(NaturalNews) The American Cancer Society (ACS) is involved financially with manufacturers of mammography devices, tainting its cancer screenings with conflict of interest, cancer prevention experts Samuel S. Epstein and Rosalie Bertell have charged.

Since the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded and sank in April, BP has devoted inadequate resources to the oil spill response, withheld information from the American public, and denied access to spill sites to journalists. So our ship the Arctic Sunrise is heading to the Gulf to do an independent assessment of the impacts. We believe it’s way past time the full, unabridged truth about the extent and nature of this oil catastrophe was told to America and the world.

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At the height of the Iraq war, the Army routinely dismissed hundreds of soldiers for having a personality disorder when they were more likely suffering from the traumatic stresses of war, discharge data suggests.

Another pharmaceutical giant has settled a big compensation claim. So why are they allowed to go on misleading the public?

New Song Showcase new feature at 8th annual Hope Mountain Barter Faire, set for Sept. 17-19

From our I.V. weekly issue dated August 11, 2010

ZINA BOOTH I V News Staff Writer   “

Southern Oregon activities tend to favor gatherings, festivals and campfires, not bars,” says Patrick Dodd, organizer of the New Song Showcase/Contest for the eighth annual Hope Mountain Barter Faire. It’s set for Sept. 17 through 19. “Help us put Southern Oregon on the songwriters’ map, and get your song heard for $20,” urged Dodd. Most songwriters’ contests, you send in $35 and your CD, and you never hear from them again. With “New Song Showcase”, all entering songwriters will have a chance to perform their new song on all three days, with semi-finalists chosen from each day. The three finalists will perform on the main stage Sunday, and the winner will play main stage at the Faire next year. Songs of all finalists will be aired on Hope Mountain Radio from the main stage, and contestants will perform at the new solar-powered Ballad Tree, with energy provided by Megawatt NRG Renewable Energy Systems. “Besides the great prizes — a Breedlove guitar, cash and 10 hours recording time, ‘New Song’ will be an immense amount of fun,” stated Dodd. “Any songwriter will go to others’ shows for inspiration, to learn different chords. When the field is dry, go to your well — welcome to the water, boys.” Dodd has 11 years experience with open-mics, and he realizes that the most important factor is to let everyone feel good, so that everyone wins. The ambience is always the living room, no matter how large the crowd. In his early 30s Dodd helped organize the South by Southwest Songwriters weekend in Austin, Texas. He’s looking forward to this addition to the Hope Mountain Barter Faire to be held at 3833 Holland Loop in rural Cave Junction. Dodd noted, “There is quite simply nothing like a song circle around a campfire, everyone is a hero, reflecting on the general spirit and sharing attitude. When we all get together, we all win as we network and learn more about songwriting. “We have an amazing amount of talent in Southern Oregon, we just don’t realize it because we all live rural, separated. When we get together, all our creative juices get flowing.” Dodd describes the jolt felt by a musician as the chords, the tune, and the words flow together like magic, and the listener shakes his head, thinking, “Yeah, I’ve been there.” “The New Songwriter’s Showcase is a chance to get your name out,” explained Dodd. “We will list all entries with links to the songwriters’ Websites or Facebook pages on our New Song Page. “All potential songwriters need to do is fill out an entry form with name, address, phone, email, Website, title of song, along with a copy of their new song on a CD (if available) and the entry fee. Those without a recording of their new song can still show up with their entry fee.” Checks or money orders can be made out to Hope Mountain Barter Faire and mailed to New Song Showcase/Contest, c/o Patrick Dodd, 12108 Redwood Hwy. Wilderville OR 97543; or phone 541-956-1513. Deadline for mail entry is Sept. 1. Dodd plans on offering different contests, and giving recognition to all so everyone feels good. The community can help sponsor this event and help educate the next generation by donating a prize and creating a category for the New Songwriter’s contest. Dodd suggests that perhaps a tavern might wish to donate a free dinner for the Best Female Retaliation Song, like the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl.” A service station could donate a gas card for a Farthest Distance Award, with contestants traveling from Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin and North Carolina for the festival. The Best Romantic Song might win a basket of bread, cheese and wine, or the biggest knuckle-buster prize could be free string and a pic. Other categories could include most outrageous, silliest, and a Best Kiddies Song, so children could join the contest too. Anyone interested in donating prizes and creating a category can email smallrevolution@earthlink.net. “New Song” will have an eclectic pool of judges, 11 so far, including S.W. Oregon favorite Frankie Hernandez, so that all genres will have a fair chance. By keeping quality at forefront, money second, the Hope Mountain Barter Faire’s New Song Showcase will be a great contest with well-crafted music and fun for all. Albums, eight-tracks, cassettes, CDs, nothing replaces playing a song with eye-to-eye contact and the human connection. Said Dodd, “Come to the Barter Faire New Song Showcase and see for yourself that Southern Oregon songwriters are like the first prize: The Breedlove guitar is not well-known, but reviewers say it performs better than Martin and Santa Cruz.” 

Investigators in the United States probing the assassination of a senior Hamas official have drawn links between U.S. companies and suspects in the case, bringing them closer to identifying them, according to an American press report Saturday.

The findings show U.S. authorities playing a great role in the probe than previously revealed, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Mohammed al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official accused by Israel of planning a series of terror attacks and weapons transfers, was found dead in a Dubai hotel room on January 19.

Dubai police have publicly accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of the hit, which sparked diplomatic outrage when it emerged that a group of suspects used forged passports of Israeli allies to enter the Gulf emirate.

The U.S. companies identified by investigators include wed-based firms that pair freelance job-seekers with employers and transfer payments between them, the Journal said. Authorities have identified financial transfers from several intermediary businesses into prepaid, cash-card accounts used by suspects in the Dubai killing, according to international investigators.

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Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.

Story here

Emily Henochowicz was wounded by a tear gas canister in a demonstration following Israel's Gaza flotilla raid.

By Avi Issacharoff

The Israeli government is refusing to pay the cost of medical care for an American-Jewish activist who lost an eye when Border Police officers fired a tear gas canister at her during a demonstration.

Emily Henochowicz, who studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and also holds Israeli citizenship, took part in a protest on May 31, shortly after Israel killed nine pro-Palestinian activists in a raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

	Emily Henochowicz after losing an eye at a protest at the Qalandiyah checkpoint − she was struck by a teargas grenade.
	Photo by: Daniel Bar-On

Dozens of activists took part in the protest against the Israeli blockade of Gaza next to the Qalandia checkpoint, south of Ramallah.

According to the IDF, demonstrators began to throw stones at the Border Police, after which the army responded by firing tear gas canisters.

According to Henochowicz, one policeman shot a canister directly at her face, shattering her jaw and causing her to lose her left eye. A Haaretz reporter witnessed the incident.

Following her her treatment at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Henochowicz's father, who had traveled from the U.S., was handed a bill for NIS 14,000. Under advice from his lawyer, Michael Sfard, he asked the Defense Ministry cover the expense, but officials refused.

In justifying the refusal, the Defense Ministry claimed the tear gas was not fired directly at Henochowicz.

"The canister ricocheted at her after it rebound off a concrete barrier and changed direction - it was not shot directly at her," the ministry said in a statement drafted by lawyer Sharon Zimmerman. The statement also accused Henochowicz of putting herself at risk by voluntarily participating in a breach of the peace.

In response, Sfard said that as police were still investigating the incident, it was impossible for the Defense Ministry to judge exactly what occurred.

"Either way, even if wounding of my client was the result of negligence and not criminal intent -even then the State of Israel has a moral, ethical and legal obligation to pay for her treatment," Sfard wrote.

The Defense Ministry responded: "From our reports, we know that the Border Police acted in accordance with the law at the violent demonstration at Qalandia, and that the shooting of tear gas canisters at demonstrators was justified. Of course, we regret that Emily Henochowicz was wounded in her eye. But under such circumstances, the Defense Ministry does not cover the expenses of medical treatment."

Since 1967, Israel has prevented the growth of Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley by cutting off their water supply or declaring large areas as live fire zones.

The notion that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed is a foundational principle of the American experiment.

However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 23% of voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed. Sixty-two percent (62%) say it does not, and 15% are not sure.

These figures have barely budged since February.

There is no gender gap on this question. Younger voters are more likely than their elders to believe the government today has the necessary consent. Among voters under 30, 28% say the government has that consent. Just 15% of senior citizens share that view.

From an ideological perspective, most liberal voters (58%) think the federal government has the consent of the governed. Most moderates (57%) and most conservatives (84%) disagree.

Democrats are closely divided on the question. Republicans and unaffiliated voters strongly reject the notion that the government has the consent of the governed. 

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls).  Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 12-13, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are “united in the belief that our political system is broken, that politicians are corrupt and that neither major political party has the answers.” He adds that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and the politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”

The book earned positive reviews from Larry Sabato, Pat Caddell, Bill Kristol, Joe Trippi and others. In Search of Self-Governance is available from Rasmussen Reports and at Amazon.com.

Data released yesterday finds that 68% of voters believe the Political Class doesn’t care what most Americans think.  Earlier polling shows that 59% are embarrassed by the behavior of the Political Class.

Rasmussen Reports has documented the wide gap between perceptions of the Political Class and Mainstream voters. To measure this gap, the firm has created a Political Class Index based upon three polling questions.   Mainstream voters tend to trust the wisdom of the crowd more than the wisdom of politicians and are skeptical of the government and its relationship with big business.

Not surprisingly, only four percent (4%) of Mainstream Voters think the Political Class cares.

Over the past couple of years, most Americans have opposed many initiatives of the Political Class including the bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Additionally, most voters still favor repeal of the national health care plan and overwhelmingly disagree with the Justice Department's decision to challenge Arizona's new immigration law in court.

Fifty-five percent (55%) don’t even think most members of Congress pay all the taxes they owe.

Voters are evenly divided over the notion that a group of people randomly selected from the phone book could do a better job than the current Congress.

One reason for skepticism about the Political Class is that  70% believe Big Government and Big Business are on the same team  working together against the rest of us.

Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky.

In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.

Under the terms of a 2008 status of forces agreement, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but they'll leave behind a sizable American civilian presence, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, and five consulate-like "Enduring Presence Posts" in the Iraqi hinterlands.

Iraq remains a battle zone, and the American diplomats and other civilian government employees will need security. The U.S. military will be gone. Iraq's army and police, despite billions of dollars and years of American training, aren't yet capable of doing the job.

The State Department, better known for negotiating treaties and delivering diplomatic notes, will have to fend for itself in what remains an active danger zone.

More...

By ROBERT MACKEY 

On the eve of an international conference in Afghanistan, the country’s only female governor told Britain’s Channel 4 News that Afghan women should not have to sacrifice their rights as part of any peace agreement with the Taliban.

Habiba Sorabi, the governor of the Bamiyan province — where the Taliban terrorized Shiite members of the Hazara minority during their rule, and destroyed ancient Buddhist monuments — rejected a suggestion from a minister in the national government that women would have to “be sacrificed” in return for a deal with the fundamentalist insurgents. Speaking in English to a crew from Channel 4 News, Ms. Sorabi said:

Why are they not doing the sacrifice? Always we women should do the sacrifice? Always women during the war and during the conflict, for a long period in Afghanistan, women sacrificed. So this is enough I think.

Ms. Sorabi was not invited to the conference in Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Tuesday.

Last year, conservative Shiite clerics, courted by President Hamid Karzai, pushed for changes to Afghanistan’s family laws to severely restrict women’s rights.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010
By our correspondent

Karachi

The War Against Rape (WAR) is outraged at the gang-rape incident of a Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre’s nursing student on July 13, 2010, on the hospital premises.

WAR sees this incident as an act of sheer barbarism where the accused, in order to cover their tracks, attempted to take the life of the survivor by pushing her off the building, due to which she suffered serious injuries.

The fact that the main accused is an ex-medico-legal officer is a matter of deep concern, the group said. The audacity, with which the perpetrators committed this act inside the hospital, brings to light the utter failure of monitoring systems and the failure to provide a safe working environment to women.

Reports of sexual assault of nursing students in hospitals by senior doctors are made every year across Pakistan. Cases of sexual harassment are even more common in these settings. They typically demonstrate the abuse of power by those in influential positions by committing human rights violations apparently without any fear of accountability and punishment.

The survivor and her family in this case have recently expressed that they are under immense pressure to withdraw charges. The WAR demanded that the government ensures complete protection for the survivor and her family, conduct an impartial investigation, arrest the remaining perpetrators of this heinous crime and take the case to its logical end.

The WAR also urged the government, especially the social welfare and women’s development departments, to take every measure for the quick recovery of the survivor and her family and to make sincere efforts for their rehabilitation.

WAR also demanded that policies should be put in place that prescribe penalties for those abusing authority by harassing students and other staff members.

The government, especially the Health Department, should conduct an inquiry into existing power structures in hospital settings that cause a perpetuation of such crimes and what kind of mechanisms are there for those being harassed or assaulted to report and what actions have been taken so far to stem out this problem.

The group also urged that the government make DNA testing facilities available at public hospitals in Karachi to expedite the process of investigation and to minimise contamination of vital evidence.

It's been debunked
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

♦  No,  it's not true that Shirley Sherrod, a black Georgia-based US Department of Agriculture bureaucrat, used her position to deny help to struggling white farmers. In fact, it's rather flamboyantly and obviously untrue, but she's been fired nonetheless by the Obama administration, and specifically by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, an unfairness which deserves more attention.

Since the lies in this matter are rather routine for America's right-wing, let's take a moment to look at this mess. First, the damning video comes from Andrew Brietbart, who has a long and growing track record of distorting the truth. He is, for example, the key funder of video liar James O'Keefe, whose lies and misleadingly edited video brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Your second clue that you're being lied to is that Brietbart's video is heavily edited, which is always a red flag for anyone who cares about the truth.

Brietbart's biggest lie, though, is the made-up story that in the video, Sherrod is describing her work for the Dept of Agriculture. That's a lie and Brietbart must know it's a lie. Sherrod's speech described events from more than two decades ago, when she was working for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, a group set up specifically to help struggling black farmers. She described her reaction when a struggling white farmer came pleading for help at this co-op set up to help struggling black farmers. She says she was taken aback at first, but came to see, more than two decades ago, that struggling farmers should be helped regardless of their color. It’s not just about black people," she says, it’s about poor people."

Is that offensive to you? Is it hard to understand that she might be taken aback by a white guy asking for help? Are you shocked and outraged by the story? I'm sure not. To me it's an inspirational story about someone learning a worthwhile lesson, and obviously that was Shirley Sherrod's intent in telling it. Brietbart's intent, in editing and distorting her words and lying about the circumstances and her point, is pretty obvious, too.

I'll close this entry by quoting someone smarter than me, SusieMadrik, aka the Suburban Guerrilla, who is spot on as usual: "I can’t do anything about the media, or the gutless administration, but I can remind you that whenever a scandal is ginned up like this by the right-wing attack machine, IT IS ALWAYS A LIE. It may be a lie wrapped around a minute speck of truth, but that only makes the lie more plausible. It is still a lie."  #

♦  No,  it's not true that Muslims are building a mosque at the site of the former World Trade Center in New York — it's two blocks away. It's not true that it will be a "13-storey mosque" — it's a mosque that will be one tenant in a long-standing 13-storey building. It's not true that it's part of a Muslim jihad against America — it's just another mosque in a nation that claims to cherish freedom of religion.

There's very little truth in what Republican fearmongers are saying about this matter, and this advertisement, which was "paid for by National Republican Trust PAC", amounts to little more than a shameful hate video. Republicans who believe in freedom of religion — are there any? — should demand an apology.  #

♦  No,  it's not true that Democrats' proposals for clean energy legislation would "cost every family in this country about $4,000 more for utility bills." That's Congressman Dan Burton (R-Indiana), lying as he often does. According to estimates from people who are paid to do the math impartially, the proposals would cost the average American family about $83 per year.

If you don't think the clean energy legislation is worth $83 per year, make your arguments. We're big fans of political arguments, and not at all enamored of this legislation, so why can't Congressman Burton make honest arguments against this bill, instead of pulling a ginormous number like $4,000 out of his ass?  #

More lies debunked