7,300 Palestinians in Israeli jails

 

Israeli soldiers take a young boy into custody by force.‎

 

7,300 Palestinians, including 17 legislators and two former ministers, are currently detained in about 20 Israeli prisons, a report says.

Hundreds of them have never been charged or put on trial.

Among the detained are 33 women, nearly 300 children, 296 administrative detainees, and dozens of political leaders, Palestinian researcher Abdul Nasser Farawna said in a report issued on Monday.

Farawana, who specializes in detainee affairs, said that 1,500 of them are ill and need urgent medical attention and dozens need surgeries and hospitalization, but no action has been taken by the Israeli authorities.

The detainees are held in about twenty prisons and detention and interrogation centers, mainly in Ramon, Shatta, Galboa, Asqalan, Hadarim, Al-Damoun, Be'er Sheva, Ofer, Majoddo, and the Negev detention camp, he added.

He went on to say that 83 percent of the detainees are from the West Bank, 10.6 percent are from Gaza, while the rest are Arab residents of Israel and other Arab nationals.

Jail terms range from 10 years to life sentences, Farawna, who is also a former detainee, explained.

Political figures like Nael al-Barghouthi, Fakhri al-Barghouthi, and Akram Mansour have been in prison for over 30 years.

 

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=132472&sectionid=351020202

Through the Wormhole: The Secret State's Mad Scheme to Control the Internet

by Tom Burghardt

Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once famously wrote that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." A century later, radical French philosopher Michel Foucault turned Clausewitz on his head and declared that "politics is the continuation of war by other means."

In our topsy-turvy world where truth and lies coexist equally and sociopathic business elites reign supreme, it would hardly be a stretch to theorize that cyber war is the continuation of parapolitical crime by other means.

Through the Wormhole

In Speed and Politics, cultural theorist Paul Virilio argued that "history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems." With electronic communications now blanketing the globe, it was only a matter of time before our political masters, (temporarily) outflanked by the subversive uses to which new media lend themselves, would deploy what Virilio called the "integral accident" (9/11 being one of many examples) and gin-up entirely new categories of threats, "Cyber Pearl Harbor" comes to mind, from which of course, they would "save us."

That the revolving door connecting the military and the corporations who service war making is a highly-profitable redoubt for those involved, has been analyzed here at great length. With new moves to tighten the screws on the immediate horizon, and as "Change" reveals itself for what it always was, an Orwellian exercise in public diplomacy, hitting the "kill switch" serves as an apt descriptor for the new, repressive growth sector that links technophilic fantasies of "net-centric" warfare to the burgeoning "homeland security" market.

Back in March, Wired investigative journalist Ryan Singel wrote that the "biggest threat to the open internet" isn't "Chinese hackers" or "greedy ISPs" but corporatist warriors like former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.

Having retreated to his old haunt as a senior vice president with the ultra-spooky firm Booz Allen Hamilton (a post he held for a decade before joining the Bush administration), McConnell stands to make millions as Booz Allen's parent company, the secretive private equity powerhouse, The Carlyle Group, plans to take the firm public and sell some $300 million worth of shares, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

"With its deep ties to the defense establishment" the Journal notes, "Booz Allen has become embedded in a range of military operations such as planning war games and intelligence initiatives." That Carlyle Group investors have made out like proverbial bandits during the endless "War on Terror" goes without saying. With "relatively low debt levels for a leveraged buyout," the investment "has been a successful one for Carlyle, which has benefited from the U.S. government's increasing reliance on outsourcing in defense."

And with 15,000 employees in the Washington area, most with coveted top secret and above security clearances, Booz Allen's clients include a panoply of secret state agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, NSA and the U.S. Air Force. With tentacles enlacing virtually all facets of the secretive world of outsourced intelligence, the firm has emerged as one of the major players in the cybersecurity niche market.

While McConnell and his minions may not know much about "SQL injection hacks," Singel points out that what makes this spook's spook dangerous (after all, he was NSA Director under Clinton) "is that he knows about social engineering. ... And now he says we need to re-engineer the internet."

Accordingly, Washington Technology reported in April, that under McConnell's watchful eye, the firm landed a $14.4 million contract to build a new bunker for U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM). Chump change by Pentagon standards perhaps, but the spigot is open and salad days are surely ahead.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19934

An important speech by Senator Al Franken

By Ed Tubbs

 

The Fourth is nearly upon us.

Contrary to overwhelming belief, July 4 is not the birthday of the United States of America. The actual date the US could be said to have been "born" was with George Washington's first Oath of Office, April 30, 1789. It was on that date The United States of America was first open for business.

What many also do not realize was that Washington was the presiding officer at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, when and where The United States of America was put to paper as a civil, governing idea and entity.

However the country has failed often, too often utterly, to live to the European Enlightenment ideals that are the premise and predicate behind the Constitution, the premise and the predicate we claim to strive to live to can be summed in one word: JUSTICE. And the justice we strive after is for all within our jurisdiction, not only within our borders. I submit that when justice fails to preside over any, it fails to preside at all, and that it is incumbent upon each of us to do what we can to correct the deficiencies, when they occur.

Senator Al Franken of Minnesota recently gave a speech to the Constitutionalist Society in which he, in his Al Franken manner, tersely outlines what has gone wrong, how justice is being -- as it has been -- hijacked by conservatives to serve ill ends. Franken's points are made with his typical droll, sometimes sarcastic humor. But the points are made. And he is effective. Listen to Senator Franken. Then conclude. But not before. For the fate of the vast majority of Americans is verily at stake.

Understand that how our relatives and colleagues vote matters. It is to the sitting president to nominate justices for the federal judiciary, not just the Supreme Court. And it is to the members of the Senate to confirm or not those nominees. Yes, how your relatives and colleagues vote effects even the most minute, most intimate of the daily lives of all of us. The link below, unfortunately includes perhaps three or four minutes of introduction. The remaining minutes are, however, both priceless, and essential.

http://franken.senate.gov/files/audio/Franken_Speech_To__ACS_GALA.mp3

 

http://www.opednews.com/articles/An-important-speech-by-Sen-by-Ed-Tubbs-100629-272.html

Sticking the public with the bill for the bankers' crisis

By Naomi Klein

My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I'm not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday.

I'm talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world's wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill.

How else can we interpret the G20's final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.

They are happening for a simple reason. When the G20 met in London in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the leaders failed to band together to regulate the financial sector so that this type of crisis would never happen again. All we got was empty rhetoric, and an agreement to put trillions of dollars in public monies on the table to shore up the banks around the world. Meanwhile the U.S. government did little to keep people in their homes and jobs, so in addition to hemorrhaging public money to save the banks, the tax base collapsed, creating an entirely predictable debt and deficit crisis.

At this weekend's summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper convinced his fellow leaders that it simply wouldn't be fair to punish those banks that behaved well and did not create the crisis (despite the fact that Canada's highly protected banks are consistently profitable and could easily absorb a tax). Yet somehow these leaders had no such concerns about fairness when they decided to punish blameless individuals for a crisis created by derivative traders and absentee regulators.

Last week, The Globe and Mail published a fascinating article about the origins of the G20. It turns out the entire concept was conceived in a meeting back in 1999 between then finance minister Paul Martin and his U.S. counterpart Lawrence Summers (itself interesting since Mr. Summers was at that time playing a central role in creating the conditions for this financial crisis allowing a wave of bank consolidation and refusing to regulate derivatives).

The two men wanted to expand the G7, but only to countries they considered strategic and safe. They needed to make a list but apparently they didn't have paper handy. So, according to reporters John Ibbitson and Tara Perkins, "the two men grabbed a brown manila envelope, put it on the table between them, and began sketching the framework of a new world order." Thus was born the G20.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sticking-the-public-with-t-by-Naomi-Klein-100628-367.html

The Cider House Rules Rules

Reviewed by Michael Dare

 

At this point, I find the productions of Book-It Repertory inseparable from the books themselves. Every show I've seen has impeccably mirrored the source material. If you didn't like their production of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, it's because you don't like Tom Robbins, not because you don't like Book-It Repertory. They have found a magical spot, right in the middle of literature and theatre and bedtime story, where dad's rendition of Dr. Seuss has been replaced by a brilliant collection of adapters, directors, and performers who miraculously and precisely subjugate their needs to the needs of the original author in spectacular displays of talent and stagecraft.

 

If they're doing a book you love, you will fall in love again. If they're doing a book you haven't read but discover you hate, hey, at least it was over in just a couple hours, and you can sort of say you've read it.

 

I've got my own little list of authors whom, after reading one book of theirs, I said to myself OMG, I must read every single word this writer ever writes, and John Irving is one of them. I read The Cider House Rules when it first came out, didn't like it as much as The World According to Garp, but saw the subsequent movie, enjoyed it, and yet it wasn't till halfway through the Book-It theatrical production that it dawned on me it was a masterpiece, WAY better than Garp, not just good, not just great, but a genuine masterpiece, encompassing the highest possible principles that make up the foundation of Art with a capital A. It's hard to imagine a more sensitive issue treated with more dexterity or vision, more than a novel, more than a play but the most intimate expression of the human condition known to man, to make up stories that encompass everything our pathetic species is up to, seen from every angle, pretending that objectivity is possible while subjecting us to a funhouse mirror of reality where you know it's true, you can feel the truthiness, but it's never looked like this before. If you don't know that art can illuminate, can make you aware of every troubling aspect of life and death, of what we're doing on this planet, that it can ask the deepest of questions in the most profound manner, why do we treat each other so badly and what, just what, can one single man can do about it, you must see this production immediately.

 

Calling it Dickensian is too easy and too apt. Anyone who starts listing the similarities between The Cider House Rules and David Copperfield or Oliver Twist will find themselves in a whirlwind of academic trivia. You do it. It makes no difference. You don't have to have read Dickens to get Irving. When he quotes the opening sentence of David Copperfield, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," that's all we need to know. We're going to get variations on that theme brought to an incredible height.

 

There seems to be no question as to who the hero is in the life of Dr. Wilbur Larch, the founder of St. Clouds hospital and orphanage in Maine in the '30s. Just ask the hundreds of orphans and pregnant women who have gone through his door who the hero is of THEIR lives and they will answer Dr. Wilbur Larch.

 

Except for one. Homer Wells is an orphan who literally owes his life to Dr. Wilbur Larch, and yet he makes it his life's quest to be the goddam hero of his own goddam life. To do so, he must rebel against the only authority figure he knows, Dr. Wilbur Larch, for whom he's been participating in abortions for years, and here's where a six-hour theatrical production, broken into two pieces, beats the hell out what we can expect from a mere movie. It's with the telling of Larch's back-story that the melodrama reaches epic proportions.

 

Let's say you're a doctor and a patient is brought to you, a thirteen year old girl, pregnant, for the third time, by her father, a serial rapist, and the previous pregnancies had caused such scarring of the uterus that regular childbirth would be impossible, no choice but a Caesarian if the pregnancy is brought to term, yet it's early enough to simply end the ordeal for the child, a fifteen minute procedure you're completely capable of performing. Such is Wilbur's dilemma.

 

Or let's say you're a teenage orphan who wants to be a doctor asked to participate in surgery that just happens to include the scrapping of a uterus. Would you refuse to participate once you saw in a trash can what was scraped from the uterus, a tiny being that never took a breath? Such is Homer's dilemma.

 

Any theatrical production demands you identify with SOMEONE, whoever's closest to you, but in general we rely upon the dramatist to supply us with a simple protagonist, antagonist, and conclusion. Irving muddies the waters with a protagonist with a protagonist. Homer's savior, Dr. Larch, is clearly the hero of Homer's life since, after all, he's the one that decided to let the pregnancy go to term, since every female visitor to Saint Clouds leaves her baby there, whether born or not. Irving, and his brilliant adapter Peter Parnell, pull off this hat trick with no moralizing or proselytizing, just a lot of compassion. Though it's an incredibly entertaining morality play, it's not a lecture on morality. Irving's too smart for that. He approaches it from every possible viewpoint, women who shouldn't but do, women who should but don't, women who's lives are made better and others much much worse, husbands who want the baby but wives who don't, rejected patients who end up dead by going somewhere else, even the incompetent abortionist who kills as many as they help and they're not evil because, well, at least they're doing something. The subject has never been approached more thoroughly, without lying platitudes or easy slogans, recognizing that the abortion question is as complicated as it gets. Extremely graphic descriptions of the abortion process are accompanied by equally graphic descriptions of sex, treating them both equally, a perfectly rational approach since you can't have one without the other. Irving tells you much more than you ever knew about his subject. He tells you everything but what to think about it, figuring that reality is the best teacher, that you can't make up rules, even in a cider house, that you've got to take everything on a case by case basis. There's an episode of Mad Men where they're given the assignment of trying to find advertisers for an episode of The Defenders about a woman who got an abortion and the best they can come up with is lipstick. Abortion's a hard sell artistically as it's a tricky subject entirely devoid of easy answers. At the end of The Cider House Rules, one would be hard pressed to say whether John Irving was pro or anti, just smart.

 

This production is a perfect example of why the six-hour approach is imperative with certain novels. There's a death by drowning during a log jam in The Cider House Rules, one of many many tidbits left out of the film but left in the play. All the events of Last Night in Twisted River, Irving's latest, are set in motion by a death by drowning during a log jam. Leave the log-jam out of The Cider House Rules and you're leaving out one of the best things about John Irving, the themes and sub-text and entertaining quirks that tie all his work together: the wrestling, the seduction of the innocent, the dismemberments, the logging, the oral sex, the bears, god, what's with the bears. One of the treats of indulging oneself in the work of any great novelist is reveling in their personal obsessions, and Book-It never neglects to give us that same thrill.

 

A massive shout out to director Jane Jones and the entire ensemble cast of nurses, orphans, and derelicts who inhabit this mad world. Every one of them had a moment to shine and that they did. Dr. Larch, one of the most compassionate and empathetic characters of all time, is played by Peter Crook, and his Larch is so on the money, so innately American, it makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking casting a Cockney Michael Caine in the film. Crook is way more like the George C. Scott who played the part in my mind. While most of the characters remain steadfastly who they are, Homer is the one with the arc, the Candide of the piece who grows in front of our eyes, and Conner Toms is well up to the task. I can't wait to see who he eventually becomes in Part 2, coming this fall. 

 

But you've got to see Part 1 first. All you princes of Ivars, you kings of Mercer Island, get thee to Book-It Repertory before it's too late.

 

Through July 11. Get your tickets here.

 

MD

 

"You may disapprove, but you may not be ignorant or look away" —Dr. Larch to Homer

Homer Wells (Connor Toms, left), the never-adopted orphan becomes a surrogate son, and a medical protégé to the orphanage director, Dr. Larch (Peter Crook).  Doctor Larch and nurses (Melinda Deane & Julie Jamieson) help a pregnant patient (Mary Murfin Bayley). Photos by Adam Smith.

How to Opt-In to Your Rights

Eight of the world's strangest houses

By Brian Clark Howard

As more and more people rebel against ticky-tacky, cookie-cutter homes, options are growing for more unique, satisfying dwellings.

Popular Mechanics' Chris Sweeney recently created a great list of 18 of the world's strangest homes. And though there are arguably some even stranger ones out there (the toilet-shaped home, for one, or the coral castle), one of the things we like about Popular Mechanics' list is a strong focus on sustainability.

The Popular Mechanics collection focuses on designs that think outside of the box and approach sustainability from a holistic perspective. Some include recycled materials, but recycling itself isn't usually the central theme.

You don't have to live in a house built out of discarded tires, bottles, or vehicles to "go green." There are many ways that we can all go green in our homes, no matter what they look like or where they are located. Switching to more efficient light bulbs and appliances, trying out energy monitoring devices, and boosting insulation are a few examples.

For the greenest of Popular Mechanics' strange houses, look below:

Photo: Courtesy of Free Spirit Spheres

Free Spirit Spheres

Looking like something from Star Wars, suspended tree houses known as Free Spirit Spheres excite the imagination. Made by Tom and Rosy Chudleigh from British Columbia, the "tree houses for adults" are handmade from local wood.

The spheres are recommended for meditation, photography, canopy research, leisure, wildlife watching and other activities, and they can be ordered fully loaded with plumbing, electricity and insulation. Some are available for rental, and DIY kits are offered. They reportedly sway in the wind.

Photo: www.arquitecturaorganica.com

The Nautilus House

Perhaps what Gaudi would have envisioned if he were asked to decorate a sea shell, the Nautilus in Mexico City was completed in 2006 by architect Javier Sensonian of Arquitectura Orgánica. Sensonian practices what he calls "bio-architecture," and has designed buildings shaped like snakes, whales and other living things.

The Nautilus was built for a young family who wanted something that felt more integrated with nature, and it is filled with lush vegetation. The front door blends into the colorful mosaic facade.

Photo: RobertBruno.com

The Steel House

One glance at the fantastical Steel House, and you'll never forget it. Designer Robert Bruno wanted it to look somewhere between animal and machine, and we think he succeeded. The unique home is perched on a bluff near Lubbock, Texas, and minimizes disruption to the area by resting on top of four skinny legs.

Steel is long-lasting and highly recyclable, so green builders have been giving it a second look in recent years, especially for roofing. Inside, the Steel House looks more H.R. Giger than Martha Stewart, and it doesn't look like the most practical living space, but it definitely is thinking outside of the four-walled box.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/daily_green_news/251/eight-of-the-world-s-strangest-houses.html

Working on a (Temp) Dream

Welcome to the freelance economy, where workers are atomized, badly compensated and strangely optimistic.

By Richard Greenwald

We are living at the dawn of the freelance world, as more and more people find themselves working as consultants, contract workers or freelancers. This change in the way we work is as profound as the shift that occurred during the industrial revolution.

More than 25 percent of all working Americans are, whether they want to be or not, temporary laborers, and that number will surely rise in the coming years. (According to the Freelancers Union, which represents almost 100,000 contract workers in the New York City metro region, freelancers already comprise 30 percent of America's workforce.) Job security and 9-to-5 jobs are becoming a relic of the past. This year's college graduates enter a fragile economy offering more risk than guarantees, and far fewer jobs than applicants.

As corporations have prospered and gained labor flexibility, most workers have watched their futures decline. Neoliberalism has unlocked capital, freeing it from national borders; workers are increasingly a temporary, disposable expense. Firms can now hire on a project basis (anywhere), and no longer need to invest in large facilities or workforces.

Many readers of this magazine have tried to understand the complacency of today's workers, particularly younger ones, who find themselves temping. Some of that complacency has to do with the growing freelance economy.

The larger social impact of freelancing has been well documented, but what is missing is an understanding of those businesses that encourage or are enriched by the new "gig" economy. We know little about the businesses that prop up freelancers, simultaneously nurturing and feeding off them. In fact, we tend not to think of these businesses collectively as an industry. But we should. From consultants to self-help book authors to the rise of "co-workplaces," which provide freelancers with social interaction, an industry has developed that serves as both freelance cheerleader and parasite. It has defined the new gig culture, and it is time that we begin to understand this industry's place in our economy.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6107/working_on_a_temp_dream/

Texas Nationalist Movement Wants the Lone Star State to Become an Independent Republic. Bye-Bye!

 

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

The following E-mail BuzzFlash received merits our wackiest news release of the week award. Only Sarah Palin could fully appreciate it.

Texas Nationalist Movement
POC: Dave Mundy, Media Coordinator
press@texasnationalist.com
(281) 415-4013
National office: (409) 527-4929

NEWS RELEASE

TNM TO SUE MEXICO FOR RETURN OF ARTIFACTS

NEDERLAND, Texas – The Texas Nationalist Movement is preparing for a lawsuit against Mexico for the return of artifacts taken to Mexico City during the Texas Revolution.

"It has been known for some time that the Mexican government is in possession of the true Alamo flag and many other artifacts captured during their invasion of Texas and we want them back," TNM president Daniel Miller said. "We are going to initiate the suit in federal court and will appeal to the International Court of Justice in The Hague if necessary."

The move is part of a longer-sought exchange of artifacts recovered by each side during the Texas Revolution of 1835-36.

An article in the Texas Observer relates the tale of a 1998 expedition by Texas officials to Mexico City, seeking to recover the flag of the First Company of Texan Volunteers from New Orleans, dubbed the "New Orleans Greys" because of their distinctive uniforms. The two companies of riflemen were welcomed by the settlers of East Texas, who gifted them with, according to the Texas Observer article by Lucius Lomax, "…a flag, made of blue silk, about the size of a bath towel, bordered by white fringe. The silk featured the likeness of an eagle, wings spread, and below the eagle the words, 'First Company of Texan Volunteers from New Orleans.'"

The flag was captured at the Alamo and returned to Mexico City as war booty. In the years since its re-discovery in the archives of the National Museum of History at Chapultapec Castle, several different administrations in both Austin and in Washington have sought its return. At one point, former Texas Gov. George W. Bush's administration offered to trade a number of artifacts captured by Gen. Sam Houston's victorious army at the Battle of San Jacinto for the flag – but every effort has met with suspicion and disinterest by the Mexican government.

http://blog.buzzflash.com//alerts/3227

CHEVROLET CRASHES CHEVY

by Jim Hightower

Good news, people. General Motors has turned a profit! However, there's bad news, too: GM's top executives are insane. By which I mean bonkers, loopy, bull-goose crazy.

How else to explain the carmaker's recent effort to rebrand "Chevy," one of the most iconic brand names ever to come out of America? A June memo, floated down from the executive suite of corporate headquarters in Detroit, directed all employees to henceforth stop saying "Chevy." Instead, decreed two vice presidents who signed the astonishing document, "We'd ask that whether you're talking to a dealer, reviewing dealer advertising, or speaking with friends and family, that you communicate our brand as Chevrolet moving forward."

Holy Don McLean! He's the fine singer and songwriter who penned the classic refrain" "Bye-bye Miss American Pie/ I drove my Chevy to the Levee/ But the Levee was dry." Excuse us Mr. vice presidents, but it's suicidal corporate goofiness to mess with a brand that is so positively ingrained in American culture.

Well, say the two veeps, it's a matter of marketing consistency. As their memo explains, "The more consistent a brand becomes, the more prominent and recognizable it is with the consumer." Yoo-hoo, boneheads, a foolish consistency has been defined as the "hobgoblin of little minds."

http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7181

Cannabis Reduces Infant Mortality

by Storm Crow

Surprisingly connections between "Failure-to-Thrive" and Cannabinoids.

Image from a story about the Use Of Non-Psychoactive Cannabinoids In The Treatment Of Neurodegenerative Diseases from Science Daily

(NORTHERN CALIFORNIA) - Years ago, a friend of mine, a good Christian lady, had a child with "failure to thrive". She had CPS all over her, looking for even the tiniest trace of child neglect. They found none. The child was well cared for, but she just didn't seem that interested in eating. Her bottles often went half finished.

I believe that those bottles of formula, given from birth, were major part of the problem. Our bodies make chemicals called "endocannabinoids" that are closely related to THC and cannabidiol (CBD). Endocannabinoids control many bodily functions and are excreted into breast milk. When lactating female rabbits were injected with CBD, a non-psychoactive, plant-derived cannabinoid, there was "a significant accumulation of the drug in milk." ^[1]

Endocannabinoids are also detected in human and cow's milk, with the highest levels occurring the day after giving birth. This healthy dose of naturally-occurring endocannabinoids stimulates the suckling reflex in newborn mammals, including humans^[2].

When newborn mice are given a chemical to block the effect between endocannabinoids and their CB receptors, the mice simply don't know how to eat.Yet, if the blocking agent is mixed with an equivalent amount of THC, the mice eat and grow normally^[3].

CB receptors work kind of like an ignition switch. First, you need the right kind of "key" (the right-shaped cannabinoid) to go into the "keyhole" (the receptor) to turn on the "engine's" action (suckling, stopping pain or inflammation, or maybe killing a cancer cell). Phytocannabinoids (cannabinoids from plants, like THC) can mimic the effects of your endocannabinoids- they can turn on the same "ignition switches" as your body's own cannabinoids. The blocking agents (antagonists) are like sticking a broken key stub in the keyhole. You can't get a real key in, and the engine can't turn on.

Scientists have bred mice that do not have CB receptors. They are poor, sickly things, prone to all sorts of ailments. Some scientists believe that there are people like those mice, having fewer than normal, or dysfunctional, CB receptors. And infants born with this condition have growth failure resulting from an inability to ingest food, just like those newborn mice^[4].)

If "failure to thrive" infants were being breast-fed, they would get at least some of their mother's normal endocannabinoids from her milk. If she were using cannabis, logically, her breast milk would contain not only her own endocannabinoids, but also the phytocannabinoids, THC and CBD. In CB receptor-deficient children, an extra dose of phytocannabinoids could make the difference between "failure to thrive" and a healthy child! However, since receptor deficiency is inheritable, the mother may be deficient, too, and unable to give her child sufficient amounts of endocannabinoids in her milk.

But all this is just conjecture on my part. Just me, grouping together various studies to make a theory about "failure to thrive" babies. Medical science surely isn't going to say that having Mom smoking a little pot in the evening is going to help her baby do better, is it?

Well, tonight, I found a study that seems to say just that! It's a sad little thing- an abstract of a study on the death of babies- yet vital facts can be learned from those soulless statistical studies. This one gave the infant death rates per 1,000 live births, and the drugs, if any, that the mother used during pregnancy.

A total of 2,964 babies were drug-tested at birth to see if they were positive for drugs- cocaine, opioids or cannabis were studied. 44% of the infants tested positive for all varieties of drugs, including the 3 being studied. During the first two years of their lives, 44 babies from the original group, died. Since statistics are a drag to slog through, I'll cut right to the chase- the deaths per thousand live births- the numbers tell the story.

"No drugs at birth" deaths....... 15.7 deaths per 1000 live births

"Cocaine positive" deaths.......17.7 deaths per 1000 live births

"Opiate positive" deaths.......18.4 deaths per 1000 live births

"Cannabis positive" deaths.... 8.9 deaths per 1000 live births ^[5]

The cocaine and opiate babies have a higher death rate than the "No drugs" babies- that was to be expected. But look at the "cannabis" babies! Having extra cannabinoids in their bodies at birth (and likely later, from 2nd hand exposure, or breast milk) seems to have some sort of a protective effect. The "cannabis" infants have a mortality rate almost half of what the "No drugs" infants have!

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/june272010/marijuana-infants-sc.php

How to spend $1 billion on G20 security

The question as to how Canada could possibly spend C$1 billion ($960 million) protecting world leaders for just three days becomes progressively easier to answer the longer you spend in southern Ontario, the central province where the Group of Eight and then the Group of 20 are meeting this weekend.

G20 leaders will gather on Saturday and Sunday in central Toronto and a large area around the city center venue has been sealed off with high-tech fencing designed to deter even the most ardent climbers. The government, on the defensive about the security bill after critics accused Ottawa of wasting money, isn't giving a detailed breakdown of security costs. Ministers do admit that policing alone will cost C$450 million, most of which will go on overtime.

That isn't surprising when you work out how money will be needed to pay the 10,000 police who could be called up. My taxi driver was fuming when he picked me up at the airport and his mood didn't improve as we crawled past large groups of police not doing very much. "Look at that horse. He probably earns more than I do," he fumed.

This morning we got on a bus for the two-hour drive north to the lakeside resort of Deerhurst, in the middle of prime cottage country deep in the woods, where the Group of Eight leaders are meeting. At first we could see the occasional police car here and there but the closer we approached our target, the more security we saw. Every path leading into the forest seemed to have a black and while Ontario police car blocking the way.

Then the checkpoints started. At the first one we were waved through by no fewer than seven tanned policemen, who didn't seem to be doing very much. Just outside the resort a large grey observation balloon hovered in the air. Our bus stopped and waited and waited and all we could see were barricades and police, many of whom were watching the fence which had been erected around Deerhurst. About two dozen police motorcycles sat deserted outside the Algonquin Animal Hospital.

http://blogs.reuters.com/macroscope/2010/06/25/how-to-spend-1-billion-on-g20-security/

Monsanto, Big Brother of the New World Agricultural Order: An Interview With Marie-Monique Robin

by Mickey Z.

Award-winning French journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin is the author of "The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply" (The New Press) and the creator of the film by the same name.

In a review of these two projects, Leslie Thatcher writes: "What Marie-Monique Robin most effectively documents are the perverse effects - the moral, social, technological, economic and market failures - of Western society's economic organization, most specifically with respect to science and the products of science and, ultimately, with respect to the preservation of the public commons and human life on the planet."

My conversation with Marie-Monique Robin follows:

Mickey Z.: Was there an initial spark that led you to this project that took three years and investigations on four continents to complete?

Marie-Monique Robin: My "story" with Monsanto began in 2003, when I made three documentaries for the Franco-German channel ARTE (to which I pay a tribute for the quality of its programs) about the reduction of biodiversity.

MZ: Please take us through those documentaries and their connection to Monsanto.

MMR: The first, "Biopirates," told how corporations like Monsanto were holding abusive patents on living organisms which are contributing to a new drastic reduction of biodiversity. At that I time, I heard about a company called Monsanto which already held more than 600 patents on living organisms. The second documentary, called "Wheat: Chronicle of a Death Foretold," told the story of cultivation of that golden cereal, from the very beginning 10,000 years ago until today and explained how the practices of industrial agriculture that brought the "green revolution," made thousands of local landraces and varieties disappear, a dramatic evolution which will be accelerated by GMOs [genetically modified organisms]. At the same time the so-called green revolution provoked a huge contamination of the environment through the massive use of chemical pesticides, "biocides," which "entered into living organisms, passing one to another in a chain of poisoning and death," as Rachel Carson wrote in "Silent Spring." Finally, I made a documentary, called "Argentina: The Soybeans of Hunger," about the cultivation of Roundup Ready soybeans in Argentina, where I depicted the environmental, social and health disasters which the introduction of Monsanto's GMOs represent. Today, they cover 60% of the area under cultivation in the country.

http://www.truth-out.org/monsanto-big-brother-new-world-agricultural-order-an-interview-with-marie-monique-robin60776

Close encounter with socialized medicine

By Bruce Dancis

A blustery London breeze knocked a large wooden plank loose from a construction site and into a heavy steel barrier, which in turn fell over and hit me on the right side of my head, sending me crashing into the stone wall of a British government building.

At least that's what the onlookers who witnessed the incident and pulled the barrier off me said as I lay on the ground, bleeding from head and knee on King Charles Street, only a block from 10 Downing Street and just outside a museum honoring Winston Churchill and his World War II Cabinet.

Still conscious but a little bit woozy, I hadn't yet realized I was about to have a close encounter with the National Health Service, a.k.a. the United Kingdom's form of socialized medicine.

My wife, Karen, and I were in London on vacation, visiting the usual tourist attractions, including the Cabinet war rooms where Churchill and his advisers gallantly organized the defense of their country against Adolf Hitler's rampaging armed forces. Getting injured in a freak accident on a Saturday afternoon was not part of our vacation agenda.

I kept telling my worried wife and the gathering crowd that I was OK, despite all that blood. Another tourist, a doctor from Florida, assisted Karen in applying facial tissues to the gash in my head.

He began asking me questions: "Who is the prime minister?"

Before I could answer "David Cameron," he realized I was an American and changed the question to, "Who is the president of the United States?" adding, "Not that you have to like him."

"But I do," I replied, "for the most part."

The good doctor was trying to find out how badly injured I was, and when he could see that I hadn't lost either consciousness or most of my blood and marbles, he jokingly informed me, "I am indeed a doctor, but I'm a gynecologist." He said I probably needed to go to the hospital, but warned – with an unstated but obviously negative attitude toward what the Brits call the NHS – "you'll most likely be there for seven hours (before they get to you)."

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/26/2850249/close-encounter-with-socialized.html#ixzz0sBHe1SUf

What if Rolling Stone Had Covered Gen. Douglas MacArthur?

By Don Davis

"THANKS, MR. HASTINGS, FOR SHARING THIS WONDERFUL NEW 'TOBACCO' WITH ME — IT MAKES ME FEEL AS IF MAYBE WE SHOULD SIT DOWN AND TALK WITH THE CHINESE."

http://satiricalpolitical.com/2010/06/27/rolling-stone-mcchrystal-douglas-macarthur/

How to run your family like a corporation

The Coming Era of Energy Disasters

 

by Michael Klare

Isn't it strange that, no matter how terrible the news from the Gulf, the media still can't help offering a lurking, BP-influenced narrative of hope?  Here's a recent headline from my hometown paper, for instance: "Signs of Hope as BP Captures Record Oil Amounts."  The piece is based on a BP report that, last Thursday, its woefully inadequate, ill-fitting "top hat" had captured more than 25,000 barrels of the gushing oil -- that is, five times more than it long claimed was spewing from its busted well (25 times more than it originally suggested). 

With semi-official estimates in the range of 35,000-60,000 barrels escaping a day (and those numbers regularly on the rise), this represents a strange version of hopeful news.  Ominously enough, by the end of July, with a new, larger, "tighter" cap theoretically in place, BP is aiming to capture up to 80,000 barrels a day (that is, 20,000 barrels more than it has publicly acknowledged might possibly be spewing from the floor of the Gulf).  In all such articles, the real narrative of hope, however, involves the relief wells, the first of which is now within "200 feet" of the busted well.  Usually, the date for one of those wells to plug the leak is given as "early August" or "mid-August" and it's regularly said that the drilling of those wells is advancing "ahead of schedule."

Whatever "signs of hope" do exist, however, they're already badly beslimed by on-gushing reality.  On the very day that BP announced its 25,000-barrel capture, huge amounts of methane were also reported to be pouring into the Gulf.  Until now, this had evidently been largely overlooked (or under-reported), even though methane in high concentrations can deplete water of its oxygen and so suffocate marine life, creating vast dead zones and inhibiting the natural breakdown of the spilling oil.  According to John Kessler, a Texas A&M oceanographer, the Deepwater Horizon spill represents "the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history."

Meanwhile, if you read carefully, you'll note that those relief wells are no sure thing.  They might not do the job until the fall or even, worst-case scenario, Christmas, or (even-worse-case scenario) they might fail entirely, leaving the well to spew oil and natural gas (with its methane) for an estimated two to four more years.  And let's not forget general bad weather, as well as hurricane season bearing down on the Gulf, the possibility that the well's casing might be cracking or eroding -- meaning even more spillage or seepage -- and  that a "clean-up" in which, in Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's words, the Gulf ecosystem would be "restored and made whole," may not, as Naomi Klein wrote recently, be "remotely possible, at least not in a time frame we can easily wrap our heads around." 

Worse yet, the disaster in the Gulf is largely being dealt with as a one-shot nightmare.  It isn't.  Consider our potential American Chernobyl as just a precursor to a future filled with "unexpected" energy mega-disasters, as Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of the invaluable Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, suggests.  (To catch him discussing our dystopian energy future on the latest TomCast audio interview, click here, or to download it to your iPod, click here.)  Tom

BP-Style Extreme Energy Nightmares to Come
Four Scenarios for the Next Energy Mega-Disaster 
By Michael T. Klare

On June 15^th, in their testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the chief executives of America's leading oil companies argued that BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was an aberration -- something that would not have occurred with proper corporate oversight and will not happen again once proper safeguards are put in place.  This is fallacious, if not an outright lie.  The Deep Horizon explosion was the inevitable result of a relentless effort to extract oil from ever deeper and more hazardous locations.  In fact, as long as the industry continues its relentless, reckless pursuit of "extreme energy" -- oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium obtained from geologically, environmentally, and politically unsafe areas -- more such calamities are destined to occur.

At the onset of the modern industrial era, basic fuels were easy to obtain from large, near-at-hand energy deposits in relatively safe and friendly locations.  The rise of the automobile and the spread of suburbia, for example, were made possible by the availability of cheap and abundant oil from large reservoirs in California, Texas, and Oklahoma, and from the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  But these and equivalent deposits of coal, gas, and uranium have been depleted.  This means the survival of our energy-centric civilization increasingly relies on supplies obtained from risky locations -- deep underground, far at sea, north of the Arctic circle, in complex geological formations, or in unsafe political environments.  That guarantees the equivalent of two, three, four, or more Gulf-oil-spill-style disasters in our energy future.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175264/tomgram:_michael_klare,_the_coming_era_of_energy_disasters/#more

Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

This undated file photo provided by by Michael Moore of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution …

 

By ARTHUR MAX

AGADIR, Morocco – Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth's oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

"These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean," said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report's authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.

"The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings," Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. "What she's actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby," he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.

Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

"You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_sc/whaling

BP to cleanup workers: "We don't care if you die of leukemia or brain damage. Wear a respirator and you're fired!"

by New York Crank

The headline on Racewire is chilling. "BP Threatens to Fire Cleanup Workers Who Wear Their Own Safety Gear."

But at the same time, BP is not supplying respirators and other safety equipment to its cleanup crews.

Already the symptoms of illness are spreading. They include nausea, dizziness and breathing problems.

The article points out that both the oil and dispersants getting sprayed on it are "highly toxic" and contain compounds that include benzene, tolulene and xylene. In the long run these can cause leukemia and brain damage.

So why is BP refusing to let its workers wear respirators? Your guess is as good as mine, and what I'm guessing is that BP doesn't want any "negative looking" photographs of people wearing respirators or hazmat suits — even though the workers are clearly dealing with hazardous materials. That kind of photograph in the media would intensify the well-deserved rage against BP.

So for the sake of nicer-looking publicity photographs, BP is willing to kill off some of the workers.

http://thenewyorkcrank.blogspot.com/2010/06/bp-to-cleanup-workers-we-dont-care-if.html

It Begins… Plans to Evacuate Tampa Bay Are Put Into Place …Update: Pensacola Beach Closed

Large slicks of oil and tarry mats floated in on the Florida shore on Wednesday.

As Barack Obama continues to golf, hit the ballpark, BBQ and party, the BP oil slick is now threatening Tampa Bay. Authorities have set up plans for evacuation.
Veterans Today reported:

Gulf Oil Spill 2010: Plans to evacuate Tampa Bay area are in place.

As FEMA and other government agencies prepare for what is now being called the worst oil spill disaster in history, plans to evacuate the Tampa Bay area are in place.

The plans would be announced in the event of a controlled burn of surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or if wind or other conditions are expected to take toxic fumes through Tampa Bay.

This practice has been used by the US Forestry service, when fire and smoke threaten the health and well being of people.

The elderly and those with respiratory problems would be more susceptible to health risks, in the event of a controlled burn.

http://waronyou.com/topics/it-begins%E2%80%A6-plans-to-evacuate-tampa-bay-are-put-into-place-%E2%80%A6update-pensacola-beach-closed/

Behind 'Seattle Times' winning a Pulitzer

By John Hamer

Who, what, where, when, why and — most importantly — how did The Seattle Times win a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for "Breaking News" for its coverage of the Lakewood police shootings and the Maurice Clemmons manhunt?

Those questions were asked — and well-answered — at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce first Executive Speaker Series event, "Anatomy of a Pulitzer Prize" on Tuesday (June 22) at The Westin. (The Washington News Council was a "promotional partner" for the luncheon, along with the Public Relations Society of America and The Times.)

Lori Matsukawa, longtime KING-5 TV anchor, moderated the all-Times panel: Executive Editor David Boardman, and Managing Editors Suki Dardarian and Kathy Best, who oversaw the coverage. When Matsukawa asked Boardman why they won the Pulitzer, he replied: "First of all, I want to say this belongs to all of you. We want the whole community to share in this prize."

Indeed, this was an unprecedented example of a newspaper networking with citizens in what some call the new news ecosystem. No newspaper has ever made such extensive use of the web to cover a breaking news story. That's why this Pulitzer was so richly deserved.

Dardarian noted that the shootings happened on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, when only one reporter and one editor were in The Times' newsroom. "Within a few hours, the newsroom was full," she said. Before long, they were "on the front lines."

Boardman said The Times "got a four-to-five-hour jump on every other news organization" because reporter Jennifer Sullivan, working from her sickbed, identified Maurice Clemmons as the shooter through her sources. When The Times reported that, Dardarian said, she got a call from a police spokesman saying "we got it wrong … That got my adrenaline going." The Times checked again, and confirmed it was Clemmons. Later, the police confirmed on television that The Times was right, Dardarian said.

The Times created a "#washooting" hashtag on Twitter and the digital flood began. They invited citizens to contribute tips, photos and videos, using Google Wave and other online sources.

They did "cutting-edge use of all these new tools," Boardman said, using their "quick-twitch muscles." Boardman, who had not used Twitter much before, tweeted for 15 straight hours.

"The Seattle Times jumped into digital news with both feet," Matsukawa said, noting that many bloggers and dot-commers were "shocked" that The Seattle Times could become so "digitally nimble" in such a short time.

http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/19591/Behind--Seattle-Times--winning-a-Pulitzer/

RNC staffer fired in sex scandal paid $100,000 to ‘keep quiet’

 

By John Byrne

The former chief of staff to the Republican National Committee received more than $100,000 in a "severance payment" after he was fired for his role relating to the discovery that the party had signed off on $2,000 in reimbursements for a sex-themed Beverly Hills club.

RNC insiders say the money was approved as "hush money" to keep the former staffer, Kenneth McKay, from divulging details of GOP Chairman Michael Steele's leadership practices.

The severance payment and hush money allegation was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.

One GOP insider described the six-figure payment to outgoing RNC Chief of Staff Kenneth K. McKay IV  negotiated even though McKay had scarcely a year on the job -- as "hush money" to keep a former employee from divulging details of Michael Steele's controversial tenure as RNC chair.

Party insiders told ABC News the six-figure payout represented McKay's severance package, and came in exchange for him signing a strict confidentiality agreement. Two RNC sources, both of whom spoke on the condition they not be identified, said similar deals were struck with others who had been forced out in the last few months. Both sources have been critical of Steele's leadership. They said in separate interviews that, while they were not alleging that anything illegal took place, they believe the McKay agreement and others like it are aimed at preventing the departing cast of employees from disparaging Steele. McKay, who had received $163,000 in salary payments, did not respond to messages left at his home in Rhode Island....

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0623/rnc-staffer-fired-sex-scandal-paid-100000-keep-quiet/

The rise of hugely insufferable women

By Mark Morford

Not all grown men are suave, sexy, progressive George Clooney/Viggo Mortensen/Colin Farrell lookalikes with sharp blue eyes, stubbly outgrowths and abs like World Cup forwards, all hearts of gold, full heads of hair and perfectly sculpted genitalia custom designed to satisfy a small harem, make birds sing and goddesses purr.

Not all adult men are strong and dependable, loyal and true, able to make you laugh, sigh, moan, buy you a drink, jump start your Mini in the rain, smell good all over, build a deck, parallel park a tractor-trailer, and feel sufficiently secure in their masculinity and humanity to champion gay rights and women's rights and pelican rights.

Conversely, not all men are of the other ilk either, the sweaty, overweight, woman-hating Republican homophobes in titanic SUVs, bad marriages and sad comb-overs, twitchy fearmongers who hate all foreigners and wear their baseball hats and grubby hoodies in fancy restaurants, men who spit on the sidewalk and blow their noses like open trumpets into the street, immature adulterers as eager for a war and a beatdown as they are for 20 minutes with a meth dealing gay hooker.

Did you already know all this about men? Does it seem forehead-slappingly obvious to suggest, despite all the clichés, lousy track records and Tiger Woods, that men come in such a huge array of shapes, styles and configurations?

Well of course it is. After all, the male creature has been dissected and bisected and demonized since time immemorial, from hero to Great Oppressor, father to magnate, hunk to egomaniac and back again in the time it took you to read this sentence.

But oh, is it ever worth remembering in light of what is right now being dubbed, with various degrees of pleasure and concern, confusion and delight, "the rise of the woman," "the new conservative feminism," "the end of men," and on and on, all sorts of amazing, disorienting pro-female bellwethers and signs, indicators and shifts.

It is something to behold. Right now I'm vainly attempting to cross-reference Hanna Rosin's fascinating mixed-bag article from the Atlantic that ran under the delightfully obnoxious headline "The End of Men: How Women are Taking Control of Everything," and mixing it with all the feverish stories about California's landmark political races, Carly and Meg and Pelosi, too, influenced by everyone's favorite winkin' ditzball from hell, Sarah Palin.

And I'm tossing in a dash of pop culture, all the MIAs and Lady Gagas and Miley Cyruses, the Kathryn Bigelows and the ditzbombs of "Sex and the City," trying to parse and understand and see some sort of through-line.

I am not having much success. Most women -- and many of us men -- are cheering madly at all the newfound roles, powers, titles, successes and attentions, from Hillary's stunning presidential run to Bigelow's Oscar to (even) Meg Whitman's pile of billions that could very well buy her the election.

But holy hell with the lost gospels of Mary Magdalene, many are also booing, hissing, screaming their frustration, entirely furious that many of third-wave feminism's cornerstone values -- abortion rights, humanitarianism, anti-racism, don't kill stuff -- are being violently, stupidly co-opted, inverted, perverted, repackaged, skinned like a moose and shot from a helicopter like a wolf skittering across the Alaskan tundra.

In short, most progressive women are right now discovering a brutally painful truth, one that men have known for millennia: With power, glory and long overdue cultural advancement, comes a whole delightful s--bag of downsides, drawbacks, jackals and bitches to poison the party. Fun!

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/23/notes062310.DTL#ixzz0rmhnsaLH

NASCAR Continues Campaign Against Marijuana, Suspends “Spotter”

by Morgan Fox

Once again, the top brass at NASCAR have taken a stand against marijuana users. Yesterday, officials for the racing organization suspended crewmember and former driver Randy LaJoie indefinitely after he tested positive for marijuana. The test was not to make sure that he could be a driver, but that he could be a spotter. For those of you not familiar with racing, the spotter sits in the stands and relays car positions to his or her driver through a headset. Please forgive my ignorance of the details of racing, but it seems as if this is basically a professional spectator, with the enviable bonus of getting to yell at the driver.

Seriously, a drug test is required for this job.

LaJolie now joins the massive ranks of athletes and celebrities forced to apologize for using a substance safer than alcohol.

"I screwed up," LaJolie said in an interview the day he was suspended.

NASCAR's behavior is not that surprising. Back in March, officials waited until the last minute to deny Cannabis Planet TV the opportunity to sponsor, and place advertisements on, one of the cars. The car was allowed to race, but with different sponsors.

http://blog.mpp.org/prohibition/nascar-continues-campaign-against-marijuana-suspends-%E2%80%9Cspotter%E2%80%9D/06232010/

WHO to tax your internet usage to fund vaccines in third-world countries

 

by Mike Adams

 

 

(The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing hard to impose global consumer taxes to help fund its various programs, including a new proposal that would tax the internet in order to pay for vaccines and other pharmaceutical medicines for third-world countries. Yes, you read that right - WHO wants every person in the world to help pay for drugs that make Big Pharma even richer.

Consider it a reverse Robin Hood ploy: They're stealing from the working class and giving to the ultra wealthy drug companies!

Of course this isn't the first time the UN has petitioned governments around the world to illegally tax citizens in order to further its own agenda. This body of unelected officials tried to push "cap and trade" legislation for supposed climate change just last year (but failed to do so because many countries simply refused the idea).

In the current scheme, WHO appointed a so-called panel of "medical experts" to prepare a report highlighting various financing ideas that would fund all the projects WHO is trying to accomplish in the world. One of those ideas is to have governments tax internet usage in their countries and give the money to WHO for "medical research and development" in poorer, developing countries. (This is code-speak for unlawfully pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of Big Pharma in the name of charity).

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/029066_World_Health_Organization_vaccines.html

It’s only being a parasite when other people do it

by Iron Knee

This guy has to be a winner in the "do as I say, not as I do" contest. David Jungerman of Raytown, Missouri posted a large sign on a semi-truck along a major highway. The sign reads:

Are You A Producer or Parasite
Democrats – Party of Parasites

However, a quick check of a farm subsidy database shows that Jungerman has received over a million dollars in government aid. Jungerman claims "Crop subsidies are different."

Well, yes, obviously. They are different because you receive them.

http://politicalirony.com/2010/06/24/its-only-being-a-parasite-when-other-people-do-it/

Clint Webb for Senate

Urgent message to all sentient beings

BP oil leak setback: 'Top hat' removed, oil flow unhindered

 

By Mark Seibel

WASHINGTON — Workers removed the "top hat" device collecting crude oil from BP's gushing Deepwater Horizon well Wednesday morning in a major setback to efforts to contain the leak.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the BP oil leak, told reporters in his daily briefing that the long term impact of the decision was uncertain, but video from the leak showed crude gushing unhindered into the water for the first time since the "top hat" device, also referred to as the Lower Marine Riser Package, was set in place June 3.

It was unclear how soon the top hat might be put back in place, Allen said. He said he had only learned of the problem as he was headed to the Coast Guard headquarters briefing room in Washington. A BP press statement later said the incident had occured at 8:45 a.m. Central time.

BP called the measure temporary, but provided no information on when the device might be reinstalled.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/23/96411/bp-oil-leak-setback-top-hat-removed.html#ixzz0rmq7zo2K