Chinese honey now reported among import dangers

WorldNetDaily.com | Jun 26, 2007

15 senators urge FDA to get tough on adulterated sweetener

Bottom line: if it is made in China, don’t buy it and definitely don’t put in in your mouth! Investigate the foods you buy and stay out of the mainstream supermarkets if possible. They are marketing globalization and bad health for a profit. America is quite capable of producing its own high-quality natural organic foods including honey. Boycott pesticide and antibiotic-laden foods and support your local organic producers and markets. At the same time boycott GMO foods which are bad for you, bad for the environment and especially bad for bees. If we are to have a steady supply of honey, we have to ban genetically modified crops which are destroying the bee populations. This is a very serious issue and we need to get really pissed off about it and put a stop to it!

PW

WASHINGTON – First it was poisoned pet food.

Then came the warnings that imported seafood was unfit for human consumption.

Then it was recalls of toys, fireworks, electrical products and much more.

Now China is under fire for shipping to the U.S. honey tainted with a potentially life-threatening antibiotic as well as adulterating exports with sugar.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., is blowing the whistle on the latest China import scandal. He is calling on the Food and Drug Administration to implement bans on tainted honey, most of which comes from China.

“Almost 70 percent of the honey consumed in our country is imported – most of it from China,” says Conrad. “Unfortunately, China has a long track record of importing adulterated honey and engaging in other fraudulent conduct in the honey trade. These actions not only hurt honey producers in North Dakota and across the country, they also present needless health risks to our consumers.”

In a bipartisan letter signed by 15 senators, Conrad urged the FDA to act on a petition for a standard of identity for honey. Such a regulation would provide a uniform, legal definition of honey purity levels that would aid regulators. Imported honey is an ingredient found in a wide array of products including cereals, snacks, meats and beverages and is also a common ingredient in many health and beauty products.

In 2002 and 2003, the FDA and U.S. Customs seized multiple shipments of Chinese honey at U.S. ports which were contaminated with chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that is banned in food products in the U.S. because of its potentially life threatening effects.

More recently, there are reports that imported honey is being blended with sugars or being labeled as a blend to avoid U.S. duties. This honey is subsequently sold to U.S. processors as pure honey. A long-time supporter of North Dakota’s honey producers, Conrad recently called on the secretary of agriculture to address the growing problem of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious condition destroying colonies of honeybees across the country.

North Dakota ranks No. 1 among honey producing states in the nation.

Conrad’s letter cited recent scandals over China imports as a reason for renewed concern about honey.

“Recent alarming reports of adulterated food ingredients imported from China raise very serious concerns about the threats posed to U.S. consumers by impure and unfit food imports, and about the steps being taken by the U.S. government to detect and stop such imports,” he wrote. “In this regard, we have particular concerns about imports of honey into the United States.”

He pointed out that the antibiotic chloramphenicol is a food contaminant that can cause idiosyncratic aplastic anemia.

“As shown on the FDA’s on-line listing of import refusals, the growing number of import refusals for impure, adulterated or otherwise unfit products from China far exceeds refusals for other countries,” wrote Conrad. “We fear that these reported incidents may only be a portion of a much larger problem. We are particularly concerned about common practices that may enable those who adulterate or mislabel imported honey to readily escape detection. For example, the continually changing list of enterprises selling honey from China, and the extensive history of fraud and illegal transshipment in honey imports from China may make it especially difficult to determine the actual producers of impure imported honey.”

Conrad’s action comes in the wake of similar concerns expressed by Sen. Dick Durban, D-Ill., and Sen. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.. Those followed WND’s series of explosive investigative reports into threats to life and limb from Chinese products, reports that got enough attention from U.S. lawmakers to begin the process of developing standards and increasing inspections.

“I think we have reached a point, unfortunately, where ‘made in China’ is now a warning label in the United States,” said Durbin.

Durbin specifically referenced statistics gathered in WND’s investigation of product recalls from China. WND found most of the Consumer Product Safety recalls involved imports from China. Imports from China were recalled by the CPSC twice as often as products made everywhere else in the world, including the U.S., the study of government reports showed.

Concerns with China imports began with the pet food scandal that killed or maimed up to 39,000 American cats and dogs. WND’s investigation followed into imports of foods meant for human consumption. The New York Times and other major U.S. media followed.

As WND reported, China, the leading exporter of seafood to the U.S., is raising most of its fish products in water contaminated with raw sewage and compensating by using dangerous drugs and chemicals, many of which are banned by the FDA.

The stunning news followed WND’s report that FDA inspectors report tainted food imports from China are being rejected with increasing frequency because they are filthy, are contaminated with pesticides and tainted with carcinogens, bacteria and banned drugs.

China consistently has topped the list of countries whose products were refused by the FDA – and that list includes many countries, including Mexico and Canada, who export far more food products to the U.S. than China.

While less than half of Asia has access to sewage treatment plants, aquaculture – the raising of seafood products – has become big business on the continent, especially in China.

In China, No. 1 in aquaculture in the world, 3.7 billion tons of sewage is discharged into rivers, lakes and coastal water – some of which are used by the industry. Only 45 percent of China has any sewage-treatment facilities, putting the country behind the rest of Asia.

Durbin and Sen. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., held joint talks with FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach and Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong over the contaminated shipments from China. The senators claimed a victory in the form of a proposed agreement between the FDA and Chinese government and a commitment for increased food inspections from the FDA.

“This proposed agreement between the FDA and the Chinese government is a significant breakthrough in terms of food safety – and American consumers stand to be the big winners,” said Durbin.

In addition, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson raised the issue last month with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi. When she returned to China, Beijing promised to overhaul its food safety rules. Also, China sentenced to death Liu Pingjun, the former head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

China exports about $2 billion of food products to the U.S. every year and the total is rapidly growing. According to all U.S. food authorities, China is by far the biggest violator of food safety standards.

China is the second largest source of imports for the U.S. while the U.S. is China’s largest overseas market and second largest source of foreign direct investment.

Web radio stations set for ‘Day of Silence’ protest

Reuters | Jun 25, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Web radio broadcasters across the United States were preparing for a ‘Day of Silence’ on June 26 to protest the U.S. government’s plans to boost royalty payments to artists and record companies by more than 300 percent, when their music is played online.

“These proposals will bankrupt the industry,” Jake Ward, a spokesman for the lobbying group SaveNetRadio Coalition, said on Monday. “They’re killing the Golden Goose.”

The ‘Day of Silence’ is being organized by SaveNetRadio Coalition, whose 14,000 members include: Yahoo Inc., Viacom Inc, and RealNetworks Inc.

SaveNetRadio said the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board’s March decision to boost royalty rates will kill the fledgling industry, if goes into effect on July 15. It is hoping the ‘Day of Silence’ will help raise public awareness of the issue.

The organization said the proposal also requires additional administrative fees which the organization estimated could cost Webcasters around $1 billion.

Tom Cruise Nazi film sparks Scientology row with Germany

Daily Mail | Jun 26, 2007

Cruise preaching from the pulpit

Tom Cruise has been banned from making a film in Berlin about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler because the German government says his belief in Scientology is akin to Nazism.

The Hollywood star is set to play Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who almost succeeded in assassinating the Nazi leader in 1944.

The project is due to start production next month but the Germans fear Cruise will use the film, which he is co-producing, as a public relations vehicle for Scientology, which many of the country’s politicians have compared to Nazism.

The German government claims it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.

The country has fought against the sect for a decade. It is even under observation by the Federal Agency for the Protection of the Constitution, a body that usually hunts spies, terrorists and neo-Nazis.

One of Germany’s few war heroes, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg had been deeply opposed to the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and planted a briefcase bomb under a table near Hitler in his Wolf’s Lair headquarters on July 20, 1944. The bomb went off but only wounded the Fuehrer.

Two hundred of his conspirators were also arrested and killed.

German Defence Minister Franz-Josef Jung has ruled that Cruise should not be allowed to film in the inner courtyard of his ministry where von Stauffenberg was shot.

A Defence Ministry spokesman said: “The film makers will not be allowed to film at German military sites if Count Stauffenberg is played by Tom Cruise, who has publicly professed to being a member of the Scientology cult.

“In general, the German military has a special interest in the serious and authentic portrayal of the events of July 20, 1944 and Stauffenberg as a person.”

However, Cruise’s film producing partner, Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists Entertainment, said Cruise’s “personal beliefs have absolutely no bearing on the movie’s plot, themes or content.”

She added: “We believe the film will go a long way toward reminding the world that even within the ranks of the German military, there was real resistance to the Nazi regime.”

The film, to be released next year, will be directed by Bryan Singer and co-star Kenneth Branagh. It is called Valkyrie after Operation Valkyrie, the plot’s codename.

Related

Tom Cruise to be Worshipped Worldwide as the Christ of Scientology

Aussie indigenous community fears ‘military occupation’

AAP | Jun 26, 2007

Residents of a remote community set to receive the first police and troops under the federal government’s radical indigenous child abuse plan have expressed terror at the impending “military occupation”.

The comments came as federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough renewed his plea to state premiers to contribute police as part of the initial phase of the plan, saying their response so far has been “disappointing”.

The government last week seized control of more than 60 Northern Territory communities and announced it would impose alcohol and hardcore pornography bans, welfare restrictions and compulsory health checks for children.

Police, with military logistics support, are expected to begin entering towns within a week as part of an initial “stabilisation” phase.

But leaders at Mutitjulu, the community near Uluru which is set to receive the first police and troops, yesterday labelled the intervention a “military occupation”.

Bob and Dorothea Randall said their children were frightened of being forced to undergo medical checks.

“Even the doctors say they are reluctant to examine a young child without a parent’s permission,” the Randalls said.

“Of course any child that is vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected but a wholesale intrusion into our women and children’s privacy is a violation of our human and sacred rights.”

The Randalls accused the commonwealth of treating Mutitjulu as a “political football”, and said it should focus on improving health, education and social services instead of sending troops.

Mutitjulu resident Mario Giuseppe said the community, where a 2005 inquest was told young female petrol sniffers traded fuel for sex, was in “terror”.

“I thought the government was here to protect the women and children and they are scaring the living daylights out of them,” he told the ABC.

“This is bringing back a lot of memories and opening a lot of scars for these old people here, they are running to the hills and hiding.”

Women were scared that police were being sent out to the community to take away their children, Mr Giuseppe said.

“They think the army is coming to grab their kids and the police are coming to help them.

“The women and the kids are scared and they are running to the sand hills.”

Mutitjulu elder Vince Forrester said he was worried for the safety of the women and children during the cold desert nights.

“You don’t bring an army into a community, this is intimidation of the Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory,” he said.

Meanwhile Mr Brough urged the states to put politics aside and support the plan.

NSW and Victoria have committed 10 police officers each, but WA premier Alan Carpenter says his state will not contribute because of a lack of resources. The Queensland, South Australian and Tasmanian governments are still considering the request.

“We’re asking them to not do this for the federal government, there’s not a thing in this for us – it’s for the children of the Northern Territory, their fellow Australian kids,” Mr Brough told reporters.

“On behalf of those who don’t have a voice – they are those who are being hurt tonight and tomorrow night in the NT – we do desperately need these resources to help those people.”

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd said the government needed to lay down a transparent plan for policing the communities in order to secure the states’ support.

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser yesterday criticised the plan as paternalistic and said it was being carried out without consultation.

Australian army, police move into Aboriginal zones

AFP | Jun 26, 2007

Police and the military seized control of villages in the Northern Territory, where they will enforce bans on alcohol and pornography

Police and soldiers began deploying to outback Australia yesterday as part of a radical plan to end child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities, a move that has been criticized as a return to the nation’s paternalistic past.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard last week announced he would use police backed by military logistics to seize control of indigenous camps in the Northern Territory to protect women and children.

The controversial decision, which includes bans on alcohol and pornography and medical check-ups for all children under the age of 16, was taken following a damning government report into child abuse in indigenous communities.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough said 20 Australian Defence Force personnel were already on the ground and their number would be boosted in coming days as they prepared to deploy to remote communities.

“Right now I’m trying to stabilize in the order of 70-odd towns in the territory — that is a massive undertaking,” Brough said.

Federal police also began arriving in the Northern Territory capital, Darwin, yesterday, along with those from several states, each of which has been asked to contribute 10 officers.

But one of the most troubled communities, Mutitjulu, near Uluru, has questioned what some of its leaders termed a military occupation.

“The fact that we hold this community together with no money, no help, no doctor and no government support is a miracle,” community leaders Bob and Dorothea Randall said in a statement released by their lawyer.

“Police and the military are fine for logistics and coordination, but healthcare, youth services, education and basic housing are more essential,” she said.

They also questioned whether children should undergo medical checks.

“Of course, any child that is vulnerable or at risk should be immediately protected, but a wholesale intrusion into our women and children’s privacy is a violation of our human and sacred rights,” the Randalls said.

Former conservative prime minister Malcolm Fraser also criticized the plan as a throwback to paternalistic practices of the past, such as the removal of Aboriginal children from their families.

“People must be treated with respect, and in relation to this point they have not been,” Fraser told ABC.

“In relation to that, I said it was a throwback to past paternalism because it clearly this time has been put in place, announced without any consultation with the communities,” he said.

Howard dismissed accusations of high-handedness over the plan, which was devised without consultation with Northern Territory leaders.

“I have no doubt that the women and children of indigenous communities will warmly welcome the federal government’s actions,” he said.

Number of Americans who believe Saddam-9/11 tie rises to 41 percent

Raw Story | Jun 24, 2007    

by Josh Catone

A new Newsweek poll out this weekend exposed “gaps” in America’s knowledge of history and current events.

Perhaps most alarmingly, 41% of Americans answered ‘Yes’ to the question “Do you think Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq was directly involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001?”

That total is actually up 5 points since September 2004.

Further, a majority of people couldn’t identify Saudia Arabia as the country of origin of most of the 9/11 hijackers, even given the question in multiple choice format. 20% answered Iraq, while 14% believed the hijackers came from Iran.

A majority (52%) believe the US is losing the war against al Qaeda, however Newsweek disagrees. In the magazine’s reporting of the poll, they made judgment that the US is in fact not “losing the fight against al-Qaeda or radical Islamic terrorism.”

Closer to home, 89% of Americans are unable to name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (John Roberts), though a majority of those polled were able to name Nancy Pelosi as the current Speaker of the House.

A large majority of people said they didn’t know or didn’t care who the winner of this year’s American Idol competition was (or at least weren’t willing to admit it).

The full results of the Newsweek poll are available here.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19375611/site/newsweek/

Everyone we fight in Iraq is now “al-Qaida”

Salon | Jun 23, 2007

A change in the way the Bush administration and military commanders refer to “the enemy” in Iraq has been almost immediately adopted by the media.

by Glenn Greenwald

Josh Marshall publishes an e-mail from a reader who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government “reporting” yet:

It’s a curious thing that, over the past 10 – 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as “al-Qaida” fighters. When did that happen?

Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were “insurgents” or they were referred to as “Sunni” or “Shia’a” fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly, without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US military command is referring to these combatants as “al-Qaida”.

Welcome to the latest in Iraq propaganda.

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term “Al Qaeda” to designate “anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq” is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as “Al Qaeda.”

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don’t think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing “Al Qaeda fighters,” capturing “Al Qaeda leaders,” and every new operation is against “Al Qaeda.”

The Times — typically in the form of the gullible and always-government-trusting “reporting” of Michael Gordon, though not only — makes this claim over and over, as prominently as possible, often without the slightest questioning, qualification, or doubt. If your only news about Iraq came from The New York Times, you would think that the war in Iraq is now indistinguishable from the initial stage of the war in Afghanistan — that we are there fighting against the people who hijacked those planes and flew them into our buildings: “Al Qaeda.”

What is so amazing about this new rhetorical development — not only from our military, but also from our “journalists” — is that, for years, it was too shameless and false even for the Bush administration to use. Even at the height of their propaganda offensives about the war, the furthest Bush officials were willing to go was to use the generic term “terrorists” for everyone we are fighting in Iraq, as in: “we cannot surrender to the terrorists by withdrawing” and “we must stay on the offensive against terrorists.”

But after his 2004 re-election was secure, even the President acknowledged that “Al Qaeda” was the smallest component of the “enemies” we are fighting in Iraq:

A clear strategy begins with a clear understanding of the enemy we face. The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis, mostly Sunni Arabs, who miss the privileged status they had under the regime of Saddam Hussein — and they reject an Iraq in which they are no longer the dominant group. . . .

The second group that makes up the enemy in Iraq is smaller, but more determined. It contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam Hussein — people who still harbor dreams of returning to power. These hard-core Saddamists are trying to foment anti-democratic sentiment amongst the larger Sunni community. . . .

The third group is the smallest, but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda.

And note that even for the “smallest” group among those we are fighting in Iraq, the president described them not as “Al Qaeda,” but as those “affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda.” Claiming that our enemy in Iraq was comprised primarily or largely of “Al Qaeda” was too patently false even for the President to invoke in defense of his war.

But now, support for the war is at an all-time low and war supporters are truly desperate to find a way to stay in Iraq. So the administration has thrown any remnants of rhetorical caution to the wind, overtly calling everyone we are fighting “Al Qaeda.” This strategy was first unveiled by Joe Lieberman when he went on Meet the Press in January and claimed that the U.S. was “attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we’re fighting in Iraq today”. Though Lieberman was widely mocked at the time for his incomparable willingness to spew even the most patent falsehoods to justify the occupation, our intrepid political press corps now dutifully follows right along.

Here is the first paragraph from today’s New York Times article on our latest offensive, based exclusively on the claims of our military commanders:

The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

The article then uses the term “Qaeda” an additional 19 times to describe the enemy we are fighting — “Qaeda leaders,” “Qaeda strongholds,” “Qaeda fighters,” “Qaeda groups,” the “Qaeda threat,” etc. What is our objective in Iraq? To “move into neighborhoods cleared of Qaeda fighters and hold them.”

In virtually every article from the Times now, anyone we fight is automatically designated “Al Qaeda”:

* June 21 (by Michael Gordon and Alissa Rubin):

American troops discovered a medical aid station for insurgents — another sign that the Qaeda fighters had prepared for an intense fight . . . In a statement, the American military said it had killed 41 Qaeda operatives.

* June 20 (by Michael Gordon):

The problem of collaring the Qaeda fighters is challenging in several respects. . . The presence of so many civilians on an urban battlefield affords the operatives from Al Qaeda another possible means to elude their American pursuers. . . . Since the battle for western Baquba began, Qaeda insurgents have carried out a delaying action, employing snipers and engaging American troops in several firefights.

* June 19 (by Michael Gordon and Damien Cave):

The Qaeda and insurgent strongholds in Baquba are strongly defended, according to American intelligence reports [though even that article described the enemy in Baquba as “a mix of former members of Saddam Hussein’s army and paramilitary forces, embittered Sunni Arab men, criminal gangs and Qaeda Islamists”]

*June 17 (by Thom Shanker and Michael Gordon):

With the influx of tens of thousands of additional combat troops into Iraq now complete, American forces have begun a wide offensive against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia on the outskirts of Baghdad, the top American commander in Iraq said Saturday.

The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in a news conference in Baghdad along with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said the operation was intended to take the fight to Al Qaeda’s hide-outs in order to cut down the group’s devastating campaign of car bombings. . . .

The additional American forces, General Petraeus said Saturday, would allow the United States to conduct operations in “a number of areas around Baghdad, in particular to go into areas that were sanctuaries in the past of Al Qaeda.”

From The Washington Post today:

The battle came Friday to the town of Khalis, about 10 miles northwest of Baqubah. U.S. forces saw a group of al-Qaeda in Iraq gunmen attempting to avoid Iraqi police patrols and infiltrate Khalis from the southwest, according to a U.S. military statement. . . . .

With those deaths, at least 68 suspected al-Qaeda operatives have been killed in the offensive, according to the U.S. military’s tally.

And here is the headline from CNN’s article yesterday:

Note that, in the sub-headline, CNN totals the number of “militants” killed as 68, which, in the headline, magically becomes “68 al Qaeda militants killed.” That is because, in our media, everyone we kill in Iraq, and everyone who fights against our occupation, are all now “al Qaeda.”

Each of these articles typically (though not always) initially refers to “Al Qaeda in Iraq” or “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” as though they are nothing more than the Iraqi branch office of the group that launched the 9/11 attacks. The articles then proceed to refer to the group only as “Qaeda,” and repeatedly quote U.S. military officials quantifying the amount of “Qaeda fighters” we killed. Hence, what we are doing in Iraq is going after and killing members of the group which flew the planes into our buildings. Who could possibly be against that?

Are there some foreign fighters in Iraq who have taken up arms against the U.S. occupation who are fairly called “Al Qaeda”? Probably. But by all accounts — including the President’s — they are a tiny part of the groups with guns who are waging war in Iraq. The vast, vast majority of them are Iraqis motivated by a desire to acquire more political power in their own country at the expense of other Iraqi factions and/or to fight against a foreign occupation of their country. To refer to them as “Al Qaeda” so casually and with so little basis (other than the fact that U.S. military officials now do so) is misleading and propagandistic in the extreme.

Making matters much worse, this tactic was exposed long, long ago. From the Christian Science Monitor in September, 2005:

The US and Iraqi governments have vastly overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, and most of them don’t come from Saudi Arabia, according to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). According to a piece in The Guardian, this means the US and Iraq “feed the myth” that foreign fighters are the backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters may stoke the insurgency flames, they make up only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents.

And in January of this year, the Cato Institute published a detailed analysis — entitled “The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq” — by Ted Galen Carpenter, its vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, documenting that claims of “Al Qaeda in Iraq” is “a canard that the perpetrators of the current catastrophe use to frighten people into supporting a fatally flawed, and seemingly endless, nation-building debacle.”

What is always most striking about this is how uncritically our press passes on government claims. War reporting in Iraq is obviously extremely difficult and dangerous, and it takes a great deal of courage to be in Iraq in order to file these stories. There is no denying that.

But precisely because of those dangers, these reporters rely almost exclusively on the narratives offered by U.S. military officials selected by the Bush administration to convey events to the press. Almost every one of the articles referenced above is shaped from start to finish by accounts about what happened from American military commanders (with, in isolated instances, accounts from Iraqis in the area). That is inevitable, though such accounts ought to be treated with much greater skepticism.

But what is not inevitable is to adopt the patently misleading nomenclature and political rhetoric of the administration, so plainly designed to generate support for the “surge” (support for which Gordon himself admitted he has embraced) by creating the false appearance that the violence in Iraq is due to attacks by the terrorist group responsible for 9/11. What makes this practice all the more disturbing is how quickly and obediently the media has adopted the change in terms consciously issued by the Bush administration and their military officials responsible for presenting the Bush view of the war to the press.

UPDATE: Posts from other bloggers who previously noticed this same trend demonstrate how calculated it is and pinpoint its obvious genesis. At Kos, BarbInMD noted back in May that Bush’s rhetoric on Iraq had palpably shifted, as he began declaring that “Al-Qaida is public enemy No. 1 in Iraq.” The same day, she noted that Bush “mentioned Al-Qaida no less than 27 times” in his Iraq speech. As always, a theme travels unmolested from Bush’s mouth into the unexamined premises of our newspapers’ front pages.

Separately, Ghillie notes in comments that the very politically cognizant Gen. Petraeus has been quite noticeably emphasizing “the battle against Al Qaeda” in interviews for months. And yesterday, ProfMarcus analyzed the top Reuters article concerning American action in Iraq — headline: “Al Qaeda fight to death in Iraq bastion: U.S” — and noted that “al qaeda is mentioned 13 times in a 614 word story” and that “reading the article, you would think that al qaeda is not only everywhere in iraq but is also behind all the insurgent activity that’s going on.”

Interestingly, in addition to the one quoted above, there is another long article in the Post today, this one by the reliable Thomas Ricks, which extensively analyzes the objectives and shortcomings in our current military strategy. Ricks himself strategy never once mentions Al Qaeda.

Finally, the lead story of the NYT today — in its first two paragraphs — quotes Gen. Odierno as claiming that the 2004 battle of Falluja was aimed at capturing “top Qaeda leaders in the city.” But Michael Gordon himself, back in 2004, published a lengthy and detailed article about the Falluja situation and never once mentioned or even alluded to “Al Qaeda,” writing only about the Iraqi Sunni insurgents in that city who were hostile to our occupation (h/t John Manning). The propagandistic transformation of “insurgents” into “Al Qaeda,” then, applies not only to our current predicament but also to past battles as well, as a tool of rank revisionism (hence, it is now officially “The Glorious 2004 Battle against Al-Qaeda in Falluja”).

Wear your RFID chip or eat it

TIMES NEWS NETWORK | JUN 24, 2007

by SHELLEY SINGH

Care to eat chips — not the potato ones in colourful packaging and different flavours but the digital ones, info rich variety! For starters, swallow this: If you happen to be among the select VIP members of the Baja Beach Club, one of Barcelona’s hottest night spots, you’ll not only be in the company of some very exclusive people, but also among the few with an implantable microchip. The chip was club owner Conrad Chase’s idea of offering a unique identity to the club’s VIP patrons.

Slightly larger than a grain of rice, the chip is used to identify people when they enter and pay for drinks. It is injected by a nurse under a local anesthetic. It is an RFID tag — radio frequency identification. RFID tags are miniscule microchips which listen for a radio query and respond by transmitting their unique ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries: They use the power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response.

At the Baja Club if a special tag-reader is waved near the arm, a radio signal prompts the chip to transmit an identification number which is used to access information about the wearer from a database. Otherwise the chip is dormant. But its applications are wider.

The Baja club members are not the only users of such geeky stuff. Very soon most people might have some kind of a chip implanted in them, as a means to identify, deliver medicines, monitor health, give access to secure areas and also functions as digital door locks.

Just recently Kodak filed a patent for edible RFID chips. They’re designed for monitoring a patient’s gastric tract. The chips are covered in a harmless gelatin, which eventually dissolves. These RFID chips embed deep in the body and can be read by a scanner. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.

Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.

VeriChip, another American company provides chips to hospitals to manage patients. It also provided chips to the Baja Club. An Israeli company Given Imaging has developed PillCam, a tiny two-sided camera the size of a large pill which patients swallow. It has been used for gastro-intestinal endoscopy tests to diagnose disorders of the oesophagus and the small intestine.

It takes pictures and sends them wirelessly to a recorder worn on the patient’s waist. The images are downloaded to a computer for diagnosis. The $450 capsule passes through the bowel naturally and is flushed down the toilet.

All this is part of what experts like to call “intra-body wireless communications”. In this more than one chip could be embedded in humans and these chips relay information to each other or to a receiver without interference, just as a radio can be tuned to different stations. So in diabetics, for example, an implanted glucose-level reader in one part of the body can communicate with an implanted insulin-pump elsewhere.

With such new innovations it will be more common in future to have some wireless devices which are ingested, implanted or simply attached to the body and linked to a network. It is still early days, but a wireless future with edible chips is clearly looming large on the horizon.