statism watch

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The Daily Mail
June 30, 2010

Full body scanners at airports could increase your risk of skin cancer, experts warn.

The X-ray machines have been brought in at Manchester, Gatwick and Heathrow.

But scientists say radiation from the scanners has been underestimated and could be particularly risky for children.

They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin – one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body – that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.

Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University’s centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is ‘very low’, he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.

He says children and passengers with gene mutations – around one in 20 of the population – are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA.

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Related: G8 Summit: Leaders divided over tackling national deficits | For more, see the G20 Coverage page feature

The Canadian Press
June 26, 2010

HUNTSVILLE, ONT.– G8 leaders wrapped up their cottage country summit today with some tough words for Iran and North Korea – and a commitment to work with the G20 to stave off another global financial crisis.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the heads of the world’s other top industrialized democracies emerged from a meeting room at a secluded resort with their remedy for the world’s woes.

The 43-point summit communique admonishes Iran and North Korea for their nuclear activities and holds North Korea responsible for the sinking of a South Korean warship last march.

“We cannot be complacent about the grave threat posed to the security of present and future generations by the proliferation of nuclear weapons,” the communique states.

Harper went a step further: “The world must see that what they spend on these weapons will not be the only costs they incur,” he told a closing news conference.

Iran and North Korea have become international pariahs for their nuclear ambitions, oppressive regimes and inflammatory rhetoric.

The communique also chides both countries for their human rights record and urges them to abide by international law, UN Security Council resolutions and International Atomic Energy Agency rules.

The unanimous statement is welcome news for the Harper government, which had been pushing hard for it. Sources say the deal came together at the last minute. That’s because Russia was reluctant to take a strong stand.

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It’s incredible how long and hard a fight this was for first responders, how so many of them were left to languish (and die) for so long.

Related: Judge: $575M settlement rejected for 9/11 heroes | 9/11 tentative deal for rescue workers reached

Cheryl Robinson, CNN
June 24, 2010

A U.S. district judge in New York approved a settlement Wednesday that could pay more than $700 million to thousands of 9/11 first responders exposed to toxic dust at ground zero.

Before approving the settlement Judge Alvin Hellerstein listened to testimony from a sampling of some of the 10,000 plaintiffs at Wednesday’s hearing about the health battles that have plagued them since working at the World Trade Center site.

“I intend to approve this settlement, and I now do so as a fair, adequate and reasonable settlement reflecting hard work and a concern for fairness by all parties,” said Hellerstein.

“It is fair in amount and fair in procedures,” he added.

Qualifying plaintiffs will be enrolled in a special insurance policy through MetLife that will pay up to $100,000 for certain blood and respiratory cancers diagnosed during the coverage period.

The amended settlement raises the total compensation for sick first responders from $625 million proposed in the March 11 settlement to $712 million and caps attorney fees to 25 percent of the total settlement.

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Taking care of its servicemen and women is one of the few things the Canadian federal government should be doing with your tax money, as part of a limited government’s mandate to defensively protect its citizen’s individual rights via the courts, police, and military. Instead, here they are handing the money to lawyers rather than the vets that need it. So remember this, police and military, the next time you find yourself contemplating what level of force to use on a citizen. Because you’re on their side, even if it seems like you work for the state or the banks now.

Related: French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment | Report: France ‘deliberately’ used soldiers as ‘nuclear guinea pigs’ | ‘They were looking for the ideal Manchurian Candidate’ | Government Experiments on U.S. Soldiers: Shocking Claims Come to Light in New Court Case | Psychologists Helped Guide CIA Interrogations | Vets Sue CIA Over Mind Control Tests | Atomic-testing veterans to receive whopping $24,000 each in compensation | Remembering Brainwashing | Chinese Torture Techniques Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo | Canadian MKULTRA project mind control victim to tell of pills, shocks, brainwashing | Much of Britain sprayed in secret germ warfare tests

Kathryn May, The Ottawa Citizen
June 22, 2010

OTTAWA – The Harper government has spent nearly $8 million fighting veterans and their families seeking compensation for exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

Documents recently tabled in Parliament show four departments have been involved in battling the class action suit with Justice spending the most at $5.8 million followed by another $1.5 million spent by National Defence. Health Canada and Veterans Affairs have paid about $445,000.

Liberal Senator Percy Downe who requested the tab on legal costs said $7.8 million in legal fees are “beyond the pale” especially when, he said, veterans exposed to Agent Orange are being denied what’s owed to them.

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Anne-Marie Tobin, The Canadian Press
June 22, 2010

In what’s likely an understatement, Justin Saunders says “it’s really not fun” to experience the eye-watering, cough-inducing effects of tear gas.

He figures he was tear gassed directly about 25 times during the Quebec City Summit of the Americas in 2001, and even when he wasn’t in the line of fire, it was “still kind of everywhere – it got on everything.”

“I noticed it hit my throat first, and it’s difficult to breathe. You usually cough. There’s a lot of mucus production,” recalls Saunders, an organizer with the Toronto Community Mobilization Network.

“If your eyes are unprotected, then that’s the next biggest thing that you notice. Your membranes start tearing up and it’s difficult to see because there’s so much production of that, so usually you have to have it flushed out, or you have to wait for a really long period of time before it calms down.”

If police do pull tear gas canisters from their arsenal during protests at the G20 Summit, Saunders and an ad hoc group called Toronto Street Medics that he’s helping to organize will be on the ground and ready to help those who are feeling the effects.

They’ll be carrying water for flushing people’s eyes, as well as first-aid kits with bandages and supplies to tend to anyone who might get injured or feel unwell.

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This all sounds rather like healthcare rationing, don’t you think? Of course, we’ve been accustomed to thinking that no such thing exists in the glorious socialized Canadian healthcare system, where all your cares are provided for. Unless you have an autistic child. Unless you need expensive unlisted medication. Unless there’s a bureaucrat deciding who will live and who will die. Unless you need to get multiple opinions from harried doctors and fight tooth and nail for your loved ones. So what’s the solution? Clearly ‘private’ (eg; public-private) insurers can be equally arbitrary and corrupt, prevaricating and denying care. We’ve all heard the horror stories from the US, which also has a socialized medical system, contrary to perception. Can we at least allow that some of the corruption and systemic apathy in healthcare might be removed from the system if we removed politics from the picture, allowed doctors to work for themselves, and had a thriving truly private system, with open competition, where you kept those wages that are now going into the black hole of public health and were instead free to make your own choices where your health care dollar was spent? Perhaps some of the effort directed towards hand-wringing today might be more effectively channeled into prosecuting fraud in the pharmaceutical industry, such as the clear case of collusion between states and the manufacturers of H1N1 vaccines. There’s still no guarantee you’d be able to afford everything under the sun. But at least the choices would be your choices. And the market would naturally move money towards solutions for the diseases killing the most people, rather than political fads.

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Johanna Weidner, The Cambridge Record
June 21, 2010

Government ‘choosing who will live and who will die’

CAMBRIDGE – The medication is Elaine Young’s last hope.

Suffering with a debilitating colon disease that made her too sick to get out of bed many days, she believed a potent drug for inflammatory disorders would help her feel better and prevent severe complications.

“That’s my last recourse before surgery,” Young said.

The combination of medications the Cambridge woman has been taking barely helped with her ulcerative colitis, a disease that causes inflammation and sores in the lining of the colon and rectum.

Drug therapy is essential to battle the disease and even then hospitalization or surgery may be necessary when symptoms become severe.

Despite the dire prognosis, Young struggled to get help from the government to pay for the costly medication. The single mother is on disability support since being laid off from a factory accounting department a few years ago.

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Another precrime provision, with the additional goody of sharing your medical records with the police. Decisions like this, that may appear reasonable on the surface to some, are readily exposed as driven by a wider agenda when put in context. For one thing, the definition of ‘mentally ill’ is subject to inflation. US veterans of the wars in the middle east that have been encouraged to file for PTSD benefits (small wonder after multiple tours of duty – a Pentagon study found 10% of returning soldiers have PTSD) are in many cases surprised to discover they’re also being denied gun ownership. CNN reported back in 2007 that the total figure for mental illness could be as high as a third of vets. Nexus this in with the recent report that Obama has promised to support a United Nations small arms treaty calling for a global gun registry and stringent licensing restrictions, the brutal totalitarian-style raids, the knock and talk campaigns to build a list of citizens that own firearms, and you’re starting to get an idea of the big picture.

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Virkram Dodd, The Guardian
June 14, 2010

Doctors have agreed to breach duty of medical confidentiality if patients who own guns become seriously mentally ill

Doctors have agreed to breach their duty of medical confidentiality to patients who own guns if they fear they have become so seriously mentally ill they may use their weapons on themselves or the public, the Guardian has learned.

GPs say they will tell the police if a gun owner’s deteriorating health makes him or her a serious danger to the public, without the patient giving consent to their medical privacy being breached.

In order for doctors to know which patients have guns, the medical records of patients holding or applying for firearms licences would be “flagged”.

The agreement comes after months of talks between the Association of Chief Police Officers and the British Medical Association.

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Bill c6 is back. And so are the questions around who deems natural health products to be safe or unsafe and why Health Canada – which apparently does get funding from industry – will be given broad new powers to storm home offices and regulate . While the point has been made that some of the criticism of Bill C6′s predecessor, Bill C51 may have been a little overblown owing to the funding of one major opposition campaign by a supplements company, there are real concerns which can’t simply be waved off despite the obvious package dealing being employed (which rolls supplements into food safety into concerns about toxic Chinese products). Just recently, it was determined by administrative fiat that vitamins would be removed from the shelves of pharmacies, underscoring the natural health product industry’s fears that various traditional remedies would be persona non grata under the new regulatory regime.

While the Canadian Senate was able to water down some of the powers of Health Canada inspectors to storm homes and places of business in search of ‘dangerous’ and unsafe products, much of that language survives in this new incarnation. There’s a new warrant provision for search, great, but it doesn’t mean Health Canada has to go before a judge to get a warrant – all they have to do is pick up a phone. Last year, the National Post’s blustering indignation at Senate resistance to the bill which would “harmonize” Canadian legislation with American and EU regulation spoke volumes. This is really about Codex, after all. UN Codex Alimentarius guidelines present ‘guidelines’ (which compliant nations go on to enshrine in regulation) which suggest WTO partners ban the sale of food products that claim health benefits and regulate their potency. That’s the loophole that has brought you a wide range of herbal products, allowing you to make up your own mind about their efficacy. Is this a right we want to see vanish as Health Canada proceeds to micromanage all such products under the pharmaceutical model?

Related: Stop selling unlicensed natural health remedies: pharmacy regulators | Passage of Bill C-6 Imminent, Gives Health Canada Warrantless Search and Seizure Powers | US House approves sweeping new food powers for FDA | Listeriosis report urges cleanliness and — increased federalization of food safety | New Ontario regulations forcing local butchers out of market | SWAT Teams raiding Amish, Food Co-ops in Rural US | Ottawa to revive bill restricting natural health products | Naturopaths Fear Proposed Bill C-51 | Canada’s C-51 Law May Outlaw 60% Of Natural Health Products | Codex Alimentarius Commission adopts more than 50 new food standards

CBC News
June 9, 2010

The federal government is taking a third shot at passing a new consumer protection law to replace the 40-year-old Hazardous Products Act.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq told a news briefing in Ottawa Wednesday that the new legislation will ban the manufacturing, import or marketing of any product considered unsafe.

It will also require manufacturers or importers to report any serious incident or death involving its products. They’ll also be obliged to present Health Canada with any test results if asked.

The bill also gives the federal government the power to initiate a product recall, even if a manufacturer or importer refuses. Under the current law, the government can request a recall but not order one.

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James Chapman, The Daily Mail
June 4, 2010

Genetically modified crops were last night given enthusiastic backing by the Environment Secretary.

Caroline Spelman shocked colleagues by suggesting that the coalition government will take a more pro-GM stance than its Labour predecessor.

The Tories have traditionally taken a sceptical approach to so- called ‘Frankenstein foods’, and at present no GM varieties are cultivated commercially in the UK.

Labour ministers shied away from promoting GM foods in recent years over concerns about a public backlash.

But Mrs Spelman insisted last night they could bring ‘benefits to food in the marketplace’.

Her intervention drew fierce criticism from anti-GM campaigners, who accused her of getting her facts wrong and highlighted her background as a lobbyist for biotechnology.

Mrs Spelman set up a food and biotechnology lobbying company Spelman, Cormack and Associates with her husband, Mark Spelman, in 1989. Although she resigned as a company director last year, the firm remains in the hands of her husband.

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These glasses are typically hard acrylic as well, so they’re probably full of the controversial hormone analogue BPA. A double shot of carcinogens for your kid courtesy of China’s sprawling manufactories.

Related: Toxic cadmium taints kids’ jewelry | New toxic milk case in China kept secret for a year, reports say | “Trace amounts” of Melamine found in Canadian infant formula | Tests find melamine in candies, milk, infant formula from China

CBC News
June 4, 2010

Millions of drinking glasses pulled over cadmium concerns

Concerns over the toxic chemical cadmium have prompted McDonald’s Canada to follow the lead of its U.S. parent and recall promotional Shrek Forever After glasses.

The four drinking glasses portraying characters from the Dreamworks hit movie have been sold at McDonald’s outlets since May 21.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall of the glasses in the U.S. early Friday morning after laboratory testing showed cadmium in paint on the glasses.

A Canadian recall was announced a few hours later. In a media notice issued Friday, McDonald’s Canada stated its safety standards are among the highest in the world and the recall was “the appropriate course of action.”

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