It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine "abortion" to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women's reproductive freedom and protect rape victims. And this proposed "rule change" doesn't need congressional approval.

I just signed a message to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, whose department is considering this rule change, telling him: "Contraception is NOT abortion." Can you add your voice to this cause? Click here to sign the message: http://pol.moveon.org/contraception/?r_by=-10012929-m05Zbcx&rc=confemail

 

Last week, you and thousands of others signed our petition to Send Karl Rove to Jail. You agreed that Rove should pay for his dirty voter suppression tricks. You stood up for democracy and the rule of law. And for that, we thank you.

Our allies at Brave New Films created a short video that exposes Rove's recent crimes. Share this email and video with your friends. Together, our voices will have a bigger impact on landing Rove in jail.

Now, we're also working to eliminate one of the darkest corners of Rove's legacy -- stolen elections. Remember, the U.S. Attorneys scandal happened because Rove asked Republican appointees to shut down minority voter registration drives and disenfranchise voters. There is a way to stop his voter suppression tactics -- by electing reform-minded Secretaries of State to run fair, clean elections.

Here's how we do it. We target Secretary of State races in key battleground states, and work hard to help reform candidates defeat Rove / Bush cronies there. Our goal is simple: Stop the next Katherine Harris. In 2006, our community of donors gave over $500,000 to seven Secretary of State races. We won 5 of those 7 campaigns. The 2008 elections will be dramatically different because of our success.

Secretary of the State Project:  http://secstateproject.org/

 

 

Sign the petition

U.S. Hands Off Georgia and Russia - END NATO NOW!

TELL BUSH, CHENEY, RICE AND CONGRESS: U.S. HANDS OFF GEORGIA AND RUSSIA - NO NEW WAR - END NATO NOW!

It is with growing concern that we observe that the U.S. government is threatening new military moves that carry the danger of another war-this time against Russia.

The Bush regime and the corporate U.S. news media have launched an anti-Russia hate campaign. Yet just as with the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and the threats on Iran, the threatened military confrontation with Russia is also based on a lie.

The truth, hidden by most of the corporate news media, is that Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, unleashed his U.S.- and Israeli-armed and-trained forces on the tiny autonomous region of South Ossetia, murdering civilians and attacking Russian peacekeeping troops stationed there. Only then did Russian troops respond.

Saakashvili is the president who sent 2,000 Georgian youth to join the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. The U.S. supplies the weapons to his army. U.S. Special Forces and Israeli advisers and mercenary contractors direct the Georgian military, which just held three weeks of joint exercises with the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in July. We must take note that like Iraq and Iran, Georgia itself is a prize for U.S. oil companies, as it is a major transit point for Central Asian oil.

There is little doubt that U.S. arming of Georgia and its push to get Georgia into NATO set the scene for the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia and created the threat of a new major war. Now Washington also threatens Russia by placing missile bases  in Poland and the Czech Republic against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people there. Surrounding Russia with this military alliance of new NATO members is the greatest danger to peace and stability on a global scale.

It is time to remember that NATO was established as an anti-USSR military alliance aimed at reinforcing capitalist control and preventing socialist revolutions in the colonialist powers of Europe weakened by World War II. Since the end of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. has attempted to vastly expand NATO and turn it into a military instrument to consolidate U.S. corporate power, surround Russia and China and re-conquer the former colonial world.

Consider these examples:

Yugoslavia. Based on the lie that NATO was defending small nations, U.S.-NATO intervention and bombing destroyed multinational Yugoslavia and turned the Balkans into a collection of dependent ministates ruled by the U.S. and Western Europe powers.

Afghanistan. Based on the lie that this was a police action against terrorists, U.S.-NATO have carried out a seven-year occupation leaving the country in ruins and enslaved.

Iraq. Here the lie about weapons of mass destruction was so blatant, and the U.S. position so weak, that most NATO countries refused to join the occupation and utter destruction of Iraq.

No one can believe Bush is promoting peace in Georgia. It is time not only to stop this expansion but to end the NATO war machine completely by dissolving NATO.

It is encouraging to anti-war people worldwide that Georgians themselves have issued a statement condemning the Saakashvili machine. "The entire responsibility for this fratricidal war," the Georgian Peace Committee says, "for thousands of children, women and elderly dead people, for the inhabitants of South Ossetia and of Georgia falls exclusively on the current president, on the Parliament and on the government of Georgia." (Aug. 11)

We cannot do less than the people of Georgia who oppose the current president and want no part of NATO. We demand from Washington:

(1) Stop interfering in Georgia and the Caucasus

(2) Stop attempting to expand the NATO military organization into the countries of Eastern Europe and those that border on Russia.

(3) End the aggressive NATO military alliance

(4) No new wars!

 

On February 13, 2007, Judge Jack Weinstein issued a permanent injunction, prohibiting attorney, Jim Gottstein, and Dr David Egilman, an expert witness in litigation involving Zyprexa, from further disseminating certain Eli Lilly documents that were sealed with a court order until Mr Gottstein released them to the media in December 2006.

After reviewing the documents as a plaintiff's expert in the underlying Zyprexa litigation, Dr Egilman became so alarmed over what he found that as a doctor, he believed he had an obligation to find a way to make the information public.

In an effort to get the documents out from under the court order, Attorney Gottstein subpoenaed Dr Egilman for a deposition in a lawsuit unrelated to the Zyprexa case and asked him to send the documents for review ahead of the actual deposition date.

As soon as Mr Gottstein received the documents he provided copies to reporter, Alex Berenson, at the New York Times, along with a number of other journalists and patient rights activists and groups.

Mr Gottstein argues that the public has a right to know the truth about the risks associated with the drug. "The files show that the manufacturer hid vital information about the drug's safety," he states, "not only from patients, but also from doctors."

"Zyprexa has killed and permanently sickened thousands of people who have taken it," he says.

Mr Gottstein openly admits that he wanted to get the information out to save lives. "The bottom line is patient safety," he said.

The documents quoted by Mr Berenson in articles for the Times, showed that Lilly had concealed Zyprexa's links to weight gain, high blood sugar, and diabetes for a decade.

The documents also reveal that Lilly trained its sales representatives to increase prescriptions for Zyprexa by influencing doctors to prescribe it for off-label conditions, and with patient populations such as children, for uses that have never been tested or approved by FDA.

Zyprexa is an antipsychotic approved for the limited use of treating adults diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and yet it is currently Lilly's number one selling product with sales over $4 billion last year and 20 million people have taken the drug.

MUCH MORE HERE:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_evelyn_p_070214_more_zyprexa_postcar.htm

IMPORTANT NOTE LATER IN ARTICLE:

The Update also spoke of a plan to pay the National Alliance on Mental Illness "NAMI", the most notorious Big Pharma backed front group in the US, millions of dollars to help downplay the news about diabetes and Zyprexa.

The memo said the plan was to "mobilize our allies" and provide "NAMI a multimillion dollar grant to stage a national screening" to "help educate physicians and patients on the inherent risks of diabetes--regardless of the antipsychotic."

MORE HERE: Alliance for Juman Research Protection>  http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/05/eli-lilly-tooth-fairy.html

 

Suicide Hot Line Got Calls From 22,000 Veterans

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forced Vaccinations = Crimes Against Children

 

NaturalNews) The Public Health Council in New Jersey has voted to require all children attending preschool or daycare to be injected with not just one vaccine, but four different vaccines. If this rule goes into effect -- and political momentum is certainly in its favor -- New Jersey would be the first U.S. state to make the vaccination of children required by law. This means that those parents who refuse to participate in such vaccination programs would be labeled "criminals" and arrested at gunpoint.

The health experts in New Jersey backing these vaccines claim there's absolutely no evidence showing that the chemicals used in the vaccines -- which include trace amounts of neurotoxic mercury -- are in any way harmful or linked to autism. These are the same people, of course, who say that mass fluoridation of public water supplies with a toxic waste chemical misnamed "fluoride" is also perfectly safe. And mercury dental fillings are safe, too, if you can believe that. In fact, there's hardly a chemical or heavy metal being used in public health today that isn't safe enough to be injected into the bodies of children, if you believe these so-called health "experts."

What they don't seem to recognize is that virtually every study conducted on the "safety" of these chemicals has been fraudulently conducted and influenced by industry. It is in the interests of powerful corporations (drug companies and chemical manufacturers) to keep the public hoodwinked over the dangers of toxic chemicals. So even though any rational person taking a look at the data can see a link between autism and vaccines, Big Pharma has managed to pull enough strings to keep the people in power parroting their standard excuse: "There's no convincing evidence linking autism and vaccines."

In reality, there's plenty of evidence. It's just not convincing to them. Nothing would be. You can't convince tobacco companies that nicotine is addictive, either. You can't convince utility companies that power lines cause brain cancer in children. And you'll never convince Big Pharma scientists that there's any danger whatsoever to their profitable vaccines.

But the truth is that the potential dangers of these mandatory vaccination policies are not really known to anybody. It's only after the fact -- after thousands of children are harmed by these chemicals -- that the evidence becomes so overwhelming that health officials finally adopt some common sense and back off the policies. In the mean time, New Jersey is really just mandating the medical experimentation on children with vaccines that may later turn out to be far more dangerous than they thought.

 

MORE IMPORTANT READ HERE:  http://www.naturalnews.com/022384.html

Growing threat - Join us in mobilizing to Stop War on Iran!

As we write, the arrival of new U.S. warships will mark the largest build-up of Naval forces in the Gulf since the 1991 Gulf War.

The aircraft carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt and the  USS Ronald Reagan, along with the USS Iwo Jima, an Amphibious Assault Ship are sailing toward the Persian Gulf to reinforce the US strike forces in the region, along with a British Royal Navy carrier battle group and a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine.

This move follows the ominous Operation Brimstone, a massive military exercise involving more than a dozen warships from the US, England, and France in the Atlantic Ocean in preparation for a possible confrontation with Iran.

The USS Roosevelt, which participated in the just-concluded exercise, and the USS Ronald Reagan will join two US naval battle groups in the area:  the USS Abraham Lincoln with its Carrier Strike Group Nine ; and the USS Peleliu, and Amphibious Assault Ship with its expeditionary strike group.

Naval forces now heading towards the Gulf include:

Carrier Strike Group Nine:
USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) nuclear powered carrier with its Carrier Air Wing Two
Destroyer Squadron Nine:
USS Mobile Bay (CG53) guided missile cruiser
USS Russell (DDG59) guided missile destroyer
USS Momsen (DDG92) guided missile destroyer
USS Shoup (DDG86) guided missile destroyer
USS Ford (FFG54) guided missile frigate
USS Ingraham (FFG61) guided missile frigate
USS Rodney M. Davis (FFG60) guided missile frigate
USS Curts (FFG38) guided missile frigate
Plus one or more nuclear hunter-killer submarines
Peleliu Expeditionary Strike Group:
USS Peleliu (LHA-5) a Tarawa-class amphibious assault carrier
USS Pearl Harbor (LSD52) assult ship
USS Dubuque (LPD8) assult ship/landing dock
USS Cape St. George (CG71) guided missile cruiser
USS Halsey (DDG97) guided missile destroyer
USS Benfold (DDG65) guided missile destroyer

Carrier Strike Group Two:
USS Theodore Roosevelt (DVN71) nuclear powered carrier with its Carrier Air Wing Eight
Destroyer Squadron 22:
USS Monterey (CG61) guided missile cruiser
USS Mason (DDG87) guided missile destroyer
USS Nitze (DDG94) guided missile destroyer
USS Sullivans (DDG68) guided missile destroyer
USS Springfield (SSN761) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine
IWO ESG ~ Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group
USS Iwo Jima (LHD7) amphibious assault carrier with its Amphibious Squadron Four
and with its 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit
USS San Antonio (LPD17) assault ship
USS Velia Gulf (CG72) guided missile cruiser
USS Ramage (DDG61) guided missile destroyer
USS Carter Hall (LSD50) assault ship
USS Roosevelt (DDG80) guided missile destroyer
USS Hartfore (SSN768) nuclear powered hunter-killer submarine

Carrier Strike Group Seven:
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76) nuclear powered carrier with its Carrier Air Wing 14
Destroyer Squadron 7:
USS Chancellorsville (CG62) guided missile cruiser
USS Howard (DDG83) guided missile destroyer
USS Gridley (DDG101) guided missile destroyer
USS Decatur (DDG73) guided missile destroyer
USS Thach (FFG43) guided missile frigate
USNS Rainier (T-AOE-7) fast combat support ship

This massive deployment means that hundreds of nuclear-armed warplanes, thousands of troops, and destroyers capable of launching cruise missiles carrying nuclear weapons, bunker busters, or fragmentation bombs will be available for a strike on Iran.  While Russia is bogged down with the crisis in Georgia, and China is occupied with the Olympics, the Bush Administration may believe that this is an opportune time to strike.  This massive deployment is occurring as both Houses of Congress are set to approve resolutions that would mandate a U.S. blockade (which is an act of war under international law). 

The time to act is now:

Please sign the petition online at http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml

And please help us get the word out - use the Tell a Friend Link at http://stopwaroniran.org/friend.shtml

How Washington's Right-Wing Wrecking Crew Robbed Us Blind

By Thomas Frank, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 6, 2008.

 

Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past, that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.

 

MORE HERE:    http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94046/how_washington%27s_right-wing_wrecking_crew_robbed_us_blind/

Big Business Is Making Sure It Wins the Presidency

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com. Posted August 9, 2008.

 

Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush's America for almost eight years now? Well, now we're getting to see that same regulatory malfeasance applied to yet another cornerstone of our political system. The Federal Election Commission -- the body that supposedly enforces campaign-finance laws in this country -- has been out of business for more than six months. That's because Congress was dragging its feet over confirmation hearings for new FEC commissioners, leaving the agency without a quorum. The commission just started work again for the first time on July 10th under its new chairman, Donald McGahn, a classic Republican Party yahoo whose chief qualifications include representing Tom DeLay, the corrupt ex-speaker of the House, in matters of campaign finance.

 

MORE HERE:  http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94334/big_business_is_making_sure_it_wins_the_presidency/

 

2008's First Disenfranchised Voters:  "Veterans"

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted August 11, 2008.

 

The first large block of voters to be disenfranchised in 2008 are the wounded warriors from recent wars and homeless veterans living at hundreds of Department of Veterans Affairs facilities across the country, according to veterans and voting rights activists.

"President Bush and Karl Rove are attempting to block voter registration of at least 200,000 and possibly as much as 400,000 veterans," said Paul Sullivan, president of Veterans for Common Sense, referring to injured former soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in various VA treatment facilities, veterans living in the VA's nursing homes, and homeless veterans living in VA shelters.

"We may have all kinds of hurdles," Sullivan said. "We may have the clock running out on us, but we will not give up. This needs to be shoved in the face of every single elected official in the country. We can fix this in a second We are talking about two or three sentences in legislation. We are talking about the integrity of our democracy."

MORE HERE:   http://www.alternet.org/democracy/94541/

 

 

ADMINISTRATION

The Iraq Forgery

On Dec. 14, 2003, the London Sunday Telegraph published an explosive front-page story headlined, "Terrorist behind September 11 strike 'was trained by Saddam.'" The proof was a July 1, 2001, letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, stating that 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq. War supporters touted this story as further justification for the Bush administration's war. That same day, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly proclaimed, "Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda/Saddam." However, as the 9/11 Commission proved, there were no pre-war ties between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al Qaeda organization. So what happened? Pulitzer-Prize winning author Ron Suskind argues in his new book, "The Way of the World," the White House fabricated this letter and paid Habbush $5 million to stay quiet. Additionally, officials ignored Habbush's warnings that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Suskind's reporting provides the latest bit of evidence that the Bush administration deliberately misled the public to launch its war.

IGNORING UNWANTED EVIDENCE: In January 2003, Michael Shipster, the head of Iraqi operations for the British intelligence service MI6, began secret talks with Habbush. According to Nigel Inkster, a former senior British intelligence official, Habbush confirmed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Hussein was "more concerned with threats from regional enemies like Iran than a US invasion." Senior White House officials were well-informed about these discussions. The British intelligence services prepared a final report on Shipster's meetings with Habbush, which then-CIA director George Tenet used to brief President Bush and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. "The report stated that according to Habbush, Saddam had ended his nuclear program in 1991, the same year he destroyed his chemical weapons stockpile. Iraq had no intention, Habbush said, of restarting either program," Suskind writes. "The White House then buried the Habbush report. They instructed the British that they were no longer interested in keeping the channel open." But as Suskind told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann yesterday, Bush administration officials became worried that Habbush might go public with his revelations after Amb. Joseph Wilson