Post by QuestionHair1 on Nov 20, 2005 19:44:48 GMT -5
From: Richard Menec <menec@mts.net>
(A newsclipping service for news rarely seen on corporate sponsored media - comes daily individually or as a digest, you can email above to join the email list)
Date: Nov 20, 2005 11:38 AM
1. The Ringworm Children
2. EPA to Allow Pesticide Testing on Orphans and Mentally Handicapped
Children
3. The Corporate Media’s threat to Freedom - Mike Whitney
4. No Nativity Scene in Ottawa this year
1.
The Ringworm Children: How the Israeli Government Irradiated 100,000
Israeli Kids
Israel Insider | October 28 2005
By Barry Chamish
On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel's Channel Ten television screened a
documentary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor party
founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi
youths of a generation.
"The Ringworm Children" (translated in Hebrew as "100,000 Rays"),
directed
by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, recently won the prize for "best
documentary" at the Haifa International film festival, and in the past year
has made the rounds of Jewish and Israeli film festivals around the world.
But it had yet to come to Israeli television screens. The subject is the
mass irradiation of hundreds of thousands of young Israeli immigrants from
Middle Eastern countries -- Sephardim, as they are called today. The story
goes like this:
In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim
Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to
him by the American army.
They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation
of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to
be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For
doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million
Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The
money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.
To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on "school
trips" and their parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for
the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after
their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that
killed thousands over time and are still killing them now. While living,
the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's
disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.
That is the subject of the documentary in cold terms. It is another matter
to see the victims on the screen.
To watch the Moroccan lady describe what getting 35,000 times the dose of
allowable x-rays in her head feels like. "I screamed make the headache go
away. Make the headache go away. Make the headache go away. But it never
went away."
To watch the bearded man walk hunched down the street. "I'm in my fifties
and everyone thinks I'm in my seventies. I have to stoop when I walk so I
won't fall over. They took my youth away with those x-rays."
To watch the old lady who administered the doses to thousands of children:
"They brought them in lines. First their heads were shaved and smeared in
burning gel. Then a ball was put between their legs and the children were
ordered not to drop it, so they wouldn't move. The children weren't
protected over the rest of their bodies. There were no lead vests for them.
I was told I was doing good by helping to remove ringworm. If I knew what
dangers the children were facing, I would never have cooperated. Never!"
Because the whole body was exposed to the rays, the genetic makeup of the
children was often altered, affecting the next generation. We watch the
woman with the distorted face explain, "All three of my children have the
same cancers my family suffered. Are you going to tell me that's a
coincidence?"
The majority of the victims were Moroccan because they were the most
numerous of the Sephardi immigrants. The generation that was poisoned
became the country's perpetual poor and criminal class. It didn't make
sense. The Moroccans who fled to France became prosperous and highly
educated. The common explanation was that France got the rich, thus smart
ones. The real explanation is that every French Moroccan child didn't have
his brain cells fried with gamma rays.
The film made it perfectly plain that this operation was no accident. The
dangers of x-rays had been known for over forty years. We read the official
guidelines for x-ray treatment in 1952. The maximum dose to be given a
child in Israel was .5 rad. There was no mistake made. The children were
deliberately poisoned.
David Deri makes the point that only Sephardi children received the x-rays:
"I was in class and the men came to take us on a tour. They asked our
names. The Ashkenazi children were told to return to their seats. The dark
children were put on the bus."
The film presents a historian who first gives a potted history of the
eugenics movement. In a later sound bite, he declares that the ringworm
operation was a eugenics program aimed at weeding out the perceived weak
strains of society. The Moroccan lady is back on the screen. "It was a
Holocaust, a Sephardi Holocaust. And what I want to know is why no one
stood up to stop it."
David Deri, on film and then as a panel member, relates the frustration he
encountered when trying to find his childhood medical records. "All I
wanted to know was what they did to me. I wanted to know who authorized it.
I wanted to trace the chain of command. But the Health Ministry told me my
records were missing." Boaz Lev, the Health Ministry's spokesman chimes in:
"Almost all the records were burned in a fire."
We are told that a US law in the late '40s put a stop to the human
radiation experiments conducted on prisoners, the mentally feeble and the
like. The American atomic program needed a new source of human lab rats and
the Israeli government supplied it. Here was the government cabinet at the
time of the ringworm atrocities:
Prime Minister - David Ben Gurion; Finance Minister - Eliezer Kaplan;
Settlement Minister - Levi Eshkol; Foreign Minister - Moshe Sharrett;
Health Minister - Yosef Burg;
Labor Minister - Golda Meir; Police Minister - Amos Ben Gurion.
The highest ranking non-cabinet post belonged to the Director General of
the Defence Ministry, Shimon Peres.
That a program involving the equivalent of billions of dollars of American
government funds should be unknown to the Prime Minister of cash-strapped
Israel is ridiculous. Ben Gurion had to have been in on the horrors and
undoubtedly chose his son to be Police Minister in case anyone interfered
with them.
Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan was rewarded for eternity with a hospital
named after him near Rehovot. But he's not alone in this honor. Chaim
Sheba, who ran Ringworm Incorporated, had a whole medical complex named
after him. Needless to say, if there is an ounce of decency in the local
medical profession, those hospital names will have to change.
After the film ended, there was a panel discussion which included a
Moroccan singer, David Edri, head of the Compensation Committee for
Ringworm X-Ray Victims, and Boaz Lev, a spokesman for the Ministry Of
Health.
TV host Dan Margalit tried to put a better face on what he'd witnessed. He
explained meekly that "the state was poor. It was a matter of day to day
survival." Then he stopped. He knew there was no excusing the atrocities
which the Sephardi children endured.
But it was the Moroccan singer who summed up the experience best. "It's
going to hurt, but the truth has to be told. If not, the wounds will never
heal."
There is one person alive who knows the truth: Shimon Peres. The only way
to get to the truth and start the healing is to investigate him for his
role in the mass poisoning of over 100,000 Sephardi children and youth.
But here is why that won't happen. The film was aired at the same time as
the highest-rated TV show of the year, the finale of Israel's talent-hunt
show: "A Star Is Born." The next day, the newly-born star's photo took
up
half the front pages. There was not a word about "The Ringworm Children"
in
any paper, nor on the Internet. Until now.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2.
ALERT: EPA TO ALLOW PESTICIDE TESTING ON ORPHANS & MENTALLY HANDICAPPED
CHILDREN
Organic Consumers | November 17, 2005
Send a letter to EPA here!
Forward this alert to friends and colleagues
Public Comment Period Closes December 12, 2005
RELATED: The Ringworm Children: How the Israeli Government Irradiated
100,000 Israeli Kids
Feds Tested AIDS Drugs on Foster Kids
Feds: Some AIDS Drug Tests Violated Rules
Public comments are now being accepted by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) on its newly proposed federal regulation regarding the testing
of chemicals and pesticides on human subjects. On August 2, 2005, Congress
had mandated the EPA create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on
pregnant women and children. But the EPA's newly proposed rule, misleadingly
titled "Protections for Subjects in Human Research," puts industry profits
ahead of children's welfare. The rule allows for government and industry
scientists to treat children as human guinea pigs in chemical experiments in
the following situations:
Children who "cannot be reasonably consulted," such as those that are
mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns may be tested on. With permission
from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may
be exposed to chemicals for the sake of research. Parental consent forms are
not necessary for testing on children who have been neglected or abused.
Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable. Send a
letter to EPA here!
OCA's focal concerns with this proposed rule specifically involve the
following portions of text within the EPA document (Read the full EPA
proposed rule here: PDF --- HTML):
70 FR 53865 26.408(a) "The IRB (Independent Review Board) shall determine
that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of the children,
when in the judgment of the IRB the children are capable of providing
assent...If the IRB determines that the capability of some or all of the
children is so limited that they cannot reasonably be consulted, the assent
of the children is not a necessary condition for proceeding with the
research. Even where the IRB determines that the subjects are capable of
assenting, the IRB may still waive the assent requirement..."
(OCA NOTE: Under this clause, a mentally handicapped child or infant orphan
could be tested on without assent. This violates the Nuremberg Code, an
international treaty that mandates assent of test subjects is "absolutely
essential," and that the test subject must have "legal capacity to give
consent" and must be "so situated as to exercise free power of choice."
This
loophole in the rule must be completely removed.)
70 FR 53865 26.408(c) "If the IRB determines that a research protocol is
designed for conditions or for a subject population for which parental or
guardian permission is not a reasonable requirement to protect the subjects
(for example, neglected or abused children), it may waive the consent
requirements..."
(OCA NOTE: Under the general rule, the EPA is saying it's okay to test
chemicals on children if their parents or institutional guardians consent to
it. This clause says that neglected or abused children have unfit guardians,
so no consent would be required to test on those children. This loophole in
the rule must be completely removed.)
70 FR 53864 26.401 (a)(2) "To What Do These Regulations Apply? It also
includes research conducted or supported by EPA outside the United States,
but in appropriate circumstances, the Administrator may, under §
26.101(e), waive the applicability of some or all of the requirements of
these regulations for research..."
(OCA NOTE: This clause is stating that the Administrator of the EPA has the
power to completely waive regulations on human testing, if the testing is
done outside of the U.S. This will allow chemical companies to do human
testing in other countries where these types of laws are less strict. This
loophole in the rule must be completely removed.)
70 FR 53857 "EPA proposes an extraordinary procedure applicable if
scientifically sound but ethically deficient human research is found to be
crucial to EPAâ?Ts fulfilling its mission to protect public health. This
procedure would also apply if a scientifically sound study covered by
proposed § 26.221 or § 26.421--i.e., an intentional dosing study involving
pregnant women or children as subjects..."
(OCA NOTE: This clause allows the EPA to accept or conduct "ethically
deficient" studies of chemical tests on humans if the agency deems it
necessary to fulfull its mission. Unfortunately, the EPA report sets up no
criteria for making such an exception with any particular study. This
ambiguity leaves a gaping loophole in the rule. Without specific and
detailed criteria, it could be argued that any and every study of chemical
testing on humans is "necessary." This loophole in the rule must be removed,
based on this inadequacy of criteria and definition.)
Send an email to EPA here!
Forward this alert to friends and colleagues
By mail: Send two copies of your comments to: Public Information and Records
Integrity Branch (PIRIB) Office of Pesticide Programs U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Mail Code: 7502C
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC, 20460-0001 Attention: Docket ID
Number OPP-2003-0132
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
3.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11022.htm
The Corporate Media’s threat to Freedom
By Mike Whitney
11/15/05 "ICH " -- -- There is no similarity between the corporate
media and a “free pressâ€. The corporate media operates according to its
structural make-up, which requires it to serve the interests of
ownership and maximize profits. Its top-down style of management
ensures that it will align itself with the political centers of power
which create the opportunity for greater prosperity. This explains why
the media giants have consistently concealed the Bush administration’s
attacks on civil liberties, supported the expansion of executive power,
and paved the way for global war. After all, they are just acting in
their own best interest, accommodating the political establishment to
allow for more consolidation and expansion. One hand washes the other.
The cozy relationship between the administration and the media has made
it nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. In
fact, the media is the primary instrument of state policy. Its task is
to shape the public’s perception of government and to project a benign
image of the US to the world beyond.
Naturally, this symbiotic relationship has intensified as the needs of
the administration have increased. Now, the media crafts the storyline
of American magnanimity while the US military carries out war crimes in
Falluja or torture in Baghdad. It showers praise on the Dear Leader
while thousands wallow in squalor in New Orleans or are cluster-bombed
in Tal Afar. It waves the flags and sings the patriotic anthems that
prepare the nation for war. The media has become indistinguishable from
the political establishment; executing its duties in a manner that best
serve the objectives of the state.
Confidence in the media has never been lower. A broad section of the
public doesn’t believe anything they read in the papers nor do they see
reporters as impartial observers of world events. This should be no
great surprise. The model of a privately-owned media ensures that the
facts are massaged to suit ownership; a practice that inevitably
undermines credibility.
The marriage between the media and the state increases the danger to
the public interests. This is especially true when the media becomes a
marketing tool for the government, promoting its vastly unpopular wars,
its attacks on the social safety-net, and its vicious assault on civil
liberties.
The media has become an adversary to the people it is supposed to
serve. It now functions exclusively as a weapon in the imperial
arsenal; exalting the state and its wartime agenda, while savaging the
institutions of democracy and personal liberty. Its role as
state-propagandist is conspicuous in everything from its blind devotion
to the president to its obfuscation of facts that discredit the
administration.
If we consider a few of the critical stories the mainstream media
suppressed, we get a clearer idea of its overall agenda.
The media refused to cover the allegations of irregularities in the
2004 presidential election; dismissing the anomalies as conspiracy
theories. Independent investigations have cast serious doubt on the
legitimacy of the balloting, and just last week, the GAO confirmed
suspicions that widespread voter fraud may have taken place. Whether or
not the elections were fairly conducted is immaterial; given the
suspicious results of the 2000 election, this was a story that should
have been covered. Instead, it was purposely ignored to silence critics
and divert attention from the dysfunctional electoral system.
The media has refused to cover the massive and devastating siege of
Falluja; an assault that displaced 250,000 civilians and intentionally
destroyed water lines, electrical power, sewage treatment plants,
government buildings, hospitals and schools. Even now, a full year
later, journalists have been kept from entering the city or
photographing the largest single war crime of the ongoing conflict.
And, even though news services around the world are confirming the use
of banned weapons, including napalm and other “unidentified†substances
during the attack, the American media refuses to give details or demand
an independent investigation. It is interesting to compare the media’s
silence on the carnage in Iraq to its front-page coverage of the
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Lavish
attention has been devoted to Hariri’s death because it advances the
administration’s foreign policy goals. Once again, the media is
clearing the path for future imperial conflicts by building the case
for war against Syria.
The media has also refused to cover the Downing Street Memo; the
damning document written by a member of Tony Blair’s national security
team who verified that Bush planned to “remove Saddam through military
force†as early as July, 2003 (even though the administration was
saying that that it would “exhaust all peaceful meansâ€) The unprovoked
attack would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But
the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.â€
Even though the memo provided the first piece of irrefutable evidence
that the administration deliberately manipulated the facts, no American
newspaper referred to the memo for more than 7 weeks after its
discovery. The details of the Downing Street Memo are still unknown to
many Americans, allowing Bush to continue to deny the cherry-picking of
pre-war intelligence. The memo proves that Bush is lying.
The media has also refused to provide any coverage of the mercenaries
who were deployed to the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane
Katrina. This is the first time in American history that a foreign
(corporate) army has carried out operations on US soil. The media made
sure that no photos of these corporate warriors appeared in any of the
newspapers or TV programs. The absence of coverage raises serious
questions about censorship in Bush’s America.
The media refuses to provide news of the Iraq war and the devastation
of Sunni heartland. Al Qaim, Husbaya, and Tel Afar have all been
attacked with the same ferocity as Falluja; forcing the townspeople to
flee and then destroying the water, electricity, sewage and other
critical parts of the infrastructure. The Pentagon is now engaged in a
scorched earth strategy knowing full well that its policy of killing
journalists will keep the story from being reported. The obliteration
of these cities shows that the military has abandoned the idea of
achieving a political solution in Iraq. The present strategy is aimed
at “destroying the resistance’s ability to wage warâ€, by systematically
laying to waste one city after another. This is the Rumsfeld solution,
but you won’t find it in the media.
The news from Iraq focuses entirely on the random acts of violence
which perpetuate racial stereotypes of Islamic extremists. This
provides the justification for the continuing American occupation. The
media has worked in conjunction with the Pentagon to create the story
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; the embodiment of a ruthless Muslim fanatic
who kills simply because he “hates freedomâ€.
No one can categorically deny that Zarqawi may exist. The fact is,
however, that there has never been a positive identification of him,
nor has anyone ever provided concrete proof of his whereabouts.
Reporters are responsible to provide the facts to their readers, not to
promote a narrative that suits the Pentagon’s agenda.
These are just a few of the stories that the media has refused to cover
because they conflict with the goals of the administration. If we look
deeper we see that the Cheney Energy papers, the 9-11 “whitewash, the
corporate scandals, the “Able Danger†program, and the attacks on civil
liberties, have all met a similar fate. Stories that are incompatible
with the aims of ownership or administration policy are usually left on
the cutting room floor.
Freedom is impossible where the information systems are monopolized by
private industry. Democracy requires that people have access to
divergent points of view so they can form opinions free from coercive
influences. The corporate model aims at uniformity in order to limit
the range of debate and promote a business-friendly agenda. In America,
the news has become a study in uniformity; presenting the very same
topics from precisely the same perspective. This creates the impression
that the facts are generally agreed upon, which is not the case. 65% of
the American people do not support the media’s pro-war stance, and yet,
the anti-war position is nowhere to be found on commercial TV.
The war on terror is not simply a misguided crusade against non-state
actors like Al Qaida. It is a sweeping plan for global corporate
domination. Managing information is vital to that effort. Knowledge is
power, and there is a deliberate attempt to seize that power by
controlling the sources of information. In effect, it is the
privatization of the truth; standardizing information through greater
media consolidation and disseminating it through its own filtering
systems. Its inhibiting effects on our democracy have already been seen
in the curtailing of civil liberties and the twisting of facts that led
to the Iraq war. The further merging of the state and the media portend
a strengthening of autocratic government and a loss of personal
liberty.
The multi-headed dragon of corporate media must be confronted and
defeated. Al Qaida may pose a threat to our security, but the alliance
of state and media poses a clear and present danger to our freedom.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
4.
[thanks to rgt for this]
There will be no Nativity Scene in Ottawa this year!
The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a nativity scene in Ottawa
this Christmas season. This isn't for any religious reason, they simply
have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the Nation's
capitol. There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill
the stable.
(A newsclipping service for news rarely seen on corporate sponsored media - comes daily individually or as a digest, you can email above to join the email list)
Date: Nov 20, 2005 11:38 AM
1. The Ringworm Children
2. EPA to Allow Pesticide Testing on Orphans and Mentally Handicapped
Children
3. The Corporate Media’s threat to Freedom - Mike Whitney
4. No Nativity Scene in Ottawa this year
1.
The Ringworm Children: How the Israeli Government Irradiated 100,000
Israeli Kids
Israel Insider | October 28 2005
By Barry Chamish
On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel's Channel Ten television screened a
documentary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel's Labor party
founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi
youths of a generation.
"The Ringworm Children" (translated in Hebrew as "100,000 Rays"),
directed
by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, recently won the prize for "best
documentary" at the Haifa International film festival, and in the past year
has made the rounds of Jewish and Israeli film festivals around the world.
But it had yet to come to Israeli television screens. The subject is the
mass irradiation of hundreds of thousands of young Israeli immigrants from
Middle Eastern countries -- Sephardim, as they are called today. The story
goes like this:
In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim
Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to
him by the American army.
They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation
of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to
be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For
doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million
Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The
money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.
To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on "school
trips" and their parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for
the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after
their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that
killed thousands over time and are still killing them now. While living,
the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer's
disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.
That is the subject of the documentary in cold terms. It is another matter
to see the victims on the screen.
To watch the Moroccan lady describe what getting 35,000 times the dose of
allowable x-rays in her head feels like. "I screamed make the headache go
away. Make the headache go away. Make the headache go away. But it never
went away."
To watch the bearded man walk hunched down the street. "I'm in my fifties
and everyone thinks I'm in my seventies. I have to stoop when I walk so I
won't fall over. They took my youth away with those x-rays."
To watch the old lady who administered the doses to thousands of children:
"They brought them in lines. First their heads were shaved and smeared in
burning gel. Then a ball was put between their legs and the children were
ordered not to drop it, so they wouldn't move. The children weren't
protected over the rest of their bodies. There were no lead vests for them.
I was told I was doing good by helping to remove ringworm. If I knew what
dangers the children were facing, I would never have cooperated. Never!"
Because the whole body was exposed to the rays, the genetic makeup of the
children was often altered, affecting the next generation. We watch the
woman with the distorted face explain, "All three of my children have the
same cancers my family suffered. Are you going to tell me that's a
coincidence?"
The majority of the victims were Moroccan because they were the most
numerous of the Sephardi immigrants. The generation that was poisoned
became the country's perpetual poor and criminal class. It didn't make
sense. The Moroccans who fled to France became prosperous and highly
educated. The common explanation was that France got the rich, thus smart
ones. The real explanation is that every French Moroccan child didn't have
his brain cells fried with gamma rays.
The film made it perfectly plain that this operation was no accident. The
dangers of x-rays had been known for over forty years. We read the official
guidelines for x-ray treatment in 1952. The maximum dose to be given a
child in Israel was .5 rad. There was no mistake made. The children were
deliberately poisoned.
David Deri makes the point that only Sephardi children received the x-rays:
"I was in class and the men came to take us on a tour. They asked our
names. The Ashkenazi children were told to return to their seats. The dark
children were put on the bus."
The film presents a historian who first gives a potted history of the
eugenics movement. In a later sound bite, he declares that the ringworm
operation was a eugenics program aimed at weeding out the perceived weak
strains of society. The Moroccan lady is back on the screen. "It was a
Holocaust, a Sephardi Holocaust. And what I want to know is why no one
stood up to stop it."
David Deri, on film and then as a panel member, relates the frustration he
encountered when trying to find his childhood medical records. "All I
wanted to know was what they did to me. I wanted to know who authorized it.
I wanted to trace the chain of command. But the Health Ministry told me my
records were missing." Boaz Lev, the Health Ministry's spokesman chimes in:
"Almost all the records were burned in a fire."
We are told that a US law in the late '40s put a stop to the human
radiation experiments conducted on prisoners, the mentally feeble and the
like. The American atomic program needed a new source of human lab rats and
the Israeli government supplied it. Here was the government cabinet at the
time of the ringworm atrocities:
Prime Minister - David Ben Gurion; Finance Minister - Eliezer Kaplan;
Settlement Minister - Levi Eshkol; Foreign Minister - Moshe Sharrett;
Health Minister - Yosef Burg;
Labor Minister - Golda Meir; Police Minister - Amos Ben Gurion.
The highest ranking non-cabinet post belonged to the Director General of
the Defence Ministry, Shimon Peres.
That a program involving the equivalent of billions of dollars of American
government funds should be unknown to the Prime Minister of cash-strapped
Israel is ridiculous. Ben Gurion had to have been in on the horrors and
undoubtedly chose his son to be Police Minister in case anyone interfered
with them.
Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan was rewarded for eternity with a hospital
named after him near Rehovot. But he's not alone in this honor. Chaim
Sheba, who ran Ringworm Incorporated, had a whole medical complex named
after him. Needless to say, if there is an ounce of decency in the local
medical profession, those hospital names will have to change.
After the film ended, there was a panel discussion which included a
Moroccan singer, David Edri, head of the Compensation Committee for
Ringworm X-Ray Victims, and Boaz Lev, a spokesman for the Ministry Of
Health.
TV host Dan Margalit tried to put a better face on what he'd witnessed. He
explained meekly that "the state was poor. It was a matter of day to day
survival." Then he stopped. He knew there was no excusing the atrocities
which the Sephardi children endured.
But it was the Moroccan singer who summed up the experience best. "It's
going to hurt, but the truth has to be told. If not, the wounds will never
heal."
There is one person alive who knows the truth: Shimon Peres. The only way
to get to the truth and start the healing is to investigate him for his
role in the mass poisoning of over 100,000 Sephardi children and youth.
But here is why that won't happen. The film was aired at the same time as
the highest-rated TV show of the year, the finale of Israel's talent-hunt
show: "A Star Is Born." The next day, the newly-born star's photo took
up
half the front pages. There was not a word about "The Ringworm Children"
in
any paper, nor on the Internet. Until now.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2.
ALERT: EPA TO ALLOW PESTICIDE TESTING ON ORPHANS & MENTALLY HANDICAPPED
CHILDREN
Organic Consumers | November 17, 2005
Send a letter to EPA here!
Forward this alert to friends and colleagues
Public Comment Period Closes December 12, 2005
RELATED: The Ringworm Children: How the Israeli Government Irradiated
100,000 Israeli Kids
Feds Tested AIDS Drugs on Foster Kids
Feds: Some AIDS Drug Tests Violated Rules
Public comments are now being accepted by the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) on its newly proposed federal regulation regarding the testing
of chemicals and pesticides on human subjects. On August 2, 2005, Congress
had mandated the EPA create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on
pregnant women and children. But the EPA's newly proposed rule, misleadingly
titled "Protections for Subjects in Human Research," puts industry profits
ahead of children's welfare. The rule allows for government and industry
scientists to treat children as human guinea pigs in chemical experiments in
the following situations:
Children who "cannot be reasonably consulted," such as those that are
mentally handicapped or orphaned newborns may be tested on. With permission
from the institution or guardian in charge of the individual, the child may
be exposed to chemicals for the sake of research. Parental consent forms are
not necessary for testing on children who have been neglected or abused.
Chemical studies on any children outside of the U.S. are acceptable. Send a
letter to EPA here!
OCA's focal concerns with this proposed rule specifically involve the
following portions of text within the EPA document (Read the full EPA
proposed rule here: PDF --- HTML):
70 FR 53865 26.408(a) "The IRB (Independent Review Board) shall determine
that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of the children,
when in the judgment of the IRB the children are capable of providing
assent...If the IRB determines that the capability of some or all of the
children is so limited that they cannot reasonably be consulted, the assent
of the children is not a necessary condition for proceeding with the
research. Even where the IRB determines that the subjects are capable of
assenting, the IRB may still waive the assent requirement..."
(OCA NOTE: Under this clause, a mentally handicapped child or infant orphan
could be tested on without assent. This violates the Nuremberg Code, an
international treaty that mandates assent of test subjects is "absolutely
essential," and that the test subject must have "legal capacity to give
consent" and must be "so situated as to exercise free power of choice."
This
loophole in the rule must be completely removed.)
70 FR 53865 26.408(c) "If the IRB determines that a research protocol is
designed for conditions or for a subject population for which parental or
guardian permission is not a reasonable requirement to protect the subjects
(for example, neglected or abused children), it may waive the consent
requirements..."
(OCA NOTE: Under the general rule, the EPA is saying it's okay to test
chemicals on children if their parents or institutional guardians consent to
it. This clause says that neglected or abused children have unfit guardians,
so no consent would be required to test on those children. This loophole in
the rule must be completely removed.)
70 FR 53864 26.401 (a)(2) "To What Do These Regulations Apply? It also
includes research conducted or supported by EPA outside the United States,
but in appropriate circumstances, the Administrator may, under §
26.101(e), waive the applicability of some or all of the requirements of
these regulations for research..."
(OCA NOTE: This clause is stating that the Administrator of the EPA has the
power to completely waive regulations on human testing, if the testing is
done outside of the U.S. This will allow chemical companies to do human
testing in other countries where these types of laws are less strict. This
loophole in the rule must be completely removed.)
70 FR 53857 "EPA proposes an extraordinary procedure applicable if
scientifically sound but ethically deficient human research is found to be
crucial to EPAâ?Ts fulfilling its mission to protect public health. This
procedure would also apply if a scientifically sound study covered by
proposed § 26.221 or § 26.421--i.e., an intentional dosing study involving
pregnant women or children as subjects..."
(OCA NOTE: This clause allows the EPA to accept or conduct "ethically
deficient" studies of chemical tests on humans if the agency deems it
necessary to fulfull its mission. Unfortunately, the EPA report sets up no
criteria for making such an exception with any particular study. This
ambiguity leaves a gaping loophole in the rule. Without specific and
detailed criteria, it could be argued that any and every study of chemical
testing on humans is "necessary." This loophole in the rule must be removed,
based on this inadequacy of criteria and definition.)
Send an email to EPA here!
Forward this alert to friends and colleagues
By mail: Send two copies of your comments to: Public Information and Records
Integrity Branch (PIRIB) Office of Pesticide Programs U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Mail Code: 7502C
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC, 20460-0001 Attention: Docket ID
Number OPP-2003-0132
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
3.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11022.htm
The Corporate Media’s threat to Freedom
By Mike Whitney
11/15/05 "ICH " -- -- There is no similarity between the corporate
media and a “free pressâ€. The corporate media operates according to its
structural make-up, which requires it to serve the interests of
ownership and maximize profits. Its top-down style of management
ensures that it will align itself with the political centers of power
which create the opportunity for greater prosperity. This explains why
the media giants have consistently concealed the Bush administration’s
attacks on civil liberties, supported the expansion of executive power,
and paved the way for global war. After all, they are just acting in
their own best interest, accommodating the political establishment to
allow for more consolidation and expansion. One hand washes the other.
The cozy relationship between the administration and the media has made
it nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. In
fact, the media is the primary instrument of state policy. Its task is
to shape the public’s perception of government and to project a benign
image of the US to the world beyond.
Naturally, this symbiotic relationship has intensified as the needs of
the administration have increased. Now, the media crafts the storyline
of American magnanimity while the US military carries out war crimes in
Falluja or torture in Baghdad. It showers praise on the Dear Leader
while thousands wallow in squalor in New Orleans or are cluster-bombed
in Tal Afar. It waves the flags and sings the patriotic anthems that
prepare the nation for war. The media has become indistinguishable from
the political establishment; executing its duties in a manner that best
serve the objectives of the state.
Confidence in the media has never been lower. A broad section of the
public doesn’t believe anything they read in the papers nor do they see
reporters as impartial observers of world events. This should be no
great surprise. The model of a privately-owned media ensures that the
facts are massaged to suit ownership; a practice that inevitably
undermines credibility.
The marriage between the media and the state increases the danger to
the public interests. This is especially true when the media becomes a
marketing tool for the government, promoting its vastly unpopular wars,
its attacks on the social safety-net, and its vicious assault on civil
liberties.
The media has become an adversary to the people it is supposed to
serve. It now functions exclusively as a weapon in the imperial
arsenal; exalting the state and its wartime agenda, while savaging the
institutions of democracy and personal liberty. Its role as
state-propagandist is conspicuous in everything from its blind devotion
to the president to its obfuscation of facts that discredit the
administration.
If we consider a few of the critical stories the mainstream media
suppressed, we get a clearer idea of its overall agenda.
The media refused to cover the allegations of irregularities in the
2004 presidential election; dismissing the anomalies as conspiracy
theories. Independent investigations have cast serious doubt on the
legitimacy of the balloting, and just last week, the GAO confirmed
suspicions that widespread voter fraud may have taken place. Whether or
not the elections were fairly conducted is immaterial; given the
suspicious results of the 2000 election, this was a story that should
have been covered. Instead, it was purposely ignored to silence critics
and divert attention from the dysfunctional electoral system.
The media has refused to cover the massive and devastating siege of
Falluja; an assault that displaced 250,000 civilians and intentionally
destroyed water lines, electrical power, sewage treatment plants,
government buildings, hospitals and schools. Even now, a full year
later, journalists have been kept from entering the city or
photographing the largest single war crime of the ongoing conflict.
And, even though news services around the world are confirming the use
of banned weapons, including napalm and other “unidentified†substances
during the attack, the American media refuses to give details or demand
an independent investigation. It is interesting to compare the media’s
silence on the carnage in Iraq to its front-page coverage of the
assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Lavish
attention has been devoted to Hariri’s death because it advances the
administration’s foreign policy goals. Once again, the media is
clearing the path for future imperial conflicts by building the case
for war against Syria.
The media has also refused to cover the Downing Street Memo; the
damning document written by a member of Tony Blair’s national security
team who verified that Bush planned to “remove Saddam through military
force†as early as July, 2003 (even though the administration was
saying that that it would “exhaust all peaceful meansâ€) The unprovoked
attack would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But
the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.â€
Even though the memo provided the first piece of irrefutable evidence
that the administration deliberately manipulated the facts, no American
newspaper referred to the memo for more than 7 weeks after its
discovery. The details of the Downing Street Memo are still unknown to
many Americans, allowing Bush to continue to deny the cherry-picking of
pre-war intelligence. The memo proves that Bush is lying.
The media has also refused to provide any coverage of the mercenaries
who were deployed to the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane
Katrina. This is the first time in American history that a foreign
(corporate) army has carried out operations on US soil. The media made
sure that no photos of these corporate warriors appeared in any of the
newspapers or TV programs. The absence of coverage raises serious
questions about censorship in Bush’s America.
The media refuses to provide news of the Iraq war and the devastation
of Sunni heartland. Al Qaim, Husbaya, and Tel Afar have all been
attacked with the same ferocity as Falluja; forcing the townspeople to
flee and then destroying the water, electricity, sewage and other
critical parts of the infrastructure. The Pentagon is now engaged in a
scorched earth strategy knowing full well that its policy of killing
journalists will keep the story from being reported. The obliteration
of these cities shows that the military has abandoned the idea of
achieving a political solution in Iraq. The present strategy is aimed
at “destroying the resistance’s ability to wage warâ€, by systematically
laying to waste one city after another. This is the Rumsfeld solution,
but you won’t find it in the media.
The news from Iraq focuses entirely on the random acts of violence
which perpetuate racial stereotypes of Islamic extremists. This
provides the justification for the continuing American occupation. The
media has worked in conjunction with the Pentagon to create the story
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; the embodiment of a ruthless Muslim fanatic
who kills simply because he “hates freedomâ€.
No one can categorically deny that Zarqawi may exist. The fact is,
however, that there has never been a positive identification of him,
nor has anyone ever provided concrete proof of his whereabouts.
Reporters are responsible to provide the facts to their readers, not to
promote a narrative that suits the Pentagon’s agenda.
These are just a few of the stories that the media has refused to cover
because they conflict with the goals of the administration. If we look
deeper we see that the Cheney Energy papers, the 9-11 “whitewash, the
corporate scandals, the “Able Danger†program, and the attacks on civil
liberties, have all met a similar fate. Stories that are incompatible
with the aims of ownership or administration policy are usually left on
the cutting room floor.
Freedom is impossible where the information systems are monopolized by
private industry. Democracy requires that people have access to
divergent points of view so they can form opinions free from coercive
influences. The corporate model aims at uniformity in order to limit
the range of debate and promote a business-friendly agenda. In America,
the news has become a study in uniformity; presenting the very same
topics from precisely the same perspective. This creates the impression
that the facts are generally agreed upon, which is not the case. 65% of
the American people do not support the media’s pro-war stance, and yet,
the anti-war position is nowhere to be found on commercial TV.
The war on terror is not simply a misguided crusade against non-state
actors like Al Qaida. It is a sweeping plan for global corporate
domination. Managing information is vital to that effort. Knowledge is
power, and there is a deliberate attempt to seize that power by
controlling the sources of information. In effect, it is the
privatization of the truth; standardizing information through greater
media consolidation and disseminating it through its own filtering
systems. Its inhibiting effects on our democracy have already been seen
in the curtailing of civil liberties and the twisting of facts that led
to the Iraq war. The further merging of the state and the media portend
a strengthening of autocratic government and a loss of personal
liberty.
The multi-headed dragon of corporate media must be confronted and
defeated. Al Qaida may pose a threat to our security, but the alliance
of state and media poses a clear and present danger to our freedom.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
4.
[thanks to rgt for this]
There will be no Nativity Scene in Ottawa this year!
The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a nativity scene in Ottawa
this Christmas season. This isn't for any religious reason, they simply
have not been able to find three wise men and a virgin in the Nation's
capitol. There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill
the stable.