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Forging his way through the predictable UK media censorship: Dr Andrew Wakefield Responds to Measles Outbreak in Swansea
June 20, 2011 By Washington's Blog
Global Research, June 20, 2011
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25318
We've been told that 9/11 changed everything.
Is it true?
Let's look at the facts:
June 20, 2011 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — President Barack Obama may have been in Puerto Rico for only four hours, but his brief fundraising visit has unleashed a growing political furor in this U.S. Caribbean territory.
Legislators of Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood ruling party say they are resentful that he swooped in to raise about $1 million and did not offer any help or solutions as the island battles a soaring crime rate and higher unemployment compared with any U.S. state.
One legislator threatened to derail one objective of the president’s June 14 visit: to woo Hispanic voters on the mainland in his quest for re-election.
June 20, 2011 By MARTHA ROSENBERG
http://counterpunch.org/rosenberg06172011.html
The discovery that many people with life problem or occasional bad moods would willingly dose themselves with antidepressants sailed the drug industry through the 2000s. A good chunk of the $4.5 billion a year direct-to-consumer advertising has been devoted to convincing people they don't have problems with their job, the economy and their family, they have depression. Especially because depression can't be diagnosed from a blood test.
Unfortunately, three things dried up the depression gravy train for the drug industry. Blockbusters went off patent and generics took off, antidepressants were linked with gory and unpredictable violence, especially in young users and -- they didn't even work, according to medical articles!
That's when the drug industry began debuting the concept of "treatment resistant depression." It wasn't that their drugs didn't work (or you didn't have depression in the first place), you had "treatment resistant depression." Your first expensive and dangerous drug needed to be coupled with more expensive and dangerous drugs because monotherapy, one drug alone, wasn't doing the trick!
June 20, 2011
Food prices will soar by as much as 30% over the next 10 years, the United Nations and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have predicted.
Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the OECD, said that any further increase in global food prices, which have risen by 40% over the past year, will have a "devastating" impact on the world's poor and is likely to lead to political unrest, famine and starvation. "People are going to be forced either to eat less or find other sources of income."
The joint UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and OECD report predicted that the cost of cereals is likely to increase by 20% and the price of meat, particularly chicken, may soar by up to 30%.
World food prices are already at a near-record high as droughts and floods threaten to seriously damage this year's harvest. The report said the global harvest is in a "critical" condition and warned that prices will continue to rise until depleted stocks are rebuilt.
June 20, 2011 An abiding belief in American exceptionalism is more or less ubiquitous across the political spectrum. But in many ways, what makes America different from other advanced democracies are relatively modest differences in priorities. While all wealthy democracies share the same basic model --they derive the bulk of their economic activity from the private sector while offering some form of social safety net for those who fall through the cracks -- even slight differences in priorities can have a huge impact on the lives of their people.
Here are 9 countries that do a better job providing for their citizens than we do.
June 20, 2011 The New York Times reports on Justice Clarence Thomas’ longstanding — and highly fruitful — relationship with a leading conservative donor named Harlan Crow. Crow has donated nearly $5 million to Republican candidates and conservative organizations, including $100,000 to the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — and he has also been very generous to the Thomas family:
The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas. [...]
Mr. Crow has not personally been a party to Supreme Court litigation, but his companies have been involved in federal court cases, including four that went to the appellate level. And he has served on the boards of two conservative organizations involved in filing supporting briefs in cases before the Supreme Court. One of them, the American Enterprise Institute, with Mr. Crow as a trustee, gave Justice Thomas a bust of Lincoln valued at $15,000 and praised his jurisprudence at an awards gala in 2001.
June 20, 2011 http://www.opednews.com/articles/Ron-Paul-Champion-of-gree-by-Brent-Budowsky-110618-466.html
June 18, 2011
By Brent Budowsky
The good news for Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is that more than any other Republican, he has defined the debate from the Republican side. Give him credit. The bad news about Dr. Paul is that for practical purposes he is the Ayn Rand champion for the most greedy big banks, job destroyers and job exporters. The worst news for American consumers, American workers and American jobs is that Dr. Paul's Ayn Rand philosophy is an epic financial and human tragedy for them. Ron Paul is an Ayn Rand libertarian, but not a populist. In fact, Paul is the anti-populist apologist for the worst abuses of Gilded Age greed. He wants these abuses to continue in the name of a fictional free market that no longer exists. He cheers while these abuses flourish in what Paul calls liberty but in fact is the liberty of the greed of the few to cheat and abuse the rights and hopes of the many. Dr. Paul means well, but fails to understand that monopoly is not liberty. Oligopoly is not freedom. Ripping off homeowners and borrowers is not liberty or freedom, it is ripping off homeowners and borrowers in a market that is not free when consumers are not given real choices. Exporting jobs is not liberty; laying off workers is not freedom; destroying the rights of workers is not liberty; free trade with slave wage nations is not liberty or freedom.
June 20, 2011 The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal – Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya.
You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled Libya, the destruction of Gadhafi's family compound and tent encampment in the desert--killing his son and three grandchildren--and the deployment of special forces inside Libya is not a "War." It is in the Obama White House's evasive nomenclature just a "time-limited, scope-limited military action" Can you find that phrase in the Constitution?
If Obama used the word "War," he would have a more difficult time explaining to Congress and the American people (three out of four oppose this war) why he did not (1) seek a declaration of war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, or (2) seek Congressional authorization for appropriated funds to further the war with our NATO co-warriors, or (3) comply with the deadlines of the War Powers Resolution. He threw all three lawful restraints on his Presidential unilateralism overboard.
June 20, 2011 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/18-4
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. Good news for investors whose investments have gone south comes from unlikely sources. Libya is one of them and Goldman Sachs another. The news is certain to convince many that there is no better manager of their money than that fabled institution that was saved from extinction by the taxes we pay that were given to Goldman Sachs when it was in distress. Its benevolence, when recognized by other investors, will certainly cause millions to begin investing with Goldman. Here, according to the Wall Street Journal is what happened. In early 2008 Libya gave Goldman $1.3 billion to invest. (That was one year before Goldman received $12.9 billion of taxpayer bailout funds that it said it did not need because it was “always fully collateralized and hedged.”) It was before Gadhafi had begun publicly slaughtering his citizens and was, therefore, still considered a good friend by most western countries and by investment banks such as Goldman and other large financial institutions. Unfortunately for Libya (and Goldman as it turned out) Goldman was less successful in its management of Libya’s funds than its reputation led Libya to believe it would be. Goldman engaged in 9 equity trades and one currency transaction that led to the spectacular result that within a few months the $1.3 billion Libya had given Goldman had lost 98% of its value. By the first half of 2009 the fund was worth approximately $25 million. Libya was distressed at its loss. According to the WSJ Libya was so disappointed that following a less than cordial meeting between the Libyan fund manager and two Goldman executives who had travelled to Libya to express the equivalent of their condolences, Goldman thought it prudent to hire armed guards to protect the executives until they could get out of town. The meeting had not, it would seem, gone well but it was not the end of Goldman’s attempts to make amends and subsequent efforts are what bode well for other Goldman investors.
—Henry David Thoreau, Higher Laws
June 20, 2011 http://www.opednews.com/articles/Gaza-Cradle-of-Killing--by-Ray-McGovern-110618-700.html
June 18, 2011
By Ray McGovern
Stuffing my backpack before setting out to board "The Audacity of Hope," the U.S. boat to Gaza, I got a familiar-sounding call from yet another puzzled friend, who said as gently as the words allow, "You know you can get killed, don't you?" I recognize this caution as an expression of genuine concern from friends. From some others -- who don't much care about Gaza's plight and/or who do not wish us well -- the words are phrased somewhat differently: "Aren't you just asking for it?" That was the obligatory question/accusation at the end of a recent interview with me that was taped for a BBC-TV special scheduled to air this coming week as we try to break -- or at least draw attention to -- Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza and the suffering it inflicts on the people there. I also have been cautioned by a source with access to very senior staffers at the National Security Council that not only does the White House plan to do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White House officials "would be happy if something happened to us." They are, I am reliably told, "perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of activists shown on American TV." I mention this informal warning for the benefit of anyone who may have harbored hope that the U.S. government would do something to protect us American citizens from the kind of violence used by the Israelis against last year's flotilla. It seems best to be up front and realistic about what to expect.
