Report: Israel coerces medical patients into collaboration
Electronic Intifada - 8 Aug 2008
rr r r r rr r rr r rr r rr rr rrr rA new report by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel provides a detailed description of the permits mechanism instituted by Israel and of the growing restrictions placed by this mechanism on the access of patients to medical care unavailable in Gaza. The report describes how patients’ access to medical care is conditioned on their collaboration with Israeli intelligence.

Climate Camp: Down With the Eastside
Indymedia UK - 8 Aug 2008
From 3rd-11th August 2008, the Camp For Climate Action is being held in Kingsnorth, Kent near the proposed site of the first coal-fired power station in the UK since 1984.Notingham residents are amongst those participating in the camp, organising themselves as part of the Eastside “neighbourhood” which also includes the good citizens of other Eastern parts of the country including Derby, Cambridge and Norfolk. Unfortunately, a Nottingham man is among those who have fallen victim to overzealous policing and was arrested, accused of “possession of a bladed article” (hardly an unusual situation for a camper).Newswire: Riseup! Radio #7 August Show ? Climate Camp Special | Climate Camp Location & Route (from Nottm or Anywhere) | Nottingham Riders Set Off For Climate Camp | Sumac Climate Action Garden Party: The Pictures 2 | Sumac Climate Action Garden Party: The Pictures 1 | Sumac Garden Party | Climate Camp JingleNotts climate features since last camp: Derbyshire Opencast Mine Squatters: Eviction Imminent | Free Food in Nottingham | Coal On Hold – Derbyshire Coal Mine Site Occupied | Campaigners Trespass on Proposed Coal Mine Site | New Old Coal for Notts | Fossil Fools Take On E.ON In Nottingham | Convictions For Activists – Climate Criminals Walk Free | ‘Clean’ Coal On Trial | Biofuels Conference Disrupted At Concerns Over Multi-National ‘Greenwash’ | Nuclear No Answer To Climate Change | DIY V3 Wind Turbine WorkshopNational features: Climate Camp Ready For Action | Climate Camp Day 6: Action Spreads Across South East | Heathrow to Kingsnorth Climate Caravan 2008 | The not-so-secret ‘guide to policing protest’ | Climate Camp: Site TakenLinks: Climate Camp | Climate IMC | Eastside Climate Action | Network for Climate Action | Days of Climate Action | Workshop programme | Notts Indymedia Climate Camp 2008 topic page

War with Iran – On, Off or Undecided?
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 8 Aug 2008
Summary: With Congress on recess, it’s too soon to know what’s ahead, but one thing’s for sure. Neocons still run things. Dick Cheney leads them, and he claims Iran intends to destroy Israel, is developing nuclear weapons, and is a “darkening cloud … right at the top of the list” of world trouble spots and needs to be addressed (along with Syria) as the next phase of “the road map to war.” With five months to go and heavy firepower to call on, he and George Bush have plenty of time left (as this writer said earlier) to incinerate Iran and end the republic if that’s what they have in mind. Better hope they don’t or that cooler heads win out for a different way. source: Global Researchread more

The corporate takeover of ?reason? and ?science?
UKWatch.net - 8 Aug 2008
Those who say that they favour science and rationality can end up supporting the opposite. Science and rationality retain a very significant force in public debate and is thus worth exploiting by vested interests. The strategic use of science is a well used part of the armoury of the public relations industry. Indeed it is true to say that the founding of the PR and lobbying industries were based on attempts to pervert rationality and science in the interests of vested interests. The very earliest PR practitioners such as Freud?s nephew Edward Bernays, were adept at this. Bernays use of psychology was famously put to use in promoting cigarette smoking among women by styling them ?torches of freedom? and associating them with women?s equality and liberation. Bernays was amongst the first to make a profession out of what he called the ?conscious? and intelligent manipulation? of the beliefs and behaviour of the public. Those who ?manipulate this unseen mechanism? of society were, he wrote, an ?invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.? [1] Today the PR industry is still based on the same philosophy. The promotion of ?science-i-ness? is an ever present talisman. It has two cardinal principles. The first – seen increasingly following the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s ? is that where science or truth will undermine corporate interests, the science or truth must be changed. The second principle is to disguise the source of information where useful. When a message is likely to be disbelieved or treated with scepticism when said openly by a corporation or politician, the words must be put in the mouth of someone more believable and apparently disinterested. This is the famous third party technique and has led to a whole swathe of scientists taking corporate money to promote corporate friendly science. Because science is still such a resource it is imperative for powerful interests to try and co-opt, undermine, distort, influence or buy ?science?. This is now so widespread that the issue is openly debated in the scientific journals and there is a small but growing number of studies examining the question of the potential bias introduced by corporate funding.[2] From the 50 year battle to protect the tobacco industry to today?s strategic use of science in climate change denial, and to muddy the waters as obesity and binge drinking become crisis issues, scientists have been recruited as a resource. For example they receive research grants, are paid as consultants or have their names added to academic journal articles ghost written by PR operatives. Some scientists are even kept on retainers by corporations or lobby groups and can be wheeled out to order. The third party technique fits nicely into the co-option strategy. Scientists whose research budgets are nicely swelled by corporate money can often be surprisingly willing recruits to speak on behalf of industry. A study of toxic industrial contaminants in farmed Salmon published in Science in 2004, was greeted with a chorus of condemnation in the press. Many of the voices were described as academic scientists. In fact almost all had financial links to the industry undisclosed in the press. The study itself was well grounded.[3] Nonetheless the industry campaign to remove the stain of poisoned Salmon from the public mind was largely successful. In the US and UK the creation of ?front groups? is common. These are organisations usually including a science-like term in their title such as ?foundation? ?institute? or ?research?. In the UK the food industry has been able to sabotage healthy eating initiatives since the 1970s by ? among other things – funding the apparently independent British Nutrition Foundation which is able to place representatives on a myriad of government committees.[4] The International Life Science Institute sounds a bit scientific. In fact it is a food industry lobby group funded by hundreds of the biggest food, pharma and chemical companies and was for years more or less directed by the Coca Cola company. It was able to infiltrate the WHO process on dietary sugars by covertly funding some of the scientists involved.[5] In January 2006 the WHO decided that ILSI ?can no longer take part in WHO activities setting microbiological or chemical standards for food and water?, as a result of complaints about its lobbying tactics.[6] The PR industry is at the forefront of creating and managing front groups today. The Scientific Alliance turned out to be run from the offices of Foresight Communications a PR firm in central London and to be funded by Scottish quarry owner Robert Durward. The Social Issues Research Centre ‘fosters the image of an ultraconcerned public spirited group’ and of ‘a heavy-weight research body’.[7] It is also run by a PR/marketing company from the same address. That company – MCM Research – used to announce on its website its approach to open and truthful communications: ?Do your PR initiatives sometimes look too much like PR initiatives? MCM conducts social/psychological research on the positive aspects of your business… The results do not read like PR literature?.[8] Of course the corporations can do little else than lie and attempt to co-opt science. They require to extract maximum surplus from both labour and natural resources to be part of the global market. Their problem is that these qualities of corporate operations are not very attractive to the overwhelming majority of the population of the globe. As a result corporations and their PR agents must try to undermine or co-opt science. The only defence is transparency, enhanced ethics standards and public funding of research. NOTES 1. Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928, New York: Horace Liverwright. 2. Kassirer, J.P. On the take: How medicine’s complicity with big business can endanger your health. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 2005.; Lesser et al. ?Relationship between funding source and conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles?. PLoS Medicine 2007.; Jorgensen AW, Hilden J, Gotzsche PC. Cochrane reviews compared with industry supported meta-analyses and other meta-analyses of the same drugs: systematic review. BMJ 2006;333:782-5.;Veronica Yank, Drummond Rennie, Lisa A Bero, Financial ties and concordance between results and conclusions in meta-analyses: retrospective cohort study BMJ 2007;335:1202-1205 (8 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.39376.447211.BE (published 16 November 2007); Jim Giles, Industry money skews drug overviews Nature 437, 458-459 (22 September 2005); DeAngelis, C. Comment on ?Conflict of interest in medical research: facts and friction? in meeting proceedings, call to action: Managing financial relationships between academia and industry in biomedical research 2007; 15-16.;Peppercorn, J, Blood, E., Winer, E, Partridge, A. Association between pharmaceutical involvement and outcomes in breast cancer clinical trials. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2005. 3. David Miller ?Spinning Farmed Salmon (part 2 of 3)?, Spinwatch, 28 May 2008 http://www.spinwatch.org/content/view/4953/8/ 4. Geoffrey Cannon The Politics of Food Century Hutchinson, London, UK, 1987. John Yudkin, Pure, White and Deadly, Penguin, 1988. 5. Sarah Boseley ‘WHO “infiltrated by food industry”’ The Guardian Thursday January 9, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jan/09/foodanddrink; Sarah Boseley ‘Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO’ The Guardian Monday April 21, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/apr/21/usnews.food; Sarah Boseley ‘WHO ‘buried’ report to please food industry’ The Guardian Wednesday November 3, 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/nov/03/media.advertising 6. John Heilperin, ?WHO to Rely Less on U.S. Research?, Associated Press, January 27, 2006. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/27/national/w15… 7. Annabel Ferriman ?An end to health scares?? BMJ 1999;319:716- ( 11 September ) http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/319/7211/716 8. Ibid.

Pensioners and postal workers rally to the People Before Profit charter
UKWatch.net - 8 Aug 2008
The scale of the economic crisis, which has seen rising prices and attacks on workers? living standards, is leading to increased support for the People Before Profit Charter. The charter puts forward ten demands to improve the lives of working people. Supporters of the charter protested outside the building where Centrica, the owner of British Gas, announced 992 million profits last week. They demanded a windfall tax on the company. The protest received widespread media coverage, with pictures of it on the front page of the London Paper, and the Morning Star. It even appeared in the Sun. A number of postal workers signed the charter at a protest on Monday of this week (see page 14) to support of three Bristol CWU trade union activists who are facing victimisation. Signatories included: Dave Ward, the deputy general secretary (postal) of the CWU communications union; David Wilshire, branch secretary of Bristol CWU; and Paula Franklin, one of three victimised activists. With the energy giants hiking their fuel prices massively, these are also worrying times for old age pensioners. There are currently 2.1 million pensioners living in poverty, up from 1.8 million last year. The increasing pressure on their pension will throw many more into poverty. The plight of pensioners has got increasingly worse since Margaret Thatcher cut the link between pensions and wages in 1980. This means the basic state pension is just 90.70 a week. Trade unions and campaigners are demanding that the basic pension rate be increased to 124.05 a week. The charter?s calls for the abolition of taxes on fuel and energy for old people and the poor, and for the link between wages and pensions to be re-established. This demand is winning support for the charter among pensioners, such as Gordon McLennan, a pensioner activist in Lambeth, south London, and former general secretary of the Communist Party. Gordon told Socialist Worker, ?I agree with the general proposals of the charter, but I am particularly interested in the point about the fight for higher pensions and the abolition of tax on fuel and energy for old people and the poor. ?There are plenty of reasons for pensioners to back the charter. We have the scandal where electricity and gas prices are going up, sometimes at the rate of 40 percent. ?We have a situation where pensioners are being increasingly forced into a corner, both in society and economically. ?There is no response to this from present day politicians. We are being ignored. The local council?s newspaper doesn?t have a word about elderly people in it. ?The government is increasing our winter fuel allowance by 100 when gas and electricity bills are going up by a lot more. Some 300,000 pensioners have dropped into poverty in the last year. ?The kind of feeling that pensioners have about all this must be built up to have a massive impact on 22 October. ?That?s when we will lobby parliament to demand a decent state pension and to celebrate 100 years of the state pension.?

Fixation on the market
UKWatch.net - 8 Aug 2008
This was a decision that hit hard the struggling mortgage payers in the interests of controlling inflation which, it should be pointed out, is none of the mortgage-payers’ fault but can be attributed largely to fuel profiteering, speculation, oil and gas company super-profits and the resulting transport cost rises which affect almost every commodity. It also brings into sharp focus the Financial Services Authority warning to lenders earlier this week that specialist mortgage firms are “too ready” to take court action against borrowers. But these are not the only factors which have affected and damaged the 18,900 families who have lost their homes in the first six months of this year or the 45,000 whom the Council of Mortgage Lenders forecast will fall victim throughout the full year. The real elephant in the room is, as seems to be increasingly the case, the policies of a government which point-blank refuses to abandon its fixation with the market and take real measures to solve a housing crisis which is totally of its own making. Throughout the life of this Labour government, it has steadfastly refused to reverse its disastrous policies on council housing, attempting to drive a wedge between councils and their tenants with so-called arm’s-length management organisations, bribes to force occupants to relinquish their status as council tenants in favour of housing associations, reinforcing the ring-fencing of councils’ housing revenue accounts and blocking any attempt by councils to pick up their former role as the premier suppliers of social housing in this country. This has led to a dearth of affordable housing at the lower end of the housing market, driving hard-up families into mortgage deals that they cannot afford, simply because there is little or no alternative except an over-priced and insecure private rented sector. This, in turn, increases the scarcity of houses for sale at the bottom end of the market yet again and thus drives up the prices, overheating the housing market and making housing ever more expensive and ever less affordable, until such time as lenders get panicky as they see their borrowers becoming over-extended and start pulling in credit availability, causing the so-called credit crunch which then makes mortgages even more expensive. Yes, of course, greedy mortgage lenders carry a portion of blame, lending even to those who clearly can’t afford it on the basis of trousering their commission and moving onto the next victim, leaving the families in their wake with a headache which gets worse as the bank tries to halt inflation by hitting those on the bottom of the heap. But the majority of the blame must rest with a government which, for purely right-wing ideological reasons, will not countenance the public supply of anything be it health, housing or transport. And it is the same government which handed over interest-rate setting to the bankers, in the certain knowledge that bankers’ solutions rarely benefit the low-paid. This government should be squeezing the profiteers in the oil and power supply industry until the pips squeak. Instead, it chooses to be an audience on the spectacle of bankers squeezing the poor, while it does its best to make the problems worse by ensuring that the low-paid remain exactly that.

Rice on possible IDF Iran strike: U.S. has no veto over Israeli military ops
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 8 Aug 2008
Summary: United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday refrained from saying the U.S. would prevent Israel from mounting a much-touted attack against Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear aspirations. “We don’t say yes or no to Israeli military operations. Israel is a sovereign country,” Rice said in an interview with Yahoo! News. source: Haaretzread more

Will next Israeli leader attack Iran?
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) - 8 Aug 2008
Summary: After Olmert’s decision to step down, candidates for Israeli PM leave ‘all options on the table’ on Iran source: The Real Newsread more

The Wrecking Crew: Thomas Frank on How Conservatives Rule
Democracy Now - 8 Aug 2008
Columnist and author Thomas Frank joins us to talk about his latest book, The Wrecking Crew. Frank writes, ?Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction.?

“This is the Olympics the West Wanted” – Dave Zirin on US Corporations Entering China, Athletes Speaking Out and the Games from ‘68 to Today
Democracy Now - 8 Aug 2008
As the 2008 Summer Olympic Games open in Beijing, we speak with sportswriter Dave Zirin. “This is the Olympics the West wanted: games where the grandest prize is not a gold medal but a glittering entree to China’s seemingly endless army of potential consumers,” writes Zirin. “This is the reason that George W. Bush will attend the opening ceremonies, the first U.S. President to do so on foreign soil.” [includes rush transcript – partial]

Summer Olympic Games Open in Beijing, Pro-Tibet Protester Deported to US
Democracy Now - 8 Aug 2008
The eyes of the world are focused on China today as the Summer Olympic Games open in Beijing. One big question centers on whether the Olympic Committee and the Chinese government will allow any public protests during the Games. We speak with an activist who was arrested in China and deported after unfurling a Tibet independence banner close to the main Olympic stadium. [includes rush transcript]

Headlines for August 8, 2008
Democracy Now - 8 Aug 2008
Bin Laden Driver Given Lenient Sentence, Iraqi Officials: Agreement Reached on US Withdrawal, China Policies Draw Scrutiny as Olympic Games Begin, US Admits Nuclear Submarine Leak, Pakistan Lawmakers to Impeach Musharraf, Rep. Green Calls on Pentagon to Explain Promotion of Threat-Wielding Recruiter, Mukasey Appoints Torture Backer as Chief of Staff, Anthrax Suspect Supported Anti-Gay Group, Texas Executes Another Foreign National, Judge Upholds Denver DNC Protest Restrictions, Daschle in Talks with Ethanol Lobby, Oxfam: Stop Criminalizing HIV, Court Rules US Owes Native Americans $455M for Land Drilling, Report: Sleep Deprivation Continued Despite Gitmo Ban, 20th Anniversary of ?8-8-88? Uprising in Burma