"Martin Hart-Landsberg" - Globalization And Its Consequences

By Martin Hart-Landsberg

Global Research, June 22, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25360

Although capitalism has always been a global system, the international integration of production and finance and our dependence on cross-border activities seems greater than ever before. At the risk of oversimplifying, we now have a world system within which Latin America, Africa and the Middle East specialize in the production and export of primary commodities, increasingly to East Asia. East Asia operates as the world's manufacturing hub, exporting final products to the developed capitalist world, especially the United States. And the United States specializes in providing the finance that underpins the international production system and developed capitalist country consumption.

While this global system has done little for popular well-being, elites have clearly profited. As the Wall Street Journal reports:

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"Paul Joseph Watson" - New Study Finds Direct Link Between Vaccines and Infant Mortality

United States, which administers highest number of vaccines in developed world, also has highest number of infant deaths in developed world

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 23, 2011

http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-study-finds-direct-link-between-vaccines-and-infant-mortality.html

A shocking new study published in a prestigious medical journal has found a direct statistical link between higher vaccine doses and infant mortality rates in the developed world, suggesting that the increasing number of inoculations being forced upon children by medical authorities, particularly in the United States which administers the highest number of vaccines and also has the highest number of infant deaths, is in fact having a detrimental impact on health.

The study, entitled Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?, was conducted by Neil Z. Miller and Gary S. Goldman. It was published in the reputable Human and Experimental Toxicology journal, which is indexed by the National Library of Medicine.

According to his biography, “Goldman has served as a reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vaccine, AJMC, ERV, ERD, JEADV,and British Medical Journal (BMJ). He is included on the Editorial Board of Research and Reviews in BioSciences.”

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"Jon Terbush" - Record Number Of Americans Want Troops Out Of Afghanistan

Published on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 by TalkingPointsMemo

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/poll-support-for-immediate-withdrawal-from-afghanistan-hits-record-high.php

by Jon Terbush

One day ahead of an address to the nation in which President Obama will announce his plans for the nation's future involvement in Afghanistan, a Pew survey finds that a record high level of Americans now support an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Obama has faced mounting pressure from both the public and members of Congress to begin scaling back the country's presence in Afghanistan, particularly in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death. In the survey, 56% of respondents said they thought troops should come home "as soon as possible." At the same time, 39% said the military should remain until the situation in Afghanistan has stabilized, a record low in Pew's surveys.

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"Dina Cappiello" - Al Gore Blasts Obama On Climate Change For Failing To Take 'Bold Action'

WASHINGTON—Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists -- and fellow Democrats -- have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama's record on global warming.

Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists -- and fellow Democrats -- have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama's record on global warming. (File) In a 7,000-word essay for Rolling Stone magazine that will be published Friday, Gore says Obama has failed to stand up for "bold action" on global warming and has made little progress on the problem since the days of Republican President George W. Bush. Bush infuriated environmentalists for resisting mandatory controls on the pollution blamed for climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible.

While Gore credits Obama's political appointees with making hundreds of changes that have helped move the country "forward slightly" on the climate issue, and acknowledges Obama has been dealing with many other problems, he says the president "has simply not made the case for action."

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"Marla Cone" - Scientists warn that chemicals may be altering breast development

By Marla Cone

Editor in Chief

Environmental Health News

June 22, 2011

 http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/altered-mammary-glands/document_view

Exposure to chemicals early in life may alter how breast tissue develops and raise the risks of breast cancer and lactation problems later in life, scientists concluded in a set of reports published Wednesday.

The scientists are urging federal officials to add new tests for industrial chemicals and pesticides to identify ones that might disrupt breast development. In some cases, they said, mammary glands are more sensitive to effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals than any other part of the body, so low levels of exposure may be causing breast changes.

“Few chemicals coming into the marketplace are evaluated for these effects,” said one of the reports, based on the findings of more than 60 scientists who convened a workshop in Oakland, Calif., in 2009.

Although many experts have long debated the role of the environment in breast cancer, the possibility that chemicals are changing how and when breasts develop is a relatively new concern for scientists.

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"Ethan A. Huff" - More farmers going organic to improve soil, save energy, and produce better food

by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

http://naturalnews.com

(NaturalNews) Conventional farming methods may gradually be going the way of the buffalo, at least for many smaller-scale farmers who are discovering the practical and financial benefits of switching to organic techniques. The Morning Call (TMC) reports that many dairy farmers are making the transition to organic because they are realizing it is better for their herds, better for the land, better for consumers, and ultimately better for business.

When James Burkholder, a Pennsylvania dairy farmer, made the decision to switch his dairy herd of 60 conventional cows to organic, it was almost a no-brainer. The conventional dairy market has seen profitability wane considerably in recent years, and Burkholder told reporters that he and his family had considered starting a new business altogether because it was almost no longer worth their while -- that is, until they discovered the benefits of operating an organic dairy farm.

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Times of India: Junk food destroys brain cells

Times of India | Jun 22, 2011, 05.53pm IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Junk-food-destroys-brain-cells/articleshow/8951935.cms

A study has found that eating too much of fatty junk food destroys the brain cells that control weight, leading to a vicious circle of obesity.

Researchers fed rats what they described as a "typical high-fat American diet" and found they had doubled their calorie intake three days later.

It also showed they had an inflammation in the hypothalamus, the part of the brain containing neurons that control body weight, and though the inflammation stopped a few days later, it recurred after four weeks.

Lead researcher Dr Joshua Thaler, of the Diabetes and Obesity Centre of Excellence at the University of Washington in Seattle, said scientists also detected a healing response to brain injury called gliosis.

"Gliosis is thought to be the brain equivalent of wound healing and is typically seen in conditions of neuronal injury, such as stroke and multiple sclerosis," the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.

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"Barry Estabrook" - Why Supermarket Tomatoes Suck

By Barry Estabrook

Onearth, June 13, 2011

http://www.onearth.org/article/tomatoland-book-excerpt

Excerpted from the new book "Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit"

In Vermont, where I live, as in much of the rest of the United States, a gardener can select pretty much any sunny patch of ground, dig a small hole, put in a tomato seedling, and come back two months later and harvest something. Not necessarily a bumper crop of plump, unblemished fruits, but something. When I met Monica Ozores-Hampton, a vegetable specialist with the University of Florida, I asked her what would happen if I applied the same laissez-faire horticultural practices to a tomato plant in Florida. She shot me a sorrowful, slightly condescending look and replied, "Nothing."

"Nothing?" I asked.

"There would be nothing left of the seedling," she said. "Not a trace. The soil here doesn’t have any nitrogen, so it wouldn’t have grown at all. The ground holds no moisture, so unless you watered regularly, the plant would certainly die. And, if it somehow survived, insect pests, bacteria, and fungal diseases would destroy it." How can it be, then, that Florida is the source for one-third of the fresh tomatoes Americans eat? How did tomatoes become the Sunshine State’s most valuable vegetable crop, accounting for nearly one-third of the total revenue generated?

From a purely botanical and horticultural perspective, you would have to be an idiot to attempt to commercially grow tomatoes in a place like Florida. The seemingly insurmountable challenges start with the soil itself. Or more accurately, the lack of it. Although an area south of Miami has limestone gravel as a growing medium, the majority of the state’s tomatoes are raised in sand. Not sandy loam, not sandy soil, but pure sand, no more nutrient rich than the stuff vacationers like to wiggle their toes into on the beaches of Daytona and St. Pete. "A little piece of loam or clay would go a long way," said Ozores-Hampton. "But, hello? -- this is just pure sand." In that nearly sterile medium, Florida tomato growers have to practice the equivalent of hydroponic production, only without the greenhouses.

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"Patrick Bond" - Climate Meetings Have Become Conferences of Polluters

By PATRICK BOND

http://counterpunch.org/bond06212011.html

Judging by what transpired at last week’s global climate negotiations in the former West German capital, Bonn, it appears certain that in just over five months time, the South African port city of Durban will host a conference of procrastinators, the ‘COP 17’ (Conference of Parties), dooming the earth to the frying pan. Further inaction on climate change will leave our city’s name as infamous for elite incompetence and political betrayal as is Oslo’s in the Middle East.

It appears certain that Pretoria’s alliance with Washington, Beijing, New Delhi and Brasilia, witnessed in the shameful 2009 Copenhagen Accord, will be extended to other saboteurs of the Kyoto Protocol, especially from Ottawa, Tokyo and Moscow, along with Brussels and London carbon traders.

What everyone now predicts is a conference of paralysis. Not only will the Kyoto Protocol be allowed to expire at the end of its first commitment period (2012). Far worse, Durban will primarily be a conference of profiteers, as carbon trading – the privatization of the air, giving rich states and companies the property-right to pollute – is cemented as the foundation of the next decade’s global climate malgovernance.

Indeed, a telling diplomatic move in Bonn was when Pretoria negotiators, weighed down by team members from maxi-polluters Eskom, Sasol and the National Business Initiative, tried to break African solidarity against European Union plans for opening up new carbon markets (in exchange for Europe emitting much more GreenHouse Gas pollution) – instead of doing the honorable thing by paying the EU’s vast climate debt to Africa straight up.

A local alignment is now approaching in which on the one hand Pretoria’s Bantustan-type politicians and officials will legitimize ‘climate apartheid’ once the COP17 begins at the Durban International Convention Centre, at the same time they support every homegrown, climate-destroying action in sight:

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"Conn Hallinan" - The Traumatic Brain Injury Epidemic

By CONN HALLINAN

http://counterpunch.org/hallinan06212011.html

"We are facing a massive mental health problem as a result of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a country we have not responded adequately to the problem. Unless we act urgently and wisely, we will be dealing with an epidemic of service related psychological wounds for years to come."

Bobby Muller, President Veterans for America

"The multiple nature of it [multiple tours and longer deployments] is unprecedented. People just get blasted and blasted and blasted."

Maj. Connie Johnmeyer, 332nd Medical Group

According to official Defense Department (DOD) figures, 332,000 soldiers have suffered brain injuries since 2000, although most independent experts estimate that the number is over 400,000. Many of these are mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI), a term that is profoundly misleading.

As David Hovda, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, points out, "I don't know what makes it 'mild,' because it can evolve into anxiety disorders, personality changes, and depression." It can also set off a constellation of physical disabilities from chronic pain to sexual dysfunction and insomnia.

MTBI is defined as any incident that produces unconsciousness lasting for up to a half hour or creates an altered state consciousness. It is the signature wound for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs are the principal weapon for insurgents.

Most soldiers recover from mTBI, but between five and 15 percent do not. According to Dr. Elaine Peskind of the University of Washington Medical School, "The estimate of the number who returned with symptomatic mild traumatic brain injury due to blast exposure has varied from the official VA [Veterans Administration] number of 9 percent officially diagnosed with mTBI to over 20 percent, and, I think, ultimately it will be higher than that."

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