Harper furious over aboriginals visit to Iran: Terry Nelson

PressTV

A top aboriginal leader says the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has launched a smear campaign against the Iranian nation and discourages Canadians from visiting Iran

“For us as indigenous people from the Canadian side, for us to be in Tehran, we were absolutely set upon, we were told ‘no, don’t go to Tehran’. But we were pretty clear that the dehumanization, the demonization of the Iranian people has been one of the facts of Western media and we understand that because we too have also met with the crusader,” Terry Nelson, the top Chief of Canada Aboriginals-- also known as First Nations said in an interview withPress TV on Sunday.

The comment comes as Nelson is currently in Tehran to seek help in exposing Ottawa's exploitation and abuse of aboriginal communities.

The top Canadian chief went on to say that indigenous people in Canada need to go outside the country to open up human rights issues, the same thing that Native Americans have done over the years.

“The problem with the indigenous peoples in Canada is that they have not done the same thing as the Native Americans. Native Americans have always consistently gone outside the country to deal with their human rights issues and essentially have dealt with other countries,” he noted.

Activists say there has been a significant rise in human rights violations together with an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of speech since Canadian Premier Harper took power in 2006.

According to reports, Canada has forced thousands of aboriginal children into ghastly boarding schools where they have been abused sexually, psychologically, and physically.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada has documented over 600 cases of missing or murdered aboriginal women and girls from across the country in the past twenty years. These alarming rates have been a major source of concern and grief for the aboriginal community.

The UN has also strongly condemned Canada's record on children's rights, and accused Ottawa of systematic discrimination against aborigines and immigrants.

Condemning Western media for portraying a horrific image of Iran, Nelson concludes that Iranians have been very kind to us.

“We clearly, our people’s religious spiritual understanding was confronted. So I think one of the things we have to do is that our people have to continue to go. I was really, really surprised and, I guess, not so much surprised, the treatment of the Iranian people for us has been great. This is something the Western media has always said that if you go to Iran you will be treated really badly,” Nelson concluded. 

US austerity: Genocide of 50 million people

PressTV
Webster Griffin Tarpley

No matter whether the next US president is named Obama or Romney, the Wall Street financier elite that dominates the United States is psychotically planning a series of tax increases for the middle class and working people, cuts in benefits and social services, and a transfer of wealth in favor of the top 1%, all of which will add up to a further cut of about 25% in the depleted US standard of living.

The mythical “fiscal cliff”

This outcome is being prepared right now by a demagogic propaganda campaign around the slogan that the United States faces a “fiscal cliff” at the end of the current calendar year. This alleged fiscal cliff is the result of two factors. First, the tax cuts enacted by George Bush the younger in the months before 9/11 are due to expire. If the Bush tax cuts are ended, the average family would pay a few hundred dollars more. But the tax rate for the richest earners would go from 35% to 39.6%, which, at high levels of income, can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in taxes.

At the same time, stock speculators and hedge fund hyenas like Mitt Romney would no longer pay 15%, but rather 20%, on their profits. In other words, the Bush tax cuts were mainly a gift to the super-rich. The Republicans want to keep the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and if possible make people in the middle - earning between $48,000 and $80,000 per year - pay significantly more.;

The other aspect of the fiscal cliff are the automatic cuts in military spending and social services spending which were built in to the budget agreement of August, 2011 (popularly known as the “Satan Sandwich”) which allowed the United States to avoid default on necessary payments. Under these automatic cuts, the Pentagon budget would be cut by about 8% or $500 billion over 10 years. At the same time, doctors and hospitals working for Medicare, the government’s health insurance program for people over 65, will suffer a 2% payment cut across the board. The goal of all this is to reduce federal spending by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Obama and the Congress both ignore that austerity cuts of this type have actually increased the budget deficit in Greece and other European countries where they have been tried.

The lame duck session and the grand bargain

The goal of reactionary Republicans and of Obama’s Wall Street Democrats is to negotiate a “Grand Bargain” of austerity and cuts sometime in the next few months. One possible time for this dirty deal to be made will come in December, after the US general election at the beginning of November. In December, significant numbers of defeated or retiring congressmen and senators will be leaving, and many will be looking for jobs on Wall Street. They will be eager to betray the economic interests of the American people to curry favor with the bankers they hope will hire them. Otherwise, pressure will build for a Grand Bargain during the early months of 2013.

Such a Grand Bargain of austerity will target in particular Social Security (government old-age pensions), Medicare (health care for seniors), and Medicaid (health care for the poor); only token sacrifices will be asked from the rich 1%. If this scenario actually occurs, the lives of up to 50 million Americans will be in grave danger.

This is first of all the case because of the long decline in the American standard of living, which has, according to some reckonings, been reduced by about two thirds since August 15, 1971, when Nixon and Kissinger abandoned the Bretton Woods international monetary system. There is no more margin for cuts without tragic consequences. During this same period, the social mobility in the United States - understood as the ability to go from being poor to being well-off - has declined markedly, and is now inferior to every country in Western Europe except for ossified Great Britain.

50 million Americans officially in dire poverty

Every 10 years, the United States government conducts a census of the population, and in the process collects important data about demographics and income. It is now expected that the official US poverty rate, which underestimates the real problem of poverty, will rise to almost 16% of the population. Poverty means an individual living on less than $11,170, or a family of three living on less than $19,090. This is truly dire poverty. By this estimate, about 50 million Americans will be poor, the highest rate since Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965.

According to official statistics, the US unemployment rate rose slightly to 8.3% in July 2012. Once again, this figure understates the problem. The US Department of Labor publishes a data series called the U6 unemployment rate, which tries to reflect underemployment -- as in cases where a worker who wants to work full-time is forced to work part-time - and workers who have given up their job searches in despair.

By this measure, the US unemployment rate has been as high as 17.1% at the end of 2009, and is currently at 15%. These are depression levels. Assuming that the US workforce is about 155 million, this means that over 23 million Americans are actually out of work. If we add in elderly dependents and children, we will once again get close to the 50 million whose lives are now in danger.

Under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act of 1935, the federal government could have provided benefits to one important category - impoverished mothers with dependent children. This was called welfare, but it no longer exists, having been abolished by Bill Clinton in 1995-96 as part of his reelection campaign. Currently it is estimated that about 15 million children - about 21% of all children in the United States - live below the official poverty line. Since an adequate standard of living requires about twice the federal poverty level income, it follows that 44% of US children are in reality stuck in low income families. They can thank Bill Clinton for their current situation.

That same Social Security Act of 1935 established a system of unemployment insurance, which is now being sorely tested. When the depression began in 2008-9, the Obama stimulus bill extended jobless payments to unemployed workers for 99 weeks in many states. Now, with the depression grinding on, more than 5 million people have been unemployed for more than six months, and most of these have joined the ranks of the 99ers - those who have been jobless for almost 2 years. Some 23 states, especially those governed by Republicans, have now cut eligibility by as much as five months, impacting a half million unemployed. Only three states still offer 99 weeks of benefits, and that will end in September 2012.

Food stamps for 46.5 million under attack

The one federal program that still contributes to keeping the endangered 50 million alive is the Food Stamp program of the US Department of Agriculture, which currently feeds 46.5 million Americans. In some cities, the food stamp allowance is about $130 per month, which translates into about $1.55 per person per meal. This is already too little to permit good nutrition.

Right now the debate in the Congress is whether this program should be cut by $16 billion as the Republicans demand, or by “only” $5 billion, the Democratic Party proposal. Once again, any cuts in the food stamp budget under the current conditions will inevitably lead to vitamin deficiencies, cognitive impairment, and large increases in morbidity and mortality.

As for health insurance, most sources estimate that about 46 million Americans have no way of paying for the services of a doctor, hospital, or pharmacy. This figure largely overlaps with the 50 million who are in dire poverty, and the 50 million who are living on food stamps. Any reduction in Medicaid, which is intended for low income people, will take a toll of lives. Republicans are demanding massive cuts to Medicaid, while Democrats argue that moderate cuts will be sufficient. In reality, any cuts at all will represent thinly disguised murder.

Neither Obama nor Romney has anything to offer the endangered 50 million. Indeed, Romney has already announced that he is “not worried about the poor.” This issue highlights the inhuman cruelty of the political process in the United States today. How long before a social explosion forces the ruling elite to confront these issues?

U.N. Program to Ship Contaminated Fish from Japan to Developing Countries

 x-skf

Another "win" for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who operates the ODA (Official Development Assistance). They have managed to obtain support from the United Nations on this one.

I first wrote about this particular ODA in June last year, with the follow-up post in September when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs formally requested the appropriation for the 3rd supplementary budget.

Now it's official, with the help of the UN. Canned fish from Tohoku will be given to people in developing countries in the world so that the fisheries in the disaster-affected areas can recover and "baseless rumors" disappear.

The fish cans will go to Cambodia and 4 other countries and will be used in school lunches to feed school children.

From Sankei Shinbun (3/30/2012):

食料支援で風評被害解消　被災地の缶詰を途上国に

Food aid to dispel baseless rumors, by sending canned food made in disaster-affected areas to developing countries

政府は、東日本大震災の被災地で製造された水産加工品を発展途上国の人々に食べてもらうため、国連機関の世界食糧計画（ＷＦＰ）と政府開発援助（ＯＤＡ）に関する書簡を交換した。食料支援を通じ、被災地の水産業振興と風評被害の解消につなげるのが狙いだ。

The Japanese government exchange letters with the UN WFP (World Food Programme) regarding the ODA (Official Development Assistance) so that people in developing countries will be able to eat processed marine products made in the areas affected by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The purpose is to promote [the recovery of] fisheries industry in the disaster-affected areas and to dispel baseless rumors [that food in Japan is contaminated with radioactive materials].

政府が平成２３年度第３次補正予算に計上した１０億円を元手に、ＷＦＰが青森、岩手、茨城、千葉の４県の水産加 工場で製造されたイワシやサバなどの水煮の缶詰を調達。カンボジアなど５カ国で学校給食などに役立ててもらう。加藤敏幸外務政務官は書簡交換の式典で、 「甚大な被害を受けた被災地の水産加工企業は、操業の全面再開に向け努力している」と強調した。

The Japanese government allocated 1 billion yen in the fiscal 2011 3rd supplementary budget. Using this money, WFP will purchase cans of boiled sardines and mackerels made in factories in Aomori, Iwate, Ibaraki, and Chiba Prefectures. The cans will be shipped to 5 countries including Cambodia for the use in school lunches. Toshiyuki Kato, parliamentary secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [No.3 politician at the ministry] emphasized in the letter exchanging ceremony, "The marine product processing companies in the disaster-affected areas have sustained grave damage, and they are doing their best to resume full operation."

このＯＤＡをめぐっては、東京電力福島第１原発事故の影響を懸念する一部の市民団体などが反発。外務省幹部は「放射線量を検査し、安全性に問題がないものを輸出することで、海外に根強い風評被害の打破を図りたい」と説明している。

There are a few citizens' groups who oppose this particular ODA program as they are worried about the effect of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. The top officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs explain that the radiation measurement will be conducted, and only those products without any worry of safety will be exported so that the baseless rumors that still persist overseas are dispelled.

When the Japanese government officials say "without any worry of safety", their safety equals 100 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium starting April 1, 2012.

I couldn't find any press release on this, and no information as to other 4 countries receiving the canned fish from Japan.

Here's from the feedback page of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You can contact them by mail or by phone, or you can contact the embassies and consulates around the world.

The UN's WFP contact information is here: http://www.wfp.org/contact

5.9 Million US Kids Have Food Allergies

Medical News Today

Approximately 8% of US children have some kind of food allergy, researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine reported in the journal Pediatrics. 38.7% of those with a food allergy have a history of severe reactions, while 30.4% are allergic to several foods, the authors added.

Symptoms in a severe reaction may include wheezing and anaphylaxis, when the patient finds it hard to breath and has an abrupt drop in blood pressure.

The most common allergens for children were found to be peanuts, milk and shellfish.

Previous studies had estimated that 4% of US kids have some kind of food allergy.

Study leader, Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, wrote:

"The large, population-based nature of this study shows that pediatric food allergy is a significant and growing problem in our society. Based on our data, about 1 in every 13 children has a food allergy. What's more, nearly 2 out of every 5 affected children suffer from a severe food-allergy.

For these children, accidental ingestion of an allergenic food may lead to difficulty breathing, a sharp drop in blood pressure, and even death. Now that we understand just how far-reaching the problem of food allergy truly is, we can begin taking the necessary steps to keep these children safe."

New Study: Fluoride Can Damage the Brain - Avoid Use in Children

Sweet Remedy


PRNewswire, June 21, 2011

"The prolonged ingestion of fluoride may cause significant damage to health and particularly to the nervous system," concludes a review of studies by researchers Valdez-Jimenez, et al. published in Neurologia (June 2011), reports New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.

Valdez-Jimenez, et al. describe studies that show fluoride induces changes in the brain's physical structure and biochemistry which affects the neurological and mental development of individuals including cognitive processes, such as learning and memory.

The research team reports, "It is important to be aware of this serious problem and avoid the use of toothpaste and items that contain fluoride, particularly in children as they are more susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride."

A different research team (Tang et al.) reported in 2008 that "A qualitative review of the studies found a consistent and strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low IQ."

A message to the environmental movement

James Corbett

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US dithers on Afghanistan troop withdrawal

Brisbane Times

No "rush to the exits" for US troops ... an
Afghan National Police graduation ceremony
at an International Security Assistance Force operating base
in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan.

WASHINGTON: The incoming US Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, has declined to put a figure on imminent US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, while increasing the prospect of American forces staying in Iraq longer than originally planned.

Mr Panetta, the present head of the CIA, told a congressional committee that it would be up to the President, Barack Obama, the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, and the commander of forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, to call the shots on the drawdown, due to start next month.
But in somewhat contradictory testimony, the 72-year-old long-time Washington insider appeared to back both Mr Obama's pledge of a ''significant'' cut in troop numbers as well as endorse Mr Gates's call for a ''modest'' pull-back.

 

Questioned by the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, which is expected to rubber-stamp his Pentagon appointment, Mr Panetta said it was impossible to be specific on numbers before he assumed his new role.

He agreed with recent assessments that there had been progress on security in Afghanistan, ''albeit fragile and reversible''.

But asked by a Republican senator, John McCain, whether he agreed with Mr Gates's more cautious position on withdrawals, Mr Panetta said: ''I agree that they should be conditions-based. And I'm going to leave it up to Secretary Gates and [the others] to decide what that number should be.''
Pressed further, he said: ''I'll have to obviously arrive at a decision myself. I'm not in that position now.''

Opinions differ wildly on how many troops should leave. Senator McCain nominates just 3000 of the nearly 100,000-strong force; his fellow committee member Carl Levin, a Democrat, says ''at least 15,000 troops'' should be sent home this year.

Mr Gates, meanwhile, continued to portray the drawdown as minimalist, telling NATO defence ministers in Brussels on Thursday that a reduction in American troops should not signal a mass exodus of allied forces.

The long-serving Mr Gates, who leaves his post on June 30, has cautioned against withdrawing combat troops, saying the US was looking for a way to reduce its ''surge'' numbers without compromising the safety of those remaining on the ground.

''Even as the United States begins to draw down next month, I assured my fellow ministers that there will be no rush to the exits on our part - and we expect the same from our allies,'' he told reporters.
More Americans now say it is time for the US to get out of Afghanistan, with almost half of those surveyed in opinion polls since the May 2 killing of Osama bin Laden claiming the allies are at last winning.

And Mr Obama claimed last week that a ''big chunk'' of objectives in Afghanistan had now been achieved.

In a CNN poll out yesterday, 74 per cent of respondents endorsed the drawdown; 39 per cent said it was time to leave altogether.

Mr Obama increased US troop numbers in Afghanistan by more than 30,000, copying the Iraqi troop surge ordered by George Bush in 2007 that provided enough stability for Mr Obama to scale back forces there last year.

However, Mr Panetta said it was likely that Iraq would ask the US to keep some of its remaining 47,000 troops in that country beyond 2011, making a complete withdrawal problematic. Such a request should be ''seriously considered'', he said, warning that there were more al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq than there were in Afghanistan.

"[Iraq], too, continues to be a fragile situation … we should take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that we protect whatever progress we've made there."
IN addition, Mr Panetta also:

Warned that America's ''next Pearl Harbour'' could be a cyber-attack on the US that crippled its electrical grid and security and financial systems.

Described US relations with Pakistan as complicated and frustrating, but also critical.
Promised to complete this year Mr Gates's review of the $US400 billion in proposed defence budget cuts.

When Peru Practiced Mass Sterilization With IMF Blessings

Axis of Logic

The French media have said little in favor of the victory by leftist-nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala over Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, in Sunday’s Peruvian presidential elections. The elections revived a scandal about a forced-sterilization program led by Alberto Fujimori from 1995 to 2000 with blessings from the IMF, financial support from NGOs including the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), and few questions about the approaches used.

Under IMF tutelage and banner for the fight against poverty by birth control, during the late 90's Alberto Fujimori, Peruvian politician of Japanese ancestry, promoted a program of forced sterilization for the lowest social strata. Illiterate indigenous peasants were the key target. The reported number of victims is 300,000. Over the same period 25,590 men underwent vasectomies.

The family planning program that advocated this voluntary surgical contraception (AQV) was answering a call from the IMF to reduce the country’s birth rate.

In exchange for bonuses, government emissaries persuaded women to let themselves be operated on for some cash and for food that was limited mostly to a bag of rice. The finality of the sterilization was kept hidden. Appalling sanitation resulted in medical complications. Over 20 deaths were officially recorded.

The reports mostly show that the victims were usually not informed when they gave their consent, and coercive measures were often used. The program also involved a quota system. Public-sector medical personnel were forced, under threat of dismissal, to sterilize some number of women set by their department every month.

In twenty years, only one family has been compensated, although around 2,000 have filed complaints.
Although many observers have expressed concern about Ollanta Humala, whose personality is presented as caustic because of his Marxist-Leninist roots, the victory of this former lieutenant-colonel seems more like "The Revenge of the other Peru": that of the poor Indian. Peru’s 48-year old new president is putting aside the Chavez model and wishing to follow in Lula’s footsteps.

Translated for Axis of Logic by author and columnist, Dady Chery.

Original Source in French: Le Monde

Lakotah: The Next Chapter

Republic of Lakotah

Russel Means

Two weeks ago, I went to New York with a delegation from the Republic of Lakotah, to utilize the annual meeting of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII, May 16-27). The primary purpose of the trip was to utilize past and present allies in the indigenous struggle to aid us in visiting a small, select group of other Nation’s Missions and their Ambassadors to the United Nation to discuss the international character of treaties between my people, the Lakota, and the United States of America.
In 1851 and 1868, the Lakotah, Dakota, Nakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho nations had militarily defeated the United States, and the United States had requested peace. Our nations agreed to peace at a treaty negotiation at Fort Laramie. The treaties were international instruments between two independent nations, unambiguous and unequivocal in defining the territories of the indigenous nations involved—it covered an area the size of the contemporary country of Guatemala.

Since the time of the signing of the treaty, the Lakotah have insisted that the United States respect its obligations under the treaties. Our insistence has even taken us to the United States Supreme Court. Now, how ridiculous is that, for us to go to the violator of the treaties, expecting that same violator to force itself to live up to its own laws. How can we allow an international contract dispute to be decided by the Violator?

Over the past century, one thing has become clear—the United States wanted to take its benefit from the treaties, and it never intended to abide by the other essential treaty provisions. OK, we get it. The US certainly is not going to begin to respect the treaties today.

There are some who say, “Well, if we don’t have our treaty, we have nothing.” To them, I say, “Look around you. You already have nothing! You experience the worst poverty, the worst health, the worst environmental problems, the worst of everything, plus they have stolen your territory, your freedom, and your self-respect. Wake up! What you wave around in the name of ‘sovereignty’ is no longer a treaty, it is a broken contract!”

Let’s be clear, if the US decides that it is not going to abide by the treaties (and it has done so repeatedly), then there must be consequences for that decision—just like if you sell me your car, but I do not pay you the money for your car. I don’t get to keep the car just because I have grown accustomed to driving it. Neither does the US get to keep our territory just because it allowed its citizens to invade and occupy our homeland, build homes and businesses, and steal wealth and resources from our homeland.

Article 37 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (PDF document) directly addresses this point:

Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance and enforcement of treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements concluded with States or their successors and to have States honor and respect such treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as diminishing or eliminating the rights of indigenous peoples contained in treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements.

Our treaties are international instruments, and require enforcement. If the US is not going to honor its obligations then international law is clear about an equitable remedy for that breach. Under the established international legal principle of inadimplanti non est adimplendum (“one has no need to respect his obligation if the counter-party has not respected his own”), if one party to a treaty consistently refuses to abide by the treaty, then the parties have to return to their original positions before the treaty was signed.

When I first came to New York in 1975 to help establish the UN office of the International Indian Treaty Council, we were in the midst of an indigenous revolution. (Two years before, we had liberated our community of Wounded Knee, indigenous peoples were on the move.) By 1977, we had kicked open the doors of the UN, and demanded our seat at the table of nations. In my recent visit to the UN, I was dismayed and saddened by what has happened since that time.

In the years since 1977, that revolution that we began has become bogged down in bureaucracy and procedure that divert and sidetrack our right to be free. Countries like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand trot out their sell-out “Natives” like puppets to mouth the ongoing genocidal policy of those countries. The original indigenous revolutionaries have been replaced by “technicians” who accept crumbs from the invaders who continue to seek to destroy us.

People in the throes of genocide are given five minutes to tell their story, with no recourse—it’s just on to the next speaker. It is time to renew the teachings of our ancestors.

We need a renewal of the international indigenous revolution, one that does not ask permission from the invaders of our homelands, one that recalls the original message of our ancestors never to surrender, one that advances our natural right to be free and independent peoples, with international personality and dignity and respect. The Republic of Lakotah is not waiting. We have renewed our strategies with other freedom-loving indigenous peoples, with countries like Bolivia who understand and support our aspirations, and with international civil society. We now encourage a new generation of indigenous young people to shake off their cynicism, put their talents to work, and take their place in history by writing the next chapter with us in the international indigenous revolution.

Russell Means, Oglala/Iynktowan, is Chief Facilitator, Republic of Lakotah (republicoflakotah.com), and author of the autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread.

Health bill would require hospitals to develop vaccine policies for employees

Statesman
By Chuck Lindell 

Under a wide-ranging health care bill approved Friday by the Texas Senate, hospitals would have to develop policies requiring immunizations for employees who have contact with patients.
The provision, which can include everyone from housekeepers to doctors, is intended to protect patients from exposure to preventable diseases, particularly the flu.

"It's a patient-safety issue," said Denise Rose with the Texas Hospital Association, which supports the requirement. "If someone is in a room with a patient who's very ill or whose immune system is compromised, they should be vaccinated."

Studies have shown that hospitals with higher vaccination rates among workers have lower patient mortality rates, and organizations including the American College of Physicians have said that health workers have an ethical obligation to immunize.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all health care workers receive annual flu shots, but CDC surveys in 2006 and 2008 found less than half had received the influenza vaccine. The agency also recommends that health workers be immunized against chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria and whooping cough.

In the Austin area, all employees in the Seton Healthcare Family's 10 hospitals must get flu shots; the seven St. David's HealthCare hospitals require the vaccine for all employees who work in patient areas or come in contact with patients. Both hospital systems require unvaccinated employees to wear a surgical mask during flu season, roughly November through May, when dealing with patients.
The proposed state rule — included in Senate Bill 7, the special session's omnibus health care measure — would let hospitals determine which immunizations to require and which employees to include in the policy.

Employees could opt out of receiving shots for certain medical reasons, but they would have to follow procedures — such as wearing masks and gloves — to protect patients from potential exposure.
In addition, hospitals could include exemptions for reasons of conscience or religious beliefs.
"We cannot have our colleagues, co-workers and health care workers potentially carrying a deadly infectious disease that they can transmit to others," Dr. Erica Swegler, with the Texas Medical Association, told a House committee in May.

Opposition has come from vaccine opponents who say immunizations carry a health risk.
"We think it goes too far for government to say that in order to keep your job you have to take this injection," said Dawn Richardson with Parents Requesting Open Vaccine Education.
A bigger concern should be the growing number of antibiotic-resistant infections in hospital patients, Richardson said. "This is not such a big problem that you can justify trampling on peoples' rights to have control over what happens to their bodies."

The requirement for hospital vaccination policies, however, enjoys wide support from Texas medical organizations and in the Legislature. Both chambers approved the requirement in the just-concluded regular session, though time ran out before final passage.

Nobody spoke against the immunization proposal during committee hearings Thursday and Friday on the omnibus health care bill, approved unanimously Friday by the Senate. The House Appropriations Committee is expected to approve the bill today, with a House vote expected early next week.
clindell@statesman.com; 482-8516

Ghosts of Guatemala’s Past

New York Times

By STEPHEN SCHLESINGE

IN 1954, the American government committed one of the most reprehensible acts in its history when it authorized the C.I.A. to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Guatemala, President Jacobo Arbenz. It did so secretly but later rationalized the coup on the ground that the country was about to fall into communist hands.

Guatemalan society has only recently recovered from the suffering that this intervention caused, including brutal military dictatorships and a genocidal civil war against its Indian population, which led to the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people. Only in the 1980s, when a peace process commenced, did democratic governance resume. But a silence about the Arbenz era continued.

Now, after 25 years of increasingly vibrant democratic rule, Guatemalans feel confident enough to honor the memory of their deposed leader by incorporating his achievements into the national school curriculum, naming a highway after him, and preparing an official biography. America should follow suit by owning up to its own ignoble deed and recognizing Arbenz as the genuine social progressive that he was.

Washington feared Arbenz because he tried to institute agrarian reforms that would hand over fallow land to dispossessed peasants, thereby creating a middle class in a country where 2 percent of the population owned 72 percent of the land. Unfortunately for him, most of that territory belonged to the largest landowner and most powerful body in the state: the American-owned United Fruit Company. Though Arbenz was willing to compensate United Fruit for its losses, it tried to persuade Washington that Arbenz was a crypto-communist who must be ousted.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, the C.I.A.’s director, were a receptive audience. In the cold war fervor of the times, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers believed a strike against Arbenz would roll back communism. And the Dulleses had their own personal sympathies for United Fruit: they had done legal work for the company, and counted executives there among their close friends.

It is true that Arbenz’s supporters in the Guatemalan Legislature did include the Communist Party, but it was the smallest part of his coalition. Arbenz had also appointed a few communists to lower-level jobs in his administration. But there was no evidence that Arbenz himself was anything more than a European-style democratic socialist. And Arbenz’s land reform program was less generous to peasants than a similar venture pushed by the Reagan administration in El Salvador several decades later.

Eisenhower’s attack on Guatemala was brilliantly executed. A faux invasion force consisting of a handful of right-wing Guatemalans used fake radio broadcasts and a few bombing runs flown by American pilots to terrorize the fledgling democracy into surrender. Arbenz stepped down from the presidency and left the country. Soon afterward, a Guatemalan colonel named Carlos Castillo Armas took power and handed back United Fruit’s lands. For three decades, military strongmen ruled Guatemala.

The covert American assault destroyed any possibility that Guatemala’s fragile political and civic institutions might grow. It permanently stunted political life. And the destruction of Guatemala’s democracy also set back the cause of free elections in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras — all of which drew the lesson that Washington was more interested in unquestioning allies than democratic ones. It was only after the cold war and a United Nations-negotiated peace deal with leftist guerrillas in 1996 that genuine democracy began to take hold in Guatemala. And even since then, the cycle of violence and lawlessness unleashed by the 1954 coup has continued.

In 1998, an assassin bludgeoned to death the Catholic bishop Juan Gerardi shortly after he issued a damning report blaming the army for widespread massacres. In 2007, Guatemala had the world’s third-highest homicide rate, according to a United Nations-World Bank study. In 2009, more civilians were murdered in Guatemala than were killed in the war zones of Iraq.

Washington took the first step toward making amends when President Bill Clinton visited Guatemala in 1999 and offered a vague apology for America’s support of violent and repressive forces there. This year is an opportunity for Washington to fully own up to its shameful role in destabilizing Guatemala and honor Arbenz for having the courage to lead one of Central America’s first democracies — and send a signal that America has learned to stop placing its ideological concerns and business interests ahead of its ideals.

Stephen Schlesinger, a fellow at the Century Foundation, is a co-author of “Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.”

Noam Chomsky: U.S. History is about Keeping the Population at Bay

Gabrielle Giffords, Tom Hurndall and Palestinian Children Shot in the Head

By Alison Weir

Salem-News

Let us pray that Gabrielle Giffords recovers fully, returns to Congress, and that she then works to prevent others – including Palestinians – from being shot in the head.

 There is something particularly horrifying when someone is shot in the head. Perhaps it’s the gruesome image, the destruction of the brain, the clear intent to kill. The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is made even more nightmarish by the location of her devastating injury.

Those of us who focus on Israel-Palestine are acutely aware of this horror.

Several years ago, I was researching the cause of death of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces during the first months of the Second Intifadah, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. As I counted up the numbers, I was chilled to discover that the single most frequent cause of death in those beginning months was “gunfire to the head.”

In the past 10 years Israeli forces have killed at least 255 Palestinian minors by fire to the head, and the number may actually be greater, since in many instances the specific bodily location of the lethal trauma is unlisted. In addition, this statistic does not include the many more Palestinian youngsters shot in the head by Israeli soldiers who survived, in one form or another.

Photo from Second Intifada
The Writings of Israel Shamir

Below is a small sampling of those who died. (The term IDF stands for “Israeli Defense Forces,” although these forces are, in reality, an occupation army and are almost always deployed offensively; the incidents below took place on Palestinian territory):

Sami, 12, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire during a demonstration. Abdul, 9, was killed by IDF gunfire to his head during a funeral. Ala, 14, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire while on the terrace of his home one hour after injuring an Israeli soldier with a stone. Omar, 11, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire during a demonstration. Diya, 3 months, was killed, along with her older brother, by Israeli settler gunfire to her head and back. Bara, 10, was killed by IDF gunfire to his head while near his home. Ayman, 15, was killed by IDF tank fire to his head while farming. Khalil, 11, was killed by IDF tank fire to his head while playing with a friend. Rami, 13, was killed by IDF helicopter fire to his head while playing in front of his house. Yaser, 11, died of head wounds from an IDF rubber-coated bullet fired at close range during a demonstration…/1/

Imagine if these names were Bobby… Michael… Susan… Melissa… Jimmy…
and that the foreign troops killing them were invading Arizona, Connecticut, Ohio…

Read the Full Story

Revisiting Gaza Two Years After

Desert Peace

By Khalid Amayreh

The genocidal onslaught on Gaza is sufficient to render Israel an illegitimate state. No state under the sun, Jewish or otherwise, should behave in such a nefarious manner and remain legitimate.

The Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip two years ago, which lasted for three weeks, was pornographically criminal and graphically genocidal. Israel knowingly and deliberately targeted innocent civilians, including children, using state-of-the-art machines of death.

Entire families were simply exterminated at the pretext that a member was involved with the resistance. Homes, hospitals, mosques and other public buildings were obliterated. Even terrified and thoroughly terrorized people raising white banners were mercilessly riddled with bullets.
The sheer criminality of the Israeli army gave the impression that Israeli soldiers were probably trying to mimic Old Testament savagery by murdering men, women, and children, and by destroying and annihilating all that breathe!!

The genocidal onslaught on Gaza is sufficient to render Israel an illegitimate state. No state under the sun, Jewish or otherwise, should behave in such a nefarious manner and remain legitimate.

Don’t mention the holocaust. In the final analysis, since when did Israel have the right to utilize one holocaust in order to commit another? Or use it as red herring to divert attention from its genocidal atrocities against its victims?

To cover her crimes against humanity, Israel used her effective lying machine to the fullest. It claimed that Israel was coming under attack from Gaza and that it was merely exercising self-defense.

Such a claim, coming  from a country that is based on mass murder, ethnic cleansing and land theft, is very much analogous to an imagined  claim by the Third Reich that it was  forced to deal  stringently with Jews because SS soldiers had been coming under attack from Jewish resistance fighters at Ghetto Warsaw.

I am making this comparison because as soon as Israel ostensibly left Gaza in 2005, it imposed a hermetically tight blockade on the coastal enclave, turning it into the largest open- air prison in the world.  Gazans were tormented and savaged and starved in manners unseen since Ghetto Warsaw, or probably the great Ukrainian starvation under Stalin.

Israel simply wanted Gazans to die unwept and as quietly as possible. However, when Gazans found out that they had nothing to lose; they decided to die standing on their feet, rather than walking meekly to the Israeli slaughterhouse.

Israel rained death on Gaza for 21 consecutive days, hoping to get the people of Gaza to crawl on their hands and feet, begging for mercy from an army that combined all the elements of barbarianism and brutality of the Wehrmacht, Gestapo and SS combined.

However, much of the so-called international community kept up looking on as Gaza was being killed and raped as if these abominations were occurring on a distant planet.

There is no doubt the pornographic apathy with which the so-called civilized world related to the shameful Israeli aggression in Gaza two years ago represented an all-time low in the world’s morality.

What else can be said of powerful states, some of which are considered cornerstones of the international system, which related to the attempted lynching of nearly 2 million Gazans by merely saying that “Israel has the right to defend itself.”!! What kind of fornication with language is this, coming from the President of the most powerful nation on earth?
To be sure, moral depravity was by means the lot of an evil empire that allowed itself to be transformed into a big whore by Israel and her supporters. Many other countries betrayed and continued to betray Gaza, including countries that shamelessly claim to be Arab and Islamic.
Unfortunately, the passage of two years since the clouds of death were hovering over Gaza has not brought any solace. The brutal ugliness of a manifestly fascist Israel is as conspicuous as ever. And Israel continues to gang up on Gaza, barring the victims of the 2008-2009 aggression from rebuilding their homes by preventing building materials from getting through into Gaza.

It is true that the overall humanitarian situation in Gaza is slightly better in comparison to what it was two years ago. However, it is also true that whatever improvement there has been is not a result of Israeli magnanimity but rather a cynical attempt to enhance her tarnished image.
This is why the free-minded people of the world must stay focused on Gaza lest Israel decides to reactivate her genocidal instincts and gang up on Gaza’s children again.

We must not allow ourselves to forget the cardinal fact that the murder of Palestinian children has always been a well-guarded Zionist tradition. Unfortunately, there is no evidence whatsoever suggesting that the Zionist entity is about to forgo this evil but intrinsic tradition which for most Zionists constitutes a way of life.

US Iraqi Concentration Camps

US infected Guatemalans with syphilis in 1940s, Wellesley professor finds

Boston.com

A Wellesley College professor has discovered that the US government in the 1940s infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases in an experiment conducted without the knowledge of the 1,500 men and women -- some of them patients in a mental hospital.

Professor Susan M. Reverby, who has written extensively about the infamous Tuskegee Study in the United States, uncovered documents detailing the Guatemalan experiments while researching the Tuskegee episode and shared her discovery with US government officials.

During a news briefing early this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama plans to call the Guatemalan leader personally today and apologize.

"This is tragic, and the United States by all means apologizes to all those who were impacted by this," Gibbs said.

In a joint statement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius denounced the experiments, apologized, and pledged to never repeat the mistakes of the past.

"Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health," the secretaries said in the statement. "We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."

The US government has asked the Institute of Medicine, an independent agency that conducts health investigations for Congress, to conduct a review of the experiments, which happened from 1946 to 1948.

Separately, a presidential commission on bioethics will charter an international panel of specialists to explore the current state of medical research on humans around the world and ensure that the atrocities of the past cannot recur.

Top US government officials last night contacted Guatemala's president, Álvaro Colom Caballeros, and its ambassador to Washington. Clinton called Colom "to express her personal outrage and deep regret that such reprehensible research could occur," Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said during a press briefing.

Any decision about making reparations -- financial or otherwise -- will await the outcome of the two study panels, officials said.

In a synopsis of a report scheduled to appear in January's Journal of Policy History, Reverby writes that the US Public Health Service embarked on the Guatemalan experiments even as it continued the long-condemned work in Tuskegee, where men with syphilis were left untreated so that researchers could follow the progression of the disease. The Guatemala experiments were conducted against the backdrop of great excitement among doctors about the emergence of antibiotics, and researchers -- engaging in practices now regarded as deeply unethical -- schemed to expose vulnerable subjects to further their understanding of the new drugs and STDs.

Reverby writes that US physicians selected men in a Guatemalan penitentiary and army barracks as well as men and women in a mental hospital for the study. Initially, the researchers used prostitutes to attempt to infect the prisoners. When that approach largely failed, the doctors then "did direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured onto the men's penises or on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded."

The researchers, whose work was underwritten by the National Institutes of Health and sanctioned by the surgeon general at the time, wanted to know whether penicillin could prevent -- not just cure -- syphilis. They also hoped their experiments would lead to better blood tests and dosing strategies for antibiotics.

In one of the statements released this morning, US government officials said that most -- although not all -- of the unwitting subjects were treated. In addition to syphilis, the government statement says that the subjects were exposed to two other STDs, gonorrhea and chancroid. At least one person died, the statement said, although it is unclear whether the death was caused by the experiments or another health problem.

Until Reverby discovered the documents describing the experiment, they had sat secreted away at the University of Pittsburgh among the other papers of the researcher in charge of the Guatemala project.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, said in a telephone press briefing today that the experiment "represents an appalling example from a dark chapter in the history of medicine."

Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

ProjectCensored.org

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.

ORB’s research covered fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. Those not covered include two of Iraq’s more volatile regions—Kerbala and Anbar—and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work. In face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults, the poll found that more than one in five respondents had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, as opposed to natural cause.

Authors Joshua Holland and Michael Schwartz point out that the dominant narrative on Iraq—that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility—is ill conceived. Interviewers from the Lancet report of October 2006 (Censored 2006, #2) asked Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died. Of deaths for which families were certain of the perpetrator, 56 percent were attributable to US forces or their allies. Schwartz suggests that if a low pro rata share of half the unattributed deaths were caused by US forces, a total of approximately 80 percent of Iraqi deaths are directly US perpetrated.

Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

Full Article

War Crimes Continue Under Obama's Watch

American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.

Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed. Full Article