Pure Life Purified Drinking Water Reported Polluted

Nestlé Pure Life Purified Water has recalled a small number of gallon jugs polluted with cleanser and retailed through Shop-Rite.

You have to love the official description of a "common food grade cleaning compound that...could pose a potential health concern if ingested in large quantities..."

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/nestle06_08.html

Hillary Pitches For Debt Relief

Give us a break.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/specialthankyou/?sc=1905&utm_source=1905&utm_medium=e

Illinois Greens And Obama

Christine Escobar:

"The Green Party Convention (is) scheduled to open here in a little more than two weeks. Although the story is now out that Obama is mostly a centrist candidate, to anti-war activists and Green Party voters, in particular, that information reads like a headline from Life Magazine: 'Old News.'

"Indeed many on the left in Illinois remain cautiously skeptical about the senator's ties to local Democrat officials such as five-term Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Daley wields enormous influence over the city and its future. Many voters on the left are wary of that kind of unabashed party machine power, and they worry over how much Daley's power would grow with Obama in residence on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"...Over the past two years, the Green Party has made a few inroads in Illinois' well-oiled Democratic machine. As of 2006, when downstate lawyer Rich Whitney took 10 percent of the primary vote in his bid for governor, the Green Party earned established party status in the state and now enjoys the same access as the Republican and Democratic party do to the ballot. Despite suspect voting 'irregularities' during the Feb. 5th primary this year, in which Green Party ballots were non-existent or altered in many precincts, their candidate numbers are growing.

"If some Illinoisans know little about the Green Party, it's no secret that many also know little about Obama as a politician...when Obama continues to vote to fund the war under the pretense that he is for the troops, but not the war, anti-war voters scoff.

"...In the weeks leading up to the Green convention, however, it is certain that Chicago Green Party activists and supporters will turn up the heat on local, state and national Democratic leaders, drawing in wider circles of the left in the process. Obama and the city Democratic party bosses will be working to contain that influence, watching for those troubles to just blow away, as political troubles so often do in the Windy City."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-escobar/democrats-beware-the-gree_b_108203.html

Ehrenreich On Energy Independence

"What we are burning in our cars and keeping our homes warm or cool with is... a highly processed version of corpse juice.

"It's an old human habit -- living off the road kill of the planet. There's evidence, for example, that early humans were engaged in scavenging before they figured out how to hunt for themselves. They'd scan the sky for circling vultures, dash off to the kill site -- hoping that the leopard that did the actual hunting had sauntered off for a nap -- and gobble up what remained of the prey.

"...I say to my fellow humans: It's time to stop feeding off the dead and grow up! I don't know about food, but I have a plan for achieving fuel self-suffiency in less time than it takes to say 'Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.'

"...I'm talking about liposuction, of course, and it's a mystery to me why it hasn't occurred to any of those geniuses who are constantly opining about fuel prices on MSNBC. The average liposuction removes about half a gallon of liquid fat, which may not seem like much. But think of the vast reserves our nation is literally sitting on! Thirty percent of Americans are obese, or about 90 million individuals or 45 million gallons of easily available fat -- not from dead diatoms but from our very own bellies and butts...

"...And think what it would do for our nation's self-esteem. We may not lead the world in scientific innovation, educational achievement, or low infant mortality, but we are the global champions of obesity..."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/liposuction-the-key-to-en_b_108632.html

-Soviet Poster Celebrating Mutiny of the Battleship Potemkin-

---which was named after the military officer who aggrandized Catherine's tours with constructions of fake villages.

Prosperous Plot Posed Potemkin Plaintiffs

"Once the most feared plaintiffs’ lawyer in the land...went to prison last month for his involvement in a long-running kickback scheme. His former firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, you see, allegedly made secret payments to a small group of people who acted, in effect, as Potemkin plaintiffs, allowing the firm to trot them out as clients whenever it wanted to sue a company whose stock had fallen. Which, by the way, was often; in its glory years, Milberg Weiss’s annual 'market share' in securities litigation exceeded 50 percent.

"...Mr. Bershad, who appears to have been the firm’s bagman as well as one of its top partners, used to keep safe full of cash in his office credenza; that was the firm’s slush fund for its crooked clients. According to the government, Milberg Weiss disbursed $11.3 million illegally over a 25-year period. In other words, this wasn’t some rogue operation — the kickbacks were at the heart of the firm’s business model.

"'... Looking up from the deep pit into which I have descended has been painful,” (Weiss) wrote in a letter to the judge before his sentencing.

"...Meanwhile, Mr. Lerach was publishing his reflections on the case in a first-person article that appeared this week on the Web site of Portfolio, the Condé Nast business magazine. In the article, Mr. Lerach expresses zero remorse, positions his crimes as having hurt no one while serving a greater good and makes the absurd claim that he was railroaded by his political opponents.

"It is a brazen, shameful piece of work...

"The best description of Mr. Lerach’s methods I ever heard came from the venture capitalist
John Doerr: a 'cunning economic terrorist,' he called him."

Thanks to M. for this NYTimes profile:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/business/07nocera.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Cindy Sheehan On Father's Day

"I would like to say, not 'Happy' Father's day, but that I am in solidarity with my brothers who have lost children in BushCo's wars for corporate empire....no one is stopping the madness so more fathers won't experience the tragedy of father's day.

"I would like to say, 'Stay strong' to the father of Sean Bell and fathers of other young (mostly black or brown) men who have been targeted by law enforcement around this country with impunity. My heart goes out to these fathers because they know a secret that is hidden from the rest of us by the corporate media toadies: there is a war on the streets of this country against people of color and oftentimes people like Sean are killed because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time and they are black. There are many fathers in prison today that are only there because the judicial system is NOT colorblind and justice can often be found only at the right price.

"I would like to say, 'Hang in there' to all the fathers who have seen their homes taken away from them by the bursting housing bubble and the system that is bailing out the avaricious mortgage companies and shoving families onto the streets. Also 'hang tough' to the fathers who have had their jobs outsourced or vaporized because of the war on labor and the greedy corporations that exploit workers in our country and workers in foreign countries to increase their bottom lines while ours are tanking.

"... I want to tell the war orphans of fathers who have been killed in the US empire's wars that my heart is with you as you grieve your father and will every day for the rest of your lives, but days like today are especially tough. It is in no way fair that you lost your father while his commander in chief went AWOL from war in his past and today is having 'tea' with the Queen of England...

"There are fathers and children in Iraq and Afghanistan whose countries haven't been invaded by Hallmark (yet) and do not even know that today is Father's Day in the US, but who have suffered tremendously at the hands of BushCo. I would like to give them hope that there are people here in the US who have also been hurt that are working hard to hold BushCo accountable and end the horrible monstrosity in the Middle East. I would like to tell them that, but our leaders are weak, corrupted, and criminal and the majority of our neighbors are for the most part whiney, but apathetically inactive, or misplacing 'hope' in either one of the corporate candidates..."

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1590/t/2705/blog/index.jsp?blog_KEY=346

Rx Drugs Kill 3 Times As Many

"From 'Scarface' to 'Miami Vice,' Florida’s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

"An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/14florida.html?th&emc=th

Double Strength Morphine Tabs Recalled

Like, just imagine the multitudes rushing in to exchange their erroneously oversized morphine tablets:

"ETHEX Corporation announced today that it has voluntarily recalled specific additional lots of morphine sulfate 60 mg extended release tablets, and specific lots of morphine sulfate 30 mg extended release tablets, as a precaution, due to the possible presence of oversized tablets. Oversized tablets may contain as much as two times the labeled level of active morphine sulfate. The recalled lots were distributed by ETHEX Corporation under an "ETHEX" label between June 2006 and May 2008."

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/ethex206_08.html

Confirmed: 2K-Yr-Old Seed Germinated

"Methusela," the Judean date palm planted several years ago from seeds retrieved at Masada, has been carbon dated at 60 BC to AD 95.

Just as remarkable, it is the only specimen of an otherwise extinct cultivar:

"Scientists using radiocarbon dating have confirmed that an ancient Judean date palm seed among those found in the ruins of Masada in present-day Israel and planted three years ago is 2,000 years old -- the oldest seed ever to germinate.

"The seed has grown into a healthy, 4-foot-tall seedling, surpassing the previous record for oldest germinated seed -- a 1,300-year-old Chinese lotus, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-methuselah13-2008jun13,0,352032.story?track=ntothtml

Harvard Psych Profs Take $1.6M From Pharms, Push Childhood Antipsychotics

---That's $1.6M apiece for two of them, and just over $1M for a third, in "consulting fees," disclosed under pressure by a Senate investigation. And of course Harvard was oblivious:

"Three prominent psychiatrists at the Harvard Medical School and its affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital have been caught vastly underreporting their income from drug companies whose fortunes could be affected by their studies and their promotional efforts on behalf of aggressive drug treatments.

"What makes this case particularly troublesome is that the Harvard group’s research has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs to treat children, as was described in The Times on Sunday... Although supporters praise the most prominent of the trio, Dr. Joseph Biederman, as a visionary who has saved many lives, critics complain that the Harvard studies have been too small and loosely designed to provide conclusive results. Critics say they also were subject to biased interpretation through use of a subjective rating scale.

"The previously unknown payments to the researchers were pried loose by Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, whose staff reviewed what the researchers disclosed on conflict-of-interest forms at their institutions and prodded the university to verify the data as accurate. Under pressure, two of the researchers acknowledged receiving $1.6 million apiece in consulting fees from drug companies between 2000 and 2007 and the third reported earning more than $1 million. That was far more than the researchers had originally reported..

"... Senator Grassley and Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, have introduced a bill that would require drug and device makers to report annually any payments to doctors that exceed $500 a year. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/10/opinion/10tue2.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Obama Picks WalMart Champ As Economic Advisor

There a number of angles in this outrage, but the bottom line is, that whether the Dems or Repubs win the White House, the battle for sane environmental practices, including the fight for localization over distant marketing, will have to continue.

"Just days after clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama is naming as his economic policy director an economist who has clashed with critics of Wal-Mart by defending the company as a boon to poor Americans."

1. Either Obama is clueless about fundamental environmental issues, or he is tied to the corporate culture.

2. With this appointment, Obama furthers his reliance on Clinton left overs, the detritus of an administration that sold out to global corporatism, content to window-dress fundamental problems of environment and energy.

3. Furman is just one more example of an army of compromised "scholars" infesting the corrupt institution of "higher learning." The role of the universities, addicted to corporate, government, and alumni dollars, in supporting a status quo of environmental and human devastation, cannot be overstated, notwithstanding the principled researchers and professors trying to serve truth in a rotten institution. (See my related item on Harvard's pharma scam.)

"The appointment of Jason Furman, 37, a former Clinton administration official who is a visiting scholar at New York University, immediately met with skepticism from some who have faulted Wal-Mart for being stingy toward its workforce.

"...Jonathan Tasini, said he was puzzled by the selection of Mr. Furman. "...There have been concerns raised about where Obama's economic policies will trend," the writer said.
Mr. Tasini noted that, while Mr. Obama spurned labor groups by voting for a free-trade agreement with Peru, his past suggests he would be an ally of labor.

"...As the company became a pariah in Democratic circles, Mr. Furman stepped out on the issue in 2005 by publishing a 16-page paper titled, 'Wal-Mart: A Progressive Success Story.'

"In a debate on Slate.com in 2006, Mr. Furman took on the tactics of the anti-Wal-Mart movement, which include trying to block new stores in places like New York.

"'...The collateral damage from these efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits is way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony,' Mr. Furman added.

"...During the primary campaign, Mr. Obama was sharply critical of the company. He has said he will not shop there and that Wal-Mart should pay 'a living wage.'"

http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-taps-wal-mart-defender-as-director/79665/

Meghan O'Rourke Does Hillary

"In this regard, Clinton never really was the first American matriarch. Instead, she may be best remembered as our last patriarch."

http://www.slate.com/id/2192827

Prison Ships In The War On Terror

"The United States is operating 'floating prisons' to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

"...According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as 'floating prisons' since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed.

"...Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans."

http://www.truthout.org/article/us-accused-holding-terror-suspects-prison-ships