"Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall" - Wyeth and the Multibillion Dollar Menopause Industry

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Wyeth-and-the-Multibillion-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110401-592.html

April 1, 2011

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

I have written previously (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Marketing-Serotonin-Defici-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-100713-513.html) about the ingenious -- and deadly -- strategy by pharmaceutical companies of inventing fictitious illnesses to market highly profitable drugs that allegedly "treat" them. The technical terms for this are "medicalizing" or "disease mongering." Dr Marcia Angell, in her 2004 The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It, also talks about "generalized anxiety disorder," "erectile dysfunction," "premenstrual dysphoric disorder," and "gastro-esophogeal reflux disorder (heartburn)" as examples of common complaints that drug companies have reinvented as chronic illnesses requiring lifelong treatment (see http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/171/12/1451).

Click to read more ...

"Rob Edwards" - Mounting Alarm Over US Use of Depleted Uranium Arms in Libya

Published on Sunday, April 3, 2011 by the Sunday Herald/ Scotland

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/mounting-alarm-over-us-use-of-depleted-uranium-arms-in-libya-1.1094257

by Rob Edwards

The countries involved in air strikes on Colonel Gaddafi’s forces in Libya are coming under pressure to ban the use of toxic depleted uranium (DU) weapons because of the dangers they could pose to civilians.

The US has refused to rule out the use of DU shells in Libya, though it claims not to have fired any so far.

“I don’t want to speculate on what may or may not be used in the future,” the US air force spokeswoman, Paula Kurtz, said yesterday.

The US admitted using A-10 tankbuster aircraft designed to destroy armoured cars and tanks, and which are capable of firing 3,900 armour-piercing DU-tipped shells per minute.

Click to read more ...

"Ari Bermaan" - Meet Jim Messina, Obama's 'Enforcer' Against Progressives

By Ari Berman, The Nation
Posted on April 1, 2011, Printed on April 3, 2011
http://www.thenation.com

In March 2009 the Campaign for America’s Future, a top progressive group in Washington, launched a campaign called “Dog The (Blue) Dogs” to pressure conservative Blue Dog Democrats to support President Obama’s budget. When he heard about the effort, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, who was regarded as the Obama administration’s designated “fixer,” called CAF’s leaders into the White House for a dressing down, according to a CAF official. If the group wanted to join the Common Purpose Project, an exclusive weekly strategy meeting between progressive groups and administration officials, CAF had to drop the campaign. We know how to handle the Blue Dogs better than you do, Messina said. Not wanting to sour its relationship with the White House at this early date, CAF complied, and the campaign quickly disappeared from its website. Despite Messina’s assurance, however, the Blue Dogs would remain a major obstacle to the realization of the president’s legislative agenda.

Click to read more ...

"Darren Samuelsohn" - Barack Obama's on Thin Green Ice

Published on Saturday, April 2, 2011 by Politico.com

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/52406.html

by Darren Samuelsohn

President Barack Obama's relationship with environmentalists sits on thin ice after a major league meltdown over whether he will really defend their biggest demand: EPA climate change rules.

Tensions have crossed into the danger zone between the two camps after a year of cross-ups, including the failure to get a cap-and-trade bill through the Senate and Obama’s embrace of what historically have been green no-no’s like oil drilling and nuclear power.

Angst grew this week after Obama failed to use a major energy policy speech at Georgetown University to explicitly back the EPA's global warming agenda. Then, in what might have begun as a misunderstanding over acronyms, the AP reported that the president was leaning on House Democrats to accept a GOP-authored budget rider that would thwart EPA's greenhouse gas regulations.

The White House furiously denied the story, but the fate of the budget debate over the next eight days could govern the relationship between the administration and environmental community through the 2012 election.

Click to read more ...

"Russell Mokhiber" - How Milton Friedman and Chicago Economics Undermined America

Published on Saturday, April 2, 2011 by Corporate Crime Reporter

http://corporatecrimereporter.com/realityignored04022011.htm

by Russell Mokhiber

Here’s the thing about the Chicago School of Economics – it wasn’t always this way.

Chicago School now means – market good, government bad.

But that was Chicago School hijacked by Milton Friedman, Robert Bork, and Richard Posner.

There was a Chicago School before Friedman, Bork and Posner.

“The Chicago School began with the view that in order to have a properly functioning free market, the government must drastically curtail the ability of businesses to build and maintain concentrated economic power,” writes Kenneth Davidson in his new book Reality Ignored: How Milton Friedman and Chicago Economics Undermined American Institutions and Endangered the Global Economy (2011).

Click to read more ...

"Gary Null" - The New American Folly in Libya

What happens when we extend the logic and beliefs of Ed Schultz and others, including Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell, who accept Obama’s rationale for intervening militarily in Libya, which mirror those of the neocons and personalities like O’Reilly and Hannity on the radical right? For the reason that Gaddafi was responsible for the bombing of the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, killing 259 passengers, we are being told that arming, funding and training any opposition factions in Libya is perfectly justified. But then, is it not also true by that same logic that any civilians or innocent bystanders that were killed, tortured or disappeared as a direct result of America’s interventions in other nations are also justified to attack Americans and US interests globally? It is this old adage of “an eye for an eye” reactionary posturing that repeatedly leads us into multiple disasters, wars, revolutions, regime changes and a trail of failed foreign policies.

Click to read more ...

“Dr. Mercola” - How Western Diets Are Making the World Sick

Dr. Mercola

March 31 2011

http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2011/03/31/how-western-diets-are-making-the-world-sick.aspx

Physician Kevin Patterson noticed something during his work as an internist-intensivist at the Canadian Combat Surgical Hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The Afghan soldiers, police and civilians he treated had very different bodies from those of the Canadians he treated in his home country.

The organs of the Canadians, Americans, and Europeans he treated were encased in fat.  Afghan civilians and soldiers had little or no fat or adipose tissue underneath the skin. Patterson has become convinced that the effects of urbanization are making people everywhere in the world both fatter and sicker.

According to NPR:

“[Patterson] explains that the increase in abdominal fat has driven the epidemic of diabetes over the last 40 years in the developed world -- and that he's now seeing similar patterns in undeveloped regions that have adapted Western eating patterns.”



“Dr. Mercola” - Foods with Scary Surprises

Dr. Mercola

March 31 2011

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/03/31/foods-with-scary-surprises.aspx

The FDA has established guidelines for a number of contaminants that it will allow in our food supply. Mainstreet.com has assembled a list of some of the most common products for which the FDA has set contamination thresholds. Here's just a taste of what they found:

Potato Chips The FDA only takes action when 6 percent or more of chips show rot from pre- or post-harvest infection.

Tomatoes Acceptable levels of mold contamination go as low as 15 percent in canned tomatoes to as high as 45 percent for ketchup. And the FDA allows up to 30 fly eggs per every 100 grams of tomato sauces, or up to two maggots per every 100 grams of tomato juice.

Click to read more ...

“BW” - President George W. Bush, Mrs. Laura Bush, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Other Leaders Discuss Human Freedom and Economic Opportunity for Afghan Women at Bush Institute Conference

Business Wire

March 31, 2011

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110331006368/en/President-George-W.-Bush-Mrs.-Laura-Bush

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A decade ago, when Mrs. Laura Bush delivered her historic radio address calling attention to the plight of women and children suffering under the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were banned from the workforce and prohibited from gaining an education. Today, women represent 26 percent of all Afghan civil servants, 24 percent of government-media workers, 21 percent of private-media workers, and 24 percent of all Community Development Council members.¹ They also make up 28 percent of teachers at the primary and secondary level.² Many Afghan women are now employed as university professors, doctors, lawyers, judges, and police officers.

Click to read more ...

“Jim Kouri” - Rep. Issa grilling homeland security officials today

Jim Kouri

March 31st, 2011

http://www.examiner.com/law-enforcement-in-national/rep-issa-grilling-homeland-security-officials-today-1

Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, will hold a public hearing today with ranking members of the Department of Homeland Security to discuss the agency's handling of its disclosure responsibilities.

Several news organizations and public-interest groups have complained that DHS allows political appointees to play a pivotal role in prioritizing or censoring information it is required to release under the agency’s Freedom of information Act (FOIA) guidelines.

Even lawmakers have complained about the DHS's handling of FOIA requests. After Rep. Issa began chairing the committee in January, his first act was to request that DHS officials to submit to his office thousands of pages of records, memoranda, and emails between agency officials.

Click to read more ...