I’m no Bill Simmons, but both as a Jays fan and as a baseball lover, not to mention as a human being, I despise Roger Clemens. His record may show him as one of the greatest pitchers of all time, but, well, his record, not to mention his character, is tainted. And so, when he finds himself in trouble, whether it involves steroids or sex with an underage girl, I experience deep, profound Schadenfreude.

Many of you, I’m sure, know about the steroids issue. Did he or didn’t he? Well, he probably did. (For more, see my post on his ridicule-worthy appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform a couple of months ago.) Seven Cy Youngs, zero credibility. That’s pretty much where he stands now — in terms of baseball history, his reputation, and the law.

But don’t put your Schadenfreude away just yet. There’s more — and it’s juicy. Here’s the Daily News:

Roger Clemens carried on a decade-long affair with country star Mindy McCready, a romance that began when McCready was a 15-year-old aspiring singer performing in a karaoke bar and Clemens was a 28-year-old Red Sox ace and married father of two, several sources have told the Daily News.

Now, look, what two consenting adults do, well, that’s their business (most of the time — there are exceptions, of course). But, in this case, McCready was 15 years old.

Marcus Dixon, a good and decent young man, gets sent to prison in Georgia for statutory rape and child molestation for having consensual sex with a 15-year old — but he was 18 at the time (and, in the end, he was freed following a favourable ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court and the law that put him in prison was changed).

So if this is true about Clemens — and, of course, he is denying it (she’s just “a close family friend,” according to his lawyer) — then what?
Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Moyers did his best last night on PBS to put Barack Obama’s controversial pastor into perspective. He succeeded in showing the man’s brilliance but created unease in an observer who, by taste and temperament, is not attracted to apocalyptic preaching about the human condition.

From the interview, it’s easy to see what Obama found in Jeremiah Wright and his church that gave a new dimension to his secular desire to help the poor and dispossessed during his early days in Chicago.

Wright’s church apparently did and does good work in uplifting its community, but the social benefits come with a moral price–the preacher’s selective view of good and evil in the political world.

Consider Wright’s use of Martin Luther King to justify his own history. “Dr. King, of course, was vilified,” he told Moyers, asserting that, after King talked about racism, militarism and capitalism, he was “ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds…He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he’d overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war.”

Martin Luther King’s opposition to the war made him unpopular with Lyndon Johnson but not the rest of America, least of all African-Americans and, unlike Wright, he did not use it to condemn all of American history, from the mistreatment of Native Americans to plotting drug addiction in black communities.

The Rev. Wright’s need to “damn” America leads him to a peculiar view of history. He goes back centuries to mine our national past for evil but, when asked about Louis Farrakhan’s racist and anti-Semitic speech, dismisses it with “That was twenty years ago” and praises him for getting African-Americans off drugs and giving them self-respect.

Perhaps most troubling of all is his smiling intimation that Barack Obama is only distancing himself from his views for political expedience: “(W)hat happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I’m a pastor.”

Cross-posted from my blog.

Has the CIA infiltrated the Ecuadorian intelligence services - and is Ecuadorian intelligence feeding information to the Colombian government? These charges have been leveled by Ecuador’s President Correa against his own intelligence services - and there are some in Ecuador who are demanding he provide evidence.

Carlos Freile writes for Ecuador’s La Hora, “We Ecuadorians also have the right to demand, respectfully but with vigor, that President Correa clarify his accusations that our own intelligence services have been working at the behest of the CIA.”

Freile goes on to add,

“If he does not provide evidence of this elephantine accusation, Ecuadorians will have every justification to think that it was an impetuous charge made without sufficient proof, demonstrating either a lack of prudence and moderation, or that the tale of a link was invented to provoke turmoil in the military high command. In both cases, his conduct and honor will have been badly compromised.”

By Carlos Freile

Translated By Miguel Guttierez

April 19, 2008

Ecuador - La Hora - Home Page (Spanish)

We have every reason to ask President [Rafael Correa] to demand that Colombia provide evidence of the alleged links between our national government and the FARC. We Ecuadorians await that evidence, although critics have aired some well-founded doubts: Why such eagerness to impede the investigation into the alleged financing of the FARC by the PAIS Alliance? [The ruling party]. What were the most recent statements by [Hugo] Chavez on this subject? Why not meticulously question the Mexican student [Andrea Lucía Morret] about his contacts in Ecuador and how he got to the [FARC] guerrilla camp - and other critical issues?

[Editor’s Note: President Correa on April 5, accused the CIA of controlling many of his country’s spy agencies and said it had shared Ecuadorian intelligence with Colombia during last month’s regional crisis . On March 1, there was a Colombian bombing raid of a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory. The raid killed 25 people including FARC commander Raul Reyes and the four Mexican students . One of them, Andrea Lucía Morret, survived. The author would like to know why Morret isn’t being questioned about Colombian allegations of a link between Ecuador and the FARC. The FARC, shorthand for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army, is a left-wing guerilla group that now controls about 40 percent of Colombian territory [see map on right].

We Ecuadorians also have the right to demand, respectfully but with vigor, that President Correa clarify his accusations that our own intelligence services have been working at the behest of the CIA. As he made this accusation in public, it is his moral obligation to provide us with details about this tremendous charge that, if shown to be true, would demonstrate ruinous conduct, to say the least.

If he does not provide evidence of this elephantine accusation, Ecuadorians will have every justification to think that it was an impetuous charge made without sufficient proof, demonstrating either a lack of prudence and moderation, or that the tale of a link was invented to provoke turmoil in the military high command. In both cases, his conduct and honor will have been badly compromised.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of U.S. toes to Latin America.

There is an old saying that Americans have to live with the decisions of the Supreme Court for the rest of their lives and then some, but that takes on a perverse new meaning for those who are maimed or their lives cut short by shoddily researched and falsely advertised medications that are inadequately vetted by the Food and Drug Administration and let slide by President Bush’s activist Supreme Court.

It is deeply troubling that it is likely that the top court will soon rule the FDA — which has been co-opted by Big Pharma and politicized by the White House to a shocking extent — is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by the courts.

A blood pressure medication and a cancer drug that is effective in controlling rheumatoid arthritis are coursing through my body as I write this. All have been long proven to be effective, have few side effects of consequence and are reasonably inexpensive when purchased in bulk through my employer’s prescription drug plan.

So I come not to knock all drug makers and all drugs, but to point out that some people have not been so lucky as myself because of an unfortunate confluence of events: Big Pharma’s capacity to be deceitful, its lust for profitable new drugs as opposed to new drugs that may be profitable, and an FDA that has proven time and again in the Age of Bush that it can be co-opted.

The New York Times, in a story that anticipates the Supreme Court ruling, cites the collusion between Johnson & Johnson and the FDA over a life-threatening problem with its once popular Ortho Evra birth control patch.

It turns out that Ortho Evra delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to the company’s own internal documents.

But because the FDA approved the patch, Johnson & Johnson is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women or their families who claim that they were injured or killed by the product — even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new report from the Department of Justice has good news and bad news. The good news is that the DEA had “a 50 percent reduction in the frequency with which laptops are lost and stolen” since 2002. Of course they can’t actually figure out what was on all those stolen computers, unlike the 160 laptops the FBI has lost or had stolen during the last 4 years — they think at least 10 of those actually had sensitive information on them. It is known that at least one of the missing DEA computers did in fact have sensitive data on informants. That’s the kind of thing that could get people killed. For those keeping count, there are 231 laptops missing from the DEA in the last 5 years. New policies include encryption of some data, but frankly this is one of those cases where the best security is to minimize the data that can be breached in the first place.

Oh, but that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that even though they are losing fewer computers, they are losing more guns: 22 lost and 69 stolen. Many of the weapon thefts could have been prevented by simply following policies already in place, which is frankly inexcusable.

This was a follow-up to a study done in 2002, when they found a total of over 775 weapons and 400 laptop computers missing from various Department of Justice agencies — including the DEA. If you are curious, here’s the official executive summary from the OIG.

Maybe things work differently at the Department of Justice, but I think I would be fired if I lost a laptop full of company data, or if my own stupidity in the workplace caused a firearm to be stolen. Mistakes happen, sure. But sometimes you can’t afford to make mistakes at all. “Oh gee, I’m sorry!” won’t put an outed investigation back on track, or bring back a human being killed with a stolen gun.

Would the nations of Latin America be better off replacing the Organization of American States with a new grouping that leaves out the U.S.? After the success of last week’s Group of Rio Summit - which the U.S. did not attend - in defusing a military-diplomatic crisis involving Colombia and a number of its neighbors, there are many people south of the United States that seem to think so. Ángel Guerra Cabrera for Mexico’s La Jornada writes in part, ‘Seemingly intractable antagonisms and ideological crisis can be overcome as long as they are addressed without the presence of the United States … Looking back at history, the OAS has never condemned a single Yankee misdeed against our America, nor has it defended any of our just causes.’ In terms of the attack against Ecuador by Colombia, Cabrera expresses the suspicions of many Latin Americans, when he writes, ‘the roots of the Ecuador incident, momentarily defused by the Rio Group, remain unchanged: the Colombian conflict, the fruit of a very unfair and devastating social and political reality which has been encouraged by “Plan Colombia,” is the nucleus of a feverish U.S. plot of subversion and military interference in South America, aimed at overthrowing the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and closely related to the fierce onslaught against Cuba.’

By Ángel Guerra Cabrera

Translated By Fernando Uribe

March 13, 2008

Mexico - La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)

The Group of Rio Summit’s resounding rejection of military aggression against Ecuador and the consequent defusing of the diplomatic crisis that it sparked, has once again forced Bush - who longed for fire in the Andes region - to experience the bitter taste of defeat WATCH . In this reversal, he had to swallow the clear and vibrant desire for unity, cooperation, and peace in Latin America and the Caribbean, which was so forcefully displayed at Santo Domingo’s capital, Quisqueya.

[Editor’s Note: The “Group of Rio” was founded in 1986, and includes nineteen Caribbean states: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The 35-nation OAS (Organization of American States) has been the dominant regional decision-making body for many years. The earliest forerunner of the OAS first convened in Washington in 1890, and consisted of 18 nations].

The great lesson of the summit is the enormous capacity for dialogue and understanding that the governments of our region possess, with which seemingly intractable antagonisms and ideological crisis can be overcome as long as they are addressed without the presence of the United States.

The best evidence of this came days earlier at OAS headquarters in Washington. Due solely to Yankee pressure - even though for the first time all present clearly condemned all U.S.-inspired interventions, it was impossible to translate this into a collective statement.

On the other hand, despite the fact that Yankee pressure increased on the eve of the meeting in the Dominican Republic (as President Rafael Correa briefed several of his counterparts) U.S. intentions ended up crashing against a determined majority. So there was more than enough reason, in light of this experience, for Ecuador to assert the necessity of creating an organization of Latin American states without the Empire. Looking back at history, the OAS has never condemned a single Yankee misdeed against our America, nor has it defended any of our just causes.

The success of the Rio Summit was also made possible by other decisive factors. The most important was [Ecuadorian President] Correa’s unwavering defense of Ecuadorian sovereignty and demands for its violation to be condemned - and the unanimous disapproval of this ominous precedent. This included the resolute attitude of heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina not to accept under any circumstances, violations of the territorial integrity of another State, which left Uribe isolated.

The only positive attitude towards the Latin American peoples, once assured censorship of the summit to the armed attack against Ecuador, was not insist on the large differences in approach for the sake of opposing defuse the climate of war created.

The skilful and transparent conduct of the meeting by Dominican President Leonel Fernandez created the climate for the bright and balanced involvement of Hugo Chavez who took the lead, supported by [Nicaraguan President] Daniel Ortega and [Bolivian President] Evo Morales. This was the turning point that kept away the shadow of a fratricidal war and led to the unexpected conclusion. This singular attitude favored by the people of Latin America not only assured the summit’s censure of the armed attack against Ecuador, it made certain in the interests of not extending the warlike atmosphere, that little would be made of the vast differences in approach suggested by individual states.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing coverage of the United States from the Latin American press.

There is a confluence between our national mania for drug testing and the news that as many as 41 million Americans are drinking from water supplies tainted with traces of pharmaceuticals ranging from anti-seizure medications to mood alterers.

Americans are obsessed with drugs, but the wrong kind of drugs for the wrong reasons, and that’s not the half of it.

I understand the rationale behind drug testing nuclear power plant operators, to name an obvious example, but why are registered nurses and many other professionals required to regularly pee in a cup in order to be gainfully employed?

Because we get a false sense of security believing that Uncle Leo will get better hospital care if Nurse Nancy didn’t have a puff of marijuana the night before.

The trouble with this “logic” is that it is far more likely that Nurse Nancy is stressed out from too little staffing and too much mandatory overtime and has medicated herself to a faretheewell with sleeping aids, anti-depressants and stimulants to get through the day that may not be caught in a drug screen, and even if they are would not necessarily raise concern that she’s going off the deep end.

And that these very pharmaceuticals are turning up in increasing quantities in those municipal water supplies. Not at harmful levels for the time being, but the long-term consequences are disturbing.

The reason for this crisis in the making is that Americans are taking ungodly amounts of drugs and peeing or flushing away more and more of them in un-metabolized or unused form.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Is there any truth to the charge made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last week, when he said that Colombia had become the ‘Israel of Latin America’? According to this EDITORIAL from Uruguay, which is another of Washington’s presumed allies, this is a question on many South American lips. The Editorial board of La Republica writes, ‘Undoubtedly, Colombia’s military adventure in Ecuador has served to open the eyes of those who have yet to understand the true significance of Plan Colombia. … The United States has failed to grasp this, but there are democratic forces in Colombia that should realize by now the role that has been assigned to their country.’

EDITORIAL

Translated By Halszka Czarnocka

March 10, 2008

Uruguay - La Republica - Original Article (Spanish)

It is necessary to begin with a clarification, given the severity of the title. We are not here looking to call into question the right to exist of the state of Israel. We have another theme and hope everyone understands that.

The problem, the point to question, isn’t the existence of an Israeli state, but the role that it plays in the Middle East. No one in their right mind can deny that Israel’s policy has been to defend the interests of the United States in the region. Beyond the controversy that might arise because of these words, it would be of interest to have someone illustrious - someone other than ourselves - examine closely the condemnations that Israel has suffered at the United Nations for its to its bellicose warlike activities, illegal occupations (can anyone deny them?) and incursions into the territories of neighboring countries (doesn’t unassailable and objective documentation exist about this?).

And all of this has been made possible thanks to the support of the United States, which provides sophisticated weapons by offering subsidies, trade preferences and investment advantages (unlike the way it deals with the Arab countries).

This pattern can be applied to Colombia, which is the subject at hand. President Bush, who took the reigns of his country’s government in a very shady manner (to put it generously), is a great promoter of Plan Colombia , a project that supports that country in its fight against drug trafficking and guerrillas.

In fact, this is a project that supports Colombia in its battle against the guerrillas, who maintain a popular movement that for 60 years has controlled a sizeable portion of the country’s territory [about 40 percent today]. Drug traffic is just an excuse; in its time Cuba was accused of supporting itself with income from drug trafficking and later it was President Hugo Chavez’ turn.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. from South America.

The governments of Venezuela and Ecuador are massing troops along the border with Colombia, and are charging that the United States is behind a Colombian attack on Ecuadorian territory that killed a FARC commander and 16 others on Saturday. According this news account from Tal Cual of Venezuela, that nation’s foreign minister said Monday, ‘Colombia has become the launching point for organized aggression, war and violence throughout the region … A practical demonstration of this is what is going on in Ecuador.’ He went on to say, ‘the United States is mounting a campaign against our country, our President and our institutions. The campaign that has now been launched against Correa [President of Ecuador] is a campaign of empire.’

Translated by Miguel Guttierez

March 3, 2008

Venezuela - Tal Cual - Original Article (Spanish)

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said that Plan Colombia, the program to battle drug trafficking that is financially and logistically backed by the United States, has turned Colombia into a platform for aggression and war on our Continent.

“Colombia has become the launching point for organized aggression, war and violence throughout the region … A practical demonstration of this is what is going on in Ecuador,” said the Minister, referring to the three-way conflict between against Colombia by Ecuador and Venezuela, which was sparked when Colombian troops killed the FARC’s second in command, Raul Reyes, on Ecuadorian territory.

[Editor’s Note: The FARC, shorthand for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army, is a left-wing guerilla group that now controls about 40 percent of Colombian territory [see map on right]. Funded largely through drug-trafficking, the group is the central target of U.S. sponsored Plan Colombia, a package of military and non-military aid that has cost about $3 billion over the past five years ].

Maduro said that the operation undertaken by the “North American empire” and the Colombian bourgeoisie seeks the “internationalization of the conflict.” …

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated coverage of the brewing conflict in South America as it involves the United States.

It will be surprising if anyone claims that he/she has not been depressed at some time or the other in life. Our marital/personal/professional life, in this whirling and topsy-turvy modern world, faces extreme challenges in an attempt to retain a modicum of sanity. However, the popular myth that the ‘happiness pills’ help us come out of depression received a severe jolt recently.

“One of the largest studies (in Britain) of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don’t work,” says The Independent. More here…

While The Times adds: “Millions of people taking commonly prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat might as well be taking a placebo, according to the first study to include unpublished evidence. More than £291 million was spent on antidepressants in 2006, including nearly £120 million on SSRIs. As many as one in five people suffers depression at some point.”

More here…

For the past decade or more lots of strides have been made in the field of alternative medicine. But the medical fraternity and the media refuses to take notice of it or recommends allocation of money to find out the efficacy of such healing processes. This could be owing to the conservative approach or the mighty influence of the powerful pharmaceutical industry that rakes in millions by providing drugs/pills whose efficacy is often questioned (Click here for more) …as now in the case of ‘happiness pills’.

Hearteningly, a large number of people, even in the West, are opting for yoga, reiki, acupressure, acupuncture, flower and aroma therapy…that aim to strengthen one’s positive thoughts, improve the blood circulation and the immune system. For my earlier posts on this subject please click here… And here…

Bizarre is one of the most misused words in the news media, and CNN really hit the ball out of the park with this one:

“A firearms dealer in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Friday confirmed a bizarre link between the graduate student accused of killing five people at Northern Illinois University and the gunman in last year’s deadly shootings at Virginia Tech.

“A Web site used to buy gun accessories by Steven Kazmierczak is owned by the same company that operates a site patronized by Seung-Hui Cho, the company said.”

A coincidence perhaps, but there is nothing remotely bizarre about the link. It often times is easier to purchase firearms and firearm accessories in the U.S. than alcohol, cigarettes or birth control products.

What is bizarre is that so many people refuse to acknowledge that there is a link between the daily gun mayhem in the U.S. and the ready availability of the means to that end.

And while we’re at it, isn’t it bizarre that in our society the solution of the first resort for almost anything that ails you is to pop pills instead of trying to work through the problem, and yet an unfortunate number of people do extremely awful things like Mr. Kazmierczak when they stop popping them?

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com

While a majority of our political leaders, and the media too, continue to scare the world out of us that every nook and cranny is filled with terrorists, somehow there are only a handful among them who remind the people of the terrorist within that is taking away their natural resistance to an assortment of physical, emotional and mental ailments.

In the Indian subcontinent the ancient texts clearly emphasise that negative emotions created by fear, greed, anger, lust, etc, lead to dissipation of natural strength that exists within every human being, and which has enough power to fight any disease. A decade-long uncertainty is now taking a heavy toll of human health because of the negative emotions generated by the so-called ‘war on terror’ that seems unending.

This fallout of the ‘war on terror’ is not getting the attention it deserves. Not only the soldiers fighting on different fronts but even ordinary people sitting at home have been affected by the continuing violence and uncertainty…and, yes, we also have the fear of recession looming large on the horizon.

But then history tells us that humanity has seen even worst crisis/challenges…and overcame it. So why worry? And, yes, even worrying depletes natural resistance to fight disease!!! But since we are ordinary human beings we would succumb, in some way or the other, to the depleting factors.

However, one theory is that we are now more susceptible to ill health because most of us have stopped, or heavily reduced, walking. Why walk? As the picture above, sent by a friend, shows the organs of our body have their sensory touches at the bottom of our feet. If you massage these points you will find relief from aches and pains…You can see the heart nerve ending on the left foot. The belief is that the nerves connected to these organs terminate here. This is covered in great detail in acupressure studies or textbooks.

“God created our body so well that he thought of even this. He made us walk so that we will always be pressing these pressure points and thus keeping these organs activated/healthy at all times,” says the mail from my friend.

So, don’t just keep sitting in front of computers/TVs with a grumpy expression on your face…Instead, SMILE…And KEEP WALKING…!!!

For some more insight/fun click here…

While people in this country and much of the world remain riveted by the U.S. election race, new trouble has been brewing between U.S.-backed Colombia and Venezuela. This comes as Condoleezza Rice leads a diplomatic mission to Colombia to push for a new free trade deal.According to this account from Argentine newspaper La Capital, President Chavez raised the stakes with his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe on Saturday when he said, “I accuse the Government of Colombia of plotting a conspiracy, an act of war against Venezuela, on orders from the United States, to which we will be obliged to respond in a way that could ignite a war. … Uribe is a pawn of Washington … he is a coward, a liar, a troublemaker, and a manipulator … a man like this doesn’t merit being the president of anything, let alone a country.”

Translated By Paula van de Werken

January 26, 2008

Argentina - La Capital - Original Article (Spanish)

In a further escalation of tension between the two countries, the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, accused Colombia’s President, Alvaro Uribe, of “devising a belligerent provocation,” on orders from the United States, “that could ignite a war.”

“I accuse the Government of Columbia of plotting a conspiracy, an act of war against Venezuela, on orders from the United States, to which we will be obliged to respond in a way that could ignite a war,” said Chavez during a press conference alongside his colleague Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua.

The press conference, held on the eve of the Sixth Summit Meeting of ALBA [Bolivarian Alternative for the People of Our America - Chavez’ answer to Free Trade Agreements with the U.S.], the Venezuelan leader stressed that it was no coincidence that three senior officials of the United States, including Condoleezza Rice, had been in Colombia during the past few days.

“I am warning the world that an act of military aggression against Venezuela is being prepared by the United States, to be launched from Columbia. It is part of Operation Balboa, which is what the operation against Venezuela is called,” he declared.

“We have intelligence information about the plan, our own as well as from other Latin American countries. Rice’s visit is not a casual one, nor is that of the so-called “Drug Czar” John Walters, nor that of the American military commander (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commander Admiral Michael Mullen,” Chavez said.

Chavez insisted that Columbia had become the “aircraft carrier” from which Washington is preparing its aggression against Venezuela and its Government. “Uribe is a pawn of Washington,” said the Venezuelan leader, as he did last Sunday when, during his program “Hello President,” he called his Colombian colleague, “a coward, a liar, a troublemaker, and a manipulator” and said that “a man like this doesn’t merit being the president of anything, let alone a country.”

He maintained that Uribe would go down on history as, “a pathetic peon of Imperial North America,” and he considered that recent “attacks” against the Venezuelan people and himself have originated in Columbia. “In recent days, the Colombian oligarchy has asked for reinforcements to attack,” he claimed last Sunday, referring to declarations by U.S. officials that questioned Venezuela’s role in the fight against drug-trafficking.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US

From Colombia at the heart of the war on drugs comes this interesting article between the conflict that is arising between Washington and Caracas…
Read the rest of this entry »

They still don’t know who destroyed the CIA interrogation tapes or ordered the firing of US attorneys, but Capitol Hill bloodhounds will stop at nothing to find out if Roger Clemens used steroids.

On January 15th, the House Oversight Committee starts two days of hearings to pursue this pressing national issue, a month after the well-publicized Mitchell Report was issued and ten days after Clemens appears on 60 Minutes.

“It could be a circus with players, true,” the Committee’s minority staff director, David Marin, admits. “But if you tailor it right and invite people who clearly have pertinent information about the substance of the report, then it’s anything but a circus. It’s substantive.”

The lawmakers will be following in the footsteps of Mike Wallace, whose grilling of Clemens to be shown tonight elicits testimony that he only took legal injections of Lidocaine and B-12, not steroids.

“Swear?” Wallace asks Clemens. “Swear,” Clemens answers. Would the Rocket lie to CBS’ 89-year-old icon? Congress will put him under oath to find out.

In 2005, the same panel questioned other baseball stars and got blanket denials, but this time with 400 pages of documents and rumors compiled by a former Senate Majority Leader and paid for by anxious team owners, the results may very well be different.

One of the eagerly anticipated witnesses will be former New York Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who intrigued observers of the national pastime some years back by suddenly losing the ability to make an accurate throw to first base without the aid of a Seeing Eye dog. Could steroids have had anything to do with that?

Cross-posted from my blog.

We all know how powerful and influential the pharmaceutical companies are worldwide. Often the question is asked whether enough research is being conducted to find out whether the drugs worth billions of rupees being consumed by the trusting public are safe and effective. The recent findings by government officials and a top medical institution has raised serious doubts on this score.

Allergy to medicines ‘is killing thousands’, is the heading of a news story in The Times of London. “Nearly 3,000 patients have died in the past three years as a result of taking medicines intended to help them, official figures show. Thousands more have been hospitalised after suffering harmful side-effects or serious allergic reactions to prescription drugs and other medications.

“Almost half of the deaths occurred last year, while the number of reported adverse drug reactions has increased by 45 per cent over a decade. Growing numbers of patients taking aspirin and other medications for chronic illness such as heart disease could be fuelling the trend, experts suggest.

“Drugs most commonly implicated in adverse reactions include low-dose aspirin, diuretics, the anticoagulant drug warfarin and other nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs.

“Approximately 20,000 reports of adverse drug reactions are made to the (Britain’s) Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and Commission for Human Medicines every year through a spontaneous reporting system known as the ‘yellow card’ scheme. But Dawn Primarolo, the Minister for Public Health, admitted that the yellow card scheme ‘is associated with an unknown level of underreporting’.”

In another news story with a heading ‘We’re dying for a better drugs test’ by Anjana Ahuja’, “There is a way of testing new medicines that allows inferior drugs to come on to the market. I don’t mean inferior in the sense that the drug doesn’t help as many people as an existing medicine; I mean that it can be linked with more deaths than an existing medication, and still be approved.

“An excellent paper in The Lancet recently explained how non-inferiority trials work, why they are unethical and why they should be banned. I relay its contents because it is quite possible that you are taking a pill that has travelled this dubious route from laboratory to medicine cabinet.”

So think before you pop a pill in your mouth. I wonder why no one discusses alternative medicine, or does research on it, despite claims that dramatic cures/healings are being achieved…

Should prosecutors launch investigations into the other 88 players (mostly White and Latino) named in the Mitchell Report? If not, should they drop the case against Bonds?

Gary Webb

I have worked with a goodly number of great investigative journalists over the years, men and women who risk career, life and limb to get the story, and I can say with some satisfaction that this bunch usually did.

But beyond the glamour of the Woodward and Bernstein portrayed by Redford and Hoffman in All the President’s Men is a dark side: Investigative reporters and their editors can be an intensely jealous lot, and except for the biggest stories (like the Pentagon Papers, Watergate and the My Lai Massacre) rival papers are more apt to ignore an investigative story than mention it in their own pages, and sometimes even dump on it.

This brings me to one of the greatest investigative coups and most shameful episodes in modern American journalism — the August 1996 publication of a three-part series titled “Dark Alliance” by reporter Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News and what then transpired. I tell this story in memory of Webb, who took his own life three years ago this week.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Aislin, The Montreal Gazette