http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2008-10-21-red-dragon-china-factories-economy_N.htm
By Calum MacLeod and Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY
SHAOXING, China — In the good old days — oh, three months ago — Tao Shoulong would prowl the streets of this ancient city in his Mercedes-Benz. His wife and partner, Yan Qi, would cruise around in her Toyota Land Cruiser. Together, they would drink into the night with clients, suppliers and creditors, hatching plans to expand their Zhejiang River Dragon Textile Printing & Dyeing Co.
Tao built River Dragon from a start-up with four employees into one of China's biggest textile printing firms in just five years. He had even grander dreams: He wanted to see his company's stock trade on Nasdaq alongside the likes of Microsoft and Intel.
The dreams are dead. River Dragon shut down on Oct. 7. Tao and Yan have vanished, leaving behind more than $290 million in debt and a lot of anger in this city 140 miles south of Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta. The company's demise put 4,000 workers on the street and jilted hundreds of suppliers and creditors.
The speedy rise — and speedier fall — of River Dragon is a depressingly familiar story in China these days. Thousands of Chinese factories have shuttered in the past year, done in by:
•An export-killing global slowdown that began with the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the ensuing financial crisis. Local textile merchant Fang Xingquan, a River Dragon creditor, is among many who believe a sharp drop-off in exports was a key factor in the company's demise.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: United States | Washington | United Nations | Beijing | Microsoft | Nasdaq | Shanghai | Intel | International Monetary Fund | Mercedes-Benz | Guangdong | Xinhua | Peterson Institute for International Economics | Peking University | Standard Chartered Bank | Chinese Academy of Social Sciences | Dongguan | Toyota Land Cruiser | Stephen Green | Haier | Andy Xie | English-language China Daily | Yu Yongding | Yangtze River Delta
•Rising materials costs that have squeezed profit margins.
•A deliberate Chinese government campaign to regulate sweatshop factories out of business.
China's National Bureau of Statistics this week said the nation's economy grew at an annual rate of 9% in the quarter ended Sept. 30, the lowest since 2003. The state-run Xinhua news agency said the government is considering a series of actions to boost exports and stimulate home sales.
Many economists, including Yu Yongding of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believe that China needs to keep annual economic growth of 8% or 9% to absorb the 24 million people entering the labor force every year or risk social instability.
Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund predicted that Chinese economic growth would cool from 2007's sizzling 11.9% to 9.7% this year and 9.3% in 2009. Private forecasters are even more pessimistic. UBS Investment Research, for instance, forecasts 8% growth in 2009.
"China is being hit over the head by both the global crisis and the domestic slowdown," says Stephen Green, economist at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai.
Exports account for nearly 38% of China's economic output. JPMorgan Chase calculates that Chinese exports fall 5.7 percentage points every time global economic growth shrinks by a percentage point. And the IMF is predicting that global growth will drop 2 percentage points — from 5% last year to 3% in 2009. Chinese appliance maker Haier has already seen export growth drop to 10% the first three quarters of this year from 30% a year earlier, the official English-language China Daily newspaper reported.
What happens to China has big implications globally: China contributed 17% of world economic growth last year, the same as the United States, according to the United Nations.
Home prices collapsing
The Chinese economy is absorbing another blow beyond crumbling exports: collapsing home prices. Nicholas Lardy, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., reckons a slowdown in construction could shave another 1 to 2 percentage points off China's economic growth.
"The property bubble is already starting to burst," says Yan Yu, a business management scholar at Peking University, researching the export center of Dongguan in southern Guangdong province. "House prices here in Dongguan have fallen by up to 50% this year," leaving many homeowners owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
"People have worked all their lives and believed the hype and bought overvalued properties, then saw their savings vanish," says independent economist Andy Xie in Shanghai. "That carries more political risk" than rising joblessness.
The good news: The forecast growth rates are still pretty impressive by any other economy's standards; Chinese exports have proved surprisingly resilient, growing nearly 22% in September from a year earlier; and the government in Beijing is sitting on enough cash — $1.8 trillion in foreign exchange reserves — to go on a spending spree if needed to rescue the Chinese economy from catastrophe.
"Chinese authorities appear to be well aware of the global economic situation," JPMorgan Chase reported this month. The bank expects government to turn the spigot on spending, quadrupling the budget deficit to the equivalent of 2% of economic output from 0.5% this year.
The authorities aren't going to save everyone. The Chinese government has put pressure on small firms that foul the environment, pay miserly wages and turn out cheap products. "Beijing no longer wants to be the world's sweatshop for junk," CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets says in a recent report.
First, China cut tax breaks for exporters and imposed new export taxes on polluters, even targeting producers of disposable chopsticks. Then it introduced a labor law in January, requiring companies to give workers written contracts and making it harder for them to lay off employees or to hire informal part-time help.
The combination of tougher regulations, weakening exports, rising costs and a stronger Chinese currency has hammered thousands of small factories. The pain has been especially agonizing in Guangdong, a low-cost manufacturing center across the border from Hong Kong in southern China.
Guangdong's exports rose just 14% the first seven months of 2008 after growing 27% a year earlier. Industrial profits were up just 4% this year through May, compared with 49% a year earlier and puny compared with 21% growth nationwide. "Guangdong's weak performance is a signal of the government's determination to restructure the low-value-added export process sector and to force out of business firms that abuse labor and the environment," CLSA concluded.
Trouble in toyland
Firms that were already struggling with narrow profit margins have been squeezed. More than half of all China's toy exporters — 3,631 firms — shut their doors the first half of the year, the official Xinhua news agency reported. "Many toy factories have gone bankrupt this year," says Luo Yunzhang, founder of toy exporter Guangzhou Sixiren Toy, which makes playground equipment for Ohio-based Little Tikes, among other products.
"We saw exports start to dip in May, when the government began restricting businessmen's visits ahead of the (August) Olympic Games. … Now the global crisis is causing problems. When people are in difficulties, they spend less on things like toys," Luo says. Luo predicts that Sixiren's export revenue will drop by half this year, to $500,000.
China's textile industry is also enduring a deep slump. Textile exports have been tumbling since March. More than 10,000 small textile manufacturers went out of business the first half of this year alone, the government says. "The global crisis is seriously affecting the local textile industry," says Yu Xin of the China Chemical Fibers and Textile Consultancy in Hangzhou.
China's 30-year economic boom has produced towns that specialize in one product. There are shoe towns, zipper towns, air conditioner towns and sock towns. Shaoxing — a city of 4.3 million long known in China for opera, rice wine and scenic river vistas — has sold itself as China's Textile City.
The textile sector has been "an easy market, as it is not complicated, has low entry barriers and is a big employer," says Standard Chartered's Green. The local government gives tax breaks, and the industry has benefited from having a large number of suppliers and trained workers close by.
For a while, River Dragon looked like one of the winners. After working as a clerk at another firm, Tao started the company in 2003 with his wife, Yan, and four colleagues. River Dragon went public in Singapore two years ago, and Tao bought another textile firm last year, hoping the acquisition would give River Dragon the heft to list on Nasdaq. In July, Yan, the company CEO, announced that River Dragon had landed a $10 million contract to supply apparel to 76 U.S. universities. But the deal proved a mirage. The end came quickly. A day after the factory stopped production, River Dragon stock was dropped from the Singapore exchange. Corporate documents are missing, and Tao and Yan are long gone.
"I think they are still on the run in China," says Fang, the supplier. He says he was stiffed for more than $860,000 when River Dragon went under.
Keeping society 'stable'
About 300 suppliers and creditors descended on the River Dragon complex, looting warehouses in the hopes of salvaging something. Hundreds of workers demonstrated in the streets, demanding back pay for August and September. Worried about the unrest, the local government coughed up cash. "The government paid the workers to keep society stable," textile analyst Yu says.
As their export orders dry up, Chinese manufacturers are likely to look for customers at home in China or in other emerging markets such as the Middle East and Africa. "Soon we will see vicious price competition between companies who have lost exports," Green says.
In Guangdong, toymaker Luo hopes to push domestic sales up to $1.5 million this year from $1 million in 2007.
"The situation in the U.S. and other countries will not turn around quickly," he says. "We must rely more on the domestic market, as Chinese consumers increasingly have money to spend on toys. Profits are very thin in the toy business, both in export and domestic sales. I prefer exports. … Domestic sales involve more work. There are more customers. But their orders are small."
Independent economist Xie says China became overly dependent on demand from the U.S. and Europe that was stoked by too much borrowed money and inflated asset values. "It's all coming to an end," he says. "You need to look elsewhere for livelihood. Americans cannot spend money anymore."
Contributing: Sunny Yang. Paul Wiseman reported from Hong Kong.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Economy rocks China factories
India wants to seal border with Myanmar after blast
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20081022/tpl-uk-india-manipur-blast-81f3b62.html
Wednesday, October 22 09:03 am
Biswajyoti Das
India needs to seal its border with Myanmar to stop separatist rebels carrying out regular attacks in the northeast, officials said on Wednesday, a day after a powerful blast killed 17 people in Manipur state. Skip related content
Police said a bomb on a bicycle blew up in Imphal, the state capital, late on Tuesday. At least 40 people were wounded in the attack that police believe was revenge for security forces killing at least eight rebels last month.
Police suspect the separatist People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) in Manipur, a state which has suffered separatist and tribal insurgencies for the past 60 years in the troubled northeast region.
The rebels escaped across a largely unguarded border to their camps in neighbouring Myanmar, police said.
Manipur shares a long porous border with Myanmar of around 370 km (230 miles) and security officials want the entire stretch to be barbed-wired to stop smuggling of weapons and explosives.
Ringed by China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, India's northeast is home to more than 200 tribes and has been racked by separatist revolts since India gained independence from Britain in 1947.
"We want the centre (federal government) to fence the border, we cannot let them (PREPAK) escape after the incident," Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh told Reuters on Wednesday.
The rebel group wants to throw non-Manipuris out of the state and demands statehood, which India says is not possible.
About 700 armed PREPAK rebels have carried out regular attacks in the state, including firing a shell at the chief minister's fortified home last month.
"It definitely is a cause for concern at a time when violence in other parts of the region seems to be declining," C. Uday Bhaskar, a strategic analyst said.
In Imphal, police cordoned off the blast site, near a commando training facility and forensic experts were examining pieces of metal to find out what caused the powerful blast.
"Our plan is to fence the border and step up foot patrolling along the border, otherwise it will be difficult to control the situation," a senior intelligence officer said from Imphal.
India says around 3,000 rebels, live and train in the camps inside the jungles of Kabaw Valley of Myanmar's Sagaing Division.
"We know where militants have their camps across the border, but we can't go inside Myanmar chasing them," said a senior military commander who requested not to be named.
India has a pact with Myanmar to share intelligence, but officials said it was not enough to stop the insurgency.
Militant groups accuse New Delhi of plundering the region's mineral and forest resources but investing little in return.
(Writing by Bappa Majumdar; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
The limits of nuclear power
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=17105256
The limits of nuclear power
By Daniel B. Botkin
Monday, October 20, 2008
NEW YORK:
John McCain has called for building 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 and 100 eventually. Barack Obama's Web site says, "It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table."
But to what extent can nuclear power really help achieve energy independence?
There's a problem about nuclear energy that gets little attention. At present, fossil fuels provide 87 percent of the world's total energy while nuclear power plants provide just 4.8 percent. (All nuclear power plants currently generate electricity, accounting for about 15 percent of world electricity generation, while fossil fuels produce almost 67 percent of the electricity.)
The best estimates put the amount of uranium that can be mined economically (what geologists call the reserves) at about 5.5 million metric tons, and according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, today's nuclear power plants use 70,000 metric tons a year of uranium. At this rate of use, the uranium that could be mined economically would last about 80 years.
Suppose it were possible to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear power. Suppose that we could use nuclear energy to make liquid and gas fuels to power vehicles, and could do this quickly using conventional nuclear power plants.
We would have to build enough plants to increase energy production by 17.4 times, which means using 1.2 million tons of uranium ore each year. At that rate of use, the reserves of uranium would be used up in less than five years.
Geologists also estimate that there are about 35 million tons of uranium out there regardless of the cost of mining it (geologists call this identified resources). With nuclear power replacing all fossil fuels, even these would be used up in 29 years.
Thus, if the goal is to counter global warming by replacing all fossil fuels with nuclear power, this goal cannot be met.
Advocates of nuclear power point out that it doesn't have to replace all other sources of energy. Let's consider that approach.
At a recent meeting, the Group of Eight major industrial countries agreed to reduce carbon emissions 50 percent by 2050. Suppose nuclear energy increased just enough each year to enable fossil-fuel use to decline at a constant annual rate, to 50 percent by 2050, while nuclear power therefore increased to provide 50 percent of the world's energy.
At this rate of use, uranium reserves would run out by 2019, and the estimated maximum of 35 million metric tons of uranium in identified resources would run out by year 2038, gaining us less than two decades.
There are some important caveats. Exploring for minerals is done on an as-needed basis, and large areas of the world may have been little explored for uranium. Every mining geologist and mine corporation executive will tell you that estimates of total reserves of a mineral are just that - estimates - and that the reserves of many minerals always increase over time.
This approach may be all right for the planning time of mining companies, but it won't work for a long-term global energy strategy based on adequate supplies of uranium.
Considering the enormous costs of building the large number of nuclear power plants that are contemplated to replace fossil fuels, the United States would be courting disaster if it chose this route with nothing but blind faith that there may be a lot more uranium out there if we only look for it.
We need to know a lot more about available uranium resources and where they are. If they are in unfriendly countries, they might not be available at all.
Nuclear power advocates also argue that it is possible to recover significant amounts of uranium from spent fuel. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, "In 2004, two-thirds of the uranium used was newly mined; the rest came from civil and military stockpiles, spent fuel reprocessing and re-enrichment of depleted uranium."
But the amount from spent fuels is not specified, and a reprocessing program to deal with 1.2 million tons of used uranium would be a major undertaking, perhaps not technologically feasible in the near future.
Others suggest that breeder reactors, which produce more nuclear fuel than they use, will solve the problem.
The United States experimented with a few breeder reactors from 1964 to 1994, but they were shut down or work on them halted in the 1990s.
Other nations have tried building them, and some are considering or developing them. But to my knowledge perhaps only one or two breeder reactors are in use and providing electrical energy anywhere in the world, and these are probably not "breeding."
There are reasons for this: The technology is not there yet, and the reactors are dangerous in themselves, even without considering their potential use in making atomic weapons. They are the kind of nuclear reactors that everybody fears Iran or North Korea might build and use to make atomic bombs.
In sum, the breeder-reactor route, if it is practical at all, is a long way in the future as a major contributor to the world's energy, and certainly not a way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels now or in the near future.
The bottom line: From what is known about resources of uranium and the present and future state of nuclear power plants, there is no way that nuclear power can play a dominant role in the world's energy supply.
This is not to say that it could play no role in a mixed strategy involving many kinds of energy, only that those who continue to press for a greater role for nuclear power must first show that there will be enough uranium to assure that thousands of nuclear power plants built at enormous cost would not soon stand idle - and leave our economy standing idle too.
Daniel B. Botkin is an environmental scientist. His latest book, "Tomorrow's Energy: Fact and Fiction," will be published in 2009.
.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
My Favourites - The Burmese Harp
http://passionforcinema.com/the-burmese-harp/
(Warning! - Spoiler Alert!)
I have gone back on my word. I wanted to continue on sharing more movies of Masaki Kobayashi as I had mentioned before. But, I changed my mind. I think this way, I can share a variety of movies with varied topics and hopefully keep you all interested for the next one.
The Burmese Harp is directed by Kon Ichikawa in 1956. It is an anti-war movie, one of the major themes that the Japanese directors dealt with especially, after the horrible aftermath of the second World War. The director uses Buddhist teachings to present his ideas against war and explains it by showcasing the human tragedy associated with. The movie begins with a Corporal from the unit of Captain Inouye narrating the story to us about another Corporal Mizushima when their unit is stationed in the forests of Burma. As the unit advances through the dense jungle, the Captain teaches them to sing to keep up their morale. Mizushima is their unit’s harp player. He has a modified Burmese Harp with him.
When the news of Japan’s surrender reaches the unit, they give up their arms and are held as POWs by the British troops. Before being sent to the POW camp, the British captain asks Captain Inouye if he can convince a Japanese unit holding a hill to surrender so that further loss to life can be avoided. Unable to do the task himself, Inouye asks Mizushima to do the tasks to which Mizushima readily agrees. Mizushima is given 30 minutes to convince the troop to surrender. Risking his life, Mizushima reaches the top of the hill and speaks to the leader of the troop about the surrender. They discuss among themselves and decide to fight until the end. Determined to save the soldiers, Miizushima tries to hoist a white flag to get more time from the British. Misunderstanding his intent, the soldiers pull him inside the cave and get back to fighting. In the end its only Mizushima who is injured but he survives and he becomes distraught at his failure.
Meanwhile, in the POW camp, the rest of the soldiers in Captain Inouye’s unit are wondering about what happened to him. Inouye tries to get some information form an old lady who gets them food for trading with any items the soldiers have. Mizuma, is saved and cared for by a monk. Determined to get back to his unit as he had promised his captain, Mizushima, steals the monk’s robe and heads towards the POW camp. On his way, he comes across bodies after bodies of soldiers and is greatly affected by it. When he reaches the POW camp and makes it to his unit, he has a change of heart and decides to leave the unit and not recognize any of them. He decides to stay back in Burma and bury the bodies of the soldiers. Also, he becomes a monk to come to terms with the tragedy and to find peace within himself. Realizing that the monk is Mizushima, Inouye and his unit try many times to bring him back either by singing or by sending messages to him. They get no response form him. Post war as the peace process begins the POW’s are sent back to their homeland. Right when the unit leaves for Japan,.they get a letter from Mizushima explaining why he decided to stay back.
The strength of this movie lies definitely in its story and screen play. The symbolism in the dialogues are unmistakable For example, the movie begins with the following line: “Down in Burma, soil is blood-red. So are rocks.” . In another scene an old man says “Soldiers from various countries die here. But, Burma is always the land of the Buddha”. Using the stark landscape and the dire circumstances of living, Ichikawa portrays the value of human life and the futility of war in with utmost elegance. The transformation of Mizushima is feels real and leaves an impression on you. The background music adds the to effectiveness of the story. The mood of the soldiers is filled with nostalgia and love for their motherland. Even after the news of the surrender, Inouye tries to motivate his men by encouraging them to think about working for their country once they go back. This is also reflected in the song that the soldiers repeatedly sing, “Hanyu no Yadu or “There’s No Place Like Home.”
For Mizushima, Burma becomes the land where he gets ‘enlightened’. He realizes the purpose of his life and tries to attain it. It is difficult for him to explain to his former fellow soldiers on how he feels and he tries to avoid all contact with them. Also, it is very difficult for him to not return to his homeland and since he doesn’t want his association with his unit to affect his resolution. It is very moving and tragic a situation but, the director uses Buddhist doctrine of salvation from pain is through compassion, knowledge humility and, service. The movie does not pass judgements or try to find out reasons for the war or its aftermath. The harp is the central object for communication used by Mizushima. It represents the constant within him and through the harp he is able to remember his past and also present himself to the future.
The film boasts of an excellent composition by Akira Ifukube. The songs that the unit songs to the tunes that Mizushima plays, the melancholy of the POW camp to the distressing sight of the dead bodies, every scene has been given an exquisite background score that stays with you for a long time. Ichikawa, exploits the landscape of Burma to his advantage. From showing rough and dry terrains to marshy and swampy landscapes, the country of Burma forms an excellent backdrop, add to that the majestic and beautiful Buddha statues and temples. It is simply, stunning. Truly, one of the masterpieces of Cinema.
Ichikawa made this movie all over again in colour. It was released in 1985. By the way, an actor who is common from my previous article is Rentaro Mikuni. notice the change in his tone and dialogue delivery when you compare it to his character ( Kageyu Saito ) in Harakiri. Amazing!
Until the next time, this is Sarang signing off.
Impunity in eastern Burma challenged
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/KSAI-7KN762?OpenDocument
Source: Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC)
Date: 22 Oct 2008
Bangkok – The crackdown on peaceful protesters in Rangoon, the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in the Irrawaddy Delta, and a flawed referendum on constitutional change have been the focus of international attention in Burma during the past year. However, a new report by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) suggests that violations of humanitarian and human rights law in the conflict-affected areas of eastern Burma are more widespread and systematic than ever.
"The extent of persecution and suffering in the border areas has been largely unseen and under-reported for decades. Yet the same brutal army that crushed protests on city streets last September marauds with impunity in rural Burma, bringing fear and disrupting the lives of villagers on a day to day basis", said Jack Dunford, TBBC's Executive Director.
TBBC is an alliance of eleven NGOs from nine countries working to provide food, shelter, non-food items and capacity building support to Burmese refugees and displaced persons. Apart from updating information about internal displacement, the new report compiles abuses reported during 2008 in relation to the legal framework for crimes against humanity.
Forced displacement remains most concentrated in the conflict-affected areas of northern Karen State and southern Shan State. However, displacement is more commonly caused by coercive factors at the household level. The imposition of forced labour, extortion, land confiscation, agricultural production quotas, and restrictions on access to fields and markets has a devastating effect on household incomes and a destabilising impact on populations.
While the total number of internally displaced persons in eastern Burma is likely to be well over half a million people, at least 451,000 people are currently estimated in the rural areas. Approximately 66,000 people were forced to leave their homes due to the effects of armed conflict and human rights abuses during the past year alone.
"Despite concessions made in the Irrawaddy Delta after Cyclone Nargis, the junta's restrictions on humanitarian access continue to obstruct aid workers elsewhere in Burma, particularly in conflict-affected areas. Without assistance, coping strategies amongst the most vulnerable communities in eastern Burma will be exhausted and more refugees and migrants will be displaced into Thailand", said Mr Dunford.
Evidence cited in the report appears to support Amnesty International's recent assessment that the violations in eastern Burma meet the legal threshold to constitute crimes against humanity. Special Rapporteurs for the United Nations have consistently noted over the past decade that such abuses are systematic, rather than simply isolated acts, and that the junta has failed to implement recommendations formulated by relevant United Nations' bodies.
Critics argue that raising allegations about crimes against humanity will merely frustrate the promotion of political dialogue. However, just as the provision of humanitarian assistance should not be dependent upon political reform, humanitarian protection and the administration of justice should not be sacrificed to expedite political dialogue. The threat of prosecution may actually increase the leverage of the diplomatic community and provide an incentive for the regime to end the climate of impunity.
"Given that the Burmese junta is targeting civilians in military operations, the responsibility to protect villagers in eastern Burma must shift to the international community. The causes of this humanitarian crisis are political, so diplomatic efforts to broker tri-partite dialogue and promote national reconciliation need to be renewed. Yet it remains essential to hold the junta to account for atrocities committed in eastern Burma, and to demand an immediate nation-wide ceasefire", commented Mr Dunford.
With the exception of public UN sources, reproduction or redistribution of the above text, in whole, part or in any form, requires the prior consent of the original source. The opinions expressed in the documents carried by this site are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by UN OCHA or ReliefWeb.
Call for refugee aid
http://wimmera.yourguide.com.au/news/local/news/general/call-for-refugee-aid/1340603.aspx
BY JO MORRIS
22/10/2008 1:59:00 PM
A GROUP of Wimmera residents have launched a campaign to bring 30 Karen refugees from a camp on the Myanmar-Thailand border to live in Horsham.
Rural Australians for Refugees Wimmera branch member Mandy Kirsopp said the group needed the support of Wimmera residents to achieve their aim.
"Basically, the Wimmera branch of Rural Australians for Refugees was contacted by the Karen Refugee Network in Melbourne to ask if we could support a project to sponsor one Karen refugee family to come to Horsham," she said.
"We thought it was a terrific thing for us to do but then we thought about it and realised we needed to support a critical mass, rather than just one family, so we planned to bring over four families, which is approximately 20 people.
"We were approached by the Karen Refugee Network again and now that number is up to around 30."
Wimmera RAR member Jan Stoller said the Karen refugees were literally prisoners in camps on the border of Myanmar, formerly Burma, and Thailand.
"They are not allowed to go into Thailand and become part of the Thai community and they are unable to go back home because of persecution by the Burmese military - they are virtually in limbo," she said.
"Some people have been in these camps for up to 20 years with no hope and so our first reason for bringing them here is to offer them the chance of a new life.
"And the reason the Karen Refugee Network want them to be placed in rural communities is because they are rural people and would find it less traumatic then moving to the city."
Ms Kirsopp said the group was working with the Federal Government to arrange for the refugees to come to Horsham from January next year.
She said some refugees would have travel expenses covered but due to varying government refugee classification systems, some would only have part of their fare covered and would be stuck with a debt on arrival.
Ms Kirsopp said the Wimmera branch of RAR hoped to raise around $30,000 to assist with airfares.
She said the group was looking for individuals to sponsor refugees to travel and help them settle on arrival.
•Horsham Rural City Council will sign a declaration to become a refugee welcome zone today.
Community and enterprise services manager Angela Murphy said the declaration was a vital step for council.
"It's really about demonstrating compassion for refugees and the need for diversity in our community," she said.
Horsham Mayor Pam Clarke urged people to attend the signing at Horsham Civic Centre at 4.30pm today.
Aid cut as crops fail in Irrawaddy delta
http://www.upiasia.com/Human_Rights/2008/10/16/aid_cut_as_crops_fail_in_irrawaddy_delta/4595/
October 17, 2008 · 1 Comment
Sea-level farmlands like these have not recovered from Cyclone Nargis
A week ago the United Nations humanitarian news agency ran a telling interview with a survivor of Cyclone Nargis, the storm that devastated Burma in May.
The interviewee, a 62-year-old farmer whose daughter-in-law and granddaughter were killed in the cyclone, said that although after the disaster some monks gave her paddy seed with which to replant her fields, the crop has failed.
“Even with fertilizer, the plants simply didn’t take or died,” Aye Yin told a reporter from the IRIN news service. “Some say it’s because of the salt water that inundated much of our fields. I don’t know. In any case, it doesn’t matter now.”
To get a little income, her grandson now collects empty water bottles from the streets and sells them to recyclers. The family has also received some assistance from the World Food Programme, but Aye Yin says that it isn’t enough.
“Now all we worry about is how we will survive the coming months,” she said. “I pray we won’t starve to death.”
She is going to have to pray harder. In November, the WFP is set to scale back its work in Burma’s delta, from general to “targeted” distributing of rice.
What this means for the region’s occupants is that over a quarter of a million people will soon find that they are no longer entitled to assistance. Another half million or so especially vulnerable people, or those joining food-for-work activities, will continue to receive something for a while longer.
U.N. agencies are putting on a brave face. A WFP spokesperson told the Voice of America that there is more work and food in the delta than before. Another with the Food and Agriculture Organization said recently that 97 percent of the paddy fields in affected areas had been successfully replanted.
These persons are doing their best to make it look like everything is going according to plan, but clearly it is not. Or rather, not according to their plan.
The delivery of rice and other things to people in the delta depends upon the whimsy of Burma’s top generals. It is they, not international bureaucrats, who have decided that the supply of food is to be cut.
Aid workers may in recent months have been getting along better with regional and local authorities than in the first weeks after the cyclone, but those officials have no say in what goes on. The men that matter are in Naypyidaw, Burma’s capital.
The WFP had intended to continue with general distributions until next May, a full year after the tragedy. This is much longer than most of its relief responses, acknowledging both the sheer scale of the disaster, in which an estimated 150,000 people died, and also the inability of what is effectively a subsistence economy to recover on its own.
But an order from above has put a stop to these well-laid plans, just as in July the government abruptly stopped the group from buying rice locally, obliging it to revert to imports from Thailand and India.
While for U.N. staff this sort of arbitrary decision making “poses a challenge,” for Aye Yin it is a threat to life. The elderly farmer, who from decades of hard experience understands military dictatorship far better than they, isn’t putting any stock in their work. She just hopes that the monks come back soon.
Unfortunately there’s no guarantee of that either. The remarkable efforts of both monasteries and countless members of the general public to help survivors in the weeks following the storm embarrassed a regime that insists upon taking credit for any amount of largesse delivered under its watch, no matter how large or small.
So while avenues were opened for some foreign aid groups in June, at the same time, for many local donors they were closed. Monks bringing help from other parts of the country, like those who met Aye Yin, have been blocked from travelling again; not at checkpoints, but through warnings issued by councils in their hometowns. And outspoken well-wishers like renowned comedian Zarganar have been arrested and charged with spreading “false news” about the disaster.
Whether the monks find the ways and means to return once the WFP disappears is yet to be seen, but in any event neither Aye Yin nor anyone else in her village will be fooled by nonsense about successfully replanted fields and a quick return of jobs and food. Nor should anyone else be.
“My son and I are now dependent on an eight-year-old boy,” Aye Yin remarked of her grandson, out collecting plastic bottles. “If he were in school, he would be in the third grade, but we have failed him.”
And we have failed her.
Source: Food aid cut as crops fail in Irrawaddy delta
China oil ventures in Burma add to climate change woes
http://www.greenassembly.net/http:/greenassembly.net/2008/10/21/china/china-oil-ventures-in-burma-add-to-climate-change-woes/
Posted on October 21st, 2008 by Green Assembly
BANGKOK ~ The unregulated development of oil and gas fields in Burma (Myanmar) is creating a potential environmental disaster that will have a major impact on global warming and climate change, a study released today revealed.
“Blocking Freedom”, a damning new report by environmental and human rights group Arakan Oil Watch said Chinese companies will soon start oil extraction in Arakan state on the country’s western coast.
This is to be followed by the construction of a 2,380 kilometre pipeline that will cut a 200-metre-wide swathe across the whole country, destroying ancient forest and agricultural land in addition to disturbing billions of tonnes of soil on its path to Kunming in China.
Environmentalists say that until more details about the pipeline are revealed it is impossible to determine the precise amount of CO2 that will be released into the atmosphere during construction.
Ramree Island is marked by the pushpin just south of Sittwe“What we are talking about here is disturbing and converting an area of nearly half a million hectares (1.2 million acres) That’s about the size of Singapore,” said Green Assembly climate change expert, Jonathan Green.
Soil represents a short- to long-term carbon storage medium, and contains more carbon than all terrestrial vegetation and the atmosphere combined [Wikipedia]. When soil is disturbed the carbon is oxidised and released into the atmosphere as CO2.
Construction of the pipeline, which will contain twin pipes, one carrying oil and the other carrying natural gas from Arakan to China, could start as early as 2009.
The gas pipe will be under the control of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), while the oil pipe will be controlled by another Chinese company, SINOPEC.
Exploration of the oil and gas fields, which are mostly on Arakan state’s Ramree Island, has been going on since 2005 through a consortium led by China National Offshore Oil Company Ltd. (CNOOC).
The New York and Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed CNOOC has been partnered on the project by Singapore-based Golden Aaron Pte. Ltd. which is owned by Stephen Law, son of notorious drug baron Lo Hsing Han.
In addition to the environmental damage that will be done by the pipeline throughout Burma, there is also likely to be extensive damage in Arakan itself.
Arakan Oil Watch spokesman Peter Halford said: “It’s difficult to see how they can avoid going through an extremely sensitive mangrove forest of about 60,000 acres at the very outset of the pipeline.”
Chinese firms have been awarded the right to exploit 16 onshore and offshore oil and gas blocks, more than any of the other 11 countries currently investing in Burma’s oil and gas sector.
“Chinese and many other oil companies operating in Burma have impressive corporate social responsibility statements. Unfortunately in Burma, these statements are simply empty rhetoric,” said Arakan Oil Watch director, Mr Jockai Khaing, adding that there is no such thing as human rights or environmental law in his country.
__________________________________________________________
Technorati Tags: climate change,human rights,global warming,Burma,Arakan,Sittwe,China,oil. gas,pipeline,soil,soil disturbance,CO2 emissions
Filed under: Burma, CO2 emissions, China, oil companies
Burma's future amid the global financial crisis -MIZZIMA
http://www.mizzima.com/edop/commentary/1171-burmas-future-amid-the-global-financial-crisis.html
by Joseph Ball
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:05
Without yet knowing the end story of the current financial crisis gripping much of the world, valuable lessons for Burma's future – including the prospects and avenues for the positive development of the country – can be observed.
When the lights went off on the Soviet Union, pundits and analysts were quick to point to the failure of the command economy while simultaneously raining praise on the capitalist economic development model, and specifically the free-wheeling version trumpeted by the likes of Washington.
Then in 1997, as the Asian Financial Crisis wrecked havoc from Seoul to Jakarta, the world was told how no longer could the development models of the Asian Tigers be considered on the same plane as those of the West – while the notion of Asian Values took a pummeling from rights activists who were quick to link the so-called Asian Values with the formation of the then discredited Asian development models.
In short, economic crises have historically worked to confer legitimacy upon and acceptance of certain systems of development at the expense of alternative approaches and often associated non-financial values. This legitimacy then typically allows the perceived 'victors' greater influence and latitude in molding the direction of economic and financial approaches regionally, if not globally.
Now, as the effects of the financial turmoil in the world's major markets continue to reverberate, it is the financial system that has come to be identified most closely with the United States that is being made to appear dysfunctional in its lack of financial oversight and foresight.
Bidding to step in and replace the soiled individualist-centric model of economic growth is a pragmatic approach championed by China that seeks a symbiotic relationship between the public and private sectors in matters of economic and financial policy – in essence appreciably increasing the role of the state in the economic sector.
Whereas the International Monetary Fund, for more than a decade following the end of the Soviet empire, had preached upon the dais of global economics the boundless merits of free markets, drilling aspiring countries with the mantra of "less government is good government," the message is now clearly one of a need for increased regulation and oversight from governmental institutions – a blasphemous notion to be heard on the streets of Washington only scant years previously.
It may well transpire that 2008 is looked back on as the year in which Adam Smith's misunderstood invisible hand, long endowed with a certain mystique regarding Western development models, falls under the all-seeing eye of state authority.
Sick man of Asia no more
Almost exactly one hundred years ago, as its last Emperor assumed the throne in the form of two-year old Pu Yi, China was known as the "Sick man of Asia," a fractured economy and entity left largely to the mercy of external interests and objectives. No more.
Even before the latest financial avalanche triggered in the United States, China was poised, in many analysts' estimation, to overtake the U.S. economy within 20 years.
The International Monetary Fund, this month holding an emergency meeting on the grim outlook of the global economy, found time to announce that it expects the Chinese economy to grow at a clip approaching ten percent next year, even while the West braces to tough out the conditions of a possible deep recession. The assessment for China is the lowest such calculation for years, but still represents a considerable relative advantage.
China also holds the world's largest foreign reserves, amounting to some 1,810 billion dollars. And just last month Standard and Poor's upgraded the country's long-term sovereign credit rating from A to A+ in recognition of the country's "exceptional" economic prospects and strong financial position.
Such projections for China and the Chinese economy are made despite the Shanghai Stock Exchange taking its share of lumps over recent weeks. However, the crucial difference is that analysts look at China and see a negative economic impact in the market as predominantly a correction for problems overseas, as opposed to additionally reflecting inherent problems within China's domestic financial institutions and infrastructure.
"If you look around the world, China is doing pretty good right now, and the U.S. isn't," remarked C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, earlier this month.
With China's economic position currently portending a growing and possibly leading role for the country in the world's economy going forward, diplomats as well as monetary experts are lining up to get on board.
Since last year, when traces of many of the fissures now rending economies apart first became distinctly visible, Australia's foreign policy has become increasingly predicated upon the establishment and growth of strong ties with Beijing.
"My understanding is that China will continue to drive strong economic growth for its own national purposes, but that's also good for countries like Australia because China is such a major trading partner of ours," implored Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Meanwhile, Michel Camdessus, a former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, recently proclaimed of Asia, "Your countries are now creditors of the world." And the biggest creditor of them all is China.
Nation building or national interest?
To be sure, nation building and national interest are not mutually exclusive concepts. But the decades ahead could well see the question of national interest weighing increasingly heavy in the calculations of policy makers regarding projects associated with nation building.
George Bush assumed the Presidency of the United States eight years ago with a reputation of abhorring the concept of nation building. Two terms later, nation building sits as a central tenet to his administration's legacy. It is a policy approach that likely will not survive the ensuing Presidential handover in January of next year – no matter who resides in the Oval Office.
The prospect of a deepening financial crisis will likely take a heavy toll on the countries most susceptible to promote a foreign policy distinctly cognizant of nation building, those in North America and Europe. This diminished financial capacity to incur such massive financial outlays will be paired with domestic electoral constituencies increasingly critical of elected officers who pursue such objectives over policies more directly linked with national, domestic economy, issues.
In contrast, China has shown little, if any, interest in nation building since the implementation of broad economic reforms under then Premier Deng Xiaoping, opting instead to pursue a foreign policy definitively focused on national interest. Unlike the early decades of the People's Republic, when politics of ideology figured authoritatively in the country's foreign policy calculations, Deng's China is almost singularly infatuated with the notion of national interest – with economic considerations first and foremost.
A clear example of this approach was in the pervading atmosphere of economic uncertainty instigated by the Asian financial crisis. While China did bail out Burma, it did so out of pure economic national interest, headlined by a desire for relative stability in Burma, concessions on natural resources and easy access of Burmese markets for Chinese products.
Policy imperatives for a future Burma
National interest and nation building obviously sleep together in matters concerning domestic policy. What, then, in the national interest of building a prosperous Burmese nation, can the present financial turmoil tell Burma's current and future leaders?
To the extent that the pervading political stagnation in Burma is resultant upon the notion that some country, group of countries or international agency will proactively, possibly even physically, intervene in Burma…such premonitions, at present, must be removed from any policy equation. Already unlikely, the external financing of nation building not intrinsically linked to national interest is likely to be prohibitively expensive for potential suitors in the foreseeable future.
Succinctly put, it is imperative that prospective ruling Burmese political parties develop strategic models for the future that incorporate components of both enhanced self-reliance and diversification than what is accounted for by present models.
Whatever Burma's domestic political orientation in the future, it does nothing to change the fact that Burma's development and economic fortunes will be substantially linked to its foreign relations and eventual "re"integration into the global economy. Understanding this, and in lieu of the current financial upheavals, is there an entity that both wants to and is capable of taking the lead in providing the assistance necessary to fuel a transformation of the Burmese state? The answer is yes, and it's China.
Burma's prospects for a brighter future are thus best served by nurturing strong bonds with China, the quicker the better for prospects of economic transformation when change does come to Burma.
In doing so, nobody need forfeit any political aspirations and differences between the countries and the people are certain, and welcomed, to exist. As seen, the Australian Prime Minister, at the head of a vibrant democratic society, is outwardly supportive and positive in assessing the importance to a democratic Australia of a strong and growing relationship between Canberra and Beijing. Similarly, China is vital to several U.S. industries, inclusive of such 'national' endeavors as the development of the U.S. space program.
A strategy of confrontation with, or relative ignoring of, China is a policy inimical to the interests of a future Burma – a fact laid bare by the recent gales of financial turmoil. It is up to Burma's leaders to recognize this, while ensuring that the Burmese state effectively prioritizes the interests of the Burmese people in dealing with China – without being unjustly abused in return.
66,000 people displaced by Myanmar army abuses
http://news.indiainfo.com/2008/10/22/0810221441_66000_people_displaced_by_myanmar_army_abuses_aid_group.html
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 14:39 [IST]
Bangkok: Up to 66,000 civilians have been forced to flee their homes in eastern Myanmar in the past year because of systematic abuses by the country's ruling military, an aid group said today.
The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), which provides aid to hundreds of thousands of refugees who flee Myanmar, formally known as Burma, said in a new report that the junta s actions could constitute crimes against humanity.
"The extent of persecution and suffering in the border areas has been largely unseen and under-reported for decades," said Jack Dunford, TBBC s executive director.
"Yet the same brutal army that crushed protests on city streets last September marauds with impunity in rural Burma, bringing fear and disrupting the lives of villagers on a day to day basis."
The TBBC report accuses the military of systematically forcing villagers from their homes in Myanmar s eastern Karen and Shan states.
Forced labour, land confiscation, and restricting people s access to farmland and markets also has a devastating economic impact, it added.
The group said that their findings appeared to support London-based Amnesty International s report that the violations in eastern Myanmar "meet the legal threshold to constitute crimes against humanity."
Amnesty said in a June report that Myanmar was committing crimes against humanity by targeting civilians during its military offensive against ethnic rebel armies who have been battling the junta s rule for decades.
Civilians living in the areas affected have been subjected to abuses including torture, forced labour, killings, arbitrary arrest and the destruction of homes, villages, farmland and food stocks, Amnesty said.
Source : PTI
India launches first moon mission
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/081022/afp/081022081211asiapacificnews.html
Wednesday October 22, 4:12 PM
Photo: AFP
SRIHARIKOTA, India (AFP) - India successfully launched its first lunar mission Wednesday, marking a major boost for the country's space programme and a new step in the fast-developing Asian space race.
Cheers rang out at mission control as the unmanned lunar orbiting spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 was launched with an Indian-built rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on the southeastern coast.
Officials said the lift-off, which took place in cloudy skies at 6:22 am (0052 GMT), was a "great success", with the rocket placing the craft into a transfer orbit around the globe within 19 minutes.
"Our scientific community has once again done the country proud and the entire nation salutes them," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a message from Japan, where he was on an official visit.
The head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Madhavan Nair, said it was a "historic moment" for the country.
"It has been a remarkable performance by the launch vehicle," he said of the lift-off from the national space centre in the state of Andhra Pradesh, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Chennai.
ADVERTISEMENT
ISRO is sending the Chandrayaan-1 on a two-year orbital mission to provide a detailed map of the mineral, chemical and topographical characteristics of the moon's surface. It is expected to reach lunar orbit in 15 days.
The mission, which will also include the sending of a probe onto the lunar surface, will cost India 80 million dollars.
"Today what we have charted is a remarkable journey for an Indian spacecraft to go to the moon and try to unravel the mysteries of the Earth's closest celestial body and its only natural satellite," Nair said.
India is hoping the mission will boost its space programme into the same league as regional powerhouses Japan and China, and Nair said ISRO was aiming at a manned space flight by 2015, with work on a two-person capsule already underway.
As well as looking to carve out a larger slice of the lucrative commercial satellite launch market, India, Japan and China also see their space programmes as an important symbol of their international stature and economic development.
The launch was carried live on most Indian television channels -- with one channel using the theme music for "Star Wars" to accompany the countdown.
Some critics, however, have questioned whether it makes sense to spend so much money on space when hundreds of millions of Indians still live in dire poverty.
India started its space programme in 1963, developing its own satellites and launch vehicles to reduce dependence on overseas agencies.
It first staked its case for a share of the commercial launch market by sending an Italian satellite into orbit in April last year. In January, it launched an Israeli spy satellite in the face of Iranian protests.
But it still has a long way to go to catch up with China which, together with the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency, is already well established in the commercial launch sector.
Chinese officials have spoken of a manned mission to the moon in the future, after following the United States and the former Soviet Union last month by carrying out a space walk, and wants to establish an orbiting space lab.
Japan has also been boosting its space programme and has set a goal of sending an astronaut to the moon by 2020.
Japan's first lunar probe, Kaguya, was successfully launched in September last year.
In addition to the commercial ramifications, the development of a space race in Asia has security implications, with the potential for developing military applications such as intelligence gathering and space-based weapons.
Earlier this year, Japan scrapped a decades-old ban on the military use of space, hoping to remove any legal obstacles to building more advanced spy satellites.
South Korea, a late starter in the space race, has launched three commercial satellites since 1995 and launched its first military communications satellite in 2006.
Australia extends sanctions against Myanmar junta
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/10/22/asia/AS-Australia-Myanmar.php
The Associated PressPublished: October 22, 2008
CANBERRA, Australia: Australia extended financial sanctions against another 45 of Myanmar's military leaders Wednesday as a protest against the junta's lack of progress toward democracy.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said the new list of 463 individuals singled out for sanctions included members of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, government ministers and military officers as well as the regime's business associates and relatives.
It replaces a list of 418 people announced a year ago after the junta brutally crushed pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.
"This was, unfortunately, only the most recent very public instance of the brutal treatment meted out to civil society in that country and to those seeking to make Burma a better society and a nation based on democratic norms and ideals," Smith told Parliament.
"Australia will continue to press Burma's regime for meaningful political progress toward democracy," he added.
Today in Asia - Pacific
India launches first unmanned orbiter to the moonNext week, our hero chooses a MédocUrban cowboys take on Delhi's sacred cowsSmith said the detention of 2,000 political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is "a major impediment to political progress."
The junta's initial response to the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in May was "very disappointing" and the referendum days later that approved Myanmar's new military-backed constitution was "a sham," Smith said.
The cyclone killed more than 78,000 people and left another 56,000 missing, according to the government — the worst natural disaster in the nation's modern history.
Australia has long banned defense exports to Myanmar and denies travel visas to members of the regime.
"ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းရယ္ကုန္စင္"
(ဒီကဗ်ာေလးကို Exiles ေတြအားလုံးဖတ္သင့္တယ္ထင္လို ့ထပ္တင္လိုက္ပါတယ္၊ကိုသက္လင္းရဲ ့အီးေမးကိုရျပီးသားလူေတြကိုေတာ့အေနွာက္အယွက္ျဖစ္ရင္ေတာင္းပန္ပါတယ္။)
[Ye Yint Thet Zwe]
နီယြန္လွ်ပ္စစ္မီးေရာင္နဲ ့
ၿမိဳ ့ၾကီးက ထိုးထိုးေထာင္ေထာင္ျဖစ္ေနပံုမ်ား
ကိုယ့္အနာဂတ္ကို
ကိုယ့္မွန္ထဲ ျပန္ျမင္ရသလိုမ်ိဳး
သူမ်ားအိမ္ထဲမွာ
ကိုယ့္ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ပစၥည္းေတြနဲ ့
စတိုင္က်ေနခဲ့ရ ညမ်ားစြာ
ဘ၀က ေမ့ေလ်ာ့ျခင္းဆိပ္ခံတံတားမွာ
ခန္ ့ခန္ ့ညားညား ေက်ာက္ခ်လို ့ ၊
လူႀကီးလူေကာင္းမ်ားပါပဲ
ဒါေပမယ့္
ကိုယ့္တိုင္းျပည္အတြက္ဆို
သူတပါးရဲ ့လည္မ်ိဳ တက္နင္းရဲသူေတြရဲ ့
အိပ္မက္တခုထဲမွာ
ငါတို ့ ေရႊထီးေဆာင္းလို ့ေကာင္းဆဲ
သယံဇာတ ဘာမွမရတဲ့ေနရာမွာ
ငါတို ့ ေအာက္ေျခသိမ္းအလုပ္ေတြ
လုပ္လို ့ေကာင္းေနဆဲ
လေရာင္က မနာလိုစရာ
တသြင္သြင္ ျဖာဆင္းလို ့ ၊
အေရွ ့ေတာင္အာရွရဲ ့
ကုန္းေျမတန္းေလးအဆံုးမွာ
နာက်ည္းစရာကို
နာရေကာင္းမွန္း မသိႏိုင္ေတာ့ေလာက္ေအာင္
ေမွာ္အတတ္ေတြနဲ ့
ေပ်ာ္တတ္ေအာင္ဖမ္းစား
မစို ့မပို ့ေပးတဲ့ နည္းပညာမ်ားအၾကား
ပညာလိုသူေတြက ပညာရွာၾက
သကာလိုသူေတြက သကာရွာၾက
ဘ၀ရဲ ့ ေနထိုင္နည္းအတတ္ပညာထဲ
ဘာဘာညာညာ မလို
မ်ိဳးခ်စ္စိတ္သာလိုတယ္
ပင္လယ္မွာ ေနမကြယ္ခင္
ကိုယ့္ကိုယ္ကို အကုန္အစင္ျမင္တတ္မယ္ဆိုရင္ေပါ့ ။
Internet use 'good for the brain'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7667610.stm
Areas activated by reading a book in the brain of an experienced web user
For middle-aged and older people at least, using the internet helps boost brain power, research suggests.
A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulated centres in the brain that controlled decision-making and complex reasoning.
The researchers say this might even help to counteract the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.
The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults
Professor Gary Small
University of California Los Angeles
As the brain ages, a number of changes occur, including shrinkage and reductions in cell activity, which can affect performance.
It has long been thought that activities which keep the brain active, such as crossword puzzles, may help minimise that impact - and the latest study suggests that surfing the web can be added to the list.
Web use stimulates much more activity in the same brain
Lead researcher Professor Gary Small said: "The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerised technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults.
"Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function."
The latest study was based on 24 volunteers aged between 55 and 76. Half were experienced internet users, the rest were not.
Compared with reading
Each volunteer underwent a brain scan while performing web searches and book-reading tasks.
Both types of task produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.
However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning - but only in those who were experienced web users.
Brain activity in web newcomers: similar for reading and internet use
The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet's wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.
However, they suggested that newcomers to the web had not quite grasped the strategies needed to successfully carry out a web search.
Professor Smith said: "A simple, everyday task like searching the web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older."
Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: "These fascinating findings add to previous research suggesting that middle-aged and older people can reduce their risk of dementia by taking part in regular mentally stimulating activities.
"Older web users - 'silver surfers' - are doing precisely this.
"Frequent social interactions, regular exercise and maintaining a balanced diet can also reduce dementia risk."
Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Use it or lose it may well be a positive message to keep people active but there is very little real evidence that keeping the brain exercised with puzzles, games or other activities can promote cognitive health and reduce the risk of dementia."
Mobile Phone Use While Pregnant Causes Neurological Problems in Babies
Related CounterThink Cartoons:
http://www.naturalnews.com/024386.html
Thursday, October 02, 2008 by: David Gutierrez
Key concepts: Mobile phone, Health and Mobile phones
(NaturalNews) The first large-scale study to look at the connection between mobile phone use in pregnancy and later behavioral problems in children has overwhelmingly come back with a finding that such phone use places undeveloped babies at risk.
Researchers from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Aarhus, Denmark surveyed 13,519 women who had given birth in Denmark in the late 1990s about their mobile phone use habits while pregnant, and their children's use of the phones up until the age of seven. Due to the fact that cell phone use was less widespread a decade ago, about half of the women in the study had not used the phones while pregnant, or used them only infrequently.
Women who used handsets two or three times per day while pregnant were 54 percent more likely to give birth to children who developed behavioral problems by the time they reached school age than women who did not use them. The risk of behavioral problems increased along with the mother's mobile phone use during pregnancy.
If children used the phones themselves while very young, they were 80 percent more likely to suffer behavioral difficulties, 25 percent more likely to suffer from emotional problems, 34 percent more likely to have trouble relating to their peers, 35 percent more likely to be hyperactive and 49 percent more likely to have conduct problems than children who did not use mobile phones.
The findings were published in the journal Epidemiology.
One of the lead researchers, Leeka Kheifets of UCLA, had previously stated in writing that there was "no consistent evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to radiofrequency fields [including those from mobile phones] and any adverse health effect." A well-known skeptic of the connection between mobile phone use and health or behavioral problems, Kheifets admitted to being surprised by the current study's findings.
The researchers attempted to demonstrate that some other confounding factor - such as smoking during pregnancy, socioeconomic status or a family history of mental illness - had caused the behavioral effects observed. But when they corrected for these factors, the contribution of mobile phones actually became statistically stronger.
Saying that they did not know of any biological mechanism by which mobile phones could cause behavioral problems, the researchers urged that their results "should be interpreted with caution." They also suggested that there might be some correlation between cellular phone use and some other factor that leads to behavioral difficulties - such as neglect by a mother that spends too much time on the phone.
But they conceded that "if [the results] are real they would have major public health implications."
Sam Millham of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the University of Washington School of Public Health, said that he is certain the study results are accurate. Recent research conducted in Canada on pregnant rats demonstrated that radiation similar to that from mobile phones caused structural changes to the brains of the fetuses, he said.
Millham is considered a pioneer in researching the connection between mobile phone use and negative health effects.
The study's results came not long after the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection released new warnings about the use of mobile phones by pregnant women and children. Use of cellular phones by children can lead to short-term "disruption of memory, decline of attention, diminishing learning and cognitive abilities, increased irritability," while long-term use can cause "depressive syndrome [and] degeneration of the nervous structures of the brain."
The committee counseled pregnant women and children to limit their exposure to mobile phones, warning that the health risk from the devices "is not much lower than the risk to children's health from tobacco or alcohol."
Sources for this story include: www.independent.co.uk.
Buzz up!vote nowBoost this article on YahooBuzz! Click "BuzzUp!"
Get articles like this delivered to you FREE in our popular email newsletter
Exposed: 10 Facts about the Breast Cancer Industry You're Not Supposed to Know (opinion)
http://www.naturalnews.com/024536.html
Sunday, October 19, 2008 by: Mike Adams (see all articles by this author)
Key concepts: Cancer, Breast cancer and Cancer industry
NaturalNews) With Breast Cancer Awareness month fully upon us once again, retail stores have been invaded with everything pink, including "pink ribbon" candies and personal care products made with blatantly cancer-causing ingredients. Retail grocery stores like Safeway even hit up customers for donations at the cash register, promising to raise funds to find "the cure for cancer."
Consumers of course, have virtually no idea where the funds they donate actually go, nor do they know the truths about breast cancer they'll never be told by conventional cancer non-profit organizations. In this article, I'll reveal ten important myths about breast cancer, and the truths that can save your life.
Myth #1: Breast Cancer is not preventable
The Truth: Up to 98% of breast cancer cases can be prevented through diet, nutritional supplements, sunshine and exercise
It's true: Breast cancer can be almost entirely prevented through commonsense changes in diet, the addition of anti-cancer nutritional supplements, boosting vitamin D creation from sunlight, avoiding exposure to toxic chemicals in consumer products, pursuing regular exercise and eating a live foods diet.
The breast cancer industry -- which depends on the continuation of cancer for its profits and employment -- has so far refused to teach women even basic cancer prevention strategies (such as increasing the intake of vitamin D, which prevents 77% of all cancers). See: http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html
Myth #2: Pink ribbon products are sold to raise money to support breast cancer victims.
The Truth: Nearly 100% of the funds are used to recruit more breast cancer patients into highly-lucrative treatments that do more harm than good.
You know where all that money goes that you donate to the "search for the cure" and other cancer scams? Virtually none of it goes to actually teach women how to prevent cancer. The World Health Organization says 70% of all cancers are preventable, but the breast cancer industry helps zero percent of women actually prevent it.
Those funds actually go to recruiting breast cancer patients by offering "free" mammograms. This is the clever recruitment strategy of the cancer industry. It's sort of like a greasy garage mechanic offering a "free" checkup on your car's transmission. It's in his financial interest to find something wrong (or to break something), just like it's in the financial interests of the cancer industry to diagnose a women with cancer and scare her into expensive, high-profit treatments like chemotherapy, radiation therapy or cancer surgery. (Mammogram false positives are commonplace...)
Want proof of where these funds go? Check out this grant list at the Komen for the Cure organization, and you'll see it's almost entirely spent on recruiting more women with mammograms: http://www.komenphoenix.org/site/c.nsKZ...
When you read that list, note that there is not a single grant provided for nutritional education to teach women how to prevent cancer with vitamin D, cruciferous vegetables, anti-cancer herbs, supplements or to avoid dangerous cancer-causing food ingredients like sodium nitrite, MSG and chemical sweeteners.
Myth #3: The only proven treatments for breast cancer are chemotherapy and radiation
The Truth: Chemotherapy doesn't work and radiation causes cancer
Chemotherapy is a fraud, plain and simple. It's as ludicrous as poisoning patients with mercury and calling it medicine (which is something doctors did a hundred years ago, by the way). There is absolutely no reliable scientific evidence showing that chemotherapy has any positive effect whatsoever on breast cancer. Try to find the science yourself: It doesn't exist!
Sure, there's evidence that chemotherapy shrinks tumors. Too bad, however, that tumor size is irrelevant. Artificially reducing the size of a tumor does nothing to reverse the physiology of cancer in a patient's body. It doesn't initiate the healing that needs to take place to reverse cancer and stay cancer free. And this doesn't even take into account the quality of life issues here: Chemotherapy doesn't help people LIVE any longer, but it sure does make them DIE longer!
Myth #4: Chemotherapy is safe and doesn't cause permanent damage to your health
The Truth: Chemotherapy causes vomiting, hair loss, muscle loss, brain damage, heart damage, kidney damage and liver damage. Much of this damage is permanent. Read these stories to learn more:
Cancer Drug Causes Permanent Brain Damage
http://www.naturalnews.com/024475.html
Chemotherapy Causes Brain Shrinkage
http://www.naturalnews.com/021200.html
Chemotherapy Found to Cause Permanent Brain Damage
http://www.naturalnews.com/020665.html
Myth #5: Regular mammograms are the best way to detect cancer
The Truth: Mammograms harm 10 women for every one woman they help
Here's part of a story we published in 2006, called Breast Cancer Screening Harms Ten Women for Every One That it Helps (http://www.naturalnews.com/020829.html)
"A new study by researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Denmark found that mammograms may harm ten times as many women as they help.
The researchers examined the benefits and negative effects of seven breast cancer screening programs on 500,000 women in the United States, Canada, Scotland and Sweden. The study's authors found that for every 2,000 women who received mammograms over a 10-year period, only one would have her life prolonged, but 10 would endure unnecessary and potentially harmful treatments."
Got that? For every 2,000 women receiving mammograms, only ONE would have her life extended at all. TEN women, though, would be harmed with chemotherapy, radiation or mastectomies.
What the study didn't point out, by the way, is that all these treatments are highly profitable for the cancer industry. That's the real reason why mammograms are pushed so aggressively onto women. It's not because mammograms detect cancer; it's because mammograms make them money.
To the breast cancer industry, a woman is nothing more than a piece of meat with a cash reward attached to it. The push for mammography is a marketing ploy designed to keep women scared, misinformed and lined up to be poisoned with chemotherapy while they shell out their life savings for treatments that, for most of them, aren't even medically justified!
That's why I say the breast cancer industry is, by any honest assessment, a crime against women. In America, husbands who beat their wives are considered criminals. They're arrested and locked away. But those very same men, when wearing a doctor's coat, can assault women with chemicals, slice off their breasts with scalpels and even kill those women... all with impunity. There's not a single breast cancer doctor who has ever been arrested for the death of a patient.
The true history of western medicine's violence against women
In time, of course, this will change. Medical violence against women is a crime, regardless of whether the weapon is a fist, a baseball bat or a syringe full of chemicals that will cause permanent damage to her vital organs. In time, chemotherapy will be outlawed and breast cancer doctors will be put out of work or prosecuted for their crimes against women. Perhaps they'll even be castrated as part of a "fitting" punishment.
To all the women reading this, note carefully the history of western medicine and its numerous assaults on women over the years. Do you know where the term "hysterectomy" comes from? It comes from the belief by male doctors that women's emotions were "hysterical," and they believed the best way to "cure" women of their hysteria was to violently cut her reproductive organs out of her body.
The procedure was widely adopted by male surgeons and used for well over a hundred years to treat women who were diagnosed as suffering from virtually every kind of emotional variance you can imagine. Doctors who didn't use scalpels to remove these organs from a woman's body often resorted to so-called "pelvic massages" -- a medicalized raping of the female patient by the male doctor, of course.
Even today, tens of thousands of hysterectomies are performed each year with no medical justification whatsoever. Doctors continue to view women's bodies as diseased and abnormal, surgically removing their breasts and reproductive organs for no justifiable reason whatsoever. It's even being done today as a cancer prevention procedure, against women who have no cancer at all!
Western medicine's treatment of breast cancer patients today is little more than an extension of hundreds of years of medical violence against women by the male-dominated medical establishment.
Want proof? Notice that cancer doctors never advise men to surgically remove their testicles as a way to "prevent" testicular cancer? That's because the male surgeons performing these operations prefer to maim women, not men.
If you have the stomach for it, read the rest of the truth about how conventional doctors and surgeons commit outrageous medical violence against women and children even today: http://www.naturalnews.com/019930.html
Myth #6: BRCA-positive women should consider mastectomies to prevent cancer
The Truth: Cruciferous vegetables target BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, preventing cancer with nutrition
Women who are BRCA positive are being scared into utterly unnecessary double mastectomies -- a procedure that benefits no one except the surgeon. What nobody is telling these women is that cruciferous vegetables contain anti-cancer nutrients that specifically target BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, protecting these women from breast cancer.
All it takes is a single ounce of fresh broccoli juice each day, or fresh sprouts, superfoods or other nutrient-dense foods or juices consumed daily.
Cancer doctors, of course, conveniently forget to tell women about these little facts. It would hurt their business if women knew how to prevent cancer on their own, at home, with everyday groceries and simple herbs.
Here's text from one study that might interest you. It shows that I3C (from broccoli) and genistein (from fermented soy) inhibit estrogen-stimulated receptor activity in a dose-dependent fashion:
"...we showed that I3C induces BRCA1 expression and that both I3C and BRCA1 inhibit oestrogen (E2)-stimulated oestrogen receptor (ER-) activity in human breast cancer cells. We now report that both I3C and genistein induce the expression of both breast cancer susceptibility genes (BRCA1 and BRCA2) in breast (MCF-7 and T47D) and prostate (DU-145 and LNCaP) cancer cell types, in a time- and dose-dependent fashion.
http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v94/n...
Conventional cancer doctors, of course, refuse to tell women about scientific evidence like this. If women could prevent breast cancer with I3C, why would they need cancer doctors? The answer, of course, is that they wouldn't. You can buy I3C, but the way, right here: http://www.vitacost.com/NSI-I3C-Indole-...
The FDA, of course, won't allow companies selling I3C supplements to tell you the scientifically-validated truth about their anti-cancer benefits. It's all part of the censorship and oppression that characterizes today's cancer industry. The U.S. government, of course, is the co-conspirator in this sad tragedy of misinformation.
It is the job of the FDA and the cancer industry to keep women stupid, uninformed and scared when it comes to breast cancer. The last thing they want is for women to be nutritionally literate.
Myth #7: The cancer non-profits are searching for a cure for cancer
The Truth: Even if one was found, they would never allow a cure to be publicized: It would destroy the cancer treatment industry
It's the great scam of the cancer industry: We're searching for a cure, they claim! Never mind the fact that they've been using this same con since the late 60's, when they claimed to be only a few million dollars away from curing cancer forever.
The search for "the cure" is pure deception. It's a clever con to take money from people for all those silly pink ribbon activities, but the truth is that the cancer industry doesn't believe there's such a thing as cure. Just ask the FDA, the AMA or any state health licensing board: Anyone claiming to have a cancer "cure" is immediately considered a quack. Over the last several decades, countless doctors researching genuine cancer cures have been arrested, imprisoned or run out of the country. Read about Stanislaw Burzynski to learn about just one example: http://www.cancure.org/burzynski_instit...
Finally, even if they actually find a "cure" (which they won't, since that would destroy the profits of the cancer industry), do you think they would give it away for free? Of course not! They'd charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for it, milking the maximum profits out of a terrified population for their newest wonder drug.
Notice, by the way, that not a single conventional breast cancer non-profit group -- nor any drug company -- has announced that its breakthrough cancer drugs will be given away for free. And that leads me to this question: If they're not planning on giving away the cure for free, then why are you giving them money for free to pay for their R&D?
Why should people donate money to the wealthiest corporations in the world (the drug companies) who are going to take their money and use it to develop a new wave of drugs that are sold to cancer victims at outrageous price markups sometimes exceeding 550,000% of the cost of the chemical ingredients?
The truth is, anyone who donates money for any such "search for the cure" is being conned outright. There's a sucker born every minute, P.T. Barnum famously said. What he neglected to add is that most of them are now buying pink products and thinking they're helping find a "cure" for cancer.
Don't be suckered. Keep your money, or invest it in vitamin D supplements or anti-cancer herbs. You want to cure cancer? Cure it in your own body first. It's a lot less expensive, and you get to keep your hair, too.
Myth #8: There is no cure for breast cancer
The Truth: There are MANY natural cures for breast cancer available right now
Just a few hours of research will turn up numerous natural cures for cancer: Vitamin D, cat's claw herbs, the Essiac formula, medicinal mushrooms, spirulina, cruciferous vegetables, green tea, graviola herbs, Chinese medicinal herbs, oxygen therapy, alkalizing water therapies and much more.
All these cures have one thing in common: They are ALL suppressed by the FDA and FTC. Telling the truth about anti-cancer foods, herbs or supplements is now a criminal offense in America.
Myth #9: If my mother had breast cancer, I'll get it too
The Truth: Breast Cancer is not caused by bad genes; it's caused by bad diets
This is another common lie told to woman by cancer doctors to scare them into medically unnecessary cancer "treatments" (which can kill you or harm you). Did you know that radiation treatment for one breast actually causes cancer in the OTHER breast? See: http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000366_...
Your genes don't control your health, but what you put in your mouth and on your skin has near-total control over your health! If your parents had cancer, they were no doubt eating cancer-causing foods (processed meats) and not using anti-cancer foods, superfoods, herbs and supplements. They were also likely deficient in vitamin D, and they probably didn't drink fresh anti-cancer vegetables on a daily basis (www.JuiceFeasting.com). Lastly, they no doubt had regular exposure to cancer-causing chemicals: Cigarette smoke, chemical solvents, perfume chemicals, household cleaners, pesticides, skin care products, conventional cosmetics, etc.
Read the truth about processed meats: http://www.naturalnews.com/022288.html
Myth #10: Sunlight causes cancer
The Truth: Sunlight generates Vitamin D in your skin, which prevents 78% of ALL cancers
The disinformation put out by the cancer industry about sunlight has reached a level of absurdity that's virtually unmatched in the history of medicine. If you believe what the American Cancer Society tells you (still being suckered?), sunlight causes cancer!
Yes, that's right: Sunlight causes cancer, they claim. According to the entire cancer industry (and most dermatologists, too), you'd be much better off hiding in a cave, or living your life under fluorescent lights or smothered in a layer of toxic sunscreen chemicals (which actually DO cause cancer, by the way).
Somehow, the human race has miraculously managed to survived 350,000 years of natural sunlight without be obliterated. This is nothing short of astonishing, given that sunlight is so deadly. It sort of makes me wonder how the human race survived at all, with sunlight striking any given area of the Earth, say, 50% of the time. Did our ancestors live underground?
The ploy here is so obvious that it's child's play to expose their strategy: Cancer industry authorities know that vitamin D prevents 77% of all cancers. Since sunlight exposure causes the skin to generate vitamin D in the human body (for free, no less), the cancer industry has come to the realization that in order for it to continue surviving (and exploiting cancer patients), it has to scare people away from anything that might actually prevent or cure cancer.
This is the whole reason behind the sunlight scare campaigns, of course. It's all just a clever profit strategy to keep people sick and diseased by enforcing widespread vitamin D deficiency across the human population. Note, too, that this deficiency is especially prominent in men and women of darker skin color, which means the cancer industry's whole campaign against sunlight is filled with disturbing racial overtones that smack of genocide. (Ever wonder why breast cancer is FAR more aggressive in black women and white women? It's the vitamin D deficiency caused by the skin color, of course. But cancer docs never tell their black patients anything about it...)
Remember this: Healthy people with abundant vitamin D levels in their blood don't get cancer and they almost never catch colds. They also don't need vaccines, by the way. These are three huge profit centers for conventional medicine: Cancer, vaccines and colds. This is why the industry goes to such great lengths to (hilariously) try to discredit the sun.
It's hilarious because the sun, of course, is the source of ALL life on our planet. Without the sun, there would be no plants, no bacteria, no animals, no fish and certainly no humans. The sun is the single most important source of life on our planet, and without it, we'd all die in a matter of a few hours (from the cold alone). That the cancer industry would declare war on the sun is just a disturbing example of how far removed modern medicine is from the real world.
Why the cancer industry is dangerous to women
The cancer industry people are living in a world of self-reinforced fictions, where sunlight is bad and chemotherapy chemicals are good; where food is useless but pharmaceuticals are essential. Almost everything said to you by a conventional cancer doctor is the opposite of what's real, and yet they believe their own delusions only because those delusions are so widely shared by their colleagues. It is circular logic at its worst, driven by arrogance and greed, and totally lacking any discernable degree of intellectual honesty or compassion for the value of a human life.
The cancer industry is, in a very real way, a danger to the safety of men and women alike. It is a kind of home-grown medical terrorism, through which the application of fear and disinformation results in massive corporate profits that are only exceeded by the body count of our dead women; our mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and nieces who fall victim to conventional cancer treatments. They are being lost to a medical regime wielding weapons of mass destruction: Chemical weapons (chemotherapy), radiological weapons (radiation) and weapons of sharp steel (scalpels).
These weapons of medical violence are being directed at our women for one purpose only: To secure profits that go into the hands of a few wealthy men who sit at the top of these organizations, raking in fifty-million-dollar salaries while the cancer treatment centers send women home in body bags.
It is the ultimate act of cruelty to promise a woman "treatment" and then deliver poison.
It is the ultimate act of violence to promise a woman "healing" and then mutilate her body.
The cancer industry, as operated today, is ultimately a criminal organization engaged in acts of medical violence against women.
Why women should revolt against the cancer industry
Even worse, it is being staffed by women, cheered by women and supported by women. In World War II, before the Jews were exterminated, Nazi soldiers pried the gold fillings out of their mouths. The fillings were sold off, and the money went to two places: The pockets of the top Nazi commanders, and the continued funding of the prison camps and extermination chambers. The Jewish prisoners, in other words, paid for their own gas chamber treatments using the gold right out of their own mouths.
Today, women are paying for their own cancer industry chemical assaults using the dollars right out of their own pockets. Those who support the conventional breast cancer non-profits are feeding the very beast that may someday destroy them and send them home poisoned, emaciated, or mutilated beyond repair.
And you know what the pink ribbon non-profits will do to help these women? WIGS. They'll give them wigs to cover their hairless heads.
Chemotherapy victim or concentration camp prisoner? They both produce these same results. Zyklon B gas, by the way, was manufactured by a pharmaceutical company.
It is no coincidence that women who receive chemotherapy visually resemble the women of the Nazi concentration camps. They become emaciated through dangerous losses of muscle mass and bone mass. They lose their hair, vomit their food and suffer the devastating effects of massive nutrient loss.
They are, in effect, both prisoners of the same system of control and violence against women. It is a system that has existed for thousands of years, taking on new names and new faces as it shifts from one corner of the planet to another.
Today, that system of abuse and violence against women has a corporate logo, a cute pink symbol and a clever slogan. It has hundreds of offices all across the country, and thousands of pink products in retail stores. It is a system of violence against women, painted pink and repackaged as something that cares for women; and in that disguise, aided by the purchasing dollars of gullible consumers, it is ensnaring women in a system of such great evil that it can only be accurately compared to historical events like the Holocaust.
May God save our women from the cancer industry, lest we lose four generations to this modern chemical holocaust that has been unleashed against our mothers, daughters, grandmothers and sisters. And if our government will not protect us from this home-grown terrorism that seeks to turn the bodies of women into corporate profit centers, I hope that the People of America will one day wake up and take all justified (non-violent) measures to protect themselves from the cancer industry.
It is odd, I think, that women will protest in front of abortion clinics in order to save the life of an unborn child, and yet that same woman will say nothing when a cancer doctor destroys the life of her own mother or daughter. It is time to start protesting the cancer clinics and cancer non-profits. It is time to end this chemical holocaust and this medical violence against women. The women should be marching against mammograms and chemotherapy, demanding the arrest and prosecution of cancer surgeons who perform unjustified double mastectomies.
Throughout history, women have fought hard for the right to vote, to pursue an education and to be heard. I believe it is time that women exercised those rights to protect their freedoms and their lives from the conventional cancer industry.
Buzz up!199 votesBoost this article on YahooBuzz! Click "BuzzUp!"
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He's also a veteran of the software technology industry, having founded a personalized mass email software product used to deliver email newsletters to subscribers. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and regularly pursues cycling, nature photography, Capoeira and Pilates. Known as the 'Health Ranger,' Adams' personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org
Get articles like this delivered to you FREE in our popular email newsletter
Posts
