While pharmaceuticals may often be lifesavers, they are also the product of a massive global industry that manufactures compounds that can interfere, in myriad and unintended ways, with complex biological functions. They are often designed to break down slowly and have yet-unknown consequences to the environment. As a new Government report points out, they also contribute significantly to global warming: NHS drug-purchasing alone is responsible for millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
Major 9/11 Breakthrough in Japan
Yukihisa Fujita, a member of the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament has recently published a book titled: "Questioning 9/11 in Japan's Parliament - Can Obama Change the USA?"
During he second part of the event formal greetings to Mr. Fujita were presented by the following speakers:
Tadashi Inuzuka, Member of Parliament, member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence
Hideaki Seo, director of Sundai School , chair of the Fujita Politics Forum
Yukiyo Hatoyama, general secretary of the Democratic Party of Japan
Kazuo Tanigawa, former self defense minister and Justice minister for the ruling party in Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party
ISRAELI LINK TO PENSION SCANDAL
The explosive probe of New York state's pension fund is going international -- with investigators looking into whether payments by an Israeli company were kicked back to a firm tied to indicted political guru Hank Morris, The Post has learned.
The indictment charged that DAV-Wetherly was a source of laundered payments to Morris for steering it pension-fund business, the source said. Morris was Hevesi's longtime friend and top political adviser.
Israel's secret plan for West Bank expansion
Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem.
The Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors settlement growth, said it had obtained plans drawn up by experts that the interior ministry had commissioned which call for expanding the sprawling Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem southward by 1200 hectares, placing what is now the separate smaller settlement of Kedar within Maale Adumim's boundaries.
Chernobyl - The Horrific Legacy
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station reactor number 4 exploded at 1:24 a.m. "Tons of radioactive dust was" unleashed "into the air transported by winds, [and] it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet, settling wherever it rained. The emissions of radioactivity lasted [short-term] for 10 days."(1)
On April 29, "fatal levels of radioactivity were recorded in Poland, Austria, Romania, Finland, and Sweden."(2) The day after (April 30), it hit Switzerland and Italy. By May 2, it reached France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Greece. The next day, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey were contaminated. Then, over the next few days, "radioactive substances" were recorded in Japan (May 3), China (May 4), India (May 5), and the US and Canada (May 6).
Irish reject e-voting, go back to paper
File this in the "exporting democracy" category, or not: a recent report from Europe serves as a reminder that serious problems with e-voting aren't just an American malady, although it's much easier to move back to paper ballots if your country is fairly small.
Looking Back at Abu Ghraib 5 Years Later
These are illustrations of pathological elements of Bush administration policy that should have been made public years ago.
More...
How Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, got Abu Zubaydah to talk without torture.
The arguments at the CIA safe house were loud and intense in the spring of 2002. Inside, a high-value terror suspect, Abu Zubaydah, was handcuffed to a gurney. He had been wounded during his capture in Pakistan and still had bullet fragments in his stomach, leg and groin. Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.
VIDEO: Shepard Smith: 'WE DON'T F#&KING TORTURE!!!'
Shepard Smith's days at Fox "News" may have to be numbered at this point. Even the filthy Judith Miller, for Chrissakes, is joining him in being appalled by the torture memos.
But later, Smith completely blows his stack on Fox's online-only show The Strategy Room, pounding on the table and SHOUTING: "We are America! I don't give a rat's ass if it helps! We are America! We do not f#&king torture!!!":
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