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Vets of recent wars have stress disorder

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

About 300,000 service members who returned home from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq now suffer from post traumatic stress disorder or depression, according to an unprecedented national study released today by the RAND Corp.

Another 320,000 service members reported suffering a traumatic brain injury during deployment. However, most of the service members who reported the injuries, of which many were mild concussions, have not sought treatment or are not aware of the severity of their injuries.

Terri Tanielian, the project’s co-leader and a researcher at RAND told reporters at a news teleconference that this is “a major health crisis” for service members, both men and women.

Miss Tanielian said the study reveals the need for more service providers who know how to deliver appropriate care, including longterm future medical needs, for service members returning from war. Service members should not be limited to seeking care at Defense Department or Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities, she said. They should be able to get care within the private sector as well, since some don’t live close enough to veterans’ hospitals.

Lisa Jaycox, RAND senior behavioral scientist and co-leader of the study, said it is difficult to estimate how many mental health care service providers will be needed to fulfill the demand because “we already have a shortage of mental health professionals in the U.S. health care system.”

“This is not a problem unique to the DOD or VA but many individuals who are seeking mental health care in the U.S. have difficulty finding a provider,” she said.

The Defense Department covers the medical needs of active duty and reservists. Veterans Affairs is responsible for the care of veterans who are no longer active.

The research included a survey of 1,965 current and former service members from all military branches across the country. It is the first to comprehensively assess the current needs of returned service members from all branches of the military.

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Israeli Troops Kill Reuters Cameraman

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Democracy Now!

Among the dead was twenty-three-year-old Fadel Shana, a cameraman for the Reuters news agency. He was killed when an Israeli tank shell struck his clearly marked jeep. Shana was filming at the time of his death. Reuters released the video from his camera. It shows the shell being fired from a distance and then moments later the camera goes black. Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger called Shana’s death tragic.

David Schlesinger: “What’s clear to me is that we need a thorough and immediate investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces into what happened. This is a tragic incident, one that really shows the risks that journalists take every day around the world. But all organizations, governments included, have an obligation to let professionals do their job without fear of death.”

Danny Seaman, an Israeli government spokesperson, said the shooting of the journalist was not intentional and that Israel should not be blamed for what happened.

Danny Seaman: “The tragic loss of life today of a Reuters photographer in Gaza is the direct result of the cynical behavior of the Hamas army. This army, which chooses to fire against Israeli civilians, also uses the Palestinian civilians as a shield.”

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Bush Replaced REX84 With New Martial Law EO

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

Ted Twietmeyer

In May 2007, Bush signed executive new orders NSDP51 and HSDP20 to replace REX84. The older order REX84 was an older directive to establish martial law in the event of a national emergency. Everything done in government is done for a reason, and these two new orders are no exception.

These new directives surprised and alarmed many real conservatives and true patriots at the time. These two orders established that the White House administration would take over all local governments under a national state of emergency, instead of Homeland Security.

In May 2007, The Washington Post apparently saw nothing wrong with it and placed the story back on page 13 (a fitting unlucky number for it), according to a CSPAN television interview with well known author and writer Jerome Corsi:

Page 13 of Washington Post from May 2007 reports that Bush claims he will run the “Shadow Government”

Close-up of page 13

A contradiction appears to exist here. It cites a nuclear attack or a decapitating event in Washington as the reason for this, according to security analysts. If all the leaders and the administration in Washington are dead from a nuclear attack, who will be left to take over leading the nation under executive orders NSDP51 and HSPD20?Who would be left to sign the martial law orders? This implies that martial law must be activated BEFORE an attack takes place while the administration is out of town, which clearly implies a false-flag operation by traitors of the worst kind. The administration was in Florida on 9-11, too.

As of this writing in April 2008, we are coming up on a year since these two directives was written and signed. There have been many rumors of false-flag attacks being prepared for 2008. Are these repeated rumors designed to destroy the credibility of whistle blowers, so when the real event is announced by a whistle-blower no one will listen? This question doesn’t appear to have been asked by anyone, but it must be. This many not be unlike the proverbial story of the boy who cried wolf. But in this case the wolf isn’t coming - he’s already inside. Now it’s a question of when the wolf will make his move.

Hitler took power through completely legal means. Laws were previously established in plain view of the German people before he made his dictatorial power grab. We appear are witnessing the very same thing happening today some seventy years later. Apparently no one on Capitol Hill has learned a thing from history as it repeats itself. They also have clearly forgotten Bush’s words in December 1999 - “This job would be a heck of a lot easier if this were a dictatorship…just so long as I’m the dictator”. He meant what he said, he’s acting exactly like one and it’s happening right now.

America’s case for a repeat of a Hitler type power grab is clearly underway. First there was the infamous 1200 page Patriot Act that appeared a few days after 9-11 but almost no one on Capitol Hill took time to read, but almost everyone signed off on it anyway. Some on Capitol Hill have said that soldiers with machine guns were in the hallways on Capitol Hill the night the Patriot Act was signed, and many felt intimidated they must sign it without reading it. If true, then it implies that martial law may have already been declared in secret. Soldiers in hallways have no place on Capitol Hill in civilian government. Again, another sign of a dictatorship IN ACTION.

Technically, Congress could nullify the Patriot Act overnight by claiming it was signed under duress.

There have been other draconian follow-on homeland security type acts which simply were given less intimidating names. All are good examples of political BS at work.

Are NSDP51 and HSPD20 the last of them all? Most likely they are not. We have no idea how many other orders have been signed in secret, such as the torture orders which were leaked to the media. When confronted about the torture order, Bush simply has shrugged his shoulders about in total disregard and boldly claimed he signed off on it.

Like paving stones, all the pieces have come together in plain sight to pave the highway to a completely legal totalitarian police state, with all of America to be controlled by the White House. But is this legal? Bush has abused his executive order powers countless times like previous presidents. Executive orders were originally created by Congress to establish relatively harmless laws without the need for Congressional approval, such as new legal holidays. Congress can revoke that privilege at any time that is, up until the time when martial law is declared. Military troops will send Congress home making them powerless. At that point we shall have passed the point of no return. That is, if we haven’t already.

A look at the history of numerous third world countries around the globe proves one common thread exists once the military takes control of its home country, it usually doesn’t return control to civilian authorities once a war or threat to security is over. And today America has been reduced to the status of a third world country as well. American manufacturing is now almost totally defense industry-driven, which makes the return of government to civilian hands after war ends even less likely in the foreseeable future.

With a 100 year war boldly proclaimed by the administration, civilian control will never be returned to Congress - for at least FIVE GENERATIONS.

Martial law will require the full support of US military personnel to enforce it. Foreign troops are called into enforce martial law will still require both direct and indirect support from US military personnel, or a military-military civil war could ensue. But in the end, that may be what’s needed to end the madness.

Here is the REAL acid test - will military personnel voluntarily turn America into a police state virtually overnight? Will these same military personnel do nothing while they watch their friends and loved ones crushed under absolute law and absolute terror? Bread lines and soup kitchens will return, but most likely only within the confines of American POW camps on American soil. This will force people to voluntarily turn themselves in to eat. Perhaps a “guns-for-food” type program will be established to encourage the American people to disarm themselves, even though the door kickers will be sent out anyway.

In military history it’s well known that if you control the food supply, you control the people. Few people know that a secure area inside Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, AR has a sign declaring that secured area belongs to Homeland Security. Wal-Mart will become the food distributor for America under a rationing program. There is no other larger food store chain that can provide the required logistics that store can. In the 1990’s, the military quietly did walk-throughs of all the major food store chains around the country taking notes. Somewhere there is a document detailing what the plans are. Certainly at the very least, it will entail securing ALL the grocery stores of any size. Small corner grocery stores will be cleaned out in a day or two, and would be of no interest to the military.

To believe such horrors could never happen in America, when it’s now down on its knees already economically would be pure stupidity at the very least. Those in real estate swore for decades that real estate prices would always go up, too. Now these same people are panicking and on they are on their knees, too. So much for greed, as they have earned their reward. But what about innocent, hard working people that have always lived within their incomes? Do they deserve to suffer as well?

We live in a time when absolutely anything is possible. A military coup is now required to prevent declaration of martial law, kick the foreign troops out of America and restore true civilian government. Dangerous centralized dictatorship laws must also be nullified and this time, the lesson learned once and for all.

No civilian militia can restore American law at this point. They would only be labeled as terrorists and dealt with under new laws already in place. We have reached the point where restoration to civilian law and government checks/balances can only come from the inside.

But time is quickly running out.

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Canada Likely to Label Plastic Ingredient ‘Toxic’

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

By IAN AUSTEN

OTTAWA — The Canadian government is said to be ready to declare as toxic a chemical widely used in plastics for baby bottles, beverage and food containers as well as linings in food cans.

A Nalgene brand bottle, which is made with bisphenol-a.

A person with knowledge of the government’s chemical review program spoke on the condition he not be named because of a confidentiality agreement. He said the staff work to list the compound, called bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., as a toxic chemical was complete and was recently endorsed by a panel of outside scientists.

A public announcement by Health Canada may come as early as Wednesday but could be delayed until the end of May. Canada would be the first country to make a health finding against B.P.A., which has been shown to disrupt the hormonal systems of animals. The department’s decision was first reported in The Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper, on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, a draft report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program endorsed a scientific panel’s finding that there was “some concern” about neural and behavioral changes in humans who consume B.P.A.

B.P.A. is widely used to make polycarbonate plastics, which are rigid and transparent like glass but very unlikely to shatter. Polycarbonates have many uses that pose no risk, like the cases of some iPod models. Because animal tests have shown that even small amounts of the chemical may cause changes in the body, however, researchers have focused on food- and drink-related applications of B.P.A., like the popular Nalgene brand beverage bottles.

“If the government issues a finding of toxic, no parent in their right mind will be using products made with this chemical,” said Rick Smith, the executive director of Environmental Defence, a Canadian group that has been campaigning against B.P.A. “We will be arguing strongly for a ban on the use of this chemical in food and beverage containers.”

The public and industry will have 60 days to comment on the designation once it is released, setting into motion a two-year process that could lead to a partial or complete ban on food-related uses of plastics made using B.P.A.

Alastair Sinclair, a spokesman for Health Canada, said, “When the minister has an announcement to make, he will make it.” Mr. Sinclair declined to answer any questions.

A spokeswoman for the Canadian Plastics Industry Association referred a request for comment to the American Chemistry Council in Arlington, Va. The council did not respond to interview requests.

Some scientists question the significance to humans of studies indicating that even very small amounts of B.P.A. can induce changes in animals. There is also some dispute about how much of the chemical is released by plastics.

Jack Bend, a professor of pathology at the University of Western Ontario in London and one of the Canadian government’s outside scientific advisers, declined to comment on what action Health Canada would take. But he said he was concerned about the widespread use of B.P.A.

“The first thing is that it’s an endocrine disrupter, there’s no question about that,” Professor Bend said, referring to the chemical’s impact on the hormonal system. “Should people that are exposed to these low levels of this chemical be outrageously concerned? I’d err on the side of not creating panic. We simply don’t know. But we should find out.”

Professor Bend added that the impact of B.P.A. on the development of human fetuses was worrisome. It may prove to cause damage in much the same way as early exposure to mercury, he said.

But Warren G. Foster, director of the center for reproductive care and reproductive biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, is more skeptical.

“In my experience working with bisphenol-a, it’s a relatively benign chemical,” said Professor Foster, who once headed the reproductive toxicology group at Health Canada. “There’s room here for a lot more research.”

He added that substances could be declared toxic under Canada’s chemical management system if they had the potential for adverse effects in animals but not humans.

“If I was a fish and there was bisphenol-a in the water, I’d be concerned,” he said. “If I was a fetus and my mother was using a plastic water bottle, I wouldn’t be bothered.”

While the Canadian plastics association referred a reporter to Professor Foster, he said that he had no ties to it or the chemical industry.

The draft report released in the United States is effectively a call for further research on the chemical.

Michael D. Shelby, the director of the toxicology program’s center for the evaluation of risks to human reproduction, said he wanted to see further confirmation that the test results could be repeated and more data about the long-term consequences of exposure to the chemical.

But he said that research strongly suggested that polycarbonate food and beverage containers and food cans were the main source of human exposure to B.P.A. When asked if people should stop using them, Dr. Shelby replied: “That becomes kind of a personal choice. These are certainly two things people can get around.”

In a statement, the American Chemistry Council said the draft report “affirms that there are no serious or high-level concerns for adverse effects of bisphenol-a on human reproduction and development.”

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FDA Accused of Intentionally Creating Drug Monopolies

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

By David Gutierrez

The outgoing chief executive officer of pharmaceutical giant Wyeth has accused the FDA of “establishing monopolies” by requiring new drugs to prove that they work better than products currently on the market.

“If you’re the first company to get approved in a certain area and competitors can’t get on the market, the FDA is now establishing monopolies. And that’s certainly not their mandate,” Bob Essner said.

Essner said that the FDA might have overstepped the bounds of its legal mandate, which is only to determine if drugs are safe and effective. “It could well be legally challenged,” Essner said. “Although that may not be a formal standard, it does appear to be a growing practice.”

The FDA denies that it is forcing new drugs to prove that they are more effective than old ones, but acknowledges that it does make such comparisons. “[The FDA] does not have what is called a ‘comparable effectiveness’ standard for drugs,” the agency said. “We do consider other products already available as we make benefit/risk decisions for new products.”

Dan Vasella, chief executive officer of Novartis, agreed with Essner’s comments. “The discussion on what this [drug] brings over and above what’s on the market is a question that’s being asked,” he said. “The FDA doesn’t seem to trust the physicians any more.”

Both Wyeth and Novartis have had drugs approved through FDA assessments that included a comparison of the drug’s effectiveness or place in the market relative to already-approved treatments. Three Wyeth drugs have been rejected or had their approval delayed in 2007: the osteoporosis drug Viviant, the antidepressant and menopause treatment Priztiq, and the schizophrenia medication bifeprunox.

Wyeth’s bifeprunox and Novartis’ Prexige, a painkiller, were the drugs subjected to market comparisons.

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How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri

Author Charles Barber discusses Americans’ unrealistic notions about happiness. We’ve medicalized a lot of life issues that aren’t mental illnesses.

While we’ve now become accustomed to the barrage of prescription drug commercials on prime-time TV, it’s jarring to learn that this advertising is legal only in the United States and New Zealand. The pharmaceutical industry doesn’t just target Americans directly, but also spends roughly $25,000 per physician per year. With the aid of information from data mining companies, a pharmaceutical representative knows exactly how many prescriptions for what medication a doctor has written, allowing the industry to individually target them.

How Americans came to this fraught relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and its drugs — particularly antidepressants — is the subject of Charles Barber’s new book, Comfortably Numb. A veteran of mental health programs in homeless shelters and a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, Barber trains his eye to the confluence of science and culture that have led to the widespread prescribing of medications once reserved for the most serious cases.

While the field of neuroscience continues to churn out new data about the way our brains work, Barber is quick to remind us how much more is yet to be understood. Barber recently spoke with AlterNet about how less sexy treatments like social interventions and therapies can be just as effective in changing the brain.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri: What led you to write the book?

Charles Barber: When I started in the mental health field in the late ’80s there wasn’t really a name for what I did. If I talked to professional, educated people, they didn’t understand psychiatric diagnoses or medications. Then, 10 years later, people were very up on diagnoses, they were sympathetic to what I was doing, and there was now a name for the field: mental health. Many of them were taking the same medications that my clients were. There was a series of events over the late ’80s and early ’90s that set all that up. The main thing being Prozac and its cousins Paxil and Zoloft, which became totally mainstream; the TV advertising of drugs in the mid-’90s, well-known figures going public with their clinical depression, and a lot of subsequent pop culture stuff: The Sopranos and A Beautiful Mind, for example. All of this brought psychiatry, particularly medications, into the fore.

OR: Can you talk about your involvement in the mental health field and what it has enabled you to observe?

CB: I fell into the field for a lot of different reasons. I worked in psychiatric homeless shelter programs for about 10 years in New York — Bellevue being the most well-known. So I was working with the really seriously mentally ill, many of whom had been in and out of prisons and state psychiatric facilities and homeless shelters. What I found was that psychiatry, at least for certain diagnoses, has confused the really serious forms of the illness with the far lesser forms. The best example is depression. Many of the folks that I worked with suffered from severe depression. I make the distinction in the book between big “D” depression and small “d” depression. In its severe forms, it’s an absolutely brutal, horrific and malevolent illness where people are at dire risk of hurting themselves.

It’s jarring to go to a cocktail party and hear people talking about being bummed out or hear that they’re going through a divorce, and their family doctor put them on an antidepressant. There has been a confusion and conflation of this diagnosis that confuses serious disorders with far lesser conditions or, in many cases, life problems. We’ve medicalized a lot of life issues that are not mental illnesses.

OR: Just to be clear, this book is not about medication as a “bad” thing.

CB: Absolutely not. I think I make clear in the book that for serious disorders, I’ve seen the medications work really, really well. However, there are often side effects that the field has overlooked and is becoming more aware of these days. And these medications still don’t work a good percentage of the time for people with serious disorders. My critique is that the further you get away from serious or moderate disorders, where you’re treating nondisorders or marginal disorders with medication, the risk/reward calculus of the medications becomes more iffy — particularly antidepressants.

When the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressants like Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil first came out, they were considered pretty much side-effect-free, largely because the previous generation of antidepressants had a lot of side effects. But in the past few years, people have become more aware that they have more side effects. These effects are seen most when people are getting on and off the drugs.

OR: You write that, in 2002, more than 11 percent of American women and five percent of American men were taking antidepressants. I was struck by the high percentages, but also the fact that more than 1 in 10 women are on these medications.

Continue

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Pentagon records prisoner abuse by US military

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Military interrogators assaulted Afghan detainees in 2003, using investigation methods they learned during self-defense training, Pentagon documents released Wednesday show.

Detainees at the Gardez Detention Facility in southeastern Afghanistan reported being made to kneel outside in wet clothing and being kicked and punched in the kidneys, nose and knees if they moved, according to the documents.

A 2006 Army review concluded that the detainees were not abused but that the incident revealed “misconduct that warrants further action.”

The documents, which were turned over Wednesday evening to the American Civil Liberties Union, focus on the 2003 death of Afghan detainee Jamal Nasser, who died in U.S. custody at the Gardez facility.

The documents detail interrogation techniques used on eight detainees, including Nasser, who were suspected of weapons trafficking.

The Army review found that abuse did not cause Nasser’s death. But the documents include interviews with some interrogators who acknowledged slapping the detainees — a technique they learned during survival training at the Army’s SERE school. SERE stands for Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape.

“You say you gave permission for (redacted) to hit detainees during interrogations; did you have a memorandum or order from your higher headquarters authorizing that?” a military criminal investigator asked one of the interrogators, according to a November 2004 transcript among the more than 300 pages of documents.

“No, I did not have a memorandum and had not seen one,” the interrogator answered, according to the transcript. “I used tactics that were used in SERE.”

The investigator continued: “Did you see (redacted) hit detainees during the interviews?”

“Yes, open or closed slaps, not punches,” the interrogator answered.

In another interview that day, according to the documents, the Army investigator asks whether “you ever heard of a tactic of pouring cold water or a water and snow mix on persons captured?”

“They do spray cold water on prisoners,” the interrogator answered, referring to SERE lessons. That interrogator was unaware, however, of men in his unit pouring cold water over the detainees, as the Afghans later complained.

ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said such interrogation techniques are taught at SERE schools only to show soldiers how to withstand them from enemy captors. She called the methods, when used together, a form of torture.

“They were intended to be defensive methods, not offensive methods,” Singh said. “This raises serious questions about the interrogation methods that were being applied in Afghanistan.”

SERE methods were also used on detainees by military interrogators in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Singh said.

The Pentagon and the Army did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday evening.

The 2004 criminal inquiry of Nasser’s death was among a string of probes into alleged abuse of prisoners in U.S. jails in Afghanistan.

Trying to deflect the kind of scandal that followed the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan ordered a review of their secretive network of about 20 jails at bases across Afghanistan.

Nasser was among eight detainees who were held at Gardez for between 18 and 20 days. The Army concluded he died of a stomach ailment.

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

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McCain’s Rightwing Economics

Thursday, April 17th, 2008

By Matthew Rothschild | The Progressive

So John McCain, who admitted a while back that he didn’t know jack about economics, proved it again on Tuesday when he unveiled his economic plans.

He said, “It will not be enough to simply dust off the economic policies of four, eight, or 28 years ago.”

But he not only is dusting them off, he’s putting them up on the mantelpiece.

He would make permanent the Bush tax cuts and eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax. By doing so, he would cost the Treasury $4 trillion over the next ten years, according to Aviva Aron-Dine, policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“It’s a massively expensive tax plan,” she says.

It’s also massively maldistributive.

These tax breaks would go disproportionately to the very rich. “Half goes to people making over $200,000 a year—that’s the top 4 percent,” Aron-Dine says. “A little more than a quarter goes to the top 1 percent.”

This is redistribution of income—from bottom to top.

McCain also said he favored a “flatter” tax code. That means one that is less progressive, one that lets the rich keep more of their money. Since the days of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the tax rates have pancaked. In the 1950s, the marginal tax on the wealthiest Americans was 70 percent. Now it’s half that much. And McCain wants to bring it even lower.

And despite his populist talk about “no more corporate welfare” and about the “extravagant salaries and severance deals of CEOs,” McCain announced he would “lower the business income tax for every employer that pays it.” This would be a giveaway to businesses of about $90 billion a year, says the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. McCain then added another $70 billion a year deduction for corporate investment and equipment and a $10 billion credit for R&D. That hardly constitutes ending corporate welfare as we know it.

He said he’d pay for these corporate giveaways by freezing discretionary spending programs—the very kind of programs that could help people most in need, as well as jumpstart the economy.

Here McCain exposed himself as a pre-Keynesian economist.

Ever since the Great Depression, economists have understood that domestic government spending stimulates the economy much faster than business bennies and that such spending is crucial to get out of a recession. But rather than increase domestic government spending, McCain is going to throttle it.

Nor did he advocate a crucial policy to revive the economy and spare people suffering: and that is, to increase federal revenue sharing with the states, which are facing huge budget shortfalls and are required to have balanced budgets. “At least 20 states have made or proposed budget cuts that threaten vital services for many residents, including some of the state’s most vulnerable residents,” according to a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

These include cuts to education, health care for poor people, and programs for the elderly and the disabled. Tennessee, for instance, “has cut community-based services for the mentally retarded.”

Not only are state budget cuts savage. They are economically destructive. By strangling state spending, McCain would create a rolling recession from one state to another.

And this is where his attack on “earmarks” is so counterproductive. Many earmarks go for positive things: bridges and roads, university expansions, urban housing, etc. By vowing to veto each and every “earmark,” McCain will end up choking the states all the faster. They will have less money for public works, therefore higher unemployment, less state income tax revenue, and then a bigger budget shortfall. Thus does the circle become vicious.

As much as he tried to paint himself as an innovator, McCain revived the old Reagan proposal for a line-item veto (one that Bill Clinton, a true Republican, gave the Heimlich to when he was President).

But the last thing we need is more Executive Branch power—especially in the hands of an economic ignoramus.

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