Category: Snake Oil

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Impervious to 650,000 Iraqi deaths

Three Monkeys of the Apocalypse

As reported at Now Public, the United Stupids have denied a visa to one of the recent Lancet Iraqi death study researchers, Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who will instead present his talk in Canada.

An Iraqi medical school professor will talk about the death count in Iraq after the 2003 invasion: causes, types of victims, categories of violence, and other health indicators.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta will be in North America to collaborate with University of Washington colleagues on a research project to document elevated levels of pediatric cancers in Basra, Iraq. The project was conceived as part of a sister university relationship between Basra Univ and the UW. The research project is supported by a grant from the Puget Sound Partners, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who teaches medicine at Baghdad’s Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine, co-authored the October 2006 Lancet article that estimated more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the the American-led invasion in 2003.

Lafta will speak at a public gathering at Simon Fraser University’s Wosk Centre (580 W Hastings in downtown Vancouver BC) on Friday, April 20, at 7 pm.

His talk will be video cast to the UW’s Kane Hall at the same time with the opportunity for interactive audience participation.

Dr. Lafta will be a guest of Simon Fraser University, in part because the U.S. State Department would not issue him a visa to come to the United States.

The public is welcome at either location.

For more information:
Tim Takaro, MD, MPH, Simon Fraser Faculty of Health Sciences
ttakaro at sfu dot ca
604-268-7186

Amy Hagopian, PhD, UW School of Public Health
hagopian at u dot washington dot edu
206-616-4989, 685-3676 or Ian Maki 206-543-6020

The ABC records the members of the Coalition of the Gobbling’s infantile reactions to the Lancet study:

GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t consider it to be a credible report.

JOHN HOWARD: I don’t believe that Johns Hopkins research, I don’t.

Continue reading “Impervious to 650,000 Iraqi deaths”

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Pagan Easter Greetings

John Howard Easter Tribulations

Lamenting that “God often struggles for media coverage in the modern world”, the unctuous Asstralian Archbishop George Pell gave his beleaguered deity a hand, advertising to his flock to “refocus on their personal faith and morality”.

Apparently, despite the Vatican’s interpretation of the Fifth Commandment “You shall not kill”, Pell doesn’t think war is a personal moral issue. Instead, in his yearly Easter homily, he preached

a preoccupation with issues like the war in Iraq and global warming can distract people from their personal responsibilities.

With a supposed direct connection to his deity through the Vatican on the other side of the planet, Pell assured us

“Jesus calls us to address the challenges in our own hearts, families and communities before we moralise about distant worlds, where we are usually powerless.”

Really. Where did Jesus instruct us to do this? In Matthew 5:16 Jesus is recorded as saying “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works.” Nothing there about quenching this light at the borders.

To avoid hypocrisy and bearing in mind the Second Commandment, Pell must insist the Vatican take his disempowering advice, retreat back inside its Roman walls, and pull its representatives out of other countries where historically it has proven to be one of the most powerful, moralising, interventionary forces.

“Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet.” – Acts 7:48

NB Notes on the Pagan origins of Easter and its political expropriation by the Catholic Church are here. Briefly

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastic History of the English People”) contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards Christianity instead of to their indigenous gods (whom the Pope refers to as “devils”), “to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God.” The Pope sanctioned such conversion tactics as biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices.

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Uncle Frank on Censorship

Here’s a classic vid of Frank Zappa saying it like it needs to be said. And there’s an excellent interview with Frank Zappa by Gerald Seligman here, where Frank argues cogently against the proponents of censorship.

Statistically, I think, that since the beginning of musical time there have been more hymns than there are heavy metal songs. And if the number of words written about Jesus or doing good had any effect, then we’d all be really terrific people, wouldn’t we? Or when they start talking about factors pertaining to suicide, the largest single instance of suicide in the last decade is Jonestown, and there was no Ozzie Ozborne or AC/DC albums down there: there was only religious fanaticism.

Some more of our favourite Uncle Frank pearlers:

“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.”

The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn’t, then blow it out your ass. I do it to amuse myself. If I like it, I release it. If somebody else likes it, that’s a bonus.

There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it’s going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.

Frank may have been inspired by Francis Bacon, who in the 15th century opined

Liberty of speech invites and provokes liberty to be used again, and so bringeth much to a man’s knowledge.

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Toxic GE corn – Monsanto

Cane Toad Dreams

Monsanto attempted to suppress test study data which when independently evaluated by a French team from the University of Caen after Greenpeace was successful in obtaining a court order to release the data, showed rats fed the GE corn experienced higher levels of liver and kidney toxicity.

The same data was available to the national regulator, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), in 2004 yet FSANZ failed to assess it, relying solely on Monsanto’s analyses which, according to Professor Seralini, “do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny”.

…

The study results were published last week in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. The study was headed by Professor Gilles Eric Seralini, a French government scientist and expert in GE technology from the University of Caen. His team of experts analysed the results of safety tests submitted by the world’s largest genetic engineering company, Monsanto. The study found that “with the present data, it cannot be concluded that GM corn MON863 is a safe product”.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) based its assessment of the GE corn on Monsanto’s advices, declaring it safe for humans.

FSANZ had access to the test data (on which the new study was based) back in 2004 and still gave this toxic corn the okay.

An historical chronology of Monsanto’s deception and subsequent revelations can be downloaded here with an indepth fact sheet here.

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Saudi King lectures the Coalition of the Gobbling

True Love of Oil, Profits and Israel

At a two day summit in Riyadh aimed at pushing the Arab peace plan for Israel and Palestine, in a significant about face, the Sauds have rounded on the incompetent Coalition of the Gobbling warmongers.

Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is a close US ally, slammed Wednesday the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh.

“In beloved Iraq, blood is being shed among brothers in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and ugly sectarianism threatens civil war,” Abdullah said.

He also said that Arab nations, which are planning to revive a five-year-old Middle East peace plan at the summit, would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

What will be the reaction of the United States to such impudence? The original neocon plan called for the transformation of the middle east using Saudia as a pivot to democratise the region, with Egypt the eventual prize. Saudia is thus throwing a big spanner in the works by projecting its power and biting the hand that feeds it.

Saudi leaders are keen to promote the beleaguered Sunni cause in Iraq, which is presently endangered by overwhelming Shite power, including within the Shite dominated and United States’ backed puppet Iraqi government. The summit is expected to adopt a resolution calling for more power sharing with the former Sunni elite.

The Iraqi government has immediately dug in its heels, telling the Sauds they

did not need a “diktat” from the Arabs on how to amend its constitution and boost national reconciliation.

The Arab League wants to resume negotiations with Israhell, offering normalisation for acceptance of terms including withdrawal of all land occupied in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and return of Palestinian refugees.

Despite mutterings from Israeli officials about the Arab plan being a “starting point”, it is likely that rightwing Israeli zealots who, with the support of Doodoo bush and the Israel first lobby, will insist on retaining lands they have stolen through warfare. Acceptance of the right of return of refugees driven from their land in the Nakba catastrophe in 1948 is seen by the Israeli rightwing, religious nuts and fanatical settler movement as tantamount to destruction of their pariah apartheid state, despite the clear legal basis for such return under international law.

At the summit, Hamas is calling for an end to the western boycott of Palestine and is seeking financial support from the Arab states to the tune of $2.7b.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal projected firmness, warning Israel

not to expect any further diplomatic overtures, telling a British newspaper: “What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done.”

“If Israel refuses [the plan], that means it doesn’t want peace and it places everything back in the hands of fate. They will be putting their future not in the hands of the peacemakers, but in the hands of the lords of war.”

And that, my friends, will suit the Netanyahooites and religious zealots down to the ground, to the detriment of Israel’s future security and prosperity.