The Freedom Revolution Blog

From CBSnews.com   (Video at Link)

 

American Soldiers Are Dying Of Lung Cancer - And May Have Been Knowingly Exposed

 

The military contractor Kellogg Brown and Root, known as KBR, has won more than $28 billion in U.S. military contracts since the beginning of the Iraq war.

KBR may be facing a new scandal.

First, accusations its then-parent company Halliburton was given the lucrative contract. And later, allegations of shoddy construction oversight that resulted in Americans getting electrocuted.

Now, some other American soldiers say the company knowingly put their lives at risk.

In April of 2003, James Gentry of the Indiana National Guard arrived in Southern Iraq to take command of more than 600 other guardsmen. Their job: protect KBR contractors working at a local water plant.

"We didn't question what we were doing, we just knew we had to provide a security service for the KBR," said Battalion Cmdr. Gentry.

Today James Gentry is dying from rare form of lung cancer. The result, he believes, of months of inhaling hexavalent chromium - an orange dust that's part of a toxic chemical found all over the plant.

At least one other Indiana guardsman has already died from lung cancer, and others are said to be suffering from tumors and rashes consistent with exposure to the deadly toxin.

"I'm a nonsmoker. I believe that I received this cancer from the southern oil fields in Iraq," he said.

Now CBS News has obtained information that indicates KBR knew about the danger months before the soldiers were ever informed.

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Police use excessive force, ER docs say

Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a survey of a random sample of U.S. emergency physicians, virtually all said they believed that law enforcement officers use excessive force to arrest and detain suspects.

The sample included 315 respondents. While 99.8 percent believed excessive force is used, almost as many (97.8 percent) reported that they had managed cases that they suspected or that the patient stated had involved excessive use of force by law enforcement officers.

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by Linn Cohen-Cole: OpEdNews.com

 

I have been reporting on the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's raids on Mennonite dairy farmers, on the recent Ohio Department of Agriculture SWAT team raid on an organic coop, on the USDA's terrible weapon against all farmers with animals (NAIS - the National Animal Identification System) - trying to give an idea of the destructive forces being used intentionally against non-corporate farming.  

 

But unless one sees what is happening to seeds themselves, one misses the scope of things. 

 

Life itself depends on seeds.  

 

Multinational biotech corporations such as Monsanto have been genetically engineering them, promoting GE-seeds as producing better yields, helping the starving of the world, using less pesticides and as a boon to small farmers.  

Independent studies already show crop failures 

 

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php   

 

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July06/Bt.cotton.China.ssl.htmland 

 

and a link between GE-crops and organ damage and various diseases 

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEN20080222&articleId=8148

 

and it's clear they are designed to require petroleum-based pesticides and the use of pesticides has gone up with their use. 

 

http://www.pan-international.org/panint/files/WG2%20Genetic%20Engineering%20and%20Pesticides.pdf

But even if the GE-seeds were wonderful and all that was promised, the real problem with them are the patents they come with.  The biotech companies are monopolizing seeds themselves, actually privatizing the DNA of life.  They sell the GE-seeds at many times the price of normal seeds.  In India, where Bt-cotton farmers have been committing suicide in huge numbers because of debt, Monsanto sells Bt-cotton seed at 1000% higher than normal seeds.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html.

And the seeds come with a contract that must be signed, preventing farmers from collecting seeds off their own land at the end of the season - an historic rupture of humankind's free access to natural growth.  For it is important to notice that the biotech multinationals are not just claiming a patent on their process of altering the seeds but claim to own growth itself.

As astounding a move as that is on human resources of survival, they are doing more.  They are removing actively and aggressively and thoroughly removing access to normal "open pollinated" seeds, the ones we have known since the beginning of time, that farmers have collected and saved and shared among each other.

 

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By Julie Steenhuysen: Reuters

 

Instead of infiltrating breaks in the skin, HIV appears to attack normal, healthy genital tissue, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study that offers new insight into how the AIDS virus spreads.

They said researchers had assumed the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, sought out beaks in the skin, such as a herpes sore, in order to gain access to immune system cells deeper in the tissue.

Some had even thought the normal lining of the vaginal tract offered a barrier to invasion by the virus during sexual intercourse.

"Normal skin is vulnerable," said Thomas Hope of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine said in a telephone interview.

"It was previously thought there had to be a break in it somehow," said Hope, who is presenting his findings at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in San Francisco.

He said until now, scientists had little understanding of the details of how HIV is transmitted sexually in women.

Hope and colleagues at Northwestern in Chicago and Tulane University in New Orleans developed a new method for seeing the virus at work. They studied newly removed vaginal tissue taken from hysterectomy surgeries, and introduced the virus which carried fluorescent, light-activated tracers.

Then they watched under a microscope as the virus penetrated the outer lining of the female genital tract, called the squamous epithelium. They also observed this same process in non-human primates.

In both cases, they found HIV was able to quickly move past the genital skin barrier to reach immune cells, which the virus targets.

Hope said the study suggests the virus takes aim at places in the skin that had recently shed skin cells, in much the same way that skin on the body flakes off.

The finding casts doubt on the prior theory of the virus requiring a break in the skin or gained access through a single layer of skin cells that line the cervical canal.

And it might explain why some prevention efforts have failed. Hope said one clinical trial in Africa in which women used a diaphragm to block the cervix had no effect at reducing transmission of the virus. Nor have studies of drugs designed to prevent lesions in genital herpes proven effective.

Hope said the findings emphasize the need for treatments such as a vaccine to prevent infection.

And it makes clear the need for the use of condoms, which are highly effective at preventing infection.

"People need to remember that they are vulnerable," Hope said. "The sad part is if people just used a condom, we wouldn't have this problem," he said.

In the United States, HIV is mostly passed among men who have sex with men. Females account for 26 percent of all new HIV cases in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Globally, HIV is more commonly spread by heterosexual sex. The virus has infected 33 million people globally and has killed 25 million.

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From:  PanamaLaw.org

Shopping Malls Closing – Shortly after Christmas we will start to see shopping malls of varying sizes declare bankruptcy and close. Shopping malls are driven by the larger “anchor” clients. These are the stores that would bring in the foot traffic. And these stores are closing in massive numbers. The little guys cannot keep a mall going. They do little or no advertising. This will hit the banks hard since shopping malls are very costly. It is doubtful anyone will come along to buy them soon. The banks will have to do maintenance on the malls, carry insurance and maintain security, which means more expenses for the banks.

Cities and States Going Bankrupt – The cities and states are in trouble and some are even asking for bailouts. What happened is their spending was up due to increased revenue from property taxes. Think real estate boom, high values, high property taxes, lots of real estate sales resulting in sales tax revenues. Now with foreclosures, lower values, reduced real estate sales, bankruptcies etc their revenue is way down. Delinquency rates on tax payments are high. Also regular city and state sales tax revenue is way down. Retail sales are low.

Businesses are closing in wholesale quantities. This is going to mean layoffs in the public sector. Bailouts may help for a while but layoffs are going to come. We have already seen some pensions going into default and bankruptcies from the public sector pensions as well. More doom and gloom on the way. Bear in mind this should affect the City, County and State law enforcement agencies as well. They are not immune, not even the corrections system which may need to be downsized.

Higher Taxes – This seems inescapable. The Fed, Cities, Counties and States all prefer to raise taxes rather than downsize. You can’t always get what you want so they will have their tax raise and it will not work and then they will downsize. Getting blood from a stone is not going to work. Governments run by non-business people do not understand this very well. Who are they going to tax – the homeless, those without jobs, those in foreclosure, the retail stores that closed, the record numbers of people in bankruptcy – get the idea. Those that are still trying to live the dream and work are going to be getting hit with more and more taxes on the local and federal level. Eventually they will be busted out or living at a lower standard of living than those on public assistance.

Public assistance is not going to be cut into due to fear of riots, which cost even more money. The net effect of this will be the emergence of a black market economy based on cash, barter and precious metals keeping the various governments out of the transactions. This will reduce government revenues from taxes even further. Reduced government payrolls combined with more hungry and homeless people generally leads to higher crime rates.

Now add into the equation less police and corrections workers leading to early release programs from the prisons. California who is currently saying they are bankrupt tried this in the recent past but backed off before execution. There are millions of people in jail running about $25,000 a year each in expenses. This is a big drain that will need to be done away with. When released these people for the most part will be unemployable due to their skill set and prison record, which means more crime. The people on probation and parole will also be released early to cut expenses, again more crime.

Health Care – Fifty million people without health care coverage is a bad thing and that is the count in the USA now. When they are out of work, out of credit and have no health care they will become desperate. Not that many sick people are content to just go home and go to bed until they get sick enough to die. Health care companies are paying the health care providers 90 days late now. This will only get worse.

As more and more people lose their jobs fewer people will have health care. Rates will go up. Enrollments will then drop more. The end of this cycle is health care providers going bankrupt. Doctors and hospitals will not get the payments owed them, which by then would be at least 120 days worth. This will mean more trouble for the already financially distressed hospitals. And so the story goes on.

Martial Law, Riots, and Extreme Gun Control – These are all possibilities. Hard to say for sure what will develop. A bad economy can lead to riots. Riots are expensive, more debt results. Riots can lead to martial law and extreme gun control laws as emergency measures. All this is bad and very hard to predict with any accuracy. It is reasonable to expect some of these things.

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Consensus emerging on universal healthcare

Noam N. Levey : LA Times

Reporting from Washington -- After decades of failed efforts to reshape the nation's healthcare system, a consensus appears to be emerging in Washington about how to achieve the elusive goal of providing medical insurance to all Americans.

The answer, say leading groups of businesses, hospitals, doctors, labor unions and insurance companies -- as well as senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill and members of the new Obama administration -- is unprecedented government intervention to create a system of universal protection.

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Daschle: Good, Wrong, and Terrible

Eli Lehrer : OpenMarket.org

President-elect Obama has named Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services. By some measures the largest department in the government, Daschle is sure to take center stage in Obama’s inevitable effort to reform the U.S. Healthcare system. So what of the choice? Well, Daschle has some good ideas, one wrong idea, and one really bad one. A quick rundown:

Good Ideas: Daschle believes that individuals, mostly, should have to pay for their own health care and opposes the current mixed-economy health-care system that costs a ton but doesn’t provide good care for most Americans. The current U.S. health care system–which isn’t a free market in any sense of the term or “freer” than most other developed countries’ health care systems–seems largely devoted to cost-shifting rather than actually providing health care. Every party involved–consumers, insurers, the government, hospitals, doctors–tries to get somebody else to pay its bills. The pendulum swings back and forth a bit but nothing really changes in a fundamental way.

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The medical miracle

Jeremy Laurance : The Independent

A 30-year-old Spanish woman has made medical history by becoming the first patient to receive a whole organ transplant grown using her own cells.

Experts said the development opened a new era in surgery in which the repair of worn-out body parts would be carried out with personally customised replacements.

Claudia Castillo, who lives in Barcelona, underwent the operation to replace her windpipe after tuberculosis had left her with a collapsed lung and unable to breathe.

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MyWay.com

By PATRICK McGROARTY

BERLIN (AP) - An American man who suffered from AIDS appears to have been cured of the disease 20 months after receiving a targeted bone marrow transplant normally used to fight leukemia, his doctors said.

While researchers - and the doctors themselves - caution that the case might be no more than a fluke, others say it may inspire a greater interest in gene therapy to fight the disease that claims 2 million lives each year. The virus has infected 33 million people worldwide.

Dr. Gero Huetter said Wedneday his 42-year-old patient, an American living in Berlin who was not identified, had been infected with the AIDS virus for more than a decade. But 20 months after undergoing a transplant of genetically selected bone marrow, he no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

"We waited every day for a bad reading," Huetter said.

It has not come. Researchers at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school say tests on his bone marrow, blood and other organ tissues have all been clean.

However, Dr. Andrew Badley, director of the HIV and immunology research lab at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said those tests have probably not been extensive enough.

"A lot more scrutiny from a lot of different biological samples would be required to say it's not present," Badley said.

This isn't the first time marrow transplants have been attempted for treating AIDS or HIV infection. In 1999, an article in the journal Medical Hypotheses reviewed the results of 32 attempts reported between 1982 and 1996. In two cases, HIV was apparently eradicated, the review reported.

Huetter's patient was under treatment at Charite for both AIDS and leukemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.

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Our health service is now worse than Estonia's

Daniel Martin : Daily Mail

Healthcare in Britain is worse than in Estonia even though we spend four times as much on each person,  according to a Europe-wide league table.

And despite the billions poured into the NHS by Labour, the standard of care is on a par with the former Communist states of the Czech Republic and Hungary, which spend far less on health.

Long waiting times and slow access to new cancer drugs were highlighted as major reasons for Britain’s ‘mediocre’placing of 13th out of 31 countries.

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Andrew Malone: DailyMail.co.uk

 

....In return for allowing western companies access to the second most populated country in the world, with more than one billion people, India was granted International Monetary Fund loans in the Eighties and Nineties, helping to launch an economic revolution.

But while cities such as Mumbai and Delhi have boomed, the farmers' lives have slid back into the dark ages.

Though areas of India planted with GM seeds have doubled in two years - up to 17 million acres - many famers have found there is a terrible price to be paid.

Far from being 'magic seeds', GM pest-proof 'breeds' of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.

Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.

With rains failing for the past two years, many GM crops have simply withered and died, leaving the farmers with crippling debts and no means of paying them off.

Having taken loans from traditional money lenders at extortionate rates, hundreds of thousands of small farmers have faced losing their land as the expensive seeds fail, while those who could struggle on faced a fresh crisis.

When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.

But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That's because GM seeds contain so- called 'terminator technology', meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.

As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.

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Free Market Reforms Transforming Health Care in the Netherlands

Johnny Munkhammar : DCExaminer.com

Most Europeans have followed the American presidential campaign with interest, particularly when it comes to the groundswell of support for comprehensive healthcare reform. It seems likely that the U.S. will attempt to introduce an old European model, accepting heavy government involvement in the delivery of and payment for healthcare services in exchange for universal coverage.

Considering that several European countries are moving away from this paradigm and instead giving the private sector a more robust role, this trend is ironic.

The Netherlands is the best example of Europe's move toward market-oriented reform. Before U.S. officials devote even more taxpayer dollars to health care, they should take a long look at how the Dutch have improved their health care system by reducing the government's role in it.

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HAWAII'S HARD HEALTH-CARE LESSON

GRACE-MARIE TURNER : NY Post

HAWAII just had a vivid les son in health-care eco nomics, learning that if you offer people insurance for free - surprise, surprise - they'll quickly drop other coverage to enroll.

As a result, Hawaii is ending the only state universal child health-care program in the country after just seven months.

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Breitbart.com 

The potential link between mobile telephones and brain cancer could be similar to the link between lung cancer and smoking -- something tobacco companies took 50 years to recognize, according to US scientists' warning.

Scientists are currently split on the level of danger the biological effects of the magnetic field emitted by cellular telephones poses to humans.

However, society "must not repeat the situation we had with the relationship between smoking and lung cancer where we ... waited until every 'i' was dotted and 't' was crossed before warnings were issued," said David Carpenter, director of the Institute of Health and Environment at the University of Albany, in testimony before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform.

"Precaution is warranted even in the absence of absolutely final evidence concerning the magnitude of the risk" -- especially for children, said Carpenter.

Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute -- one of the top US cancer research centers -- said that most studies "claiming that there is no link between cell phones and brain tumors are outdated, had methodological concerns and did not include sufficient numbers of long-term cell phone users."

Many studies denying a link defined regular cell phone use as "once a week," he said.

"Recalling the 70 years that it took to remove lead from paint and gasoline and the 50 years that it took to convincingly establish the link between smoking and lung cancer, I argue that we must learn from our past to do a better job of interpreting evidence of potential risk," said Herberman.

A brain tumor can take dozens of years to develop, the scientists said.

 Carpenter and Herberman both told the committee the brain cancer risk from cell phone use is far greater for children than for adults.

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