afghanistan. The resolution would require the Obama administration to pull U.S. military trainers out of Pakistan by the end of the year.

Earlier this year, Kucinich forced a similar debate on a resolution to withdraw from Afghanistan. That resolution was easily voted down.

“Look at the history of U.S. military involvement; we became enmeshed in a war against Vietnam with advisers leading the way,” Kucinich said. “Mr. Paul and I are seeking to nip in the bud an expansion of U.S. ground presence in Pakistan.”

 

[oneofmany]

'Mental disease rising among US troops'

'Mental disease rising among US troops'​

America's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan are taking a toll on US soldiers, as the latest statistics show one out of every nine American soldiers leaves the army on a medical discharge due to a mental disorder.

"We have 100,000 troops and a third of them suffer some sort of mental health disease and half of those suffer multiple health disease," Paul Martin from Peace Action told Press TV's correspondent.

The army alone saw a 64 percent increase in those forced out due to mental illness between 2005 and 2009, the numbers equal to one in nine of all medical discharges.

According to army statistics, last year alone 1,224 soldiers suffering from mental illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, received a medical discharge.

According to Mental health experts there is a growing emotional toll on the US military which has been fighting for seven years in Iraq and nine years in Afghanistan, and there is a clear relationship between multiple deployments and increased symptoms of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

Some experts say age is also a factor.

"We are talking young people -- 18 to 24-year-olds, who are seeing the horrors of war," Martin said.

Analysts are concerned that with budget cuts looming, military medical programs will be the first on the chopping block.

The soldiers who are discharged for having both a mental and physical disability increased by 174% during the last 5 years from a little under 1,400 in 2005, to more than 3,800 in 2009, according to army statistics.

The suicide rate among US soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan has escalated to a record high, with an average of one suicide per day in June.

According to US Army statistics, a total of 32 soldiers took their own lives last month, making it the worst month on record for Army suicides. Twenty-one were on active duty, with the rest being among National Guards or Army Reserves in an inactive status, CNN reported earlier in July.

 

[oneofmany]

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'​

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.

In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."

The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.

Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.

The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.

The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.

 

[oneofmany]

Ex-CIA chief: Strike on Iran seems more likely now

Ex-CIA chief: Strike on Iran seems more likely now​

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.

Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was "way down the list" of options. But he tells CNN's "State of the Union" that such action now "seems inexorable."

He predicts Iran will build its program to the point where it's just below having an actual weapon. Hayden says that would be as destabilizing to the region as the real thing.

U.S. officials have said military action remains an option if sanctions fail to deter Iran.

Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful purposes such as power generation.

 

[oneofmany]

WikiLeaks says evidence of war crimes in documents

WikiLeaks says evidence of war crimes in documents​

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Monday he believes there is evidence of war crimes in the thousands of pages of leaked US military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan.

The remarks came after WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing group, posted some 91,000 classified US military records over the past six years about the war online, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and covert operations against Taliban figures.

The White House, Britain and Pakistan have all condemned the release of the documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history.

Assange told reporters in London that "it is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime. That said ... there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material."

Assange compared the impact of the released material to the opening of the East German secret police archives. "This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives," he said.

The documents cover much of what the public already knows about the troubled nine-year conflict: US special operations forces have targeted militants without trial, Afghans have been killed by accident, and US officials have been infuriated by alleged Pakistani intelligence cooperation with the very insurgent groups bent on killing Americans.

WikiLeaks posted the documents Sunday. The New York Times, London's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were given early access to the records.

White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the release "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk." In a statement, he then took pains to point out that the documents describe a period from January 2004 to December 2009, mostly during the administration of President George W. Bush. And, Jones added, before President Obama announced a new strategy.

Pakistan's Ambassador Husain Haqqani agreed, saying the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities," in which his country and Washington are "jointly endeavoring to defeat al-Qaida and its Taliban allies."

The US and Pakistan assigned teams of analysts to read the records online to assess whether sources or locations were at risk.

Pakistan's powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, said Moday that the accusations it had close connections to Taliban militants were malicious and unsubstantiated.

A senior ISI official said they were from unverified raw intelligence reports and were meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy.

Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI who is mentioned many times in the documents, also denied allegations that he'd worked with the insurgents.

Assange said his group also had many more documents on other subjects, including files on countries from across the globe.

"We have built up an enormous backlog of whistle blower disclosures," he said. "We have in this backlog ... files that concern every country in the world with a population of over 1 million."

He refused to go into detail, but said the information included "thousands of databases and files about all sorts of countries."

Assange said that he believed more material would flood amid the blaze of publicity.

"It is our experience that courage is contagious," he said. "Sources are encouraged by the opportunities that they see before them."

 

[oneofmany]

House rejects bill to aid sick 9/11 responders

House rejects bill to aid sick 9/11 responders​

WASHINGTON – A bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to people sickened by World Trade Center dust fell short in the House on Thursday, raising the possibility that the bulk of compensation for the ill will come from a legal settlement hammered out in the federal courts.

The bill would have provided free health care and compensation payments to 9/11 rescue and recovery workers who fell ill after working in the trade center ruins.

It failed to win the needed two-thirds majority, 255-159. The vote was largely along party lines, with 12 Republicans joining Democrats supporting the measure.

For weeks, a judge and teams of lawyers have been urging 10,000 former ground zero workers to sign on to a court-supervised settlement that would split $713 million among people who developed respiratory problems and other illnesses after inhaling trade center ash.

The court deal shares some similarities with the aid program that the federal legislation would have created, but it involves far less money. Only the most seriously ill of the thousands of police officers, firefighters and construction workers suing New York City over their exposure to the dust would be eligible for a hefty payout.

But supporters of the deal have been saying the court settlement is the only realistic option for the sick, because Congress will never act.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you can wait and wait and wait for that legislation ... it's not passing," Kenneth Feinberg, the former special master of the federal 9/11 victim compensation fund, told an audience of ground zero responders Monday in a meeting on Staten Island.

Democratic leaders opted to consider the House bill under a procedure that requires a two-thirds vote for approval rather than a simple majority. Such a move blocked potential GOP amendments to the measure.

A key backer of the bill, U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican, accused Democrats of staging a "charade."

King said Democrats were "petrified" about casting votes as the fall elections near on controversial amendments, possibly including one that could ban the bill from covering illegal immigrants who were sickened by trade center dust.

If Democrats brought it to the floor as a regular bill, King said, it would have passed with majority support.

GOP critics branded the bill as yet another big-government "massive new entitlement program" that would have increased taxes and possibly kill jobs.

To pay the bill's estimated $7.4 billion cost over 10 years, the legislation would have prevented foreign multinational corporations incorporated in tax haven countries from avoiding tax on income earned in the U.S.

Bill supporters said that would close a tax loophole. Republicans branded it a corporate tax increase.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the vote an "outrage." He said it was clearly a tactic designed to stall the bill.

"This is a way to avoid having to make a tough decision," Bloomberg said, adding that the nation owes more to "the people who worked down at 9/11 whose health has fallen apart because they did what America wanted them to do."

John Feal, a ground zero demolition worker who has lobbied extensively for the legislation, expressed disgust.

"They pulled the rug out from beneath our feet," Feal said. "Whatever member of Congress vote against this bill, whether Republican or Democrat, should go to jail for manslaughter."

The bill would have provided up to $3.2 billion to cover the medical treatment of people sickened by trade center dust and an additional $4.2 billion for a new fund that would have compensated them for their suffering and lost wages.

The potential promise of a substantial payout from the federal government had caused some ground zero workers to balk at participating in the proposed legal settlement, which would resolve as many as 10,000 lawsuits against the city.

Initially, the bill would have prohibited people from participating in the new federal compensation program if they had already been compensated for their injuries through a lawsuit, but a change was made in recent days eliminating that restriction.

Nevertheless, with the House rejecting the bill and no vote scheduled on a similar Senate version, it appears almost guaranteed that there will be no new federal law by Sept. 8, the date by which ground zero workers involved in the lawsuits must decide whether to accept the settlement offer.

Under the terms of the deal, 95 percent of those workers must say yes for the court settlement to take effect.

The compensation system set up by the court would make payments ranging from $3,250 for people who aren't sick but worry they could fall ill in the future to as much as $1.5 million to the families of people who have died. Nonsmokers disabled by severe asthma might get between $800,000 and $1 million.

About 25 percent of the money would go to pay legal fees. Contested claims would be heard by Feinberg, who would act as an appeals officer.

Researchers have found that thousands of New Yorkers exposed to trade center dust are now suffering from breathing difficulties similar to asthma. Many have also complained of heartburn or acid reflux, and studies have shown that firefighters who worked on the debris pile suffer from elevated levels of sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease.

Many of the workers also fear that the dust is giving people cancer, although scientific studies have failed to find evidence of such a link.

The exact number of sick is unclear. Nearly 15,900 people received treatment last year through medical programs set up to treat Sept. 11-related illnesses, but doctors say many of those people suffered from conditions that are common in the general public.

The House bill is named for James Zadroga, a police detective who died at age 34. His supporters say he died from respiratory disease contracted at ground zero, but New York City's medical examiner said Zadroga's lung condition was caused by prescription drug abuse.

 

[oneofmany]

Mullen says US has Iran strike plan, just in case

Mullen says US has Iran strike plan, just in case​

WASHINGTON – The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a strike is probably a bad idea.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's highest-ranking military officer, has often warned that a military strike on Iran would have serious and unpredictable ripple effects around the Middle East. At the same time, he says the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.

Mullen would not say which risk he thinks is worse. But he tells NBC's "Meet The Press" that a military strike remains an option if need be.

And he says that, should it come to that, the military has a plan at hand. He didn't elaborate.

 

[oneofmany]

Iranian president Ahmadinejad challenges Obama to TV debate

Iranian president Ahmadinejad challenges Obama to TV debate​

The president of Iran, who had a pop at Paul The Octopus last week for symbolising everything that's wrong with the West, said he would be willing to meet his US counterpart when he travels to the United Nations next month.

'I will go to New York for the next UN General Assembly session at the end of September and would again be ready to meet President Obama and have a debate with him on global issues,' he remarked.

'Let's have a man-to-man meeting, at the UN and in front of global media and let's see whose arguments are more accepted.'

Washington has declined similar offers regarding proposed televised debates between Ahmadinejad and other American presidents over the years.

The US has accused Tehran of seeking to build a nuclear weapon - something Iran denies.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Iranian president Ahmadinejad challenges Obama to TV debate

On topic with thread title isn't it ???: Beast System: Laying The Foundation Of The Beast

QueEx