Thursday, 28 October 2010 08:28 'You know all those thousands of clinical trials conducted over the last few decades comparing pharmaceuticals to placebo pills? Well, it turns out all those studies must now be completely thrown out as utterly non-scientific. And why? Because the placebos used in the studies weren't really placebos at all, rendering the studies scientifically invalid. This is the conclusion from researchers at the University of California who published their findings in the October issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. They reviewed 167 placebo-controlled trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals in 2008 and 2009 and found that 92 percent of those trials never even described the ingredients of their placebo pills. Why is this important? Because placebo pills are supposed to be inert. But nothing is inert, it turns out. Even so-called "sugar pills" contain sugar, obviously. And sugar isn't inert. If you're running a clinical trial on diabetics, testing the effectiveness of a diabetes drug versus a placebo then obviously your clinical trial is going to make the diabetes drug look better than placebo if you use sugar pills as your placebo.' Thursday, 28 October 2010 08:06 'In 49 B.C., Julius Caesar led the Roman Legion across the Rubicon and into Rome itself, defying the Roman Senate and soon thereafter declaring himself Emperor for life. This was the beginning of the changeover from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire and the phrase "Crossing the Rubicon" is now used to refer to a move by government toward military dictatorship and the suspension of civil liberties. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the United States Coast Guard has been attempting to 'cross the Rubicon' for decades, and actually achieved that goal in a silent coup in 2003 when it was moved from the Department of Transportation into the newly-created Department of Homeland Security. This change was not merely bureaucratic; it allows the Coast Guard to now openly declare itself "one of the five armed forces of the United States and the only military organization within the Department of Homeland Security." The problem is that the Coast Guard is now attempting to straddle the line between a civil service agency (as it was set up to be and indeed has always been, except during times when it was specifically placed in the service of the Navy) and a branch of the military, conforming to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. For those who understand how the United States military has been set up, and the laws and prohibitions against military personnel engaging in the policing of civilians, the fact that the Coast Guard wants to act as a maritime police agency at the same time as it declares itself a branch of the military is a clear indication that the United States is now officially under martial law.' Thursday, 28 October 2010 07:30 'Germany's foreign ministry says it has signed an agreement with Afghanistan to give 14 million dollars to Taliban militants, who choose to lay down their arms, every year. Berlin says the contract will be valid for five years and the cash will only be paid to militants who lay down their weapons. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Wednesday that reintegrating former militants into the Afghan social and political fabric is crucial to stabilizing Afghanistan, DPA reported.' Wednesday, 27 October 2010 09:01 'A new force of armed European guards is to be dispatched to Greece to patrol the country's border with Turkey in an attempt to stem steeply increasing illegal immigration into Europe. The deployment of the Rapid Intervention Border Teams, assembled from the border guard forces of other European countries, will be the first time Brussels has deployed multinational armed units on the EU's external land border. The teams are to arrive in Greece within days, the European commission announced today , although the precise numbers and makeup are yet to be decided. A commission official said: "This is a new front. The teams are armed, but they can only use their arms in self-defence".' Wednesday, 27 October 2010 08:55 'Did you know that in the aftermath of the Savings and Loan (Thrifts) scandal there were more than a thousand felony convictions of financial elites? The cost of the wrongdoing associated with the rip-off and closure of nearly 800 Thrifts cost taxpayers more than $160 billion. The current sub-prime/mortgage-backed security scandal is 40 times bigger according to Economics professor William Black. That means the size of the crime is $6.4 trillion by my calculation. Can you guess how many indictments there have been on financial elites who created this enormous mortgage crisis mess? Zero, none, nada, zip. Yes, not one single prosecution or conviction has been started of achieved.' Wednesday, 27 October 2010 08:32 'Under provisions in CETA [Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement], using saved seed could result in a farmer's land, equipment, and crops being seized for alleged infringement of intellectual property rights attached to plant varieties owned by corporations such as Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, and Bayer. "It includes the freezing of bank accounts too, so you couldn't even defend yourself in court. And this is for alleged infringement," says NFU [National Farmers Union] president Terry Boehm. ... "These are the most draconian measures possible and they would literally create a culture of fear in the farm population where, I think, that ultimately farmers would end up buying seeds every year for every acre just to avoid prosecution or the threat of prosecution".'
Thursday, 28 October 2010
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