“operation fruitcake”
Good one b. I don’t know if I can claim that on my taxes, though.
How about Fruitcakes Without Borders?
😉

Posted by: beq | Sep 2 2006 16:15 utc | 4

b – you live much more dangerously than i! 😉
thought this might be a good place to open up for discussion something annie, rick happ, beq, and i talked about earlier this week. (annie is away for the weekend, otherwise i expect that she would have written a comment to this effect.) if the amount of contributions that come in exceed the cost of the computer and monitor for r’giap, what does the group as a whole think about establishing an ongoing fund that would exist to help others in the community? i know this will require the assistance of bernhard or someone like bernhard to keep the paypal account active or to set up another one, but it seems likely that others among us will need angels. i can think of someone else whose computer seems to be acting up and it would another serious loss to moon if he was no longer able to post. although r’giap did not end up with my ibook, i will in time replace it with a new macbook and chances are that will coincide with that computer giving up the ghost. fortunately, everyone else seems healthy at the moment. so what say you, bernhard, and others – do you think this is a good idea or are we being overly ambitious?
also for those who are wondering – the monitor including shipping came to $276, i don’t have an actual number on the computer, but was told it would be about 1000 euros. i just made my first paypal installment and if, as some who have written to me directly have indicated, you do not feel comfortable with using paypal, feel free to send checks to me and i will make the payment for you and will send you the paypal email receipt. for those who are not in a position to contribute, it is clear that words of encouragement go a long way.
hope those in the u.s. enjoy a long labor day weekend.

Posted by: conchita | Sep 2 2006 16:56 utc | 6

There is a Reuters article today about a botched ceremony to officially have the U.S. military command in Iraq hand over control to the Iraqi Defense Ministry.
http://tinyurl.com/le5f4
Buried toward the end of the article is a reference to an agreement to be signed at the ceremony, which has now been postponed til tomorrow. I wonder if that is the official “Status of Forces Agreement” (SOFA) with Iraq. If so, it could be significant.
SOFAs are the instruments that define the terms and conditions on which the U.S. may base its forces in other countries at their invitation and agreement. How many troops, what kind, where they are located, what they can and can’t do, etc.

Posted by: maxcrat | Sep 2 2006 18:24 utc | 8

AMA Admits no studies were done on Fluoride Side Effects
The following letter from Dr. Flanagan, Assistant Director of the American Medical Association certainly makes clear that the AMA refuses to say that fluoridation is harmless and that no studies were ever done on fluoride side effects.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 2 2006 18:52 utc | 10

U.S. FDA in Third World Drug Trial Scandals
Experimental tests are conducted in developing countries on sick and vulnerable children under the guise of free and ethical treatments sanctioned by the FDA and complicit medical institutions.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 2 2006 19:17 utc | 12

btw, thanks for the market.com linked article re the lone ‘Eeyore’. Hard to beleive there’s only one right now.

Posted by: gylangirl | Sep 2 2006 19:33 utc | 14

Pat Lang offers an interesting opinion on todays NYT article, and a link to the recent pentagon report concerning civil war in Iraq. His comment in full, (my bold)
“Sectarian groups?”  What has been missing from the start of our Iraq venture has been a willingness to accept the idea that Iraq was and is a “state” but it has never been a “nation-state.”
In fact, the country created by international agreement after World War One remains what it always was – an artificial construct built on the land that was always just “Mesopotamia” before.
If there can be said to be an Iraqi People, then that “people” are the result of the more or less forced union of several ethno-religious nations over the last eighty odd years.  These people were subjected to “pressure cooker” efforts to develop “Iraqi Man.”  The schools were a major instrument in that effort.  Police and media pressure were used as well as all the other instruments of successive governments.  Progress toward “Iraqi Man” took place.  In some segments of the population, a self-awareness of being Iraqi rather than Sunni Arab, Kurd, Chaldean, Shia Arab, etc. took root.  This was most noticeable among army officers, the secular Shia and other more groups directly connected to the central government.
At the same time the masses of Iraqis retained their essential group identities in the categories now so familiar to us all.  These groups are closely tied to similar categories throughout the Islamic and Arab worlds;  Sunni, Shia, Kurdish, Turcoman, etc.
The Americans who launched the war in Iraq imagined that none of this was real.  Believing deeply in a Utopian vision of human social progress and inclined to think that Israel would be benefited by a Middle East no longer obsessed with a view of the world which involved a moiety of Muslims against all others, the American revolutionaries whom we generally call “neocons” openly called and still call for transformative westernization throughout the region.  I would include President Bush and Condoleeza Rice in this group.  It is unfashionable to call for “westernization” these days, so the rubrics of “democratization” and “globalization” are applied with the result that great and revolutionary outcomes have been expected from constitution writing and elections.  These mechanisms of democracy do not yield the results the “neocons” had hoped for because these mechanisms are not transformative.  They are merely expressive of what lies within the collective minds of the people voting.
What lies within the psyches of the peoples of Iraq is a belief that their communities are not “Iraq” as President Bush imagines it.  He believes that these peoples see themselves as individuals, acting as individuals within the polity of Iraq, but most of them see themselves in far older and more deeply rooted categories.
These categories are now engaged in combat on the dusty plains of Mesopotamia.  They are like lions fighting over the “kill” that our intervention has left for them.
Pat Lang
…………………………….
I’ve never seen that so succinctly put. That the template of “democratization”, or really, neo-colonialism in the shape of globalization — has never stood any more of a chance (in hell) of working in Iraq, than the former British outright colonial efforts — that they are bound to fail, structurally, by virtue of cultural ignorance and hubris. As Pat says, we have simply smashed down what mechanisms and remnants of nationalized state that have remained. And that the ensueing civil war is the food fight over that.

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 2 2006 19:44 utc | 16

grrr… me above #17

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 2 2006 19:49 utc | 18

@ Uncle Scam,
The protagonist unravels the mystery of his wifes death. She discovered a third world drug trial scandal.

Posted by: gylangirl | Sep 2 2006 21:55 utc | 20

The unintended results of the New World Order
…the “new world order” of the unintentional consequences of western aggression…
…it is not a world that was intended. It is a world in which the US has invented a fictional enemy that has generated a reality it will not be able to defeat and which may well drive it, cornered, into the mad frustration of a global war.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 3 2006 1:24 utc | 22

U.S. FDA in Third World Drug Trial Scandals
Experimental tests are conducted in developing countries on sick and vulnerable children under the guise of free and ethical treatments sanctioned by the FDA and complicit medical institutions.
The conduct of many NGO’s, foreign governments and organizations indicates that on almost every issue, the life of a child or person outside the Eurocentric territories is worth less or much less.
Some foreign parts are much less receptive to Eurocentric aid, NGO’s and efforts to “help” the people. And it is very disturbing to see how the Eurocentrics almost never perceive or understand why the “unwashed” would reject or be suspicious of their “help/aid”. It is a massive blind-spot and its a huge problem.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Sep 3 2006 3:10 utc | 24

Welcome to Neo-Fascism 101

the economic, political and cultural prerequisites of fascism do not exist in the Middle East – but they do exist in the United States. Our post-WWII, Information Age neo-fascism is much like the inter-war classical fascism but softer, lighter, friendlier. Today, instead of marching, we ritually demonstrate our political will on touch-screen pads, a ceremony organized by Party-backed corporations with secret software on private servers.
It’s a race: Will the future look like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a “dictatorship without tears” is founded upon psychotropic drugs, false religion and biological-sexual engineering? Or will it be a world of brute force like George Orwell’s 1984? “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” It will be both: A Brave New World for those who conform and 1984 for those who don’t. American fascism will both smile and grimace.
Neo-con pundits follow a clever strategy of deflection. They employ the term “Islamo-Fascism” when “theocracy” or “dictatorship” or “fundamentalist movement” would be more historically accurate. Why do they do this? Their political epithets are inspired by a subtle conditioning campaign.
Perhaps it’s subconscious projection. “Projection,” of course, is a defense mechanism that kicks when someone is threatened by, or afraid of, their own impulse. So they attribute these impulses to someone else. Do not be neo-conned. How can you help?
First, always replace the term “neo-conservatism” with “neo-fascism.”
Second, always charge those who use the term “neo-fascism” with anti-Semitism (because Arabs – most of whom are Muslims – are technically “Semitic,” too).
Third, remind people who use the term “Islamo-Fascism” that the term is historically inaccurate and that the main ingredients of classical fascism – 1) monopoly capitalism; 2) erosion of democracy; and 3) militant nationalism – are coming together in the United States like a Perfect Storm.

third world traveler: Fascism Watch

Posted by: b real | Sep 3 2006 3:36 utc | 26

came across this bit of reporting from robert fisk all the way back in 1977, where he was covering food riots in egypt

One after another, young policemen wearing gas masks ran forward, knelt on one knee and fired cannisters into the crowd. … One group of demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans, charging that all the tear gas came from the United States. Indeed, this appeared to be true. Every gas cannister which I picked up bore the words “CS 518–Federal Laboratories, Inc., Saltsburg, PA.”

gotta admire a journalist that’s been picking up weapons & fragments of weapons and reporting where they originated for such a long time now.

Posted by: b real | Sep 3 2006 4:44 utc | 28

Frank Rich’s column liberated here

FRANK RICH: Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis
PRESIDENT BUSH came to Washington vowing to be a uniter, not a divider. Well, you win some and you lose some. But there is one member of his administration who has not broken that promise: Donald Rumsfeld. With indefatigable brio, he has long since united Democrats, Republicans, generals and civilians alike in calling for his scalp.
Last week the man who gave us “stuff happens” and “you go to war with the Army you have” outdid himself. In an instantly infamous address to the American Legion, he likened critics of the Iraq debacle to those who “ridiculed or ignored” the rise of the Nazis in the 1930’s and tried to appease Hitler. Such Americans, he said, suffer from a “moral or intellectual confusion” and fail to recognize the “new type of fascism” represented by terrorists. Presumably he was not only describing the usual array of “Defeatocrats” but also the first President Bush, who had already been implicitly tarred as an appeaser by Tony Snow last month for failing to knock out Saddam in 1991.
What made Mr. Rumsfeld’s speech noteworthy wasn’t its toxic effort to impugn the patriotism of administration critics by conflating dissent on Iraq with cut-and-run surrender and incipient treason. That’s old news. No, what made Mr. Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.
Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia.
…

Posted by: b | Sep 3 2006 5:31 utc | 30

NYT Editorial: The Wrong Battle in Pakistan which concludes:

When General Musharraf comes to the United States, he loves to be lauded as a leader in the war on terrorism. Back home, his government too often acts like a garden-variety military dictatorship.

Not to NYT editors: Musharraf’s Pakistan does not ACT like a garden-variety military dictatorship, it IS one.

Posted by: b | Sep 3 2006 6:02 utc | 32

Es UK Ambssador to Usbekistan Craig Murray tells his story in a WaPo OpEd: Her Majesty’s Man in Tashkent

Two weeks later, a pathology report arrived. It said that the man’s fingernails had been pulled out, that he had been beaten and that the line around his torso showed he had been immersed in hot liquid. He had been boiled alive.
That was my welcome to Uzbekistan, a U.S. and British ally in the war on terror. Trying to tell the truth about the country cost me my job. Continuing to tell the truth about it dragged me into the Kafkaesque world of official censorship and gave me a taste of the kind of character assassination of which I once thought only a government like Uzbekistan’s was capable.
…
According to a press release distributed to local media by the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent in December 2002, the Karimov regime received more than $500 million in U.S. aid that year alone. That included $120 million for the Uzbek armed forces and more than $80 million for the re-branded Uzbek security services, successor to the KGB.
In other words, when the prisoner was boiled to death that summer, U.S. taxpayers had helped heat the water.
…
I spoke out despite a written rebuke I had received from my superiors in London, chastising me for being “over-focused on human rights.” Apparently, my job was to stand beside my U.S. colleague and support our Uzbek ally.
Danish journalist Michael Andersen later wrote of conversations he had had with U.S. diplomats in Uzbekistan the day after my remarks. “Murray is a finished man here,” one told him.
…
In the meantime, my superiors had new complaints against me. I had gone from “over-focused on human rights” to “unpatriotic,” according to my supervisor when he came to meet with me in March 2003. By August of that year, I was recalled from holiday in Canada to London, where I faced 18 reputation-wrecking allegations: I was an alcoholic; I was issuing visas in exchange for sex; I was taking bribes.
I was stunned by the speed of it all, even more when I was told by a junior staff member that under no circumstances could I tell anyone about these allegations. I could not call witnesses; I was banned from my embassy; and I would be told later of the results of the investigation.
…
When I tried to tell my story — Uzbekistan’s story — in a book, I was challenged by my government, which sought to suppress the information. The British government has an illustrious history of censoring books by former civil servants, at times even trying to ban them. In the effort to prevent a ban, I succumbed to censorship of particular passages.
…
These days I write, lecture and broadcast from London, where I live with my Uzbek girlfriend. The British government could no doubt prosecute me under our draconian Official Secrets Act, but I am confident they are too scared to have the facts of the case put before a jury.

Posted by: b | Sep 3 2006 6:32 utc | 34

Bernhard, I could imagine that the author meant the double digit unemployment figures and the ailing pension system. Nevertheless, if one can’t distinguish between the one and the other, one shouldn’t be working as a journo. On that note, considering the huge amounts of dollars thrown at the Rendon Group to provide ‘public relations products’, to feed the main stream media with spin, ranging from half truths to full on lies, it’s hard to believe that accuracy in reporting and tendency to double check the facts are selection criteria for editorial positions. The dollars wouldn’t be spend on such budget items as disinformation without there being a ready stable of businesses who live of making people believe just about anything.

Posted by: Feelgood | Sep 3 2006 6:37 utc | 36

@23:
So what’s he sayin’ — Insurgents learn from their mistakes? That guy can come up with more complex ways to say the obvious than even Rumsfeld. His shtick is to fit basic war insights into concepts from other fields. Whether that lends more insight into his goal of “defeating the bad Global Guerillas” is debateable. What is not, is that he shoehorns observation into theory, which is facile and ass-backwards. Look at his last post, “Playing With War.” What a load of sleepy bullet points pointing out the trite and often incorrect assumptions of everyone else. I’m always suspect of anyone who employs a page to define “stigmergy,” and then still uses hackneyed phrases like “Rogue Nations.” I mean where is the rigor to his thinking — or is it all rigormortis?
@24:
The conduct of many NGO’s, foreign governments and organizations indicates that on almost every issue, the life of a child or person outside the Eurocentric territories is worth less or much less.
I guess NYC has fallen outside the Eurocentric realm since I left.
@25: Architecture: Putting lipstick on the the pig of capitalist concentrated edifices. Gehry produces a nice shade — with its own sunscreen, I might add. After the’ve been bombed they’ll look like your lunch after you crumbled up the aluminum foil your sandwich was wrapped in.
@33:
Everyone finally wised up to the true nature of his “emergency” heart trip to London. Nothing sadder than a puppet no one listens to any longer.

Here’s how brazen Mr. Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Mr. Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia.

Seems Frank Rich hasn’t lost anything off his fastball.
And the “hypocritical country of the week” award goes to…..GERMANY! — for infecting US rice farmers with GMO rice when their own countryfolk won’t even eat the stuff, and for supplying Israel with two nuclear capable subs while, at the same time, publicly protesting Israel’s “disproportionate damage” inflicted on Lebanon. One thing about nuclear capable subs — they never inflict “disproportionate damage.” And all in one week.
Next week, Europe’s largest polluter learns from Bush how to let utilities pocket billions of marks of funny money while consumers are left holding the bag, and you get to advertise your faux green image.

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 3 2006 7:23 utc | 38

And the “hypocritical country of the week” award goes to…..GERMANY!
Make that “of the month” – at least …

Posted by: b | Sep 3 2006 8:16 utc | 40

Gideo Levy: Gaza’s darkness

Gaza has been reoccupied. The world must know this and Israelis must know it, too. It is in its worst condition, ever. Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza – there’s no other word to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately.
Nobody thinks about setting up a commission of inquiry; the issue isn’t even on the agenda. Nobody asks why it is being done and who decided to do it. But under the cover of the darkness of the Lebanon war, the IDF returned to its old practices in Gaza as if there had been no disengagement. So it must be said forthrightly, the disengagement is dead. Aside from the settlements that remain piles of rubble, nothing is left of the disengagement and its promises. How contemptible all the sublime and nonsensical talk about ‘the end of the occupation’ and ‘partitioning the land? now appears. Gaza is occupied, and with greater brutality than before. The fact that it is more convenient for the occupier to control it from outside has nothing to do with the intolerable living conditions of the occupied.
…
The events in Gaza expose the great fraud of Kadima: It came to power on the coattails of the virtual success of the disengagement, which is now going up in flames, and it promised convergence, a promise that the prime minister has already rescinded. Those who think Kadima is a centrist party should now know it is nothing other than another rightist occupation party. The same is true of Labor. Defense Minister Amir Peretz is responsible for what is happening in Gaza no less than the prime minister, and Peretz?s hands are as blood-soaked as Olmert’s. He can never present himself as a ‘man of peace’ again. The ground invasions every week, each time somewhere else, the kill and destroy operations from the sea, air and land are all dubbed with names to whitewash the reality, like ‘Summer Rains’ or ‘Locked Kindergarten.’ No security excuse can explain the cycle of madness, and no civic argument can excuse the outrageous silence of us all. Gilad Shalit will not be released and the Qassams will not cease. On the contrary, there is a horror taking place in Gaza, and while it might prevent a few terror attacks in the short run, it is bound to give birth to much more murderous terror. Israel will then say with its self-righteousness: ‘But we returned Gaza to them.’

Posted by: b | Sep 3 2006 8:48 utc | 42

Germany is about to see a major recession in 2007. They plan to try and reduce the government’s deficits by raising the VAT (sales tax) from 16% to 19%.
Means that the retail trade is humming right now, as people are moving up their major purchases to avoid the tax hike. But it also means that retail sales will drop off massively after the start of next year. And needless to say, no retailers are going to do any major hiring this year under this scenario.
Germany’s financial problems will not be solved by raising taxes. Here I even have to agree with Rush Limbaugh’s assertion that “no nation ever taxed itself into prosperity”.
Neither will just trimming away at all government outlays by 3%. They need to have a good hard look at the role that government plays in society and find ways to reduce it.
I don’t propose Thatcherization, but even most Germans are astounded by way that nearly every aspect of human interaction is covered by some rule, regulation, exemption to a rule or a rule excepting and revising an existing exemption.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Sep 3 2006 8:54 utc | 44

@Fellgood – about 3 and tumbling further – even the quite conservative equivilant to meet-the-press here thought to be in that range.
As for taxation – adding to the VAT is of course counterproductive. I definitly would argue for tax-increases on capital income and company profits. Those taxes have gone down very, very significantly over the last years always with promisses for “more investment” and “more employment”. This was of course a neoliberal recipe and it did not work. The Germany industry is well. Germany is exporting more in value than any other country in the world. Profits are at record hights – taxed and untaxed.
What is lacking is incountry consumption. No wonder – real wages have stagnated for years and pensions will be lower than expected. So people do save their money. Adding to the VAT is exactly the wrong thing to do in this configuration.
Even the conservatives are getting that by now. One of the conservative governers recently called for his party to stop dreaming of neolib successes and to get real. I.e. tax where the money is and not where it not is.

Posted by: b | Sep 3 2006 16:18 utc | 46

According to this AP article, the ceremony to transfer authority over military operations in Iraq from the U.S. to the Iraqi military, previously postponed from yesterday to today, has now been cancelled altogether over ongoing disagreements about roles and responsibilities. (Apologies for not making this a “live” link – still haven’t mastered that.)
http://tinyurl.com/eo3ku
“The ceremony, initially set for Saturday, was postponed to Sunday and then canceled altogether.
It was to have marked the formal transfer of control of Iraq’s armed forces to the government. The ministry and the country’s Joint Headquarters are to assume responsibility for the Iraqi Ground Forces Command, the Iraqi Air Force and the Iraqi Navy.”
Iraqi Air Force? Iraqi Navy? I didn’t realize they still had them.

Posted by: Maxcrat | Sep 3 2006 18:46 utc | 48

b,
I’m glad you took my gentle chiding with humor, as it was meant. I think what I am asking is that some of our European contributors spend a little more time explaining the lies and contradictions inherent in their own government’s policies, rather than everyone shooting at the big fat target, that is the US, all the time. Europe is capable of great evil itself while hiding behind the US’s coattails.
b is correct in calling for more corporate taxation and less VAT. VAT-type consumption taxes are by their nature regressive and best employed when a central change of consumption (i.e. from fossil fuels to renewables) is sought by a government — often with the tax revenues funding subsidies for the replacement commodity.
When discussing “red tape” one must distinguish between tiny, small, medium and large businesses. Otherwise it just becomes code for neo-liberal doing away with any government oversight for corporate depredation.
In the US, a small business might be $1-5 M in revenue, medium up to $50 M, and large anything above. A business like personal translation would be a micro-business, a sole proprietorship. Obviously different amounts of flexibility are needed with labor laws in such a personal endeavor. But, to extend that flexibility up to the corporate level, especially in light of their already lightened tax burden, would be a mistake — as the citizens of France recently showed.
I have run businesses from the micro to medium levels in the US. Generally, I have not found the regulation to be burdensome; oftentimes more might be expected. My state has new programs with “one-stop” licensing, where you can get all your licensing done in one place, at one time — this is a great help. Corruption at local levels is always an issue.
Occasionally, one falls into a Kafkaesque world, as I did several years ago while running a food coop with a liquor license in Massachusetts. Someone got a bee in their bonnet, and the liquor commision insisted on OK’ing every single display in the store, on an individual basis. I was allowed a case of red wine next to a display of pasta, but I was only allowed to place a case of champaign by the orange juice (for mimosas) on the weekend! And on, and on. It was quite a little game of cat and (hic!) mouse we had going.

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 3 2006 20:15 utc | 50

Warsaw Gaza doctors encounter ‘unexplained injuries’
The Independent
By Donald Macintyre in Gaza
Published: 04 September 2006

Doctors in Gaza are reporting what they say are unexplained injuries among the dead and wounded in operations by the Israeli military, which have killed more than 200 Palestinians in the past nine weeks.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is considering whether there is a case for an investigation into the injuries amid suspicions by the medics that the injuries were inflicted by what they claim may have been unidentified “non-conventional” weapons.
Beside especially severe burning “down to the bones”, the doctors say that, in other cases, internal organs have been ruptured without any obvious sign of shrapnel wounds.
While a report from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said the injuries raised the possibility Israel could be using “unprecedented” projectiles with “radiant” substances, the medics acknowledge that there is no proof so far of their claims. They also admit that the difficulty of establishing the exact cause of death is greatly exacerbated by the reluctance of most bereaved Palestinian families to allow autopsies.
Dr Juma al Saqqa, the director of public relations at Shifa Hospital, said the type of injuries presented by some victims were “very strange” and added: “We think this should be studied. In some cases we have opened the abdomen and found very fragmented organs.” He said this was despite X-rays showing no shrapnel lodged in the patients’ bodies. He said one, unsubstantiated suggestion by sympathetic doctors consulted in Italy was that some injuries might have been caused by phosphorus.
The concerns were aired at the weekend by a group of Palestinian medics during a visit to Gaza by a delegation from Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR). The delegation agreed to take away fragments of tissue from the bodies of Palestinians killed during the recent military operations in Gaza for possible analysis in Israel but urged the medics to seek an international investigation.
Dr Ambrogio Manenti, the head of the WHO’s West Bank and Gaza office, said the organisation had undertaken a short preliminary assessment of the claims and had now referred the issue to the organisation’s headquarters in Geneva so that it can decide whether fuller investigation was appropriate. The Israel Defence Forces said yesterday all its “weapons and ammunition are legal under international law and conform with international standards”. It said it could not respond in greater detail without more information about the injuries.
A leader of the PHR delegation, Professor Zvi Bentwich, said PHR was focusing on raising the numbers of patients allowed out of Gaza into Israel and Egypt for treatment and the relief of equipment and medicine shortages because of frequent closures of the main Karni crossing, and external training for Palestinian medical staff.
PHR is pressing the Israeli authorities to reduce the costs of patients being treated in Israel. Professor Bentwich said the denial of external specialist treatment to Palestinians was a denial “of the basic human right to health”.
He added that military operations since militants captured the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June had “exacerbated an already appalling situation”.The army said the attacks were aimed at releasing Cpl Shalit and halting the firing ofrockets into Israel.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 4 2006 8:25 utc | 52

About drug trials in 3rd world countries –
A friend of mine used to do medical research in such a country, and has told me about scandals connected with concealing the actual (unfavorable) results, perpetrated by the indigenous medical professionals, who fear loss of the influx of funds from the pharmaceutical company. In this way, the drug companies get less than what they pay for (since they would actually want accurate information) – but this is a hazard built into the situation, since the perceived self-interest of the people contracted to do the research conflicts with their responsibility to report the actual results. My friend was less bothered by that, and more bothered by the fact that the provision of care to the patients (poor children, in this case) was a distant third priority. But this is not just the 3rd world condition, or the multinational capitalism condition – this is the human condition. May the Creative Forces of the Universe have mercy on our souls, if any.

Posted by: mistah charley | Sep 4 2006 11:20 utc | 54

The audience (read: the British middle class) of BBC Radio 4’s news program, The World Tonight last week acquited Hizbollah of war crimes over the Lebanon crisis (43% guilty, therefore acquited), while Israel was pronounced guilty (can’t remember exact figure, but it was around 64%).
As we speak, the Radio 4 audience is getting tattoos done of the 4th Geneva Conventions on its collective pecs.
And as the Kool-Aid isn’t working anymore, Bliar has chosen to fall utterly silent on matters Middle Eastern, including Gaza, and is now going after babies in the womb instead.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Sep 4 2006 15:24 utc | 56

Coverage with Evidence Development. ? Never heard of it? Me neither, until today. It’s what they call this idea: if you want to be covered by Medicare, you’re forced to participate in medical research. The AMA approves (article abstract only). So much for informed consent. The Constant Gardener meets Kafka meets Josef Mengele. Welcome to …ahh fuck it.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 4 2006 21:07 utc | 58

paging werner herzog…
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin killed by stingray

Posted by: b real | Sep 5 2006 2:47 utc | 60

Median Income drops by state.
Impressive downtrend …

Posted by: b | Sep 5 2006 5:22 utc | 62

Carbon dioxide levels highest in 800.000 years

Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at anytime in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms. The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of frozen snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.
…
The ice core comes from a region of the White Continent known as Dome Concordia (Dome C). It has been drilled out by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica), a 10-country consortium.
The column’s value to science is the tiny pockets of ancient air that were locked into its millennia of accumulating snowflakes. Each slice of this now compacted snow records a moment in Earth history, giving researchers a direct measure of past environmental conditions.
Not only can scientists see past concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane – the two principal human-produced gases now blamed for global warming – in the slices, they can also gauge past temperatures from the samples, too.
This is done by analyzing the presence of different types, or isotopes, of hydrogen atom that are found preferentially in precipitating water (snow) when temperatures are relatively warm.
Initial results from the Epica core were published in 2004 and 2005, detailing the events back to 440,000 years and 650,000 years respectively. Scientists have now gone the full way through the column, back another 150,000 years.
The picture is the same: carbon dioxide and temperature rise and fall in step.
“Ice cores reveal the Earth’s natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range,” explained Dr Wolff.
The “scary thing”, he added, was the rate of change now occurring in CO2 concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order of 30 parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 years.
“The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really are in the situation where we don’t have an analogue in our records,” he said.

Nearly half of all fish eaten today farmed, not caught

Nearly half the fish consumed as food worldwide are raised on fish farms rather than caught in the wild, says a new report from FAO.
“The State of World Aquaculture 2006” was presented today Monday to delegates from more than 50 countries attending the biennial meeting of the FAO Sub-Committee on Aquaculture in New Delhi.
While in 1980 just 9% of the fish consumed by human beings came from aquaculture, today 43% does, the report shows.
That’s 45.5 million tonnes of farmed fish, worth 63 billion US dollars, eaten each year. (Currently, freshwater and marine capture fisheries produce 95 million tonnes annually, of which 60 million tonnes is destined for human consumption).
Globally, consumer demand for fish continues to climb, especially in affluent, developed nations which in 2004 imported 33 million tonnes of fish worth over 61 billion US dollars, 81% of all fish imports that year, in value terms.
But levels of captures of fish in the wild have remained roughly stable since the mid-1980s, hovering around 90-93 million tonnes annually. There is little chance of any significant increases in catches beyond these levels, FAO says.
The agency’s most recent global assessment of wild fish stocks found that out of the nearly 600 species groups it monitors, 52% are fully exploited while 25% are either overexploited (17%), depleted (7%) or recovering from depletion (1%). Twenty percent are moderately exploited, with just three percent ranked as underexploited.
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The agency’s report also points to doubts regarding future supplies of fishmeal and oil, used to feed carnivorous cultured species, such as salmon, grouper and sea bream.
Since 1985, world production of fishmeal and fish oil — manufactured using fish which are caught in large volumes but which are not consumed by humans — has stabilized at 6 to 7 million tonnes and one million tonnes, respectively.
While the vast bulk of fishmeal is used for livestock feed, chiefly by the poultry sector, aquaculture now accounts for 35% of the world’s fishmeal supply. So as aquaculture’s fishmeal needs grow, competition with terrestrial livestock for a limited resource will intensify, with ramifications for both price and availability.

Posted by: b real | Sep 5 2006 14:32 utc | 64

Just in time…
The hungry planet
Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. New figures show that this year’s harvest will fail to produce enough to feed everyone on Earth, for the sixth time in the past seven years.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 5 2006 16:42 utc | 66

wanna see something creepy?
trailer for the documentary jesus camp

Posted by: b real | Sep 5 2006 19:22 utc | 68

Monbiot: Don’t be fooled by this reform: the IMF is still the rich world’s viceroy

The glacier has begun to creak. In the world’s most powerful dictatorship we detect the merest hint of a thaw. I am not talking about China or Uzbekistan, Burma or North Korea. This state runs no torture chambers or labour camps. No one is executed, though plenty starve to death as a result of its policies. The unhurried perestroika is taking place in Washington, in the offices of the International Monetary Fund.
Like most concessions made by dictatorial regimes, the reforms seem designed not to catalyse further change, but to prevent it. By slightly increasing the shares (and therefore the voting powers) of China, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey, the regime hopes to buy off the most powerful rebel warlords, while keeping the mob at bay. It has even thrown a few coppers from the balcony, for the great unwashed to scuffle over. But no one – except the leaders of the rich nations and the leader writers of just about every newspaper in the rich world – could regard this as an adequate response to its problems.
The fund is a body with 184 members. It is run by seven of them – the US, Japan, Germany, the UK, France, Canada and Italy. These happen to be the seven countries that (with Russia) promised to save the world at the G8 meeting in 2005. The junta sustains its control by insisting that each dollar buys a vote. The bigger a country’s financial quota, the more say it has over the running of the IMF. This means that it is run by the countries that are least affected by its policies.
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Posted by: b | Sep 5 2006 19:48 utc | 70

Re: Jesus Camp. My SO’s niece living in Miami was going to a private preschool where they were pledging allegiance to the Christian flag of the US. The last I heard, her father wanted her out of that school.

Posted by: aw | Sep 5 2006 21:03 utc | 72

national security archive: New State Department Releases on the “Future of Iraq” Project

Washington, DC, September 1, 2006 – The National Security Archive is today posting State Department documents from 2002 tracing the inception of the “Future of Iraq Project,” alongside the final, mammoth 13-volume study, previously obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. “The Future of Iraq Project” was one of the most comprehensive U.S. government planning efforts for raising that country out of the ashes of combat and establishing a functioning democracy. The new materials complement previous postings on the Archive’s site relating to the United States’ complex relationship with Iraq during the years leading up to the 2003 invasion.
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The sample documents posted today were culled from 124 documents released in full and 77 with excisions from State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. These materials provide a behind-the-scenes look at the formation of 17 working groups consisting of “free” Iraqis and experts, 14 of which met throughout 2002 and early 2003 to plan for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

Posted by: b real | Sep 6 2006 3:07 utc | 74