Vaccines: “A Timely Truth Untold… Again”

Yep, that Time mag. article on vaccines was lame, but pretty much what you’d expect from the lamestream media.

ETA: Just found an excellent blog post about the Time’s article. Here’s the first few paragraphs:

Debunking vaccine propaganda: Part I

Let me preface this by saying: why on earth does anyone read the flagship publication of a corporate giant like Time-Warner– i.e. Time magazine? As if these rich business titans don’t have any agenda? Ha! And furthermore, why expose oneself to a known participant in Operation Mockingbird and all its successors at the CIA? Might as well read Pravda.

Time’s June 2 issue has a cover story on vaccines which is a masterpiece of propaganda. I wasn’t going to read it, in defense of my blood pressure and adrenal glands, but my husband talked me into it. “I already know what it’ll say,” I argued. “No no, it’s much worse than you can even imagine,” he assured me. “You’ve got to see it to believe it.”

So true. Right off the bat you have a picture of a baby about to be vaccinated, with the caption “Six-week-old Gavin Hubbard of New Hampshire bravely faces his series of five immunizations in the comforting grasp of Mom.” Give me a break! A 6-week old baby does not “bravely face” anything; this happy little guy is entirely unaware that he is about to receive 5 injections containing 14 weakened pathogens, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, animal tissues, neomycin (not to be used internally– ha ha!), MSG, and god knows what else. If he was circumcised he is likely to experience PTSD-like symptoms such as emotional withdrawal and uncontrollable crying, based on observational studies comparing circumcised and intact boys during immunization. And he is not “in the comforting grasp of Mom”; rather, Mom is helping to hold him down so the nurse can get all five needles into his thighs.

LOL! For some reason, those kinds of fine details seem to escape the notice of dutiful vax-jabbing, prick-mutilating parents. Whoo! Fun times ahead for THOSE kids.

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By Deirdre Imus, Huffington Post.

This week Time magazine’s cover story “The Truth About Vaccines” carries an ominous suggestion… “worried about autism, many parents are opting out of immunizations. How they’re putting the rest of us at risk.” (June 2, 2008). Finally, a major periodical puts a spotlight on the most emotionally charged and inaccurately reported medical controversy in modern history. And what does Time do? Blame parents for a crisis in confidence created by public health officials. If you were hoping to learn the “truth” about vaccinations, you are not going to find it in this issue of Time.

In her article, “How Safe Are Vaccines?” Alice Park attempts to address growing concerns about vaccines and asks the million-dollar question that parents around the country really want to know. Unfortunately, Park’s version of the “truth” does a disservice to readers when it falls into the same trap that has plagued similar reports; gross inaccuracies, reliance on industry-funded spokesmen whose conflicts are not disclosed, and the all too familiar and constant beat of immunization dogma suggesting doomsday disease scenarios.

Those of you who have read my postings before know that I am very skeptical of both the public health officials and the mainstream media’s ability to objectively and forthrightly cover this issue. The Time article does nothing to change that opinion. If anything, it confirms it.

At the heart of Park’s report, however, is the question about parental rights. Should parents be forced to vaccinate their children given the growing concerns about vaccine safety?

For over a year now, there has been a steady stream of articles about school districts and health departments’ heavy-handed actions towards parents who choose not to vaccine their children. Intimidation tactics that included monetary fines, expulsion from school, even threats to call in child protection agencies were used to try and coerce parents into compliance with the current immunization recommendations.

In March, the New York Times ran two separate articles on the subject of parents deciding not to vaccinate their children (“More Families Are Shunning Inoculations” [March 2], “Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines” [March 21]). Other news organizations around the country ran similar stories.

Throughout the article, Park implies parents are too “confused” to do their own homework on this subject or lack the good sense to make an informed decision. In reality, parents are deciding to opt out of vaccinations because they are concerned that vaccines may put their children at risk for adverse reactions that they feel are more threatening than the diseases the vaccines are purported to prevent. Chief among these concerns is the possible association between vaccines and autism.

As the Time article details, concerns about thimerosal-containing vaccines is one of several concerns that continues to weigh on the conscience of many parents. In one sentence Ms. Park states, “Thimerosal can do serious damage to brain tissue, especially in children, whose brains are still developing” and then dismissively trivializes parental concerns about a possible link between the developmental neurotoxin and autism by saying “that link could be merely temporal, of course; babies also get their first teeth after they get their first vaccines, but that doesn’t mean one causes the other.” The absurdly of this analogy ranks with one of the most nonsensical comments I think I have ever read. This “temporal” association has been reported by literally thousands of parents across the country who have documented evidence of their normally developing child regressing into a world of silence and isolation. To consider these vaccines containing neurotoxins like mercury and aluminum, along with other toxins, would seem to be reasonable, absent any other logical explanation.

The article also inaccurately reports that thimerosal-containing vaccines were “replaced” with thimerosal-free formulas in 2001. Thimerosal-containing vaccines were not recalled as the article suggests and remained on clinic shelves well into 2003, according to government communications. In addition, the majority of flu shots, given to pregnant women and babies as young as six months, still contain 25 micrograms of thimerosal.

According to the article, “In the first four months of this year, 64 confirmed cases of measles were reported in the U.S., scattered across 11 hot spots…the most by this date for any year since 2001; 54 cases had links to other countries, an only one of the 64 patients had been vaccinated.” Interestingly, the map denoting the location where the outbreaks occurred show that in four of the 11 “hot spots” only 1 case of measles was reported and only three states had more than 10 cases.

So let’s put the reports about the recent measles outbreak into some sensible perspective.
Out of the approximately 40 million children born in the last ten years, hundreds of thousands of which are not vaccinated, there have only been 64 cases of measles reported nationwide, all of whom recovered although 14 did require hospitalization.

Now let’s compare this statistic with the one that really has parents frightened, the 1 in 150 children who have been diagnosed with autism for which the health agencies have no logical explanation.

Like other articles on this subject, Time attempts to reassure parents about the safety of vaccines based on very selective information from conflicted sources and fails to cite recent published research and independent voices that support parental concerns. Nowhere did we read about the study that suggests delaying vaccinations for just two months might reduce the risk of developing asthma by half.

The article cites a 2003 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report as showing “no scientific evidence to support the link” between vaccines and autism. Actually it was 2004, and the same report also said the committee could not rule out an association in a small susceptible sub-group of children. In addition, it has been four years since that report was released and there have been dozens of published, peer-reviewed studies to suggest there could be an association. Those studies did not make into the Time article.

Having spoken to literally thousands of moms, I know many parents are terrified of the dozens of vaccines given to babies today. They want to do what is right for their children and want to protect them from diseases. Ms. Park notes that 77% of children are fully vaccinated and therefore supposedly protected from the childhood diseases, the author fails to acknowledge that these same children are among the sickest children in the world in spite of being the most vaccinated. They may not get the chicken pox, measles or mumps but they are beleaguered with serious developmental and autoimmune disorders that last a lifetime.

This is where Time fails to really explore the reasons and the truth about why parents are opting out of vaccinations and examine the mindset behind a modern day medical dictatorship that will go to any lengths, including school expulsion and threats of taking children away from parents in order to carry out their mission.

Suggesting that the reason parents don’t vaccinate is because “the illnesses kids are being inoculated against are rarely seen anymore,” Ms. Park opines, “Once you’ve seen your neighbor’s toddler become paralyzed, you’re a lot more likely to worry that the same thing will happen to yours.” There may be some truth to this but many parents would look at this suggestion another way. Once you see your healthy, normal toddler, or your neighbor’s healthy toddler develop autism following a series of vaccinations, you are a lot more likely to worry that the same thing could happen to your child.

Parents are not “confused,” Ms. Park…they are concerned and have every reason to be concerned.

It isn’t parents that created this crisis in confidence; it is the government and medical establishment for dismissing parental concerns and failing to make vaccine safety a priority. It is Congress’ fault for failing to do proper oversight.

Parents who chose to vaccinate their children should have nothing to fear from the relatively few who are not vaccinated. But ultimately, the choice of whether or not to vaccine a child must be made by the parent who will live with the life-long consequences.

The government bears the burden of proving vaccines are safe. Not parents. And the government has not proven the number of vaccines given to children today are safe, or that injecting our babies with mercury, aluminum and formaldehyde is safe.

Local Matters

Source: Financial Armageddon.

When people talk about what bad shape public finances are in, they often focus on the burgeoning federal budget deficit and programs like social security and medicare.

But in many cases, it’s fiscal problems at the state and local government level that matter most, at least in the short term.

If, for example, Defense Department spending is cut, it might undermine global security, but it might not mean your hometown is suddenly more dangerous.

However, if the local police department budget is slashed because income and real estate taxes are falling, the accompanying rise in crime will likely make you feel more insecure about walking around your neighborhood, especially after dark.

The same holds true in other areas, especially those that relate to social safety nets. In “State Jobless Benefits Reserves Low,” Stateline.org’s Pamela M. Prah details an area of concern that could turn out to be especially problematic at this point in the economic cycle.

More than a dozen states would be hard-pressed to provide unemployment benefits if the economy tailspins into a full-blown recession and more workers get pink slips.

Michigan, Missouri, New York and Ohio could face the biggest problems since the amount of money in their unemployment insurance reserves already are far below recommended levels while another 14 states could join this group if the job slump deepens.

“There is no cause for panic, but the situation is fairly worrisome,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for the rights of low-wage workers, headquartered in New York City.

One way economists determine whether a state trust fund is solvent is if it has enough money to make unemployment insurance benefit payments for at least one year without collecting any additional revenue. These four states have just a few months of reserves.

If a state unemployment insurance trust fund runs out of money, unemployed workers would still get their benefits, but the state would have to borrow the money from the federal government and pay it back with interest. Such a scenario would burden those states that are already cash-strapped and borrowing heavily to balance their budgets without having to raise taxes.

“Obviously, states are looking at increased pressure concerning their state unemployment trust funds,” said Sujit CanagaRetna, a budget expert with the Council of State Governments.

States that are also well below the recommended level with only about six months of money in their reserves are: Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Unemployment insurance (UI) is a joint federal-state program that provides laid-off workers with a portion of their paychecks for up to 26 weeks. States administer the program, determining who is eligible for unemployment insurance, how much the benefit will be and the length of time benefits are available. The program is funded through federal and state employer payroll taxes.

Most states’ UI trust funds are less solvent now than before the 2001 recession, Stettner said, explaining that the boom years of the 1990s meant low unemployment levels and more UI payroll tax revenues paid into state trust funds.

Stettner figures that collectively states currently have UI reserves that are roughly half the levels that are recommended before a recession.

Whether the national economy is technically in a recession is a subject of ongoing debate — businessman and billionaire Warren Buffett, for example, recently said he believes the U.S. is already in a recession. The National Conference of State Legislatures recently concluded that some states’ fiscal situations have deteriorated so much that they appear to be in a recession.

The faltering economy has helped to put 7.6 million workers in state unemployment lines, up from 6.8 million from a year ago. Just in the first three months of this year, 732,710 workers have exhausted their state benefits without finding jobs.

The unemployment rate is currently at 5 percent, up from 4.5 percent from a year ago, and many experts expect the layoffs to continue. The Federal Reserve May 21 predicted the unemployment rate would rise between 5.5 percent and 5.7 percent by the end of this year, up from the Fed’s forecast of 5.3 percent in January.

Unemployment rates range from the low of 2.6 percent in both South Dakota and Wyoming to Michigan’s 6.9 percent, the highest. States with the next highest rates are Alaska (6.7 percent), California (6.2 percent) and Rhode Island (6 percent), according to the U.S. Labor Department’s latest figures released May 16.

Most states’ UI trust funds weathered the 2001 recession, first because they went into the recession with more reserves than they have now. But Congress also helped in 2002 by transferring $8 billion from the federal UI trust fund to the individual state UI accounts.

Congress is once again considering helping states cover UI claims, but the measure has drawn a veto threat from President Bush, who has said such a move is too costly and premature.

Before recessing for the Memorial Day holiday, the U.S. Senate passed, by a veto-proof margin, a measure that would extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks for all workers and provide an additional 13 weeks for workers in high unemployment states. Unlike traditional UI benefits that are financed through federal and state payroll taxes, the federal government would pay for all of the extended UI benefits, estimated to cost $11 billion.

The measure, which was attached to the war supplemental appropriations bill, returns to the U.S House and must pass by a two-thirds margin to override Bush’s threatened veto.

Opponents of extending UI benefits say that the current 5 percent unemployment rate is still lower than the 5.7 percent rate in 2002 when Congress last extended UI benefits and gave the states $8 billion. Worker advocates, however, say today’s economy is growing at a much slower rate than 2002, and the percentage of the labor forces that is considered “long-term unemployed,” or without work for six months, is the same today as it when Congress extended UI benefits in the last recession.

The nation’s governors and state lawmakers have called on Congress to extend unemployment benefits and to give states more money to help administer more UI claims, according to letters to Capitol Hill this month.

Worker-advocate groups likewise are calling for the extension. “The economy is in at least as precarious a position as it was the last time Congress extended unemployment insurance benefits during the last recession,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute.

Some, however, argue that extending UI benefits now would be a mistake. “It’s far too early to tell what and where the effect of the uncertain economy will be felt most,” Pete Sepp, spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, which advocates tax cuts.

James Sherk, a labor expert at the Heritage Foundation, agreed, adding that six months of taxpayer support is enough time for most workers to find new jobs. He called extending UI benefits now “a political move that is not justified on its merits.”

Death Squads Plead Discrimination

Source: Mark E. Smith, Op Ed News.

The City of San Diego stands accused in federal court of discriminating against Blackwater International.

Today, Friday, May 30, 2008, I sat in Courtroom 13 on the 5th floor of the federal courthouse in San Diego and watched in horror as a white male former Marine general, acting as attorney for Blackwater International, a private Christian evangelical mercenary (death squad) corporation, told a sweet-looking blonde female federal judge, Marilyn Huff, that they were being discriminated against, and the judge not only agreed with their argument and confronted the city attorney with it, but also added a charge of diversity. Diversity? San Diego has too few murderers and killers to meet federal diversity standards?

The story behind this is that Blackwater intends to have a large presence in San Diego, and everywhere else in the U.S. possible, so that it will be in a position to quell any civil unrest that may happen after the next stolen Presidential election in November. In the meantime it will compete for work training U.S. military troops and guarding the border against Mexican invaders. Blackwater tried to open a training facility in Potrero, but seeing that they were likely to be unsuccessful due to public outrage, they quietly began seeking permits for another facility in Otay Mesa under the names of front companies like Raven (raven means black). But their purpose in Otay Mesa was also disguised. They said at different times that it would be a law enforcement training facility, a vocational school, or just a warehouse. Once all the permits had been granted, it became clear to the city that this was to be a mercenary training facility and the city exercised its discretion to stop them from opening before there was further review. Blackwater then went to federal court seeking a temporary restraining order on the grounds of irreparable injury, and the judge will grant their order on Monday.

Obviously Judge Huff does not understand what discrimination is. If people disliked Blackwater because of a historically suspect category, such as age, race, sex, disability, etc., that would be discrimination. But to dislike a company because they are known for shooting civilians indiscriminately and with impunity is not discrimination, it is fear.

In order to get a temporary restraining order in federal court, Blackwater had to show that otherwise they would suffer irreparable injury. The San Diego attorney cited rulings stating that loss of income is not an irreparable injury and the judge asked the Blackwater attorney to state what the injury was. Instead he began talking about our brave fighting men and women defending our country. Believe me, you’ve never seen a Marine speak so respectfully of the Navy before, because it is a contract with the Navy that begins on Monday that Blackwater stood to lose, at least temporarily, if the order was not granted. Since a temporary loss of income is not irreparable, he never did answer the judge’s question, but sought shelter behind false patriotism and phony national security. Mexico is not invading the U.S. and has no intentions of doing so, and our efforts to deport undocumented workers have been so successful that several U.S. farms and factories have had to move to Mexico in order to be able to rehire their deported workers when they could find no adequate replacements for them here. We are not only not under attack, we are waging wars of aggression, so self-defense is not an argument. To hear this mouthpiece say it, you’d think that if the restraining order was not granted, Osama bin Laden and five million crazed terrorists would cross the Mexican border and conquer the United States.

This remarkable proceeding is the final proof, if any more were needed, that the fascist takeover of America is complete. A federal court has no business intervening in a city’s business, not even if the company’s owner is a friend of Bush and Cheney. This means that we no longer have any local or states’ rights whatsoever, as the federal counts, stacked with judges appointed by the fascist regime in Washington, will always intervene on behalf of facism whenever states or municipalities attempt to assert their rights.

The city may appeal the ruling, but the Blackwater presence in San Diego is now a fait accompli and cannot be undone. Even if the city were to win on appeal, which it should because the laws are definitely on the side of the city, the case would just be appealed by Blackwater until it reached the Supreme Court, where the partisan thugs who installed Bush against the will of the people, including some who were appointed by that unelected President, would rule for Blackwater. No matter how illegal or unconstitutional a Supreme Court ruling, there is no possible appeal from that unelected body. A democracy is a form of government in which the ultimate power belongs to the people, not to unelected fascist thugs and their cronies.

An hour before the court hearing began, we held a protest in front of the courthouse. We had “Stop Blackwater” t-shirts, signs, and banners. A woman standing near me was talking about the election, so I asked what has become my standard question these days, “Would you still vote if the only federally approved voting mechanism was a flush toilet?” She said that she would. She is one of millions of people concerned about their right to vote, but who don’t actually care whether or not their vote is really counted or if it gives them a voice in government. As long as they can vote, they’re happy. The man standing next to her said, “Well, if a lot of people didn’t vote, maybe it would make a difference.” I said, “How’s fifty percent?” He said, “But they’re apathetic.” I said, “You don’t care if your vote is counted or not, and you call them apathetic?”

One of the protest organizers asked afterwards if anything like this had happened in Nazi Germany. I explained that it had. That many people had trusted the courts to uphold what laws remained, but the courts were just as fascist as the Nazis. Judges who weren’t, were forced off the bench. Fascist dictators appoint judges on the basis of blind loyalty, and their lapdog legislators confirm them to show their collegial support for and complicity in fascism.

Blackwater has been getting a lot of publicity. As private contractors they consider themselves exempt from all laws, domestic, foreign, and international. But they went running to the law for help when they feared a possible temporary setback to their plans. In truth the city of San Diego might be able to delay their operations, but probably couldn’t keep them out. We have a “strong mayor” system, so the mayor, who only became mayor after not one, not two, but three rigged elections, is the decider, and he said on the radio the night before the hearing that he believed that Blackwater’s permits were in order. We the people don’t get to actually vote on issues of concern to us, we can only vote for “representatives” but our votes are counted secretly by easily and undetectably hackable central tabulators and our elections officials in San Diego are a former voting machine salesperson and a guy who stated publicly that he didn’t think that manipulating a recount so that the ballots would match a fraudulent machine count was wrong. So good luck with those elections.

Author Jeremy Scahill, who has written extensively about Blackwater, will be in San Diego on June 10th. Although they didn’t say so, it is his scheduled book signing at the Unitarian/Universalist church that Blackwater feared might cause them irreparable injury, as Scahill has documented who the owners of Blackwater are, what sort of murderers and terrorists they hire, and why a company like that has no place in a democracy.

This was a sad day for America and a sad day for democracy. The poor itty bitty multi-billion dollar death squad terrorist mercenary corporation told a federal judge that they felt discriminated against, and the judge bought it. Actually, it seemed like the judge had made up her mind before hand, as she was arguing on behalf of Blackwater, handing them citations, and belittling the city and the relevant laws. On the question of jurisdiction, the right of the federal courts to preempt a city’s discretion, she did say that she didn’t think that an ordinary citizen could run to federal court if a city denied a building or business permit, but she obviously doesn’t consider Bush cronies like Blackwater to be ordinary citizens. Fascists get special treatment and favors in fascist courts.

And so, having witnessed it, I am already in a state of shock. But this shock may not reach the average San Diegan or the average American until another catastrophe like 9/11 or hurricane Katrina hits, and that will be much too late as Blackwater mercenaries will be in our streets and in helicopters overhead with automatic weapons to prevent us from getting food or medical help or escaping death. If we had a voice in the matter, we might say no. But we have no voice. Our elections aren’t about giving us a voice, they’re about legitimizing elite rule and depriving us of any voice. Instead we are told that our vote is our voice, and then our votes aren’t counted. Too bad, nothing to see here, move along.

Mark is an anti-civilizationist in San Diego.

THE A.I.P.A.C. CONFERENCE – HATE IRAN WEEK GETS UNDERWAY IN WASHINGTON.

By Damian Lataan.

The annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference got under way yesterday and wasted no time in kicking off the proceedings with Republican presidential candidate John ‘Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran’ McCain launching into a hate tirade against Iran by accusing his likely presidential election opponent, Barack Obama, of having ‘policies toward Iraq and Iran [that] would create chaos and endanger the United States and Israel’. It’ll be interesting to see how Obama responds to McCain’s accusations when he gets to address AIPAC. Hillary Clinton too is down to address the conference and, if by the time she appears she has decided that she’s still in the running, it’ll be interesting to see what she has to say as well. If, on the other hand, Hillary has decided to withdraw from the Democrat race, it will be just as interesting to see how closely whatever remarks she makes to the conference fall in line with Obama’s. Either way, it’s going to be interesting.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to address the conference. He will, no doubt, be telling them and the world how evil the Iranians are for developing nuclear power and how underhanded they are being because they may be pursuing nuclear weapons. And the audience, of course, will be totally oblivious to the superb irony of an underhandedly nuclear armed Israel telling the world that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Well, why not? The world fell for it last time when they accused that other thorn in the side of Israeli aspirations for a Greater Israel, Iraq, of secretly developing nuclear weapons long after they’d actually given the idea away. Surely, they believe, the world will fall for it again. And, while they’re at it, they will more than likely accuse Syria of the same thing in the hope that two birds might be killed with the same stone if they could just get America to do the job for them.

And while the US is dealing with Iran, it would leave Israel free to deal with Hamas in the Gaza and Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

There’s a lot riding on this years AIPAC conference what with it being the last one to be held during the Bush administration and, therefore, the last opportunity the American Israel Lobby has to effectively call for America to attack Iran. They know that a US under an Obama administration will not be likely to attack Iran. For this reason, the ‘Hate Iran Week’ will be the most intense yet.

Bush wants $600 million for Iraq police, but cuts aid to U.S. cops

By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — At the same time the Bush administration has been pushing for deep cuts in a popular crime-fighting program for states and cities, the White House has been fighting for approval of $603 million for the Iraqi police.

The White House earlier this year proposed slashing the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program, which helps local law enforcement officials deal with violent crime and serious offenders, to $200 million in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

In 2002, the year before the Iraq war, the program received $900 million.

The administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress are headed for a showdown over the domestic money, probably next month. When the Senate last week passed the emergency Iraq war funding bill, it allotted an immediate $490 million for the domestic grants while keeping the Iraqi police funds intact.

The House is expected to consider the package when it returns from its Memorial Day recess next week. But the domestic grants are the kind of spending that’s causing Bush to threaten a veto.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino did not single out the Byrne grants but made it clear the president is not happy with items that don’t deal with the war on terror.

She talked about how Congress wants “to ladle on lots of special projects. The president thinks that some of those projects may be meritorious. But they should have that debate outside of funding for the troops.”

Some budget experts argue that the Iraq police and domestic grants have nothing to do with one another.

“State and local policing should be left to state and local governments. I don’t see any advantage to federal meddling,” said Chris Edwards, an analyst at Washington’s Cato Institute.

Cato opposed the Iraq war, but Edwards said the issue of Iraq’s police funding “is a foreign policy question, and foreign policy should depend on things other than economics.”

But Travis Sharp, military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, disagreed.

“There are tradeoffs in the federal government, and one of the arguments a lot of people make is that money spent in Iraq is not spent here,” he said.

Those angry with the administration have a powerful ally in Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department.

“While President Bush requests millions of dollars for the war in Iraq, his domestic spending continues to shortchange our safety at home,” she said.

When Budget Director Jim Nussle testified before her subcommittee last month, neither side showed any desire to compromise.

Mikulski called Bush’s policies “outrageous” and labeled Nussle’s testimony “snarky, scolding, dismissive.”

“We have funded the surge of Baghdad, but we have not funded the surge of violent crime in Baltimore, Biloxi or other places,” the senator said. She then asked Nussle if Bush would support restoring most of the Byrne grant.

“I can only repeat what the president has said,” Nussle replied.

“The president didn’t say anything about this,” Mikulski shot back. “You think if I went to see the president, he’d say, ‘No?”‘

“Senator,” Nussle said calmly, “I can only repeat what the president said. And his two priorities he stated were that the bill stay within the $108.1 billion request and that it support the troops.”

The Iraq police funds are listed as money due to Iraq’s Ministry of Interior. Also included in “new obligations” to the “Iraq Security Forces Fund” are $603 million for the Interior Ministry, $744 million for the Ministry of Defense and $153 million for “quick response.”

The Congressional Research Service estimates that since the war began, the United States has spent about $20.75 billion to train and equip Iraqi soldiers and police officers.

Because of congressional skepticism about just how well those forces were being trained, Congress last fall required the Pentagon to provide an independent assessment of the forces’ capability within a year to 18 months.

White House Office of Management and Budget spokesman Jane Lee stressed Tuesday that the administration hardly wants to make America less safe and believes it “should be a reliable partner with state and local law enforcement and that taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely to help meet that goal.”

And, she noted, the president’s fiscal 2009 budget proposes spending a total of $1 billion for a variety of programs to help states and cities.

But that doesn’t mean all the programs should survive intact. “A targeted number of programs that were earmarked, duplicative or had not demonstrated results were consolidated into flexible grants,” she said, “that will permit states and localities to compete for funding based on local needs, as well as national priorities.”

Skeptics were not buying it.

“Without the restoration of this funding, our efforts to limit drugs in Montana and throughout the country will be devastated,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. “Our children’s exposure to drugs and crime will be increased, and our families will be torn apart.”

The Jungle 2008: Government Manipulates Figures on America’s Dangerous Meatpacking Plants

By Roger Horowitz, Labor Notes.

In one of the most dangerous industries in America, injury rates were cut in half in one year. Is this possible? Only if you bear in mind the saying that “figures can lie and liars can figure.”

Meatpacking has always been risky for workers’ hands, arms, legs, and backs. A 1943 government study found that killing-floor workers averaged more than two dozen injuries each year and that meatpacking was America’s most dangerous industry.

But today the figures make beef and pork processing look far safer than it is. In the 1990s companies began keeping injured workers on the job, which reduced their reported injury rates and their worker’s compensation claims.

They were aided in 2002 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which changed its recording methods so that the most common injuries in meatpacking are now exiled from official statistics. The result is that today’s government data seriously under-report injury levels in the meatpacking industry.

PUSH-BACK ON INJURIES

For a few decades after the 1930s, when the Midwest’s meatpacking plants were organized, unionization made a difference. Less than 10 years after the United Packinghouse Workers secured national contracts, meatpacking’s injury rate had plummeted.

As new firms such as IBP took over the industry in the 1980s and union strength declined, working conditions worsened. National union contracts disappeared and pay fell 30 percent. The injury rate increased 40 percent, with occupational illness—primarily carpal tunnel syndrome—growing an astonishing 442 percent between 1981 and 1991.

With little bargaining leverage over pay levels, union activists turned to activity around safety issues to retain a foothold in the industry. The immigrant workers who were entering the plants in droves often were unfamiliar with meatpacking and were outraged at the high level of disabling injuries.

In some cases spontaneous walkouts erupted, such as one at a Delaware poultry plant when an immigrant worker lost several fingers.

Public pressure also mounted on the industry. In the late 1980s IBP suffered a public relations disaster. A congressional investigation showed the company had systematically underreported injuries at its Dakota City, Nebraska plant by maintaining two separate injury logs.

The version provided to OSHA contained less than 10 percent of the injuries recorded by the company’s own medical staff. The investigation resulted in a $2.59 million fine against IBP for what one official said was “the worst example of underreporting injuries and illnesses ever encountered by OSHA.”

For their part, insurance firms that had to pay worker’s compensation claims raised their rates for the industry and made it known that they were not pleased with the high level of claims even with the inadequate compensation provided to injured workers.

RATES DROP BY HALF

These pressures had an impact. The high-water mark of injury rates was in 1991; over the next 10 years aggregate reported injury levels dropped by 50 percent. Some improvements came through ergonomic workstations and new safety equipment.

As important as any real improvements, however, was the employers’ decision to keep injured workers on the job—which lessened worker’s comp claims. Until 1981, injuries causing days away from work typically accounted for 45 percent of all injuries and illnesses. But by 2001 injuries causing absence from work fell to just under 10 percent—a great savings for the insurance industry.

Even with these improvements, meatpacking retained its undesirable position as America’s most dangerous industry. In 2001 meatpacking’s repetitive motion disorder “incidence rate” was 30 times higher than the average for all private industries.

CAN’T BEAT IT? REWRITE IT

So with a stroke of the keyboard, the BLS in 2002 put out a new set of rules for recording injuries:

1. Any restriction on the tasks a worker could perform that was limited to just the day of the injury was now not reportable. Thus a category used before 2002—injuries that resulted in “no lost days”—disappeared from the data, to be replaced simply by “other.”

2. The definition of “restricted work activity” changed. Under the old rules, “restricted work duties” took place when the worker could not perform any job duties typically expected throughout a calendar year. The new definition substituted “routine job functions” for “any job duties” and shortened the period considered to one week.

Say a worker’s job was processing meat, and after an injury she was moved to another processing job with different duties (such as moving meat by hand rather than cutting it). This would have been called “restricted work activity” under the old rules, but not post-2002.

Hey, she’s still working, isn’t she?

3. The new guidelines made it easier for firms not to report injuries resulting from ongoing activity (such as carpal tunnel syndrome) by changing the definition of reportable incidents. OSHA’s own summary of this change explained, “Aggravation of a case where signs or symptoms have not resolved is a continuation of the original case.”

This reversed the old rule whereby any injury was reportable, even if it was aggravation of an earlier condition, such as tendonitis. As a result, tables recording “repeated trauma disorders” simply disappear from BLS statistics after 2001.

HIDDEN INFO

So the aggregate data naturally look better than they used to. A year after the 2002 rules went into effect, injury rates magically dropped 50 percent.

Also telling is the fact that the supposed decline in injury rates did not continue: rates for both illness and injury have remained largely at their 2003 levels.

The irony is that even with the record-keeping changes, in 2006 meatpacking still had the highest injury rate among industries with more than 100,000 workers. Workers suffered occupational illness—which doubtless includes huge amounts of carpal tunnel syndrome under the “other” label—at a level 20 times higher than the average for private industry.

The result of the numbers game is that one-third of injuries and two-thirds of illnesses in meatpacking are classified simply as “other.” This has made it difficult or impossible to track and understand the nature of workplace dangers in the 21st century meatpacking industry.

Unions are relying, instead, on the blood-curdling stories their members still tell of the horrors inside today’s meatpacking plants.

An investigation of working conditions in meatpacking based on interviews with workers has not taken place since 1943. It is time to stop concealing the gruesome nature of this industry and give meatpacking workers the chance to detail the dangers they face every day.

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Roger Horowitz is a historian with several books on labor and business in the meatpacking industry. He can be contacted at rh@udel.edu.

UK football – Micheal Owen out of squad due to Polio vaccine reaction

He’s advised to stay away from people and rest for a couple of weeks. What a great vaccine!

By George Caulkin, Times Online.

While the rest of the continent gets feverish about the European Championship finals, England’s summer will comprise two friendly matches against the United States and Trinidad & Tobago, a prospect that has made Michael Owen sick. The striker will miss both games after picking up a virus from the vaccinations he had to travel to the Caribbean.

Owen did not report for international duty when Fabio Capello’s squad assembled on Thursday evening – the nine players present in Moscow for the Champions League final do not arrive until today – and because of his infectious symptoms he has been told to stay away. Having had hospital tests last week, the Newcastle United striker has been advised by doctors to rest for at least a fortnight.

After returning to his best form for his club in recent months – playing in a deeper role under Kevin Keegan’s management, the forward scored seven goals in Newcastle’s last nine fixtures of the season – Owen will be frustrated with a lost opportunity to force his way into Fabio Capello’s plans. The 28-year-old has figured in only one half of football under the Italian and he was hoping to benefit from an otherwise dubious enterprise.

It is understood that Owen suffered his illness from a polio injection, but whether it will prove professionally damaging is unclear. While the game against the US, which takes place at Wembley on Wednesday, and the jaunt to the West Indies the next Sunday, appear low-key, Capello has insisted on an 11-day training camp to work closely with his players. Since his appointment four months ago, the manager has not spent more than three consecutive days with his squad.

Owen will have to wait until August and a friendly match against the Czech Republic to add to his tally of 89 caps and 40 goals. Given his chequered record with injuries and the severe knee ligament damage he suffered at 2006 World Cup finals, there will be relief at St James’ Park that Owen faces a less strenuous close-season than originally thought.

If, his health permitting, Owen’s enforced spell on the sidelines allow Newcastle to speed up the laborious process of contract talks with their record signing – as The Times reported last week, contact has been made with his representatives – it will also provide a chance for others to shine ahead of the resumption of competitive football this August.

As well as the usual suspects of Wayne Rooney, Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe, Capello has selected two uncapped strikers in Dean Ashton, of West Ham United, and Gabriel Agbonlahor, of Aston Villa. Theo Walcott, who travelled to Germany for the World Cup two years ago but is yet to start a senior match, has also been included after a breakthrough campaign at Arsenal.

“Ahead of England’s friendlies against US and Trinidad & Tobago, the England squad has seen two changes,” the FA said in a statement yesterday. “Michael Owen was unable to report due to an infectious virus and is expected to be out for both games, while Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Jermaine Jenas reported with an ankle injury and has returned home.

“The nine players from Manchester United and Chelsea who were involved in the Champions League final in Moscow on Wednesday evening, will report for England on Saturday. David Beckham will report on Sunday, after Los Angeles Galaxy’s game with Kansas City on Saturday.”

Capello, who is likely to excuse the exhausted participants of the Champions League final from the trip to Port of Spain, is still to announce who will captain the side for the two matches. Rio Ferdinand remains the bookmakers’ favourite to lead the team out against the United States ahead of John Terry, but another candidate may have to be found for Trinidad & Tobago.

Sven-Göran Eriksson believes that England may benefit from their non-participation at Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. “It’s a shame for England, but it’s better like that as Capello always wins and he’ll do really well with the national team, too,” the Manchester City manager said.

Mass Public Pressure over Mad Cow Risks Forces South Korea to Delay Resumption of US Beef Imports

Where is the outrage in the U.S.?

By KWANG-TAE KIM, AP.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The South Korean government said Monday it was delaying the planned resumption of U.S. beef imports, after a request from the ruling party and large weekend street protests.

Agriculture Ministry spokesman Kim Hyun-soo said the ministry had decided to put off the final administrative step needed to clear the way for imports to begin.

He offered no details, including how long the delay would last.

The ministry had earlier requested that new quarantine rules announced last week be officially published Tuesday in a government journal, which would allow for inspections of U.S. beef shipments to commence.

President Lee Myung-bak’s Grand National Party, however, requested Monday that the ministry hold off, according to party spokeswoman Cho Yoon-sun.

The delay comes after tens of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets over the weekend to protest the government’s decision to implement an April beef import agreement with the United States.

U.S beef has been banned by South Korea for most of the past four and a half years over fears of mad cow disease.

A total of almost 60,000 people rallied in downtown Seoul over the weekend to denounce the government and call for the agreement to be scrapped.

Police clashed with protesters and detained about 300 of them, though some were released. Early Sunday morning police fired water cannons at crowds.

Protests Monday night were much smaller, with police estimating about 1,500 people gathered in central Seoul amid heavy rain.

Lee told GNP Chairman Kang Jae-sup earlier Monday that he would take steps to resolve concerns after listening to opinions on the issue, according to presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan.

Repeated calls to the spokesman seeking comment on the reason for the delay went unanswered late Monday.

South Korea agreed on April 18 to reopen what was the third-largest overseas market for American beef before the first U.S. case of mad cow disease was found in Washington state in December 2003.

Public anger intensified starting Thursday, when the government announced it would resume beef inspections this week. The weekend rallies were the biggest yet in a month of demonstrations.

Protesters claim U.S. beef is unsafe and say Lee is ignoring their concerns, behaving arrogantly and kowtowing to Washington. Lee’s government has repeatedly said American beef poses no safety risk.

The timing of the import deal — reached just hours before a summit between Lee and U.S. President George W. Bush at his Camp David retreat — has also fueled anger.

Lee, a former chief executive with a top construction company, took office Feb. 25 on a wave of popular support promising to boost South Korea’s economy and take a harder line on communist North Korea.

Though Lee’s margin of victory in December’s election was the largest ever in South Korea, his handling of the beef issue has seen his popularity plummet to nearly 20 percent in some public opinion surveys.

Scientists believe mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, spreads when farmers feed cattle recycled meat and bones from infected animals. The U.S. banned recycled feeds in 1997.

In humans, eating meat products contaminated with the cattle disease is linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare and fatal malady.

It’s Time to Stop Putting Toxic Sewage Sludge on Farmlands, Yards, and Backyard Gardens

By Laura Orlando, The ReSource Institute for Low Entropy Systems (RILES).

Johns Hopkins’ Sludge Study: Bad Science, Bad Policy

On April 14, 2008, the Associated Press broke a story about a sewage sludge study in Baltimore, Maryland, that banked on kids eating the sludge. The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health defended its participation in the study in an opinion piece in the Baltimore Sun on April 28, 2008.

The dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Klag, is terribly wrong when he claims Johns Hopkins’ researchers had spread “compost,” not sludge, on poor, black kids’ yards in Baltimore. Composted sewage sludge is still sludge. And composting does not make the toxins in the sludge disappear. Sewage sludge is poisonous, composted or not.

The intended product of wastewater treatment is clean water. Sewage sludge is the inevitable byproduct that, by definition and intention, consists of every waste material a given wastewater treatment plant is capable of removing, or is incidentally removed, from the sewage in the process of treating the wastewater. This means that, besides human urine and feces, tens of thousands of chemicals–organic and inorganic, teratogenic and carcinogenic, toxic and estrogen mimicking–will be present in the sludge.

The wastewater treatment industry’s — and the EPA’s — preferred method of disposal of sewage sludge in the United States is “land application.” To get the public to accept this has required a concerted effort from government and the sludge-industry to make the public think that sludge is “organic,” “nutrient-rich,” and otherwise “beneficial.” Calling sludge “compost” is another trick. The idea of “composting” sludge is based on the dependable presence of human feces in sludge. Human feces do indeed consist largely of organic matter. But sludge consists only partly of human feces.

The idea, therefore, of “treating” sludge so that it can become “compost,” a “soil amendment,” a “fertilizer”–is disingenuous. Once mixed together, the potential value of each and all of the materials concentrated in the sludge is lost. No “treatment” of sludge can “purify” the human excrement: once mixed with poisons, it too becomes a poison. Calling Baltimore sewage sludge “compost” is linguistic detoxification and nothing more.

What should be done? Put sludge in bags of neat looking pellets to sell as “compost” to unwary gardeners? Put it on Little League ball fields? Don’t mention organic waste contaminants like pharmaceuticals and brominated flame retardants and instead call it “compost” and see what happens when kids eat it? That will get rid of some of it — and it will take a long time for people to come to understand what happened to them.

The sewage sludge haul-and-dump industry (haul it out of the wastewater treatment plant and dump it where ever the opposition is likely to be least) is an eleven billion dollar a year industry. The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, recently bought the largest sludge hauler, Synagro. It is big business and risk free, since all liability is transferred to whomever owns the property where the stuff is dumped.

What can be done to protect public health and the environment from this onslaught? First, stop lying about sludge and start telling the truth: sewage sludge is a toxic byproduct of wastewater treatment and there is no process or technology that will make it safe. Next, place an immediate moratorium on the land application of sewage sludge. And — as if one needs to say this — don’t feed it to kids.

Resources

“Sewage-Based Fertilizer Safety Doubted,” March 7, 2008, by John Heilprin and Kevin S. Vineys, Associated Press

“National policy brought sludge to Augusta farms: Ruling for farmer disputes government data,” March 9, 2008, Associated Press

“Sludge Tested As Lead-Poisoning Fix,” April 14, 2008, John Heilprin and Kevin S. Vineys (AP)

“Hopkins’ hands clean,” April 28, 2008, by Gary W. Goldstein and Michael J. Klag, Op/Ed in the Baltimore Sun

“No one knows what makes up sewage sludge,” May 11, 2008, by Kevin S. Vineys, Associated Press

The journal Nature (May 15, 2008): “stuck in the mud” editorial, p 258, and “raking through sludge exposes stink: Environmental Protection Agency scientists accused of fabricating data about health effects of fertilizer,” by Jeff Tollefson,” p 262

Piling It High May 21, 2008, by Joel Bliefuss, In These Times

Petition to stop the land application of sewage sludge (October 2003)

Report: US continuing rendition secretly holding terror detainees in ‘floating prisons’

Source: Nick Juliano, The Raw Story.

The United States has engaged in more than 200 new cases of extraordinary rendition since President Bush vowed to end the practice in 2006 and has operated more than a dozen secretive “floating prisons” aboard military ships at sea, according to a soon-to-be released report from an international human rights organization.

The secret capture, transportation and detention of suspected terrorists in foreign prisons has not abated, despite the uproar over its probable violation of international law, according to the report from human rights group Reprieve, which was noted in The Guardian Monday. The detention of prisoners aboard military ships “is raising fresh concern and demand for inquiries” in the US and Great Britain, according to the paper.

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists.

At this time many people were abducted by Somali, Kenyan and Ethiopian forces in a systematic operation involving regular interrogations by individuals believed to be members of the FBI and CIA. Ultimately more than 100 individuals were “disappeared” to prisons in locations including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Guantánamo Bay.

The use of US military ships as prisons has been reported before, but never in as much detail. The Washington Post’s Dana Priest reported in December 2004 that CIA detention facilities “on ships at sea,” but a year later, in her comprehensive report revealing the CIA’s rendition program, she reported that the idea of secretly holding prisoners aboard ships in international waters “was discarded for security and logistics reasons.”

A June 2004 report from the organization Human Rights First revealed suspicions that prisoners were being held aboard the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu.

Reprieve’s newest report shows that the use of floating prisons is far more widespread that previously believed. As many as 17 ships were used to house detainees since 2001, according to the report, which claims the suspects are interrogated aboard the ships before being rendered to other secret prisons.

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate’s story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. “One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo … he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo.”

The legal director of the human rights group tells the Guardian that the use of these floating prisons raises serious concerns about whether the military is complying with international law and the extent to which it seems to be going to hide from oversight of its activities.

“They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights,” Reprieve’s Clive Stafford Smith tells the paper.

“By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001. The US government must show a commitment to rights and basic humanity by immediately revealing who these people are, where they are, and what has been done to them.”