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Thursday, June 23
Still In Denial About Global Warming
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 23 Jun 2005 02:35 PM CDT
 Still In Denial About Global Warming
by Sunny Lewis, AlterNet.org
The
Bush Administration’s fingerprints are all over a draft of an
international plan to combat climate change, weakening it beyond
repair.
The G8 plan to combat climate change has been "watered down" to satisfy the United States, an
environmental group said last week after viewing a leaked draft
prepared in advance of next month's G8 Summit at the Gleneagles Hotel
in Scotland. Friends of the Earth reacted "with anger" at the
content of the draft communique on climate change entitled "Gleneagles
Plan of Action," and dated June 14. Compared to an earlier draft
leaked on May 2, which itself had no specific targets or timetables for
action, this version appears to be even weaker. The latest draft
"worryingly even calls into question scientists' warnings that global
climate change is already under way," Friends of the Earth said.
On June
7, the national science academies of all the G8 countries -- Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the
United States -- plus the three largest developing countries, Brazil,
China and India, issued joint statement declaring "there is now strong
evidence that significant global warming is occurring."
"It is
likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to
human activities," the scientific academies said, adding, "The
scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to
justify nations taking prompt action."
Friends
of the Earth International's climate campaigner Catherine Pearce said,
"Every reference to the urgency of action or the need for real cuts in
emissions has been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text
recognizes the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change."
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Action Alert: Forced Mental Screening of Children
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 23 Jun 2005 12:33 AM CDT
 Action Alert: Forced Mental Screening of Children
The Liberty Committee
June 21, 2005
The American tradition of parents deciding what is best for their children is under attack.
The pharmaceutical industry wants universal mental screening for every
child in America, including preschool children. But universal
screening alone is not what the pharmaceutical industry wants.
The real payoff for the drug companies is the drugging of children that
will result -- as we learned tragically with Ritalin -- even when
parents refuse!
The drug companies want your children to be "screened." The psychiatric establishment wants to do the "screening." [The law enacting the screening program was passed by Congress last fall.]
And even Bush's commission (New Freedom Commission on Mental Health)
supports it all. These powerful groups want your children
"screened" -- whether or not you, as parents, give permission.
Congressman
Ron Paul, an OB/GYN physician for over 30 years, is desperately trying
to keep the drug companies, politicians and federal bureaucrats from
becoming parents to your children. Dr.
Paul will introduce this week an amendment to the Labor, HHS, and
Education Appropriations Act for FY 2006 that will withhold funds from
being used to implement or support any federal, mental screening
program.
***Urge your U.S. representative to vote "yes" on the Paul amendment to stop universal mental screening of children.
If your U.S. representative does not vote "yes" on the Paul amendment,
he or she supports screening your children without your permission --
just as the drug companies want.
The U.S. House will vote on the Paul amendment Thursday or Friday. Send your e-mail message today and call your U.S. representative too. Also, please spread the word.
Click here to send an E-mail Message.
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121
In a
letter to his congressional colleagues, Dr. Paul states: "As you know,
psychotropic drugs are increasingly prescribed for children who show
nothing more than children’s typical rambunctious behavior. Many
children have suffered harmful effects from these drugs, [Editor's
note: ...including damage to their DNA]. Yet some parents have
even been charged with child abuse for refusing to drug their
children. The federal
government should not promote national mental health screening programs
that will force the use of these psychotropic drugs such as Ritalin."
If you
think this action alert is about something that "can't happen here,"
think again. In 1995, the state of Texas launched the Texas Medication
Algorithm Project. (WorldNetDaily.com, June 21, 2004)
The
state of Illinois has also approved a mental health screening
program. The Illinois legislature passed the Children’s Mental
Health Act of 2003 which will provide screening for "all children ages
0-18" and "ensure appropriate and culturally relevant assessment of
your children's social and emotional development with the use of
standardized tools." In addition, all pregnant women in Illinois
are to be screened for depression.
Dr.
Karen R. Effrem, a pediatrician and leading opponent of universal
screening with EdAction states: "Universal mental health
screening and the drugging of children, as recommended by the New
Freedom Commission [Bush's commission], needs to be stopped so that
many thousands if not millions of children will be saved from receiving
stigmatizing diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of their
lives. America’s school children should not be medicated by
expensive, ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and
dubious diagnoses."
Dr. Effrem warns:
1. Parental rights are unclear or non-existent under these screening programs.
2. Parents are already being coerced to put their children on psychiatric medications and some children are dying because of it.
3. Mental health screening does not prevent suicide.
4.
Mental health diagnoses are "subjective" and "social constructions" as
admitted by the authors of the diagnostic manuals themselves.
5. Most psychiatric medications do not work in children.
6. The side effects of these medications in children are severe.
7. The
untoward influence by the pharmaceutical industry, or at least the
impropriety, is abundantly clear in two important aspects of this issue.
8.
Merging screening with the academic standards required by No Child Left
Behind, as is happening in Illinois, will lead to diagnosis for
political reasons. School mental health and violence prevention
programs funded by NCLB and government counterterrorism operations are
already using such criteria as "homophobia" and "defenders of the US
Constitution against federal government and the UN" to label school
children and US citizens as mentally unstable and violent.
(EdAction.org)
Kent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org
Submitted by Larry Hanus of Waterloo
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