LINK TO ME, LIKE BLOGGERS DO

I didn't make it to Boston for the Mass Cann rally today. Once again, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. The stupid rotator cuff thing flared up on Tuesday night and even though I took Wednesday and Friday off, I woke up in no condition to drive for four hours. It's uncanny. Same thing happened when I tried to get the Hip Hop rally in New York a couple of months ago. It appears the universe thinks I'm getting too old to attend these gatherings.

I was sorry to miss the event, but I consoled myself by catching up on the websites I've been neglecting in the last couple of weeks. Pete Guither is rolling right along at Drug War Rant and I was flattered to see he's added me to his side-bar as a daily read. Thanks Pete. You inspired me to update my own template. You can now access Pete's Rant directly from the links on this page.

My faithful readers will notice that I finally added some other new links to my cohorts from the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism as well. Charles Hardy's Cowboy in Caracas and Vheadline are both great sources for breaking news and analysis from Venezuela. Jules Siegel offers up an insider's look at Cancun and astute observations on the follibles of civilized society.

I also discovered that the Lefty Directory has added Last One Speaks to their roster of liberal voices. Brian Linse is providing a great service over there for those interested in alternative views. The link is newly installed on the sidebar. Check it out and thanks for the listing Brian.

My long term readers may have also noticed I finally figured out why I had that extra red dot on the links list. HTML is a funny language; it's pretty to easy to learn but one little typo can wreak havoc. Turned out I hadn't closed the tag on the previous link. Glad to have finally solved that little glitch. It was really offending my sense of order.

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SAVE THE CHILDREN

Carola Mittrany, another J-School alum, is reporting for the newly formed Children and Youth in Organized Violence, a site that chronicles the effects of political unrest and criminal activity on young folks all over the third world countries. If you think American kids in the ghetto have it tough, you should check out what these young people are going through. (Link is now installed on the sidebar).

This excerpt is from one of Carola's recent pieces:

Youth killed in Guatemala after trying to leave gangs
Carola Mittrany


September 12, 2003 – Seventy-nine youth have died after trying to leave gangs said Emilio Goubaud, director of the Alliance for Crime Prevention (APREDE in Spanish). APREDE runs a rehabilitation programme for gang members, known locally as ‘maras.’ "The kids had left crime and were undergoing job and educational training," said Goubaud to local newspaper Prensa Libre.

The APREDE director says that drug traffickers may have killed the ex-gang members in retaliation for their refusal to allow drugs into their neighbourhoods and to take part in organised crime.

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It is also suspected that death squads operating within the state security apparatus killed the youths. Goubaud said that the police illegally persecuted the majority of the victims.

You can sign up for their newsletter at the site and get weekly digests of their fine work in English.

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BAD MEDICINE

In yet another affront against the health and welfare of the most vulnerable citizens of the planet, the Guardian reports 50,000 children are taking antidepressants under a doctor's prescription. It seems when your pharmacorp-owned researchers are not too busy trying to prove that marijuana use causes schizophrenia, they are suppressing results that show legal drugs being prescribed to children actually encourages suicidal tendencies.

The article states:

Efexor, made by the drug company Wyeth, is being taken by at least 3,000 children in the UK, it was revealed yesterday, even though guidance to doctors states that it should not be given to under 18s. It is the second antidepressant to be specifically banned from use in children in four months.

There are around 50,000 children, some as young as six, on antidepressants in the UK, the Guardian has learned. Last year, doctors wrote 170,000 prescriptions of the drugs for children under 18, even though many experts say counselling and talking therapies work better.

The article goes on to say:

Data which suggests the drugs could be causing children to feel murderous and suicidal has been in drug company hands for several years. The studies in these two drugs and others were carried out in the mid to late-1990s, after the Food and Drug Administration in the United States asked for efficacy and safety data be cause of the rapidly increasing number of children being prescribed antidepressants.

Wyeth's response to this derelection of duty was hardly encouraging:

One of Wyeth's four studies in depressed and anxious children was published in 1997. Yesterday a spokesman for the company refused to give the dates of the other unpublished trials. Everything that it was necessary for the public to know was in the public domain, he said. "I'm not going to give additional information to you."

And they claim to be waging this WODSU to protect kids. How are they going to believe illegal drugs are bad for them when their doctors are pushing legal pharmaceutical poisons? Disgusting.

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MAD SCIENCE

The fallout over John Hopkins' bogus ecstacy study continues. John French in an open letter to Alan Leshner at Science magazine, gets the last word of the day remarking on this collossal screw-up:

What is the AAAS policy on publishing Referee's Reports on unbelievably botched work published in Science, specifically the research about MDMA published in September 2002?

Not only were findings based on doses recognized at the time to be completely inappropriate, but it was later discovered that the wrong drug had been obtained through NIDA. Further, the baseless findings were deliberately grossly exaggerated in press releases.

Given your involvement at the time of the funding as Director of NIDA, and subsequent leadership as CEO of American Association for the Advancement of Science, it is icumbent on you to lead a thorough investigation, especially since the publication of the original paper undoubtedly had an impact on the passage of highly controversial anti-rave drug legislation.

I look forward to your demonstration that the AAAS is more interested in science than in politics, by taking the investigation beyond publication of referee's reports, to iclude the internal workings of NIDA and the failure of its scientists to monitor such crucial work.

Sincerely,
John French

E-mailed at the AAAS feedback page at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/feedback

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