Big Pharma

Why yes, surprised folks, it appears that they did know Prozac tended people to violence and suicide.

Shares in Eli Lilly & Company fell yesterday after an article in a medical journal suggested that the drug company had long concealed evidence that its well-known antidepressant, Prozac, could cause violent and suicidal behavior.

[...]

The F.D.A. was reviewing the papers, which had been missing for more than 10 years[...]

[...]

Representative Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat from Kingston, N.Y., and a vocal opponent of the government's drug approval process, said yesterday that he had some of the documents cited by the journal article. The congressman, who is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which oversees federal agencies including the F.D.A., said the documents date back to the 1980's and include memos between Eli Lilly employees.

They "clearly show a link between Prozac and actions of violence perpetrated by people taking the drug against themselves and against others," Mr. Hinchey said. "The documents we have show that the company was instructing its employees to hide this information. We're seeing evidence here that it was a conscious act on the part of the company."

  NY Times article

Libya to the rescue

A possible eight-year supply of oil.

You were worried for nothing.

We can drag this oil/no-oil horror story out for decades to come if the global weather will just cooperate.

Undaunted, the Bush Junta marches on

The Bush administration is preparing plans for possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists, including hundreds whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Citing intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials, the newspaper said the Pentagon and the CIA had asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for those it would not set free or turn over to courts at home or abroad.

As part of a solution, the Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence, defense officials told the newspaper.

The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, The Post said.

  Reuters article

Make you feel better about holding uncharged prisoners for life?

Come on out and vote

A suicide car bomber targeted a police checkpoint on a road leading to the headquarters of the political party of the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, in Baghdad yesterday, just minutes before party leaders had been due to hold a news conference to unveil candidates for the election set for January 30.

At least two people were killed and 23 wounded.

Dr Allawi was not near the scene of the attack and was safe, a government official said.

Three vehicles were seen burning at the checkpoint on Zaytoun Street, which leads to the National Accord party headquarters.

[...]

On Sunday, two suicide bombers detonated a car bomb alongside a bus carrying Iraqi national guards to a base in Balad, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad, killing 29 people and igniting angry sectarian accusations between the city's Shiite population and its Sunni police force.

[...]

In the nearby city of Sharqat, guerillas on Sunday blew up the government building that was intended for use as a polling centre. Reuters reported that all 12 members of the election committee in Baiji, to the north, resigned after receiving death threats.

Reuters article at Fairfax Digital

Many thanks to all

Okay, I'm signing off for this, the first day of 2005. (According to our ridiculous Gregorian calendar view of time.)

I've been "down in the back" for three days, and sitting in one place is not pleasant. Unfortunately, I am addicted to chronicling the insanity of our political times.

I want to thank all of you, sincerely - all my readers, new, long-time, critical, accepting, dedicated, and sporadic - not so much for reading You Will Anyway, but for caring enough about our strange world and what's beneath the surface to investigate what's going on.

Thank you all for being.

A special thanks to all of you who encourage me, whether it be notes and emails or website links to YWA or wonderful comments on your own blogs, like this:

New Blogs to read. All the new bloggers in Montana, new blogs from friends, and some downright insightful progressive viewpoints. (For the record, I think that You Will Anyway is one of the absolute best progressive blogs anywhere, and I sincerely hope that it takes its place alongside the big boys of Atrios, Pandagon, etc ...)

I apologize for the horn-tooting aspect of posting that comment which I found at A Chicken Is Not Pillage (a blog I read regularly and which you can always access from a link in the left sidebar of YWA), but it caught me by surprise, and I am very grateful to the blog author, Wulfgar, for plugging YWA unsolicited (and over the top, in my own mind). YWA will never make it anywhere near the "big boys", but it won't matter, because I'd write it even if nobody ever read it. I have to.

But, you don't have to read it, and so, please accept my thanks for being here. And for being. I believe that the energy exchanged in my writing of the words and your reading of them is a subtle but powerful energy, apart from the text or context of the issues, that connects us all, and, I believe, is taking us into the next realm of human existence as we morph into or recognize ourselves for what it is we truly are.

Some times it doesn't look like the human race is evolving at all, but devolving. And I have a feeling the next few years are going to look even worse.

Your words of support and encouragement really are what keeps my head above the often times raging waters.

So...

Thank you for being.

U.S. operations in the Indian Ocean

Tom asked recently about the U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean. Talk Left has some information, with a comment from a reader:

The official US Navy website for Diego Garcia says the avg height above sea level is 4' and that the wave surged to a 6' height but operations were not affected. Really? Gonna be a lot of drowned detainees if they were housed in the same conditions as Gitmo. Sure hope the nuclear weapons bunker entrances were higher than 6'. We'll never know. We'll just trust the Navy to be truthful. LOL.

LOL is right. And, about my concern that the "Warning Center" says it had no way to warn people in that area, Talk Left has this about our base there, which apparently is used for secret detentions:

"One of the few places in the Indian Ocean that got the message of the quake was Diego Garcia, a speck of an island with a United States Navy base, because the Pacific warning center's contact list includes the Navy. Finding the appropriate people in Sri Lanka or India was harder." (NYT, 28 Dec 2004, emphasis added)

A Texas village is missing its idiot

I Think He Meant Gazillion
By Stu Finkel
12/30/04

Bush yesterday defending the amount of aid that the U.S. will provide to Tsunami victims noted that it was being upped to "35 billion." Needless to say he meant "million." Also needless to say, the SCLM generously corrected this rather glaring error without comment -- only a single entry on Google News, from a readers forum on China Daily(?!), even mentions it.

A minor mistake, sure. But does he either know or care about the difference?

That's a post from a blog Maru introduces today.

I'm guessing that he neither knows or cares. He's on vacation.

And, speaking of not knowing or caring....when first any offer was made ($15 million), I remarked that it was only a promise, and we're known to renege on those. Eg: AIDS and global food aid. Zeynep has some more examples:

Here's a brilliant suggestion:

Speaking by telephone from his home in Vermont, Mr. Leahy, who is the ranking Democrat on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, urged that a portion of the largely unspent $18 billion for Iraq reconstruction be re-directed for Asian relief efforts.

That's great, let's just roll the money from an earlier unkept obligation... Maybe some of the money promised but also not delivered to the earthquake victims in Bam (one account has only $17 million delivered out of a promised one billion) could be included while we're at it.

Alternative methods

It has recently been discovered that US and Iraqi forces have been using a method of demolishing houses in Felluce (Fallujah) that Israelis have also used on Palestinian homes.

An Iraqi soldier told an Agency France Press (AFP) reporter that they set the houses on fire where they encounter pro-insurgence publications or materials. Ismail Ibrahim Shaalan, a 50 year old resident of Fallujah, explained that he saw some soldiers set houses on fire on December 14th even though there were no clashes. A US soldier also admitted that, in some situations, they use “alternative precautions” like “setting fires and bombing” for houses that are presumed to shelter insurgents. US Sergeant John Cross also said that if they are unable to enter a place, they apply alternative methods.

[...]

There are big X letters painted in red on the walls of the houses that have been searched by US troops. Others are either partially burned out or completely ruined.

[...]

Many of those who returned to Fallujah are picking up the pieces of what is left of their ruined homes and the corpses of their relatives.

[...]

The Halil family is one family that was forced to move out of their home by US soldiers and then found it in ruins when they returned to their home ten days later. US Major Naomi Hawkins says the Halil family can apply to the governor’s office or Bagdat (Baghdad) and receive $100 to repair their home.

  Zaman International article

Good old American justice for foreigners.

All Falluja posts
<

Bye-bye Brent

I have learned from numerous sources, including several people close to Brent Scowcroft, that Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgment dumped Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The elder Bush's national security advisor was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration. But no longer. At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney has imposed his authority over Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former undersecretary of state to James Baker, and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.

[...]

Bush has borne resentment against his father's alter ego since before Scowcroft privately rebuked him for his Iraq follies more than a year ago -- an incident that has not previously been reported. Bush "did not receive it well," said a friend of Scowcroft's.

[...]

Despite his belief that the younger Bush's policies were disastrous, Scowcroft publicly supported him for reelection mainly out of loyalty to the father.

The rejection of Kanter is a compound rejection of Scowcroft and James Baker -- the tough, cunning, results-oriented operator who as White House chief of staff saved the Reagan presidency from its ideologues, managed the elder Bush's successful campaign in 1988, and was summoned by the family in 2000 to rescue George W. in Florida. When all else failed (the voters, for example), Baker arranged the outcome that put Bush in the Oval Office. In the 1995 memoir of his years as secretary of treasury and state, Baker observed that in the Gulf War the administration's "one overriding strategic concern was to avoid what we often referred to as the Lebanonization of Iraq, which we believed would create a geopolitical nightmare." In private, Baker is scathing about the current occupant of the White House, people who have spoken with him have recently related to me. Now the one indispensable creator of the Bush family political fortunes is repudiated.

Those Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. And those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk," that capturing Baghdad was a "mission accomplished," and that the Iraqi army should be disbanded, are rewarded.

  article

Neo-con coup accomplished.

The world boycotts American businesses

And the people pulling the strings in America are not invested in America. They are invested in multinationals and military defense contracts. So, why should they care?

The Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas--according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.

  Yahoo News article

Other problem brands included Exxon-Mobil, AOL, American, Chevron Texaco, United Airlines, Budweiser, Chrysler, Barbie Doll, Starbucks, and General Motors.

Oops. Well, okay. That's a different story. Is Condi diversified from Exxon?

The latest poll found that more than two thirds of European and Canadian consumers have had a negative change in their view of the United States as a result of U.S. foreign policy over the last three years. Nearly half believe that the war in Iraq was motivated by a desire to control oil supplies, while only 15 percent believed it was related to terrorism.

[...]

Half of the entire sample said they distrusted U.S. companies, at least in part because of the U.S. foreign policy. Seventy-nine percent said they distrusted the U.S. government for the same reason, while 39 percent said they distrusted the American public.

[...]

Nearly two thirds of European and Canadian consumers also said they believe U.S. foreign policy is guided primarily by self-interest and empire-building, while only 17 percent believe that the defense of freedom and democracy is its guiding principle.

What are they saying? That we're only fooling ourselves?

A reporter in Falluja

The date is not current, but the news is still being suppressed. Via POAC, this link provides a reporter's account of the Fallujan seige, with photos.

All Falluja posts

Power corrupts

Hundreds of Pakistanis staged rallies against President Pervez Musharraf in a day of protests after he reneged on his pledge to quit as army chief.

The rallies were held in major cities and towns across the country on Saturday, where speakers denounced Musharraf for breaking his pledge to hang up his army uniform by the end of 2004.

Described as a black day, protesters wore black armbands and waved black flags to symbolise their disapproval.

[...]

It was the Islamic alliance itself which in 2003 backed constitutional changes giving Musharraf extra powers - a deal they made in return for his pledge to quit the military by the close of 2004.

However, in November 2004, Pakistan's parliament enacted a controversial law allowing him to backtrack, and Musharraf said in Thursday's address that the constitution allowed him to keep both his military and civilian roles until 2007.

[...]

Musharraf toppled prime minister Nawaz Sharif in October 1999. He appointed himself president in June 2001 and won a heavily criticised referendum in April 2002, followed by a parliamentary vote of confidence in December 2003.

  Aljazeera article

And aided by his alliance with the U.S. And we can't let him lose any power at this time. He is what holds Pakistan in our sway.

Anyway, power doesn't so much corrupt as it attracts the corruptable

Whistleblowing FBI agent retires

Tom sends the following info:

Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis FBI agent whose outspoken criticisms triggered a furor over lapses in the government's pre-Sept. 11 counterterrorism efforts, retired from the bureau Friday.

Rowley ended her 24-year FBI career just 11 days after turning 50, a milestone that made her eligible for a full pension.

Though she has traversed the country speaking about ethics, integrity and civil liberties since gaining celebrity, Rowley said she has no immediate plans.

She said, however, that she would like to be considered for appointment to the new federal Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The new law overhauling the nation's intelligence apparatus directs the Department of Homeland Security to create the board to ensure that counterterrorism investigations and arrests do not infringe on people's rights.

"Although it's widely presumed to not be very effective, because they don't have subpoena powers," she said.

But it would give her a chance to use her background as a constitutional law adviser at the bureau, she said. She has written articles about the importance of preserving civil liberties in the nation's anti-terrorism climate.

  Star Tribune article

First of all, kudos to Ms. Rowley for speaking out.

Secondly, I guess it would be a logical career move to go to an agency that won't have any real power, but can make noises like it's upholding civil liberties.

...and hey, do what you want...you will anyway.