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Bayer halts sales of anti-bleeding drug Nov 5 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071105/ap_on_he_me/heart_drug;_ylt=Al1C4.GiiYlfIxba8aN7zAYR.3QA
Too Many Babies Take Anti-Reflux Drugs Nov. 5, 2007
Study Shows Some Infants Get Treated for GERD Unnecessarily
http://children.webmd.com/news/20071105/too-many-babies-take-anti-reflux-drugs?src=RSS_PUBLIC
Bill would allow illegals to join military
WASHINGTON, June 16 Immigration reform being considered in Congress would give some young illegal aliens a chance
to become U.S. citizens by serving in the military.
About 750,000 young people might
be eligible under the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors or DREAM act, The Boston Globe reports. The bill
would allow those who were under 16 when they arrived in the United States,
have a high school diploma and meet some other qualifications, to get on track for citizenship as long as they serve at least
two years.
Bill Carr, the acting deputy undersecretary of defense in charge of personnel, told the Globe the measure
would be "good for readiness." The Army has had to lower its recruiting standards to meet its goals and the Army and Marines
plan to increase their ranks during the next five years.
About 35,000 non-citizens serve in the military under a program
that gives legal residents accelerated citizenship.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/73471.html
China detains 168 people in slave labor crackdown
BEIJING, June 17 (Xinhua) -- Chinese
police have detained 168 people in in a large-scale operation to rescue slave laborers in small brick kilns and mines in Shanxi and Henan provinces in central China.
Forty-eight people who were allegedly to have
been involved in the illegal use of slave labors were detained in Shanxi, while the others
were detained in Henan, according to local police sources.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/17/content_6252758.htm
Central gov't forms
work team to investigate into "slave labor" incident
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BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- China's central government
will send a team of investigators to look into the use of "slave labor" at illegal brick kilns in central China, which has
raised great concerns among the public.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security (MLSS),
which will head the team, said preliminary investigations show the incident may involve abducted and forced labor.
"The team will find out the truth as soon as
possible, and we will go all out to rescue the workers who had been forced to work as slaves in the brick kilns," said Sun
Baoshu, deputy minister of MLSS, on Friday.
"The criminal offenders will be dealt with
to safeguard the legal interests of the workers," Sun pledged.
A total of 468 workers, 251 in Shanxi Province and 217 in Henan Province, who were forced to work as
"slaves" have been freed from brick kilns and other illegal work places.
Police in Henan
and Shanxi have staged raids on coal mines, brick kilns,
private contractors and small enterprises, as the crackdown continues.
Police in Henan Province arrested 120 people
in a four-day crackdown involving more than 35,000 police checking 7,500 kilns, while in Shanxi 38 people who were suspected
of carrying out kidnapping and forced labor were detained.
The crackdown campaign was launched after media
reports revealed that hundreds of children in Henan Province
had been abducted and forced to work in kilns in Shanxi.
Among those rescued in Henan 29 were children. |
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/16/content_6248157.htm Or
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_david_co_070615_the_new_slavery.htm
Reporter Arrested on Orders of Giuliani Press
Sec
Wednesday, 6 June 2007, 4:46 pm
Press Release: Jones Report
Reporter Arrested on Orders of Giuliani Press
Secretary
Charged with Criminal Trespass Despite Protest
of CNN Staff and Official Event Press Credentials at GOP Debate in New Hampshire
Manchester, NH - Freelance reporter Matt Lepacek,
reporting for Infowars.com, was arrested for asking a question to one of Giuliani's staff members in a press conference. The
press secretary identified the New York based reporter as having previously asked Giuliani about his prior knowledge of WTC
building collapses and ordered New Hampshire state police to arrest him.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0706/S00036.htm
This is how they hide the truth from people arrest
the reporters who ask questions.
Aaron Dykes & Alex Jones / Jones Report |
June 5, 2006 http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/050607_reporter_arrested_giuliani_orders.html
Evil Empire: Is Imperial Liquidation Possible for America?
By
Chalmers Johnson
TomDispatch.com
Tuesday 15 May 2007
In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is
almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from
a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse
of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians
or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on April 26, 2007, some 78% of Americans believe their country to be headed
in the wrong direction. Only 22% think the Bush administration's policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since
October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term - and lost. What people don't agree on are the reasons
for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy - or remedies - ought to be.
For the rest go to http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051607D.shtml
Should the Empire be dismantled?
Iraqis flock to city for anti-US protest
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-04-09
09:35
Thousands of Iraqis streamed to the holy southern city of Najaf
on Sunday in response to a call by fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for a big anti-American protest on Monday.
Sadr, who blames the U.S.-led invasion for Iraq's
unrelenting violence, has urged Iraqis to protest on the fourth anniversary of the day American forces swept into central
Baghdad.
Iraqi details 'shocking' US missteps
(AP)
Updated: 2007-04-09
08:55
NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have
been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the US occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country - a performance
so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-04/09/content_845998.htm
1,200 Philippine families lose homes in fire
(AP)
Updated: 2007-04-07
15:38
MANILA, Philippines --
A fire swept through a Manila slum Saturday morning, destroying hundreds of homes and leaving
about 1,200 families homeless, a fire official said.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-04/07/content_845593.htm
25% of UK Iraq aid budget goes to security firms:
The UK has spent £165m on hiring private security companies in Iraq in the past four years - the equivalent to around
a quarter of the entire Iraq aid budget, it has emerged. A further £43m has been spent on private guards in Afghanistan since
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2048009,00.html
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U.S. State Sponsored Terrorism?
The Secret War Against Iran
By Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has
been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17480.htm
USA Exploitation Of Guestworkers Close to Slavery
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New Center Report: Foreign Guestworkers
Routinely Exploited by U.S.
Employers
http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=247
This is an extremely interesting report.
It is rather long but definitely worth reading and very enlightening.
Slavery is a live and well in the USA. Over the years I have heard many complain about workers coming into the country
and taking jobs away from Americans and what they didn’t know is covered in this report. What the workers didn’t
know could cost them everything they own. Of course the workers have no idea what they are in for if they decide to go to
the USA to work. They are taken for the
ride of a life time by recruiters and the people they end up working for. They are lied to, cheated and threatened.
In his 2007 State of the Union Address, President Bush called for legislation creating a "legal and orderly path for foreign
workers to enter our country to work on a temporary basis." Doing so, the president said, would mean "they won't have to try
to sneak in." Such a program has been central to Bush's past immigration reform proposals. Similarly, recent congressional
proposals have included provisions that would bring potentially millions of new "guest" workers to the United States.
What Bush did not say was that the United States
already has a guestworker program for unskilled laborers — one that is largely hidden from view because the workers
are typically socially and geographically isolated. Before we expand this system in the name of immigration reform, we should
carefully examine how it operates.
This 48 page report covers a lot of ways workers are abused.
routinely cheated out of wages;
forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
forced to live in squalid conditions;
denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.
http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=247
There are also other issues not covered in this report I have also read
about over the years. A couple I remember off the top of my head is how farm workers being exposed to Pesticides and Herbicides.
Many became extremely ill and many died. NO GRAPES comes to mind. http://seas.stanford.edu/diso/articles/nograpes.html or NO GRAPES BUT WHAT ABOUT STRAWBERRIES http://diso.stanford.edu/diso/articles/strawberries.html
But of course that is another
story all of its own. The affects of chemicals used on these farms can be devastating and they still use numerous ones that
are unfriendly to the environment and have appalling affects on the workers.
Atrazine Pesticide It's
not easy being a frog!
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/programs/science/pesticides/media/Harpers-on-atrazine-8-25-06.pdf
Evidence of political interference The A to Z Guide to Political
Interference in Science Run your mouse over the boxes and if you find something your interested in just click on it.
ttp://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html |
737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "NEMESIS:
The Last Days of the American Republic " (Metropolitan Books). By Chalmers Johnson 02/19/07 "ICH" -- - Once
upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military
base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial
"footprint" and the militarism that grows with it. It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our
empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According
to the Defense Department's annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure
Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations. The total of America's military bases in
other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit
of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up. Interestingly
enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 -- mostly air and naval
bases for our bombers and fleets -- almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial
zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia
to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring
to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty. Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats
calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the
gross domestic products of most countries -- and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base's
"worth" is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military
high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and
Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners. The worldwide
total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306
Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained
32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these
holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon
easily one of the world's largest landlords. These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the
actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or
Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in
1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton
Corporation of Houston. The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel,
Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf
and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations
at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey,
all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts
most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised
as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different
bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure. In some cases, foreign
countries themselves have tried to keep their U.S. bases secret, fearing embarrassment if their collusion with American imperialism
were revealed. In other instances, the Pentagon seems to want to play down the building of facilities aimed at dominating
energy sources, or, in a related situation, retaining a network of bases that would keep Iraq under our hegemony regardless
of the wishes of any future Iraqi government. The U.S. government tries not to divulge any information about the bases we
use to eavesdrop on global communications, or our nuclear deployments, which, as William Arkin, an authority on the subject,
writes, "[have] violated its treaty obligations. The U.S. was lying to many of its closest allies, even in NATO, about its
nuclear designs. Tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of bases, and dozens of ships and submarines existed in a
special secret world of their own with no rational military or even 'deterrence' justification." In Jordan, to take
but one example, we have secretly deployed up to five thousand troops in bases on the Iraqi and Syrian borders. (Jordan has
also cooperated with the CIA in torturing prisoners we deliver to them for "interrogation.") Nonetheless, Jordan continues
to stress that it has no special arrangements with the United States, no bases, and no American military presence. The
country is formally sovereign but actually a satellite of the United States and has been so for at least the past ten years.
Similarly, before our withdrawal from Saudi Arabia in 2003, we habitually denied that we maintained a fleet of enormous and
easily observed B-52 bombers in Jeddah because that was what the Saudi government demanded. So long as military bureaucrats
can continue to enforce a culture of secrecy to protect themselves, no one will know the true size of our baseworld, least
of all the elected representatives of the American people. In 2005, deployments at home and abroad were in a state
of considerable flux. This was said to be caused both by a long overdue change in the strategy for maintaining our global
dominance and by the closing of surplus bases at home. In reality, many of the changes seemed to be determined largely by
the Bush administration's urge to punish nations and domestic states that had not supported its efforts in Iraq and to reward
those that had. Thus, within the United States, bases were being relocated to the South, to states with cultures, as the Christian
Science Monitor put it, "more tied to martial traditions" than the Northeast, the northern Middle West, or the Pacific Coast.
According to a North Carolina businessman gloating over his new customers, "The military is going where it is wanted and valued
most." In part, the realignment revolved around the Pentagon's decision to bring home by 2007 or 2008 two army divisions
from Germany -- the First Armored Division and the First Infantry Division -- and one brigade (3,500 men) of the Second Infantry
Division from South Korea (which, in 2005, was officially rehoused at Fort Carson, Colorado). So long as the Iraq insurgency
continues, the forces involved are mostly overseas and the facilities at home are not ready for them (nor is there enough
money budgeted to get them ready). Nonetheless, sooner or later, up to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members will
have to be accommodated within the United States. The attendant 2005 "base closings" in the United States are actually a base
consolidation and enlargement program with tremendous infusions of money and customers going to a few selected hub areas.
At the same time, what sounds like a retrenchment in the empire abroad is really proving to be an exponential growth in new
types of bases -- without dependents and the amenities they would require -- in very remote areas where the U.S. military
has never been before. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was obvious to anyone who thought about it
that the huge concentrations of American military might in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea were no longer needed to
meet possible military threats. There were not going to be future wars with the Soviet Union or any country connected to any
of those places. In 1991, the first Bush administration should have begun decommissioning or redeploying redundant
forces; and, in fact, the Clinton administration did close some bases in Germany, such as those protecting the Fulda Gap,
once envisioned as the likeliest route for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. But nothing was really done in those years
to plan for the strategic repositioning of the American military outside the United States. By the end of the 1990s,
the neoconservatives were developing their grandiose theories to promote overt imperialism by the "lone superpower" -- including
preventive and preemptive unilateral military action, spreading democracy abroad at the point of a gun, obstructing the rise
of any "near-peer" country or bloc of countries that might challenge U.S. military supremacy, and a vision of a "democratic"
Middle East that would supply us with all the oil we wanted. A component of their grand design was a redeployment and streamlining
of the military. The initial rationale was for a program of transformation that would turn the armed forces into a lighter,
more agile, more high-tech military, which, it was imagined, would free up funds that could be invested in imperial policing. What
came to be known as "defense transformation" first began to be publicly bandied about during the 2000 presidential election
campaign. Then 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq intervened. In August 2002, when the whole neocon program began to
be put into action, it centered above all on a quick, easy war to incorporate Iraq into the empire. By this time, civilian
leaders in the Pentagon had become dangerously overconfident because of what they perceived as America's military brilliance
and invincibility as demonstrated in its 2001 campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda -- a strategy that involved reigniting
the Afghan civil war through huge payoffs to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance warlords and the massive use of American airpower
to support their advance on Kabul. In August 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unveiled his "1-4-2-1 defense
strategy" to replace the Clinton era's plan for having a military capable of fighting two wars -- in the Middle East and Northeast
Asia -- simultaneously. Now, war planners were to prepare to defend the United States while building and assembling forces
capable of "deterring aggression and coercion" in four "critical regions": Europe, Northeast Asia (South Korea and Japan),
East Asia (the Taiwan Strait), and the Middle East, be able to defeat aggression in two of these regions simultaneously, and
"win decisively" (in the sense of "regime change" and occupation) in one of those conflicts "at a time and place of our choosing."As
the military analyst William M. Arkin commented, "[With] American military forces ... already stretched to the limit, the
new strategy goes far beyond preparing for reactive contingencies and reads more like a plan for picking fights in new parts
of the world." A seemingly easy three-week victory over Saddam Hussein's forces in the spring of 2003 only reconfirmed
these plans. The U.S. military was now thought to be so magnificent that it could accomplish any task assigned to it. The
collapse of the Baathist regime in Baghdad also emboldened Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to use "transformation" to penalize
nations that had been, at best, lukewarm about America's unilateralism -- Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Turkey --
and to reward those whose leaders had welcomed Operation Iraqi Freedom, including such old allies as Japan and Italy but also
former communist countries such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. The result was the Department of Defense's Integrated Global
Presence and Basing Strategy, known informally as the "Global Posture Review." President Bush first mentioned it in
a statement on November 21, 2003, in which he pledged to "realign the global posture" of the United States. He reiterated
the phrase and elaborated on it on August 16, 2004, in a speech to the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in
Cincinnati. Because Bush's Cincinnati address was part of the 2004 presidential election campaign, his comments were not taken
very seriously at the time. While he did say that the United States would reduce its troop strength in Europe and Asia by
60,000 to 70,000, he assured his listeners that this would take a decade to accomplish -- well beyond his term in office --
and made a series of promises that sounded more like a reenlistment pitch than a statement of strategy. "Over the coming
decade, we'll deploy a more agile and more flexible force, which means that more of our troops will be stationed and deployed
from here at home. We'll move some of our troops and capabilities to new locations, so they can surge quickly to deal with
unexpected threats. ... It will reduce the stress on our troops and our military families. ... See, our service members will
have more time on the home front, and more predictability and fewer moves over a career. Our military spouses will have fewer
job changes, greater stability, more time for their kids and to spend with their families at home." On September 23,
2004, however, Secretary Rumsfeld disclosed the first concrete details of the plan to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
With characteristic grandiosity, he described it as "the biggest re-structuring of America's global forces since 1945." Quoting
then undersecretary Douglas Feith, he added, "During the Cold War we had a strong sense that we knew where the major risks
and fights were going to be, so we could deploy people right there. We're operating now [with] an entirely different concept.
We need to be able to do [the] whole range of military operations, from combat to peacekeeping, anywhere in the world pretty
quickly." Though this may sound plausible enough, in basing terms it opens up a vast landscape of diplomatic and bureaucratic
minefields that Rumsfeld's militarists surely underestimated. In order to expand into new areas, the Departments of State
and Defense must negotiate with the host countries such things as Status of Forces Agreements, or SOFAs, which are discussed
in detail in the next chapter. In addition, they must conclude many other required protocols, such as access rights for our
aircraft and ships into foreign territory and airspace, and Article 98 Agreements. The latter refer to article 98 of the International
Criminal Court's Rome Statute, which allows countries to exempt U.S. citizens on their territory from the ICC's jurisdiction. Such
immunity agreements were congressionally mandated by the American Service-Members' Protection Act of 2002, even though the
European Union holds that they are illegal. Still other necessary accords are acquisitions and cross-servicing agreements
or ACSAs, which concern the supply and storage of jet fuel, ammunition, and so forth; terms of leases on real property; levels
of bilateral political and economic aid to the United States (so-called host-nation support); training and exercise arrangements
(Are night landings allowed? Live firing drills?); and environmental pollution liabilities. When the United States
is not present in a country as its conqueror or military savior, as it was in Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II
and in South Korea after the 1953 Korean War armistice, it is much more difficult to secure the kinds of agreements that allow
the Pentagon to do anything it wants and that cause a host nation to pick up a large part of the costs of doing so. When not
based on conquest, the structure of the American empire of bases comes to look exceedingly fragile. See also: Chalmers
Johnson: ”The Last Days of the American Republic.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13602.htmFrom the book NEMESIS: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson. Reprinted by arrangement with Metropolitan
Books, an imprint of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright (c) 2006 by Chalmers Johnson. All rights reserved. http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e17123.htm
Mission Accomplished Video Shocking, honest, brave and an amazing eye-opener. Watch this movie if you
really want to know what's happening in Iraq. Shows both sides of the story about the insurgency war that you won't see
on TV. Critical of US policy, but sympathetic to the American soldiers on the ground. Historical movie. Click
here to watch. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13440.htm
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