BPA Plastic Chemical Linked to Aggression, Hyperactivity in Toddlers
Posted by sakerfa on February 16, 2010
(NaturalNews) – Prenatal exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may increase aggressive behavior in toddler girls, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Researchers measured bodily levels of BPA in 249 pregnant women, then followed their daughters for two years. Children who had been exposed to the highest levels of the chemical before the 16th week of gestation had significantly higher scores on tests for aggression than girls of the same age with less exposure.
The study is the first to examine the effect of BPA on behavior in human children. It is consistent with the results of prior animal studies, which have also found that BPA can affect the brain and reproductive system. The National Toxicology Program concluded in 2008 that there was evidence to support the chemical’s effects on human children.
Because BPA mimics the effect of estrogen, which plays a critical role in the male brain during the 11th and 12th weeks of pregnancy, researchers believe that the chemical might be “masculinizing” the female brain.
“In the developing brain, timing is everything,” said neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain.
“I’m worried that tiny amounts of this stuff, given at just the wrong time, could partly masculinize the female brain.”
Although the study found no change in male behavior and no increase in behavioral disorders among girls, scientists noted that the population effects may be much greater than those seen in the study. Michelle Macias, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, noted that children in the study came from predominantly well-educated families, which tend to have lower aggression and hyperactivity rates than the average. In addition, neurologist David Bellinger noted that a population can become more aggressive as a whole without there being strong observable effects in individual children.
The researchers intend to continue studying the children until the age of five.
Sources for this story include: www.usatoday.com.
Source: Natural News
See Also:
(NaturalNews) – ADHD symptoms caused by lead exposure, new study claims
What causes the frequently diagnosed behavioral problem in children known as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) that leads to countless youngsters being given side-effect laden stimulant drugs? Research has focused on genes and, more recently, on the idea that multiple environmental triggers could be the cause. For example, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a recent British study indicates that certain food additives like artificial colors or preservatives could cause ADHD symptoms in some children. Read More Here
(UKPA) – Vitamin D may reduce diabetes risk
People who get plenty of vitamin D can cut their chance of developing heart disease or diabetes by 43%, researchers have said. Read More Here
Source: NaturalNews.com
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Repeal the 17th Amendment. Restore Liberty.
Posted by ch330pz on February 18, 2010
by Walt Garlington
Interest in the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution continues to grow as citizens and state and local government officials consider ways to protect their authority from federal intrusion. From Louisiana to New Hampshire to Washington state, 10th Amendment legislation is being crafted and approved to veto federal regulations and orders regarding firearms, medical marijuana, cap and trade, education, the sending of a state’s National Guard to war, health care, and more.
It should be clear from the items on the list above that a federal government of limited powers is not simply a concern peculiar to conservatives; liberals too have reason to resuscitate local governance. And one of the very best ways to help revive decentralization, in addition to nullification, is to repeal the 17th Amendment.
Until 1913, when the 17th Amendment was ratified, the citizens of the states elected U.S. senators indirectly: Voters elected the state legislators, and they in turn selected U.S. senators. From 1913 onward, voters have directly elected U.S. senators in statewide elections.
This change has led to a number of negative results, including
-Vastly increased federal power and vastly decreased state, local, and personal authority due to the state governments losing their representation in the federal government;
-The domination of Senate elections (and legislation) by forces outside of the particular states wherein elections are being held, e.g., out-of-state donations, political party operatives, and campaign consultants; and
-A decline of the influence of individual voters and small, local associations of voters over who is selected to be a senator from their state.
Under the 17th’s statewide electoral system, the individual voter is small and isolated, only one out of thousands or, in many cases now, millions of voters casting ballots. His influence in the election is marginal.
Now, repeal the 17th, and you amplify this individual’s influence many times over. For instead of one voice attempting to be heard over every other voter’s voice in the state, he is now one voice in the much smaller group of voters who reside in the districts of his state legislators, who would select the U.S. senator.
Individuals and small associations matter little to the statewide candidate but are important to the state representative and state senator who actually lives among them, knows them, and is known by them. The state legislator must take them and their views seriously, regarding Senate elections and other legislative matters, for they hold great
electoral power over him. So individuals and small, local groups would grow more influential in U.S. Senate elections if the 17th were repealed, and outside interests less so.
With repeal would come three other benefits. First, a U.S. Senate representing the state governments would likely mean the end of many of the federal mandates and programs that currently stifle policy innovation, mandate uniformity, and strangle budgets in states,
parishes, etc.
A crazy quilt of locally devised laws stretching across the United States may nauseate the federal bureaucrat who delights in the efficiency resulting from bland uniformity, but it would be pleasing to the citizens who would live under the aegis of those laws. Repealing the 17th would allow liberal, moderate, libertarian, and conservative communities to live under the laws of their own choosing rather than the choosing of the imperial few (of whatever political philosophy) in D.C.
Second, state legislatures endowed with the high responsibility of selecting U.S. senators, not to mention creating policy in fields newly freed from the rule of D.C., would naturally attract the more capable men of society to seek these offices (though unfortunately the more power hungry too), as it is with federal offices now.
Third, indirect elections generally result in well qualified candidates filling the positions in question. This is as true of U.S. Supreme Court justices chosen by the president as it was of U.S. senators chosen by state legislatures. It is no accident that the preeminent U.S. senators in our history – e.g., Randolph, Calhoun, Clay, Webster, etc. – all appeared prior to the 17th, while demagogues like Sen. Schumer and hollow men like Sens. Bayh and Frist have filled the Senate after its ratification.
Decentralization is an essential element for restoring self-government (and good government in general) in the United States. And U.S. senators chosen by state legislatures would be a tremendous boon to decentralization. Repeal the 17th Amendment; restore liberty. All citizens would be the beneficiaries.
Walt Garlington is the founder of the Louisiana State Sovereignty Committee.
Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given
Original Article
Source: Walt Garlington
Posted by ch330pz on February 18, 2010
by Walt Garlington
Interest in the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution continues to grow as citizens and state and local government officials consider ways to protect their authority from federal intrusion. From Louisiana to New Hampshire to Washington state, 10th Amendment legislation is being crafted and approved to veto federal regulations and orders regarding firearms, medical marijuana, cap and trade, education, the sending of a state’s National Guard to war, health care, and more.
It should be clear from the items on the list above that a federal government of limited powers is not simply a concern peculiar to conservatives; liberals too have reason to resuscitate local governance. And one of the very best ways to help revive decentralization, in addition to nullification, is to repeal the 17th Amendment.
Until 1913, when the 17th Amendment was ratified, the citizens of the states elected U.S. senators indirectly: Voters elected the state legislators, and they in turn selected U.S. senators. From 1913 onward, voters have directly elected U.S. senators in statewide elections.
This change has led to a number of negative results, including
-Vastly increased federal power and vastly decreased state, local, and personal authority due to the state governments losing their representation in the federal government;
-The domination of Senate elections (and legislation) by forces outside of the particular states wherein elections are being held, e.g., out-of-state donations, political party operatives, and campaign consultants; and
-A decline of the influence of individual voters and small, local associations of voters over who is selected to be a senator from their state.
Under the 17th’s statewide electoral system, the individual voter is small and isolated, only one out of thousands or, in many cases now, millions of voters casting ballots. His influence in the election is marginal.
Now, repeal the 17th, and you amplify this individual’s influence many times over. For instead of one voice attempting to be heard over every other voter’s voice in the state, he is now one voice in the much smaller group of voters who reside in the districts of his state legislators, who would select the U.S. senator.
Individuals and small associations matter little to the statewide candidate but are important to the state representative and state senator who actually lives among them, knows them, and is known by them. The state legislator must take them and their views seriously, regarding Senate elections and other legislative matters, for they hold great
electoral power over him. So individuals and small, local groups would grow more influential in U.S. Senate elections if the 17th were repealed, and outside interests less so.
With repeal would come three other benefits. First, a U.S. Senate representing the state governments would likely mean the end of many of the federal mandates and programs that currently stifle policy innovation, mandate uniformity, and strangle budgets in states,
parishes, etc.
A crazy quilt of locally devised laws stretching across the United States may nauseate the federal bureaucrat who delights in the efficiency resulting from bland uniformity, but it would be pleasing to the citizens who would live under the aegis of those laws. Repealing the 17th would allow liberal, moderate, libertarian, and conservative communities to live under the laws of their own choosing rather than the choosing of the imperial few (of whatever political philosophy) in D.C.
Second, state legislatures endowed with the high responsibility of selecting U.S. senators, not to mention creating policy in fields newly freed from the rule of D.C., would naturally attract the more capable men of society to seek these offices (though unfortunately the more power hungry too), as it is with federal offices now.
Third, indirect elections generally result in well qualified candidates filling the positions in question. This is as true of U.S. Supreme Court justices chosen by the president as it was of U.S. senators chosen by state legislatures. It is no accident that the preeminent U.S. senators in our history – e.g., Randolph, Calhoun, Clay, Webster, etc. – all appeared prior to the 17th, while demagogues like Sen. Schumer and hollow men like Sens. Bayh and Frist have filled the Senate after its ratification.
Decentralization is an essential element for restoring self-government (and good government in general) in the United States. And U.S. senators chosen by state legislatures would be a tremendous boon to decentralization. Repeal the 17th Amendment; restore liberty. All citizens would be the beneficiaries.
Walt Garlington is the founder of the Louisiana State Sovereignty Committee.
Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given
Original Article
Source: Walt Garlington
Grounds for Hope and Despair – Paul Craig Roberts
Posted by sakerfa on February 20, 2010
My February 16 column, A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs, received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate. Yahoo News gave this account:
“In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system ‘dysfunctional,’ riddled with ‘brain-dead partisanship’ and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he’d seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a ’shock’ to Congress by voting incumbents out in mass and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.”
In short, Senator Bayh got tired of being a whore for the corporate lobbyists who rule the U.S.
As Shamus Cooke noted the same day, in the last election voters gave the Democrats a super majority in the mistaken belief that Democrats would remove U.S. policy from the corporate/neocon grip only to find that the result was a surge in America’s wars of aggression.
There are grounds for hope in the fact that some of the Tea Party people understand that Americans have been betrayed and abandoned by both parties.
An unusual candidate has emerged for governor of Texas. Debra Medina is doing well with popular support without machine politics. She has an intriguing idea to abolish the property tax in Texas.
Medina makes the valid point that the property tax is a permanent government lien on a person’s home. A person never owns his home even after the mortgage is paid off, because he has to continue paying government for the right to live in his home.
Many elderly people have found that a lifetime of inflation and rising real estate assessments have pushed up the tax on their homes so much that it accounts for a large percentage of their retirement incomes. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the local government has a program by which the elderly can avoid property tax in exchange for letting the government inherit the property. It is the heirs who are dispossessed.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation studied Medina’s proposal and concluded that a rise in the Texas sales tax from 8.25 percent to 8.8 percent would allow the property tax to be abolished as long as some untaxed services, such as mining services, drilling services, legal services, and limousine services were brought into the tax base.
If Medina is a real representative of the people, she comprises a threat to the oligarchy. The oligarchy will go after her with every known dirty trick. Will Texans stand by her?
Grounds for hope are not easily come by, but plentiful are the grounds for despair. My recent article, It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State, also received confirmation on February 16 with the appearance of Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges interview with Russia Today on Information Clearing House. [Video]
Asked about the Fahad Hashmi case, Hedges pointed out that Hashmi is a U.S. citizen whose every constitutional right has been violated just as if he were an ”enemy combatant,” a designation used to justify holding non-Americans in indefinite detention. Moreover, Hedges reported that Hashmi is not being prosecuted for committing or planning an act of terror. He is being prosecuted ”for what he believes,” or to be more precise Hashmi is being prosecuted for expressing dissent. The government’s evidence against him is tape recordings of speeches he made at Brooklyn College as a student activist denouncing U.S. policies.
These tapes will be played to a patriotic jury likely to convict him for being a Muslim and an anti-American.
As Hedges emphasizes, Hashmi’s conviction would make expression of dissent an indictable offense. If expressing dissent is a crime, then thinking it will also be a crime. The government will produce manuals for its police on how to read body language and facial expressions as indicators of thought crimes.
The rapidity with which the U.S. is being transformed into a police state is astonishing. It has occurred under the guise of ”the war on terror,” itself a product of 9/11. Americans were told that the police state regime was only for terrorists, but like RICO’s asset freezes, which were only for the Mafia, and the war on drugs’ asset forfeitures, which were only for drug lords, the suspension of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties now extends to all.
Americans regard such warnings as hyperbole. They think they are safe as long as they are not doing anything wrong. In other words, they think that anyone the government picks up must be guilty.
This view shows a remarkable ignorance of the 20th century. Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag were full of people who had done nothing wrong. Many were people demonized for being of the wrong race and class. Others were people reported by envious neighbors or by someone settling a score. The system didn’t care, because it existed independently of any concerns about justice or security.
In the 1990s I saw a Russian movie about the Stalin era. The main character was a Soviet war hero, personally praised by Stalin. In his home area he had enormous authority and could order off Soviet military maneuvers that impinged on the collective farm’s crops. One day a KGB agent shows up who wants the war hero’s beautiful wife. The war hero is amused that a mere KGB agent thinks he has power over him. ”Wait until Stalin hears about this,” he says as he comes out in his military uniform with his medals and confidently drives away with the agent to be beaten and disappeared into the gulag. Even if Stalin would have cared, he would never have known.
Police states remove accountability from those in authority. One result is to remove constraints on behavior. Even when there are constraints, some spouses abuse one another and some parents abuse children. Some people abuse animals. Even many Americans have abusive tendencies as Abu Ghraib makes completely clear.
It starts with little things and works its way up. Tens of thousands of people have experienced unsatisfactory encounters with the Transportation Safety Administration, otherwise known as the airport police. In a recent case a police officer and his wife were taking their 4-year-old son to Disney World for his birthday. The child has to wear leg braces due to problems associated with his premature birth. The TSA screener ordered the braces removed before the boy could walk through the detector. But, of course, the boy could not walk without the braces. The police officer and his wife were stunned to find that TSA cannot tell the difference between an American police officer and his disabled child and a terrorist threat.
A police state has no need to differentiate. Those Americans who don’t care what happens to Fahad Hashmi, Aafia Siddiqui, Omar Khadr, and countless others are opening themselves to similar treatment and the rest of us along with them.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economyand Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Clickhere for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost , has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.
Source: Global Research
Posted by sakerfa on February 20, 2010
My February 16 column, A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs, received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate. Yahoo News gave this account:
“In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system ‘dysfunctional,’ riddled with ‘brain-dead partisanship’ and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he’d seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to deliver a ’shock’ to Congress by voting incumbents out in mass and replacing them with people interested in reforming the process and governing for the good of the people, rather than deep-pocketed special-interest groups.”
In short, Senator Bayh got tired of being a whore for the corporate lobbyists who rule the U.S.
As Shamus Cooke noted the same day, in the last election voters gave the Democrats a super majority in the mistaken belief that Democrats would remove U.S. policy from the corporate/neocon grip only to find that the result was a surge in America’s wars of aggression.
There are grounds for hope in the fact that some of the Tea Party people understand that Americans have been betrayed and abandoned by both parties.
An unusual candidate has emerged for governor of Texas. Debra Medina is doing well with popular support without machine politics. She has an intriguing idea to abolish the property tax in Texas.
Medina makes the valid point that the property tax is a permanent government lien on a person’s home. A person never owns his home even after the mortgage is paid off, because he has to continue paying government for the right to live in his home.
Many elderly people have found that a lifetime of inflation and rising real estate assessments have pushed up the tax on their homes so much that it accounts for a large percentage of their retirement incomes. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the local government has a program by which the elderly can avoid property tax in exchange for letting the government inherit the property. It is the heirs who are dispossessed.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation studied Medina’s proposal and concluded that a rise in the Texas sales tax from 8.25 percent to 8.8 percent would allow the property tax to be abolished as long as some untaxed services, such as mining services, drilling services, legal services, and limousine services were brought into the tax base.
If Medina is a real representative of the people, she comprises a threat to the oligarchy. The oligarchy will go after her with every known dirty trick. Will Texans stand by her?
Grounds for hope are not easily come by, but plentiful are the grounds for despair. My recent article, It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State, also received confirmation on February 16 with the appearance of Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist Chris Hedges interview with Russia Today on Information Clearing House. [Video]
Asked about the Fahad Hashmi case, Hedges pointed out that Hashmi is a U.S. citizen whose every constitutional right has been violated just as if he were an ”enemy combatant,” a designation used to justify holding non-Americans in indefinite detention. Moreover, Hedges reported that Hashmi is not being prosecuted for committing or planning an act of terror. He is being prosecuted ”for what he believes,” or to be more precise Hashmi is being prosecuted for expressing dissent. The government’s evidence against him is tape recordings of speeches he made at Brooklyn College as a student activist denouncing U.S. policies.
These tapes will be played to a patriotic jury likely to convict him for being a Muslim and an anti-American.
As Hedges emphasizes, Hashmi’s conviction would make expression of dissent an indictable offense. If expressing dissent is a crime, then thinking it will also be a crime. The government will produce manuals for its police on how to read body language and facial expressions as indicators of thought crimes.
The rapidity with which the U.S. is being transformed into a police state is astonishing. It has occurred under the guise of ”the war on terror,” itself a product of 9/11. Americans were told that the police state regime was only for terrorists, but like RICO’s asset freezes, which were only for the Mafia, and the war on drugs’ asset forfeitures, which were only for drug lords, the suspension of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties now extends to all.
Americans regard such warnings as hyperbole. They think they are safe as long as they are not doing anything wrong. In other words, they think that anyone the government picks up must be guilty.
This view shows a remarkable ignorance of the 20th century. Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag were full of people who had done nothing wrong. Many were people demonized for being of the wrong race and class. Others were people reported by envious neighbors or by someone settling a score. The system didn’t care, because it existed independently of any concerns about justice or security.
In the 1990s I saw a Russian movie about the Stalin era. The main character was a Soviet war hero, personally praised by Stalin. In his home area he had enormous authority and could order off Soviet military maneuvers that impinged on the collective farm’s crops. One day a KGB agent shows up who wants the war hero’s beautiful wife. The war hero is amused that a mere KGB agent thinks he has power over him. ”Wait until Stalin hears about this,” he says as he comes out in his military uniform with his medals and confidently drives away with the agent to be beaten and disappeared into the gulag. Even if Stalin would have cared, he would never have known.
Police states remove accountability from those in authority. One result is to remove constraints on behavior. Even when there are constraints, some spouses abuse one another and some parents abuse children. Some people abuse animals. Even many Americans have abusive tendencies as Abu Ghraib makes completely clear.
It starts with little things and works its way up. Tens of thousands of people have experienced unsatisfactory encounters with the Transportation Safety Administration, otherwise known as the airport police. In a recent case a police officer and his wife were taking their 4-year-old son to Disney World for his birthday. The child has to wear leg braces due to problems associated with his premature birth. The TSA screener ordered the braces removed before the boy could walk through the detector. But, of course, the boy could not walk without the braces. The police officer and his wife were stunned to find that TSA cannot tell the difference between an American police officer and his disabled child and a terrorist threat.
A police state has no need to differentiate. Those Americans who don’t care what happens to Fahad Hashmi, Aafia Siddiqui, Omar Khadr, and countless others are opening themselves to similar treatment and the rest of us along with them.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economyand Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Clickhere for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct. His latest book, How The Economy Was Lost , has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.
Source: Global Research
MSM: 1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for New 9/11 Investigation
Posted by sakerfa on February 20, 2010
(NewsWire) – SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder of the non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth), will announce a decisive milestone today at a press conference in San Francisco, as more than 1,000 worldwide architects and engineers now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After careful examination of the official explanation, along with the forensic data omitted from official reports, these professionals have concluded that a new independent investigation into these mysterious collapses is needed.
Mr. Gage will deliver the news around this major development, accompanied by signers of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth petition. The press conference will be held concurrently in 38 cities in 6 countries. http://www.ae911truth.org/info/160 – Read More Here
Posted by sakerfa on February 20, 2010
(NewsWire) – SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder of the non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth), will announce a decisive milestone today at a press conference in San Francisco, as more than 1,000 worldwide architects and engineers now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After careful examination of the official explanation, along with the forensic data omitted from official reports, these professionals have concluded that a new independent investigation into these mysterious collapses is needed.
Mr. Gage will deliver the news around this major development, accompanied by signers of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth petition. The press conference will be held concurrently in 38 cities in 6 countries. http://www.ae911truth.org/info/160 – Read More Here
Kidnapping & Trading in Iraqi Children…
Posted by sakerfa on February 21, 2010
(Uruknet) – While quite a bit of a fuss was raised regarding the kidnapping, smuggling and tafficking in Haitian children and rightly so, the same can’t be said about the fate of Iraqi children.
I have already written several posts about this new lucrative business in Iraq, that of the kidnapping, trafficking and trading of children, and I am always aghast to see that no media or organization for the protection of children, like the famous UNICEF or Save the Child or OXFAM or anyone else, has given enough attention and dedicated effort to denounce and stop this tragedy…
Of course, before our “liberation” such criminality involving the selling, buying, trading, kidnapping, killing of children was unheard of…am I to deduce that Freedom and Democracy are baby killers ? Am afraid so.
Hussein Anwar kindly forwarded this article a couple of months ago and I have been so busy with other things and only found the time today to translate it for you.
The article is dated 31.12.2009 and appeared on Al-Jazeera net. The title – Female gangs kidnap children.
I can’t translate the whole article word for word but I will give you the most essential points:
Al Jazeeralearned through a correspondent in Baghdad, who wishes to keep his anonymity, that the rate of child kidnapping is on the rise and is being blacked out by the local and international media.
This criminal activity is taking place throughout Iraq and according to some of the figures obtained from Lieutenant Dia Sahee of the Ministry of Interior responsible for investigating such crimes : from January 1, 2009 until October 1, 2009, there has been 177 REPORTED cases of child kidnapping in different provinces excluding 72 reported cases in Baghdad alone.
These criminal rings employ women because women have easier access to children, either through their working or visiting maternities where infants are kidnapped, or through schools or domestic work, and sometimes it is through asking the child for some help or enticing him/her and then abducting them in cars, hiding them under the abaya until the kidnappers reach another province or their base. It seems that these highly organized rings have bases too.
A recent case was the arrest of 4 women from Samawa, Southern Iraq, who gave some information on the methods used.
Most of these children are kidnapped for a ransom, and when families do pay, they are explicitly told that if they report the case, their child will be either kidnapped again or killed. That explains why there are no official statistics – mainly because of fear of reprisal.
Other infants/children are never found. They are either sold to rich women who cannot have children but most others are traded in criminal organizations that traffic them and smuggle them outside the country for adoption or anything else…(like organ or sex trade maybe?!)
The article quoting an Iraqi editor of a newspaper then goes on to say that it is imperative that the government pays serious attention to this and takes stringent action/measures to combat this new crime that is plaguing Iraq. The article also says that both the local and international media must cover this.
Our little ones have become commodities.
Not only that 50% of Iraqi children today are illiterate, when we had erased illiteracy before 2003, not only they have no access to proper schooling, not only are they destitute, working to feed their families when they are supposed to be playing, not only are they found scavenging in dumps, not only are they suffering the terrible carcinogenic effects of radiation, nerve agents, DU thanks to the civilized West with NO access to health care, not only are they hungry without access to even proper drinking water – they drink water from the sewages…not only that over 500′000 are living in the streets and only God knows who is doing what to them with no protector, not only are they orphaned, like 4.5 million of them…not only…but they are also kidnapped, trafficked, traded in and killed….
How can you people sleep at night with a clear conscience when you know that this is the fruit of your doing ?
There are criminal rings in Baghdad that kidnap and traffic in children and you are nothing but their silent killers.
Source: Uruknet
Posted by sakerfa on February 21, 2010
(Uruknet) – While quite a bit of a fuss was raised regarding the kidnapping, smuggling and tafficking in Haitian children and rightly so, the same can’t be said about the fate of Iraqi children.
I have already written several posts about this new lucrative business in Iraq, that of the kidnapping, trafficking and trading of children, and I am always aghast to see that no media or organization for the protection of children, like the famous UNICEF or Save the Child or OXFAM or anyone else, has given enough attention and dedicated effort to denounce and stop this tragedy…
Of course, before our “liberation” such criminality involving the selling, buying, trading, kidnapping, killing of children was unheard of…am I to deduce that Freedom and Democracy are baby killers ? Am afraid so.
Hussein Anwar kindly forwarded this article a couple of months ago and I have been so busy with other things and only found the time today to translate it for you.
The article is dated 31.12.2009 and appeared on Al-Jazeera net. The title – Female gangs kidnap children.
I can’t translate the whole article word for word but I will give you the most essential points:
Al Jazeeralearned through a correspondent in Baghdad, who wishes to keep his anonymity, that the rate of child kidnapping is on the rise and is being blacked out by the local and international media.
This criminal activity is taking place throughout Iraq and according to some of the figures obtained from Lieutenant Dia Sahee of the Ministry of Interior responsible for investigating such crimes : from January 1, 2009 until October 1, 2009, there has been 177 REPORTED cases of child kidnapping in different provinces excluding 72 reported cases in Baghdad alone.
These criminal rings employ women because women have easier access to children, either through their working or visiting maternities where infants are kidnapped, or through schools or domestic work, and sometimes it is through asking the child for some help or enticing him/her and then abducting them in cars, hiding them under the abaya until the kidnappers reach another province or their base. It seems that these highly organized rings have bases too.
A recent case was the arrest of 4 women from Samawa, Southern Iraq, who gave some information on the methods used.
Most of these children are kidnapped for a ransom, and when families do pay, they are explicitly told that if they report the case, their child will be either kidnapped again or killed. That explains why there are no official statistics – mainly because of fear of reprisal.
Other infants/children are never found. They are either sold to rich women who cannot have children but most others are traded in criminal organizations that traffic them and smuggle them outside the country for adoption or anything else…(like organ or sex trade maybe?!)
The article quoting an Iraqi editor of a newspaper then goes on to say that it is imperative that the government pays serious attention to this and takes stringent action/measures to combat this new crime that is plaguing Iraq. The article also says that both the local and international media must cover this.
Our little ones have become commodities.
Not only that 50% of Iraqi children today are illiterate, when we had erased illiteracy before 2003, not only they have no access to proper schooling, not only are they destitute, working to feed their families when they are supposed to be playing, not only are they found scavenging in dumps, not only are they suffering the terrible carcinogenic effects of radiation, nerve agents, DU thanks to the civilized West with NO access to health care, not only are they hungry without access to even proper drinking water – they drink water from the sewages…not only that over 500′000 are living in the streets and only God knows who is doing what to them with no protector, not only are they orphaned, like 4.5 million of them…not only…but they are also kidnapped, trafficked, traded in and killed….
How can you people sleep at night with a clear conscience when you know that this is the fruit of your doing ?
There are criminal rings in Baghdad that kidnap and traffic in children and you are nothing but their silent killers.
Source: Uruknet
South Africa: When Liberation Means Enslavement
Posted by sakerfa on March 3, 2010
(GlobalResearch) – With only weeks to the start of one of the greatest sporting spectacles – the soccer World Cup – the organisers have an embarrassing problem on their hands. While millions of football fans across the globe will turn on their televisions to enjoy the contest, FIFA officials are worried that viewers may be distracted from the football action on the field by the lack of action in the stands. It is feared that the six purpose-built stadiums will be beamed around the world showing a conspicuous lack of spectators. The reason? Such is the poverty in the host nation – South Africa – that most of the population simply cannot afford to pay the entrance fee to see these games.
The contradiction between splendid spectacle and paltry participation by ordinary South Africans comes at a poignant time. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s historic release from prison – after being incarcerated for most of his adult life by successive racist white governments and their abominable apartheid regime. Celebrating the pinnacle of the most popular sport on earth should coincide with a joyful anniversary that marked the liberation of black South Africa.
But 20 years after Mandela’s release and 16 years after the handover of government from the white Afrikaner rulers to the African National Congress, the people of that naturally wealthy country still find themselves shackled. Not by apartheid masters, but by grinding poverty and a plague of social miseries.
Official figures show that over half of the mainly black population lives in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 25 per cent. Millions of these people eke out a life in Shantytowns that rim the capital Johannesburg. Rampant crime and disease are the concomitants of the grim social conditions. It is estimated that some 300,000 people were killed during the civil war between the ANC and the South African Defence Forces. But, according to political analyst Mike Molyneaux, since the ANC assumed power, nearly 250,000 people in that country have been murdered and one million have died from AIDS (1).
Molyneaux, who was born in South Africa and fought against apartheid, says: “Every year, the nation celebrates it’s freedom from white rule, but, for most, freedom means only the fact that their rich rulers are black rather than white and there’s more poverty, disease, unemployment, violence and crime than ever before.”
He adds: “When the ANC first came to power there was such optimism. But within a few years that hope gave way to disappointment over the lack of progress in improving social conditions for the black majority.”
In social and economic terms, the status quo of apartheid-era South Africa would appear to be firmly intact. How is that? Given that the ANC fought a “war of liberation” alongside the South African Communist Party, which vowed to overthrow the capitalist white regime.
Contrary to popular myth, the handover of power was not so much a surrender by a discredited regime buckling under the weight of international opinion and internal dissent. It was rather more of a choreographed changing of the guard in which the white rulers dutifully stood aside to let the ANC leaders take their place. But the tacit understanding was that nothing of substantive change – in terms of economic policy and wealth distribution in that country – would take place.
Key players in this choreographed, political musical chairs were US and British mining companies, with the blessing of their respective governments. As early as the 1980s, mining giants such as De Beers, Anglo-American Mining Corporation and Rio Tinto, were grooming leaders within the ANC for the eventual handover of government.
One such meeting occurred in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1984 between Gavin Reddy, the chairman of Anglo American Mining Corporation, and exiled senior ANC figures. “It wasn’t long before Western governments, corporations and institutions were being lobbied and organised to take over the sponsorship of the ANC,” says Molyneaux.
Of vital interest to the US and British governments was South Africa’s vast wealth in “strategic minerals”, says Molyneaux, who also worked as a material engineer.
While Africa’s richest country is mainly known for its gold and diamonds, it is also the main repository in the world for “strategic minerals”.
Molyneaux explains: “South Africa contains up to 70 per cent of essential alloying metals: manganese, nickel, cobalt, chromium, vanadium and molybdenum.” Without these alloying elements, iron and copper have much reduced industrial value.
“A key to world domination is control over the supply of oil and gas as well as strategic minerals. Strategic minerals are those metal ores that are essential to the manufacture of armaments and weaponry, ships, submarines, aircraft, tanks and missiles.”
Three factors moved the US and British to engage with the ANC. Firstly, since independence from Britain in 1961, the white South African government had proved to be something of a recalcitrant client for Washington and London. It had begun courting trade in minerals with other nations such as Japan, Germany, France and South Korea. Secondly, the Soviet Union was then the major patron of the ANC. The US and Britain could not risk the mineral wealth of South Africa falling into Russian hands, so they had to hedge their bets. Thirdly, as Molyneaux points out, “the ANC leaders lacked political experience to thwart globalist plans so they made good servants to the super wealthy elite”.
The current facts on the ground of South Africa’s worsening poverty and social misery for its black majority would tend to verify this analysis.
The US and Britain have become the top two foreign investors in South Africa, reversing the years of decline in mineral trade before the ANC took “control”. Meanwhile, says Molyneaux: “The ANC government basks in the glories of political victory with monuments for the war heroes and mansions for their top brass. But thanks to the ANC’s broken promises of liberation, millions wander and languish in poverty, disease and hopelessness. South Africa’s black majority is free – free to be poor, free to be unemployed, free to be mugged, robbed, raped or murdered, free to die of AIDS.”
Finian.cunningham@gmail.com
Notes
1 Mike Molyneaux http://uncensored.co.nz/2010/02/21/hidden-globalist-agenda-behind-mandela%E2%80%99s-anc-rise-to-power-in-south-africa/
Source: Global Research
Posted by sakerfa on March 3, 2010
(GlobalResearch) – With only weeks to the start of one of the greatest sporting spectacles – the soccer World Cup – the organisers have an embarrassing problem on their hands. While millions of football fans across the globe will turn on their televisions to enjoy the contest, FIFA officials are worried that viewers may be distracted from the football action on the field by the lack of action in the stands. It is feared that the six purpose-built stadiums will be beamed around the world showing a conspicuous lack of spectators. The reason? Such is the poverty in the host nation – South Africa – that most of the population simply cannot afford to pay the entrance fee to see these games.
The contradiction between splendid spectacle and paltry participation by ordinary South Africans comes at a poignant time. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s historic release from prison – after being incarcerated for most of his adult life by successive racist white governments and their abominable apartheid regime. Celebrating the pinnacle of the most popular sport on earth should coincide with a joyful anniversary that marked the liberation of black South Africa.
But 20 years after Mandela’s release and 16 years after the handover of government from the white Afrikaner rulers to the African National Congress, the people of that naturally wealthy country still find themselves shackled. Not by apartheid masters, but by grinding poverty and a plague of social miseries.
Official figures show that over half of the mainly black population lives in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 25 per cent. Millions of these people eke out a life in Shantytowns that rim the capital Johannesburg. Rampant crime and disease are the concomitants of the grim social conditions. It is estimated that some 300,000 people were killed during the civil war between the ANC and the South African Defence Forces. But, according to political analyst Mike Molyneaux, since the ANC assumed power, nearly 250,000 people in that country have been murdered and one million have died from AIDS (1).
Molyneaux, who was born in South Africa and fought against apartheid, says: “Every year, the nation celebrates it’s freedom from white rule, but, for most, freedom means only the fact that their rich rulers are black rather than white and there’s more poverty, disease, unemployment, violence and crime than ever before.”
He adds: “When the ANC first came to power there was such optimism. But within a few years that hope gave way to disappointment over the lack of progress in improving social conditions for the black majority.”
In social and economic terms, the status quo of apartheid-era South Africa would appear to be firmly intact. How is that? Given that the ANC fought a “war of liberation” alongside the South African Communist Party, which vowed to overthrow the capitalist white regime.
Contrary to popular myth, the handover of power was not so much a surrender by a discredited regime buckling under the weight of international opinion and internal dissent. It was rather more of a choreographed changing of the guard in which the white rulers dutifully stood aside to let the ANC leaders take their place. But the tacit understanding was that nothing of substantive change – in terms of economic policy and wealth distribution in that country – would take place.
Key players in this choreographed, political musical chairs were US and British mining companies, with the blessing of their respective governments. As early as the 1980s, mining giants such as De Beers, Anglo-American Mining Corporation and Rio Tinto, were grooming leaders within the ANC for the eventual handover of government.
One such meeting occurred in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1984 between Gavin Reddy, the chairman of Anglo American Mining Corporation, and exiled senior ANC figures. “It wasn’t long before Western governments, corporations and institutions were being lobbied and organised to take over the sponsorship of the ANC,” says Molyneaux.
Of vital interest to the US and British governments was South Africa’s vast wealth in “strategic minerals”, says Molyneaux, who also worked as a material engineer.
While Africa’s richest country is mainly known for its gold and diamonds, it is also the main repository in the world for “strategic minerals”.
Molyneaux explains: “South Africa contains up to 70 per cent of essential alloying metals: manganese, nickel, cobalt, chromium, vanadium and molybdenum.” Without these alloying elements, iron and copper have much reduced industrial value.
“A key to world domination is control over the supply of oil and gas as well as strategic minerals. Strategic minerals are those metal ores that are essential to the manufacture of armaments and weaponry, ships, submarines, aircraft, tanks and missiles.”
Three factors moved the US and British to engage with the ANC. Firstly, since independence from Britain in 1961, the white South African government had proved to be something of a recalcitrant client for Washington and London. It had begun courting trade in minerals with other nations such as Japan, Germany, France and South Korea. Secondly, the Soviet Union was then the major patron of the ANC. The US and Britain could not risk the mineral wealth of South Africa falling into Russian hands, so they had to hedge their bets. Thirdly, as Molyneaux points out, “the ANC leaders lacked political experience to thwart globalist plans so they made good servants to the super wealthy elite”.
The current facts on the ground of South Africa’s worsening poverty and social misery for its black majority would tend to verify this analysis.
The US and Britain have become the top two foreign investors in South Africa, reversing the years of decline in mineral trade before the ANC took “control”. Meanwhile, says Molyneaux: “The ANC government basks in the glories of political victory with monuments for the war heroes and mansions for their top brass. But thanks to the ANC’s broken promises of liberation, millions wander and languish in poverty, disease and hopelessness. South Africa’s black majority is free – free to be poor, free to be unemployed, free to be mugged, robbed, raped or murdered, free to die of AIDS.”
Finian.cunningham@gmail.com
Notes
1 Mike Molyneaux http://uncensored.co.nz/2010/02/21/hidden-globalist-agenda-behind-mandela%E2%80%99s-anc-rise-to-power-in-south-africa/
Source: Global Research
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