NEWS AND VIEWS

Archive 4 March 2004 - 18 February 2005

Items I find interesting or important - not directly connected with my business. Recent items are on the main NEWS AND VIEWS page, other older items are listed at the FULL NEWS ARCHIVE INDEX. Index shows date of posting on this website.

You may also be interested in LINKS to sites on related topics, especially the HEALTH, DIRECTORIES and CHANGING THE WORLD sections, and the Adult Education courses "TALKING POLITICS" and "CHANGING OURSELVES, CHANGING OUR WORLD"

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INDEX  2005 2004 -  OTHER NEWS WEBSITES - ZNN ALTERNATIVE NEWS

 

INDEX 2005

18 February THE CHRISTIAN CASE FOR WAR 

21 January 2005 WILL WASHINGTON TOLERATE A CHINESE-VENEZUELAN PETRO PACT?

21 January THE END OF OIL?

OTHER NEWS WEBSITES; Common Dreams "News and views for the progressive community" - US based. Complementary Healthcare Information Service (CHIS-UK) Friends Of The Earth UK (Press releases) From The Wilderness Mike Ruppert's excellent site. What's wrong with official story on Sept. 11 2001, US plans for war in Colombia, CIA, USA politicians and the drugs trade, peak oil....No longer updates, but archives are still online. Mirror site was at http://www.copvcia.com Globalinfo.org "Daily news service of the developing world" - news on site, also offers free news feed to your website. Indymedia UK  "network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues". Some good impartial comment, and some total pillocks. ZNet "A community for people committed to social change". Includes articles by Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Robert Fisk and many more.

9 January THE WHITE STUFF - COCAINE, POLITICS AND THE FAILURE OF THE "WAR ON DRUGS"

 

INDEX 2004

8 December LABOUR FAILS TO MEET EMISSIONS TARGETS

7 December THE MATERIAL BASIS OF ACCUMULATION

4 December THE CORPORATION - A HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED FILM

1 December GOODBYE, DOLLAR - AND EMPIRE

24 November US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FRAUD 2004

18 November NEW OIL PROJECTS CANNOT MEET WORLD NEEDS THIS DECADE

17 November  MEPS CALL FOR REVIEW OF EU ARMS SALES POLICY

16 November MEDITATION MAY BOLSTER BRAIN ACTIVITY

16 November WHITE HOUSE CALLS FOR CIA PURGE

15 November CHILE IDENTIFIES 35,000 VICTIMS OF PINOCHET

11 November ADVENTURE CAPITALISM - THE HIDDEN 2001 PLAN TO CARVE-UP IRAQ

25 October COLOMBIA: WOMEN'S BODIES USED AS A BATTLEGROUND

24 October EU CONSTITUTION MUST GO BACK TO DRAWING BOARD, SAY GREENS

23 October HEALTH CONCERNS OVER TEFLON

3 October THE CHALLENGE TO MASS VACCINATION

22 September U.S. TREASURY SHOWS ACTUAL 2003 FEDERAL DEFICIT AT $3.7 TRILLION

15 September INCREASE IN CHILDHOOD LEUKAEMIA MAY BE PARTLY DUE TO INCREASED LIGHT AT NIGHT

15 September CONVENTION SPEECHES IGNORE IMPENDING U.S. DEBT DISASTER

12 September DARFUR: WHY NOW?

11 July BRITISH MPS' VISIT TO BOTSWANA CONTROLLED BY THE GOVERNMENT

30 June INDICTMENTS LOOMING FOR BUSH & CHENEY IN VALERIE PLAME CASE?

13 June THE FLUORIDE DECEPTION

ADULT EDUCATION COURSES Talking Politics  September 29, 2011, 10 a.m. - 12 noon for 10 weeks, St. Matthew's Rooms, Carver St. S1 4FT. Ongoing discussion-based group open to newcomers.

22 April UPRISING IN FALLUJAH - WHY?

3 April APPROPRIATING THE INTERNET FOR GLOBAL ACTIVISM

3 April NEW LAWS WON'T PROTECT DOLPHINS

3 April UK WILDLIFE MUST NOT BE PATENTED FOR PROFIT

26 March CROAKER COLA

26 March ACTION DAY AGAINST WATER FLUORIDATION IN SHEFFIELD AND SOUTH YORKSHIRE

12 March ARE ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS DANGEROUS TO OUR HEALTH?

4 March BUSH OR KERRY? LOOK CLOSELY AND THE DANGER IS THE SAME

18 February THE CHRISTIAN CASE FOR WAR

"Why have so many conservative (U.S.) Christians been strong supporters of the war on Iraq?...There is a whole worldview here with intertwined beliefs about politics, U.S. history, military reality, the press, the presidency, the Middle East and religion." This article examines the facts, and the history of previous US wars, and concludes;

"Has it been hard for me to reject the U.S. Empire, coming from a patriotic American conservative Christian background? No, not once I understood that the U.S. Empire is real and learned about what it does. The peoples around the world that I grew up praying for, that my church has been sending missionaries to all my life, these people are killed by the U.S. Empire, oppressed, and manipulated. I am horrified that these people would think that the U.S. Empire has anything to do with America's libertarian roots or the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Church."

Full article by Stephen W. Carson at LewRockwell.com.

21 January 2005 WILL WASHINGTON TOLERATE A CHINESE-VENEZUELAN PETRO PACT?

The U.S.-Venezuela Oil Split Approaches A Boiling Point.

"Although Venezuela has long been one of the U.S.'s top four foreign suppliers of crude, relations between the two countries have grown quite acrimonious since the Bush administration's tacit support of the failed coup against populist president Hugo Chavez in April of 2002....The crucial difference between the recent U.S. support of the middle-class opposition in Venezuela - mainly through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Aid (USAID) - versus its earlier backing of the Somoza, Batista, Duvalier and Pinochet dictatorships, is that Washington can ill afford to antagonize the populist government from which it receives anywhere between 11% and 15% of its imported petroleum."

"In December 2004, President Chavez met with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, in Beijing to discuss a new bilateral agreement regarding access to Venezuela's energy market. In Chavez' words, "this is what is needed in the world in order to break with unilateralism." As a result, Caracas will help Beijing with additions to the latter's strategic oil reserves in exchange for Chinese investment in Venezuela's agricultural sector and the development of fifteen currently shut down oil fields."

Full article at From The Wilderness, reposted from the Canadian Democratic Movement (I could not get the direct link to CDM's original article to work).

21 January 2005 THE END OF OIL?

"As Kenneth Deffeyes notes in Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak..... as of 2003, there was no major underutilized oil source left on the planet. Even as established oil fields have reached their maximum production capacity, there has been disappointing production from new fields. Globally, according to some geologists’ estimates, we have discovered 94 percent of all available oil."

Full article by Mark Williams at Technology Review

9 January 2005 THE WHITE STUFF - - COCAINE, POLITICS AND THE FAILURE OF THE "WAR ON DRUGS"

Celebrated documentary-maker Angus Macqueen spent 18 months on the cocaine trail across Latin America from the dirt-poor valleys of Peru to the shanty towns of Rio. Here he recalls the journey that revolutionised his views and explains why he believes 'the dandruff of the Andes' should be sold in Boots. Article at The Observer. If you are interested in this, you may also want to read Narco-Dollars for Beginners - How the Money Works in the Illicit Drug Trade, a 2001 article by Catherine Austin Fitts. What happens to the huge amounts of money paid for illegal drugs? How much is "laundered" by being passed through legitimate businesses, and how much does this skew the economy? What effect does it have on "democratic" politics.

8 December LABOUR FAILS TO MEET EMISSIONS TARGETS

Labour's failure to meet its own targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions is an appalling breach of trust and further evidence of an incompetent government driven by lies and spin, Green Party Principal Speaker Caroline Lucas said today.

Dr Lucas, a Green Party Euro-MP and member of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee, said: “Today’s admission that the government has failed to meet its own target of reducing UK CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2010 is an absolute scandal.

“The government knows what to do to reduce emissions – and yet it’s doing exactly the opposite: in the last few weeks alone it’s announced a freeze on fuel duty, it’s decision to funding a £47 million dual carriageway in Sussex and a relaxation of its cap on industrial CO2 emissions under the EU emissions trading scheme which comes into force next year.

“This isn’t an accident – it’s another example of this government making the right noises and then adopting policies that undermine them, sniggering at the gullibility of the British public as it does so."

The target was adopted, first in opposition in 1994 and then restated in 2001, amid now familiar rhetoric about Labour’s commitment to tackling climate change. A widely-reported Government announcement expected later today will admit the target will not be met and call for a consultation exercise to determine the reason why.

“We don’t need another consultation – we need action,” added Dr Lucas. “We already know what do. We are in serious danger – thanks in part to the yawning gulf between the Government’s rhetoric and action – of going down in history as the species that spent all its energy monitoring its own extinction rather than preventing it.”

7 December THE MATERIAL BASIS OF ACCUMULATION

"In this fifth and final installment of Stan Goff's "Persian Peril" series, our world crisis is analyzed in the three dimensions of resource depletion, economic injustice, and the dynamics of political power in a period of systemic breakdown. Mainstream progressives still discuss economic and social justice without discussing Peak Oil; they share with the free market economists a blissful ignorance of thermodynamic reality. But conversely, many Peak Oil discussions neglect the explosive political energies which might erupt from below during the disaster-process. People on the imperial periphery are tired of being fed to the imperial center and then absorbing its waste. And the working poor who form the majority in the imperial center are likely to get irked when the economy tanks. US petro-militarism is ill-equipped to prevent the political crises its masters fear, at home and abroad...."

I have reposted this article by Stan Goff in its entirety from www.fromthewilderness.com. Very interesting and important, and I recommend all Goff's other articles at that site too. Some unusually heavy going in this one on the theory bits, but you can skim or skip these and still get a lot from the analysis of the world situation!

4 December THE CORPORATION - A HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED FILM

I saw this film in Bradford - it has just started showing in the UK. It examines how the corporation got its peculiar legal status in the USA, then looks at its effects. Graphic examples of businesses ruining the environment, paying low wages to workers in poor countries who make goods which then sell for much more in rich countries, suppressing unfavourable news, etc. Also some bits on how people fight back. The Corporation website includes details of where the film is showing (not just in the UK; gives dates but not times), and a good links page to other relevant activist sites. There is also a book available.

1 December GOODBYE, DOLLAR - AND EMPIRE

"Two predictions seem solid: the mighty U.S. dollar has begun an inexorable decline, and the American empire is coming to an end....no successful assault will be made in the next four years on a fiscal deficit of $415 billion (4 percent of GDP) before the first wave of 77 million Baby Boomers reaches early retirement in 2008. After that, goodbye balanced budgets forever.

The deindustrialization of America could be reversed if we were willing to return to Hamiltonian economics, rewrite our tax and trade laws, and dump the WTO into the Atlantic. But the transnational corporations that finance both parties will not allow it, for their executives have grown royally rich transferring factories out of the United States into the low-wage countries of Asia and the Third World. 

The dirty little secret of our era is that the interests of Middle America are now in conflict with the interests of America’s corporate elites. They are anxious to get out of the United States and shed their American work force".

What fascinates me about this is that it comes from a conservative perspective - an article I found while searching for "run on the dollar". Full article by Pat Buchanan at The American Conservative.

24 November US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION FRAUD 2004

While the UK media headline allegations of fraud in the presidential election in Ukraine, the persistent suggestions that Bush stole the American election again are not "in the news" - if you depend on the mass media for your news, that is. Sickening...

If you have not come across the allegations of fixed voting machines (with no paper trail to check up on), more voters voting in some precincts that were actually registered, the predicted exclusion from the vote of many people, and more, then these are some good places to catch up;

2004 U.S. Presidential Election Controversy, at Wikipedia

The 2004 US Elections: The Mother of all Vote Frauds, at WhatReallyHappened

Evidence of Electoral Fraud in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election: A Reading List, by Michael Keefer at OpEdNews

Kerry Won, by Greg Palast at TomPaine.com

18 November NEW OIL PROJECTS CANNOT MEET WORLD NEEDS THIS DECADE

World oil supplies are all but certain to remain tight through the rest of this decade, unless there is a precipitous drop in demand, according to the results of a study by the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC).

The study found that all of the major new oil-recovery projects scheduled to come on stream over the next six years are unlikely to boost supplies enough to meet the world’s growing needs. 

ODAC analysed a total of 68 ‘mega projects’ with publicly announced start-up dates from 2004 through 2010. In total, these projects would add around 12.5 million barrels a day to world oil supplies by the turn of the decade. 

“This new production would almost certainly not be sufficient to offset diminishing supplies from existing sources and still meet growing global demand,” ODAC Board member Chris Skrebowski said.

More than half of the estimated new supply would simply replace production declines elsewhere due to natural depletion, the study found. A modest one percent annual rise in demand over the six-year period would then leave little or no surplus capacity to cushion against unforeseen disruptions in supply.

Full article at From The Wilderness. Also available in pdf format at ODAC.

17 November  MEPS CALL FOR REVIEW OF EU ARMS SALES POLICY

NEW INTERNATIONAL TREATY NEEDED TO STEM FLOW OF WEAPONS

EURO-MPs in Strasbourg have voted for a review of the EU’s Code of Conduct on Arms Exports – and to retain its embargo on weapons sales to China.

“The EU’s founding principles of tackling poverty, reducing conflict and upholding human rights are undermined by arms sales from EU members states to the very countries whose records are worst in these areas,” said Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for South-East England. Dr Lucas’s comments came as Euro-MPs voted on the fifth annual report on the implementation of the Code of Conduct, which was agreed by all EU member states in 1998.

EU Foreign Ministers adopted the Code of Conduct to ensure arms sales from EU countries did not fan the flames of conflict – or divert developing nations’ resources from the more crucial efforts to tackle poverty and human rights abuses. Though it is widely regarded as one of the toughest regimes governing arms sales imposed on major exporting nations worldwide, the Code of Conduct is not legally binding, and both NGOs and Euro-MPs have criticised member states’ failure to implement it at a national level.

“There is a fundamental contradiction between the EU’s laudable foreign policy objectives and its failure to control the activities of its member states which directly undermine them,” said Dr Lucas, who is also a member of CND’s National Council.

“Today’s vote endorses Parliament’s opinion that the EU must harmonise it arms sales policies by endorsing the Code of Conduct as a legally binding instrument, expanding its scope to cover exports of materials which can be used for torture or capital punishment and setting up an EU-wide register of arms brokers and dealers.

“MEPs have also agreed to call for a new international treaty controlling weapons sales – and to uphold the EU arms embargo to China, the world’s principal importer of conventional weapons, with its dismal human rights record and simmering conflicts in Taiwan and Tibet.”

Note - the Code of conduct can be viewed in full at  http://projects.sipri.se/expcon/eucode.htm

16 November MEDITATION MAY BOLSTER BRAIN ACTIVITY

Researchers found that monks who spent many years in Buddhist meditation training show significantly greater brain activity in areas associated with learning and happiness than those who have never practiced meditation.

Full story at WebMDHealth. (link repaired 03.03.05).

16 November WHITE HOUSE CALLS FOR CIA PURGE

"The White House has ordered new CIA Director Porter Goss to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George Bush or of leaking information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. 

‘‘The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,’’ said a former senior CIA official. ‘‘Goss was given instructions...to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.’’

Full story (5 paragraphs) at The Indian Express.

15 November CHILE IDENTIFIES 35,000 VICTIMS OF PINOCHET

A year-long investigation into state-sponsored torture in Chile has documented that an estimated 35,000 people were abused during the 1973-90 military regime. 

The report, which has not been made public, identifies dozens of secret facilities under the control of General Augusto Pinochet, who headed the military junta.....

"This is a historic step. Now those of us who were political prisoners are recognised, both socially and officially," said Mireya Garcia, of the Association of Families of the Dead and Disappeared. "I hope that this report becomes an integral part of the [educational] formation of new generations, so that in Chile never again is there torture."

Full story at The Guardian

11 November ADVENTURE CAPITALISM - THE HIDDEN 2001 PLAN TO CARVE-UP IRAQ

Why were Iraqi elections delayed? Why was Jay Garner fired? Why are troops still there? Investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovers new documents that answer these questions and more about the Bush administration’s grand designs on Iraq. Like everything else issued during this administration, the plan to overhaul the Iraqi economy has corporate lobbyist fingerprints all over it.

"In February 2003, a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a 101-page document came my way from somewhere within the U.S. State Department. Titled pleasantly, "Moving the Iraqi Economy from Recovery to Growth," it was part of a larger under-wraps program called "The Iraq Strategy." 

The Economy Plan goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before: the complete rewrite, it says, of a conquered state's "policies, laws and regulations." Here's what you'll find in the Plan: A highly detailed program, begun years before the tanks rolled, for imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges—in fact, "ALL state enterprises"—to foreign operators. There's more in the Plan, part of which became public when the State Department hired consulting firm to track the progress of the Iraq makeover. Example: This is likely history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws.

And when it comes to oil, the Plan leaves nothing to chance—or to the Iraqis. Beginning on page 73, the secret drafters emphasized that Iraq would have to "privatize" (i.e., sell off) its "oil and supporting industries." The Plan makes it clear that—even if we didn't go in for the oil—we certainly won't leave without it."

Full article at Greg Palast's website.

25 October COLOMBIA: WOMEN'S BODIES USED AS A BATTLEGROUND

By sowing terror, exploiting and manipulating women for military gain, armed groups in Colombia have turned women’s bodies into a battleground. During the course of Colombia’s 40-year-old conflict, all the armed groups – the security forces, army-backed paramilitaries and the guerrillas – have sexually abused or exploited women and girls.

In early May 2003, rapes, killings and other attacks against civilians allegedly carried out by soldiers identifying themselves paramilitaries in Tame Municipality, Arauca Department, led to the displacement of over 500 people....Guerrilla forces have also been responsible for repeated cases of violence against women, including rape.

Full article, including sample letter to write to the President of Colombia, demanding he takes immediate action to protect women from violence, at Amnesty International.

24 October EU CONSTITUTION MUST GO BACK TO DRAWING BOARD, SAY GREENS

"We want a constitution, but the current proposal would entrench much of what's worst about the EU".

 The Green Party announced from its conference in Weston Super Mare today that it would campaign actively against the current draft of the proposed EU Constitution - and would continue to offer positive, progressive policies for EU reform. Caroline Lucas MEP, the party's Principal Speaker, said today: "We are committed to the European Union and to the idea of an EU constitutional treaty. But we want a more progressive EU, an EU which serves social justice and provides for an ecologically sustainable future."

The conference reiterated a previous statement by the party council that it would say "no" in the referendum to be held on the proposals, and committed the party to joining the umbrella "no" campaign that will be set up for the referendum.

But the Greens made it clear that they would not tolerate right-wing or xenophobic arguments. For the Greens, the issue was about the contents of the proposed draft, not least its economic provisions. Party campaigns coordinator and economics spokesperson Molly Scott Cato explained: "The current proposals would commit the EU strongly to neoliberal economics, which would take Europe in the wrong direction. Any move we might make towards building a sustainable economy could be ruled unconstitutional if it impeded the drive for profit that's central to the capitalist economy. There are more important things than profit.

She added: "There's a lot that needs improving about the EU, and the wrong type of constitution would derail real progress. The Constitution should enshrine principles of democracy, accountability, social justice and sustainability. The Greens will keep on making the progressive case for EU reform."

John Norris, the party's international coordinator, underlined that "The Greens are an unashamedly internationalist and pro-European party, but we are very sceptical about the existing arrangements in the EU. We want more decisions taken lower down, closer to the people most affected by them. We want the EU to take its proper role in dealing with issues that cross national boundaries, like human rights and environmental protection, and promoting peaceful and constructive ways to prevent conflict."

John, who introduced the motion, stressed the party's concerns about the increased military role of the EU. "The Green Party is about peace and we are not into a constitution which prescribes that all countries will increase their military capabilities. We are not in favour of an EU army - not even an EU army euphemised as a 'rapid reaction force'."

For Caroline Lucas, Green MEP for South East England, the proposed Constitution represented "a missed opportunity, because it fails the European people. Its original intention was to simplify the EU and redefine its areas of competence. But instead of allocating competences at the appropriate levels it actually extends EU powers and makes the EU more complicated. This is not what we need."

23 October HEALTH CONCERNS OVER TEFLON

Teflon, a waxy, white powder, has become a staple in household kitchens everywhere. But this nonstick "treasure" may do more harm than good.

Accidentally invented by a DuPont chemist more than 65 years ago, Teflon has been raising some health concerns. A chemical used to produce it, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), has been appearing in people and animals worldwide. One study showed that in 23 states, 96 percent of the 598 children tested, had traces of the chemical in their blood. 

Scientists are conducting studies to answer one plaguing question: "Is PFOA a risk to human health?"

Many studies have been conducted using animals, such as rats, to discover the answer. The studies raised concerns regarding:
Children's health and development
Risks of liver, pancreatic, testicular and mammary gland tumors
Altered thyroid hormone regulation
Damage to the immune system
Reproductive problems and birth defects.

Full article, titled "Teflon Finds Itself in Sticky Situation", at Mercola.com (reposted from Seattle Times and Environmental Working Group).

3 October THE CHALLENGE TO MASS VACCINATION

"t is one of the most successful public relations stories of the last two centuries: the worldwide acceptance of mass vaccination to suppress infectious diseases. Yet the universal use of vaccines as a worthy goal that prevents needless suffering and benefits all mankind has begun to be challenged by a growing number of parents and physicians in the U.S., Canada and Europe. At the heart of the heated public debate is a challenge to the premise that mass vaccination with multiple vaccines safely and effectively controls diseases and improves individual and public health."

Article by Barbara Loe Fisher at the Online Vaccine Conference at Redflagsdaily.com

22 September U.S. TREASURY SHOWS ACTUAL 2003 FEDERAL DEFICIT AT $3.7 TRILLION

"The U.S. government's fiscal ills have spun wildly out of control and no longer are containable within the existing system.....the actual annual shortfall in U.S. government operations for fiscal year 2003 (September 30) was $3.7 trillion. Put in perspective, that means if the U.S. Treasury had seized all wages and salaries in 2003 with a 100% income tax, there still would have been a deficit! The outlook for fiscal 2004 numbers is even worse. Considering that the popularly reported 2003 budget deficit was $374 billion, one-tenth the number cited above, this installment on government reporting concentrates on where the incredulous $3.7 trillion number comes from, how and why the Treasury is reporting it, and why the financial press and federal politicians are ignoring it....

.....The unfolding fiscal disaster faces one of only two very unpleasant general solutions:  The first solution is draconian spending cuts, particularly in Social Security and Medicare, even if accompanied by massive tax increases. This appears to be a political impossibility, at present.

In the absence of political action, the second solution is the U.S. government facing some form of insolvency within the next decade or so. Shy of Uncle Sam defaulting on debt, the most likely outcome is the Fed eventually having to monetize U.S. debt heavily, triggering a hyperinflation. U.S. obligations eventually would be paid off in a significantly debased and devalued dollar."

Full article by Walter "John" Williams at PrudentBear.com, dated September 8.

15 September INCREASE IN CHILDHOOD LEUKAEMIA MAY BE PARTLY DUE TO INCREASED LIGHT AT NIGHT

International experts will (Wednesday 8 September) consider the evidence for a link between the rise in childhood leukaemia and increased light at night at an international scientific conference in London. The incidence of childhood leukaemia increased dramatically in the twentieth century. The increase mainly affected the under five age group, in whom the risk increased by more than 50 per cent during the second half of the century alone.

Whilst the link between leukaemia and light at night may, on the surface, seem surprising, it has a logical basis and there is considerable evidence pointing towards the association. Compared with 100 years ago we are exposed to considerable light at night (LAN) during the natural hours of darkness. LAN disrupts our natural circadian rhythm, suppressing the normal nocturnal production of the hormone melatonin.

As Russel Reiter, Professor of Cellular and Structural Biology at the University of Texas, explains, a reduction in melatonin has been linked to cancer initiation as well as cancer progression. "As an anti oxidant, in many studies melatonin has been shown to protect DNA from oxidative damage. Once damaged, DNA may mutate and carcinogenesis may occur." 

A number of studies have shown that people in occupations that expose them to LAN (i.e. night workers) experience a higher risk of breast cancer and that blind people, who are not vulnerable to reduced melatonin levels through LAN, have a lower incidence of cancer.

Full article at Eurekalert.

15 September CONVENTION SPEECHES IGNORE IMPENDING U.S. DEBT DISASTER

"Whoever wins the 2004 race will become the first U.S. president to confront what sober-minded experts across the political spectrum describe as an impending "fiscal catastrophe" lying right around the corner. 

Astronomical federal debt, coming due as the Baby Boom generation collects Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, is enormous enough to swamp the promises both candidates are making to voters, whether for tax cuts, health care, 40,000 more troops or anything else....

An array of government and private analysts put the actual U.S. "fiscal gap," which means all future receipts minus all future obligations, at $40 trillion (Government Accountability Office) to $72 trillion (Social Security Board of Trustees). 

These are not sums, but present-value figures, heavily discounted to show in today's dollars what it would cost to pay off the debt immediately. The International Monetary Fund estimates the gap at $47 trillion, the Brookings Institution at $60 trillion."

Full article at by Carolyn Lochhead at San Francisco Chronicle.

12 September DARFUR: WHY NOW?

by Stephen Gowans, from Notes From Bedlam.

What seems to escape the attention of a lot of people who find ongoing satisfaction in working themselves up into a moral frenzy over the regular depredations, exploitation and inhumanity of the world, is that people are being plundered, murdered, humiliated, starved, terrorized, bullied, dispossessed and crushed every minute, in thousands upon thousands of places around the world. 

Which isn't to offer a "poor are always with us" sop. We should be outraged. 

And yet our attention at any one time is only ever drawn to one, or at most, a few, of those places, so that we come to believe that all the inhumane conditions of the world (at least those worthy of our urgent attention) are concentrated in one locale, and that plunder, starvation, dispossession and terror elsewhere, can be ignored, if, indeed, we ever grasped their existence. 

Kosovo is a good example. There, for a few years, a low-level civil war raged, and few people outside of Serbia and governments that had a history of dominating smaller countries, noticed. 

In time, these governments – the US, the UK, and Germany at the core – brought the civil war in Kosovo to the attention of the media (which mostly passed along what they had been told uncritically, their accustomed role) and in turn the public became engaged, and outraged, ready to accept some form of intervention to put an end to massacres, deportation and what was understood to be genocide. Maybe everyone didn't agree that the intervention should come in the form of an armed response, but some form of intervention was considered necessary. 

And it came – in the form of high altitude bombing. A long history of imperialist domination would have suggested that the US, British and German interest in Kosovo had little to do with saving ethnic Albanian Kosovars, and much to do with smashing the rump of the former Yugoslavia that refused to be drawn completely into the orbit of Western capitalism. Serbia kept electing socialists, when all the other republics were electing pro-capitalist, anti-socialist "reformers" – the kind of people who get nods of approval in plush boardrooms. 

Today, any moral outrage at the goings on in Kosovo is the province of a very small group of people. Attention has been drawn to other brutalities, elsewhere. And yet all the events NATO said it intervened to put an end to – ethnically-motivated murder, deportations, the destruction of religious artifacts – are present in Kosovo today, only they're carried out by the ethnic Albanian population against Serbs, Roma, Jews and other ethnic groups. 

If we accept that Kosovo was an unpleasant place before the imperial intervention, all that has changed is that Serbia is now in the midst of being fully integrated into Western capitalism – with the expected grim and regrettable consequences for its population, and with consequences that are none too pleasant for labor elsewhere either. The dismantling of socialism in Eastern Europe, and the smashing of the Yugoslavian variety, has meant a massive increase in the pool of labor available to Western firms at a fraction of the price once commanded by workers in Germany, the UK and the US. It's no accident that a spate of German unions is accepting longer hours and leaner benefits with no increase in pay to protect their member's jobs from moving to low-wage former socialist countries teeming with the unemployed. And ethnic cleansing in Kosovo hasn't stopped at all. If anything, it's worse. The only stratum benefiting from NATO's intervention in Kosovo (and also from the dismantling of socialism in Eastern Europe and elsewhere) is the beneficiaries and representatives of Western capital – which, considering their virtual sway over the state in NATO countries, was the driving force behind the intervention in the first place. 

With Kosovo in mind, we might, then, ask what determines which of a seemingly endless array of inhumane conditions around the world is singled out, so that all other inhumane conditions disappear from our notice, and we become suitably worked up over this outrage and not that one? 

Stephanie Nolen, a correspondent with the Toronto Globe and Mail remarked that "few in the West paid attention 20 years ago, when the Sudanese government unleashed a similar [to Darfur] campaign against ethnic groups in the south, or when it froze Darfur and other non-Arab regions out of economic development and political participation. Now that the region is on the map, there is an opportunity for the kind of pressure that got Khartoum to agree to a power-sharing deal that ended the war in the south earlier this year."(August 30, 2004) 

What Nolen doesn't explain is why Darfur, after having been frozen out of economic development and political participation for years – and where the killing began more than half a year ago -- is only now "on the map." Or why, for that matter, no one seemed to notice, much less care, about "a similar campaign against ethnic groups in the south"? 

Is Darfur like Kosovo – an unpleasant place whose unpleasantness can be cited as a reason for Western imperialist powers to intervene, in the name of humanity? 

It seems significant that Darfur is home to large reserves of oil, and equally significant that the China National Oil Company owns the development concession. It is standard operating procedure in Washington to do what's necessary to eclipse China's rise as a great power rival, and since China's continued growth is dependent on imports of oil, most of which come from US-dominated Western Asian sources, upsetting China's efforts to achieve security of supply serves an important US foreign policy goal. Already, the US occupation of Afghanistan and troop presence throughout Central Asia has impeded China's plans to build a secure pipeline corridor to the petroleum rich Caspian Basin. And guess who, apart from Russia, France, India and Indonesia, owns oil field development rights in Iraq -- or did, until the US occupation threw who owns what up into the air? Iran: another country in which China has an oil stake. Needless to say, a US intervention in Sudan, in, say, the form of an occupation, would do to China's plans to establish a secure supply of oil what the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have already begun. For the US, it means control of the spigot, and therefore a stranglehold over an emerging rival. 

So it is that Darfur's suddenly being on the map, might lead one to wonder whether the populations of the Western imperialist countries are being manipulated, their moral outrage something that can be turned on and off to suit the conquest du jour. 

Some will say, maybe this is so, and maybe intervention (if it comes) will reflect imperialist motives, but something good may come if, as a consequence, the killings and deportations stop. 

Did the killings and deportations stop in Kosovo? 

And what of the main (though hidden) goals of intervention – plunder, exploitation and subjugation?

11 July BRITISH MPS' VISIT TO BOTSWANA CONTROLLED BY THE GOVERNMENT

from Survival International 

A delegation of British MPs has just returned from a visit to Botswana paid for and organised by the government there. The Bushmen evicted from their ancestral lands, whose situation they were supposed to investigate, have denounced the visit as 'controlled by the government.'

Most of the MPs spent just a few hours talking to Bushmen in one of the relocation sites, and most of those chosen to talk to them were appointed by the government. When other Bushmen tried to explain how they wanted to return to their ancestral lands, they were prevented from speaking. The MPs did not attempt to visit the hundreds of Bushmen who have returned to their lands inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

Not all the MPs, however, were taken in. Dianne Abbott told the Sunday Telegraph that the relocation centres were 'more like refugee camps than communities'. I am quite convinced that they were moved against their will.'

The visit was organised by the huge PR company, Hill & Knowlton, which has been contracted by the Botswana government and De Beers to counter the Bushmen's campaign for their land rights. It is one of many visits, all similarly stage managed, led by Nigel Jones MP. Hill and Knowlton have set up and administer a new all-party group on Botswana which is chaired by Mr Jones. The trips are paid for by Botswana's diamond revenue, controlled by De Beers, and include luxury safaris.

Nigel Jones told the BBC last week that they only saw 'one or two people who were not happy'. When the reporter put it that the Bushmen themselves were reporting 'huge social dislocation', he replied, 'Well, we didn't see any of that,' and went on, 'the government has been pretty generous.' Mr Jones has previously accused those supporting the Bushmen's right to return to their lands as 'prefer[ring] Basarwa women to die in childbirth in the bush' and 'people to die from curable diseases'. (The Bushmen are called 'Basarwa' in Botswana, a derogatory term.) 

Botswana's President Mogae visited the same settlement only two weeks ago and handed out food and blankets to the Bushmen, telling them not to try to return to their lands, in spite of the fact that they are now taking the government to court for the right to go back - the case starts this week.

The Gana and Gwi Bushmen lived largely by independent hunting and gathering until the evictions. They are now destitute and dependent on government hand-outs. They call the government sites 'places of death', saying there is nothing to do there except get drunk. They are arrested if they try and hunt. Prostitution is becoming common.

The Bushmen are the indigenous inhabitants of all of southern Africa and, it is thought, have lived there for at least 40,000 years. 

Stephen Corry, director of Survival, said today, 'For the Oxford-educated president to hand out blankets to the Bushmen and tell them not to try and return to their land is like the British 'buying' the land of Canadian Indians for 700 blankets in 1850. British MPs were complicit in that deal, and now some are doing the same thing in the Kalahari. Both episodes bring shame on Britain. Have we learned nothing from history?' 

30 June INDICTMENTS LOOMING FOR BUSH & CHENEY IN VALERIE PLAME CASE?

"!Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)? 

The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the upcoming presidential election. 

Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency...."

"Shortly after the "surprise" Tenet-Pavitt resignations, current and former senior members of the U.S. intelligence community and the Justice Department told journalist Wayne Madsen, a former Naval intelligence officer, that they were directly connected to the criminal investigation of a 2003 White House leak that openly exposed Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA officer. What received less attention was that the leak also destroyed a long-term CIA proprietary intelligence gathering operation which, as we will see, was of immense importance to US strategic interests at a critical moment. 

The leak was a vindictive retaliation for statements, reports and actions taken by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, which had deeply embarrassed the Bush administration and exposed it to possible charges for impeachable offenses, including lying to the American people about an alleged (and totally unfounded) nuclear threat posed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Conservative columnist Robert Novak, the beneficiary of the leak, immediately published it on July 14, 2003 and Valerie Plame's career (at least the covert part) instantly ended. The actual damage caused by that leak has never been fully appreciated."

Full article by Michael C. Ruppert (titled COUP D'ETAT:The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the CIA on June 3rd and 4th) at From The Wilderness.

13 June THE FLUORIDE DECEPTION

Interview at Mercola.com with Christopher Bryson, author of "The Fluoride Deception". This following extract might make you wonder how anti-fluoridation campaigners came to be seen as cranks (the book tells you that too, in part - as usual, a public relations worker had a hand in it), as well as why socialists and leftists have generally failed to address this issue, leaving it to the green, environmental and health lobbies (again! - perhaps there is a systemic problem here?)

"Q. What piece of information was most shocking to you?

A. There were several. I uncovered a medical study that had been performed at the Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati in the late 1950s. The study was paid for by industry and was buried for almost 40 years. It was part of an effort by companies such as U.S. Steel, Alcoa and the TVA, to "provide ammunition" to a self-described Fluorine Lawyers Committee to help those industry attorneys defeat workers and farmers who alleged fluoride poisoning. 

But the study found that fluoride was terribly harmful to the experimental animals, damaging their lungs and lymph nodes at modest doses. A scientist who reviewed the study for me said that, if the scientists who set workplace exposure standards had seen the data, then fluoride exposure levels in factories would have been set much lower. Tens of thousands of women and men have likely been poisoned and hurt by fluoride because of this decades-long cover up."

22 April UPRISING IN FALLUJAH - WHY?

"The waste of life and limb in America 's latest Iraq War has been escalating wildly under Paul Bremer's watch. A few minutes with any text of Roman history makes it all too clear that the job of a proconsul is to keep his assigned imperial province quiet – but don't look to the Bush people for historical perspective..... By shutting down an independent Shia newspaper, the Coalition Provisional Authority's clever little potentate has triggered an uprising that makes April 2004 the bloodiest month for American soldiers since 1971. As for the population of Fallujah, it's more asymmetrical casualties, more grief and bereavement."

"2 March 1991; The Army's 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, commanded by General Barry McCaffrey...violated a declared cease fire and moved his division forward of the cease fire line south of Basra. 400 Iraqi supply trucks and 187 Iraqi tanks – with guns locked to the rear and therefore not prepared to fire – were in the process of retreating north in accordance with the agreement that accompanied the cease fire. Many of the Iraqi soldiers in this retreating column had family members and other civilians accompanying them on this northward retreat. They thought they were protected by the Law of Land Warfare, which prohibits attacking a retreating column during a declared cease fire.

They were wrong.

McCaffrey ordered a full scale attack on the column that employed ground and air forces. In what was later referred to by participants as a “turkey shoot,” the Iraqis were annihilated. Among the thousands of Iraqis killed was a school bus full of children accompanying the column.

If 5,000 Iraqis (a conservative estimate) were killed at McCaffrey's “turkey shoot,” how many relatives surviving them would welcome the 2003 “liberation”?"

"28-30 April 2003 (NOTE 2003 NOT 2004!)

Once Iraqi combatants displaced from Fallujah, local imams stepped in. They stopped the looting and vengeance attacks, re-opened public services, and established an interim constabulary. Normalcy was beginning to take hold there, then the Bradley fighting vehicles rolled into town in late April, and the Americans took over a recently re-opened school for their headquarters, arrested the imams, installed their own mayor, and road blocked the whole city. These actions were their orders, orders from people who knew nothing of Iraqi society, and this ignorance was delivered into the hands of the Iraqi resistance like a priceless gift.

Popular outrage was swift. The Americans – still tightly strung from recent combat – were besieged by angry demonstrators, whom they then began to shoot. Between April 28 and April 30, twenty Iraqis were killed and scores wounded. Lies about weapons in the crowds were concocted, and eyewitnesses were effectively excluded from the American media. CENTCOM could say anything, no matter the number of witnesses, and it would be given equal weight against all claims to the contrary."

Lots more on historical background, and American heavy-handedness in Fallujah and elsewhere, in article by Stan Goff entitled TIME LINE: PATH TO PANDEMONIUM at From The Wilderness.

3 April APPROPRIATING THE INTERNET FOR GLOBAL ACTIVISM

"Nearly all activists use the Internet for e-mail and websites. But only a few have begun to harness the full power of the emerging networked world.

In the quest for global peace and social justice, the Internet and other emerging network technologies provide powerful tools to support our work. But most organizations have not moved beyond e-mail and basic websites—they haven’t yet learned truly strategic uses of these technologies. Put simply, the tools are in our hands, but most of us have not yet decided what to build. Below, we present a glimpse of what the future might hold based on our research on organizations that are out front in their innovative use of these emerging technologies".

Full article by Mark Surman & Katherine Reilly at YesMagazine looks at OneWorld.net, Indymedia, and more.

3 April NEW LAWS WON'T PROTECT DOLPHINS

From Greenpeace UK

Governments from around Europe have watered down laws to protect dolphins and other cetaceans from drowning in fishing nets. Every year thousands of dolphins and porpoises are killed in fishing nets in the European waters. Greenpeace revealed that the problem is so serious, some populations risk being pushed towards extinction.

On 22nd March, EU fisheries ministers debated over the wording of legislation to tackle the problem. Eventually they agreed on a severely weakened and compromised version of the text. The result - the new laws won't give dolphins and porpoises adequate protection, but the fishing industry will receive plenty of concessions.

Under the proposed new legislation, observers will continue to monitor fishing fleets believed to be responsible for dolphin deaths. But the number of observers the EU requires is way too low. Worse, the new legislation contains no clear plan of action to stop the deaths the observers report.

The legislation relies on the fishing fleets using acoustic deterrent devices (pingers) to keep dolphins out of the nets. Yet these devices haven't been properly assessed to see whether they are actually effective. The regulation was proposed in 2003 after it was revealed that EU member states were failing to protect dolphins and porpoises. Under the EU Habitats Directive, the EU is legally required to do so.

A team of Greenpeace activists toured the English Channel between January and March this year, bearing witness to the problem and documenting the destructive practices of pelagic pair trawlers. We discovered an alarming number of dolphin corpses. The dead animals had severe cuts to their beaks and fins - injuries that occur when dolphins try to escape from fishing nets.

3 April UK WILDLIFE MUST NOT BE PATENTED FOR PROFIT

From Friends Of The Earth UK .

Patenting the genetic make-up of England's wildlife could lead to companies commercialising genes without any benefit for the British public or the environment and should be resisted by the Government, according to Friends of the Earth. 

The warning comes as England's official wildlife watchdog, English Nature, is said to be "on the verge of striking a deal to bio-prospect some of Britain's most famous Nature reserves" [1] despite no legal or ethical framework being in place to ensure any genetic exploitation benefits the British people. 

Friends of the Earth has written to the Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett calling on the Government to resist moves to allow companies to profit from genetically patenting wildlife and urgently address ethical and practical questions, including whether the public, Government or opportunistic companies own the genetic rights to England's wildlife. 

Friends of the Earth's Executive director, Tony Juniper, said: "A worldwide gene rush is underway with companies staking claims on life forms from across the planet. Their aim is to boost profits from medical, agricultural and industrial products. Companies are taking traditional knowledge about the useful aspects of plants, or information established by science at public expense, patenting the life forms and then selling products back to the public, who arguably owned the wildlife in the first place. Official conservation agencies must approach this issue with caution. Helping companies get richer in this way is not necessarily good for society, and has no automatic benefits for the environment". 
Note

1. Today (Tuesday 22 March): www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/

26 March CROAKER COLA

FROM SchNEWS;

Del-Boy would have been proud. Stick some tap water in a fancy bottle, give it a poncy name, brag about the "highly sophisticated purification process" based on Nasa spacecraft technology and then sell it back to the public with an astronomical mark-up! But in true Trotter style the scam seriously back-fired for Coca-Cola last week when its entire UK supply of Dasani water was pulled off the shelves because it has been contaminated with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical.

But while in the UK Coke are just busy ripping off their customers and encouraging people to drink a can which contains six sugarcubes, across the world their fizzy pop actions are a lot more life and death.

Colombia is not the place to be if you are a trade unionist - over 3,000 have been murdered since 1987 - eight of those trade unionists were working at Coke bottling plants. One of them Isidro Segundo Gil was killed inside a Coke bottling plant and his wife murdered by the paramilitaries for campaigning for justice. These Colombian bottlers are now part of a legal action in the US under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which accuses the company of collaborating or hiring paramilitaries to murder, torture kidnap and disappear Coca Cola workers and trade unionists.

Last September Coca-Cola's largest Colombian bottler, closed the production lines at 11 of their 16 plants and launched a new offensive against union-affiliated workers in an effort to break support for the food and drink workers union, Sinaltrainal. The company imprisoned workers by force in factories or hotels and pressured them to renounce their employment contracts in return for a measly payout. Then the bottlers suddenly sacked 91 workers from their plants, 70% of whom are union organisers.

So twelve days ago to try to draw world attention to the situation 30 of these sacked workers began a hunger strike in front of six Coke bottling plants. One of them Juan Carlos Galvis, vice president of the local union said, "If we lose the fight against Coca-Cola, we will first lose our union, next our jobs, and then our lives." He should know. Last August there was an assassination attempt against him, and just a few months ago, in December, his brother-in-law was brutally murdered in an incident that many human rights groups have linked to anti-union thugs.

Just a week into the protest and strikers are already being threatened by the paramilitary who issued a statement declaring "They must leave or they will become a military target and we will finish them off."

COKE OF SECRECY

Insufficient rains for the past three years has pushed the state of Kerala in India to a severe drought-like situation. Reports from across the state say that the water levels in reservoirs are going down fast, crops are perishing and towns and villages have been hit by drinking water scarcity. So what are the caring Coca-Cola Company that "exists to benefit and refresh everyone it touches" doing? Sucking peoples water dry so they can produce their sugary crap of course.

Coke have been the focus of protests across India for the past few years. In Plachimada in the state of Kerla the company arrived three years ago, building a plant in the middle of fertile agricultural land because it had plentiful supplies of groundwater. But it wasn't long before problems began. Farmers living nearby began noticing changes in the quantity and quality of well water. Water from a well in the village of Plachimada became unfit for drinking, cooking and bathing with a district medical officer eventually telling the villagers their water was now toxic. Crop yields began to plummet. The water scarcity eventually hit Coke. Until recently, the company was drawing 1.5 million litres a day from the common groundwater resource - then it is only able to extract 800,000 litres - the remainder being brought in by truck from borewells from neighbouring villages. Fed up with this people recently blocked two of these transporters and instead distributed the water to local people and emptied the remaining water into paddy fields!

But while complaints and requests to the company and Government repeatedly fell on deaf ears locals began an indefinite picket (or 'agitation' as they call it) outside the factory gates demanding its closure. So far they've been there for nearly seven hundred days with over 300 arrests. Now due to the severe drought the local authority has refused to renew the companies license to operate. The vice-president of Coca-Cola India, Sunil Gupta said: "We have a long-term commitment to the people of Kerala. We hope the State Government would explore the possibility of finding a solution to the present problem of water availability due to deficient rain in the last couple of years." SchNEWS reckons that solution would be for the company to stop stealing the peoples water and bugger off out of India.

When you look at just two examples of how Coke are behaving across the world you have to ask yourself - what would happen if any of us did the same. Intimidating and shooting people who joined trade unions, or stealing and contaminating peoples' water supply? But then it's not people doing this but a powerful multinational whose actions Medha Patkar, coordinator of the Indian National Alliance of People's Movements says "are symbolic of the vulgar arrogance and criminal power of corporations." Or as Joel Bakan put it in his new book 'The corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit and power' "As a psychopathic creature, the corporation can neither recognise nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others. Nothing in its legal make-up limits what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs." It's up to people to make sure that the costs to these psychopaths make it impossible for them to keep getting away with such behaviour.

For more about Colombia and the worldwide boycott campaign www.killercoke.org. For more on Indian protests www.indiaresource.org

 

26 March ACTION DAY AGAINST WATER FLUORIDATION IN SHEFFIELD AND SOUTH YORKSHIRE

In December last year, anti-fluoridation campaigners launched a postcard campaign aimed at water companies across the country in a bid to stop “mass medication” via the water system, by artificial fluoridation.

On Saturday 3 April Yorkshire Against Fluoridation will be giving out information in Sheffield city centre in order to bring to the public’s attention the fact that the substance that is added in order to fluoridate water is a toxic industrial waste. There will also be a  Wakefield action day will be on Saturday 17 April.

“This substance is more toxic than lead and only slightly less toxic than arsenic. The British Fluoridation Society, a publicly-funded organisation with the sole objective of promoting fluoridation, says that the aim is to increase the level of a naturally- occurring substance to a therapeutic level. In fact, the body does not need any fluoride in order to be healthy, it is not a nutrient and the substance that will be added has never been safety tested” commented Jan Brears of the Yorkshire Against Fluoridation Group.

The campaigners also state that water fluoridation constitutes enforced mass medication which violates the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights. 

“The issue of Human Rights has been completely ignored by most MPs who have failed to protect constituents by not voting against the Water Bill as it progressed through parliament during 2003. All of us who wrote to our local Barnsley MPs received the reply that we were entitled to our opinion, but none of the MPs respected their constituents’ opinions sufficiently to vote against the Government line. It is now down to members of the public to do the job the MPs have failed to do - and put a stop to the idea that mass medication is in any way acceptable.”

YAF’s view that public opinion is against fluoridation is backed up by polls such as the one by YTV’s Calendar News on 10 September, which showed 95% against fluoridation. A similar poll of 10,000 people by Meridian TV in the south of England gave the result of 94% against.

Representatives from Yorkshire Against Fluoridation will be in Barkers Pool from 10 am on 3 April. Anyone interested in more information should contact Jan Brears on 01226 203682 or Anne Butcher on 01226 791352. 

12 March ARE ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS (EMFs) DANGEROUS TO OUR HEALTH?

Answer - yes, depending on field strength and length of exposure. I have been saying for over 5 years that this is a big health issue which deserves much more attention. Article at Mercola.com discusses research, and possible problems with home electric wiring, electric blankets and clocks, microwave ovens, telephones and more.

4 March BUSH OR KERRY/ LOOK CLOSELY AND THE DANGER IS THE SAME

Article by John Pilger at ZNet (originally in New Statesman).

Shows similarities between their support for America's overseas empire, and looks at how past Democrat presidents e.g. Wislon, Truman, Kennedy, Clinton, fostered its expansion.

"Above all, (Kerry) has not in any way challenged the notion of American military supremacy throughout the world that has pushed the number of US bases to more than 750.....What the New Democrats object to is the Bush gang's outspokenness - its crude honesty, if you like - in stating its plans openly, and not from behind the usual veil or in the usual specious code of imperial liberalism and its "moral authority". New Democrats of Kerry's sort are all for the American empire; understandably, they would prefer that those words remained unsaid. "Progressive internationalism" is far more acceptable....."

".....Clinton was little different from Bush, a crypto-fascist. During the Clinton years, the principal welfare safety nets were taken away and poverty in America increased sharply; a multibillion-dollar missile "defence" system known as Star Wars II was instigated; the biggest war and arms budget in history was approved; biological weapons verification was rejected, along with a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, the establishment of an international criminal court and a worldwide ban on landmines. Contrary to a myth that places the blame on Bush, the Clinton administration in effect destroyed the movement to combat global warming.

In addition, Haiti and Afghanistan were invaded, the illegal blockade of Cuba was reinforced and Iraq was subjected to a medieval siege that claimed up to a million lives while the country was being attacked, on average, every third day: the longest Anglo-American bombing campaign in history. In the 1999 Clinton-led attack on Serbia, a "moral crusade", public transport, non-military factories, food processing plants, hospitals, schools, museums, churches, heritage-listed monasteries and farms were bombed. "They ran out of military targets in the first couple of weeks," said James Bissett, the Canadian former ambassador to Yugoslavia. "It was common knowledge that Nato went to stage three: civilian targets." In their cruise missile attack on Sudan, Clinton's generals targeted and destroyed a factory producing most of sub-Saharan Africa's pharmaceutical supplies. The German ambassador to Sudan reported: "It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor country died as a consequence... but several tens of thousands seems a reasonable guess.....""

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