Required Cervical Cancer Vaccinations

Controversial New Bill Would Require All Girls Under 13 to Receive Cervical Cancer Vaccination

Under a bill introduced by the D.C. Council this week, female students enrolling in the sixth grade would be asked to show proof of receiving the new nationally debated vaccine against cervical cancer. If the bill passes, the District would be one of the first jurisdictions in the country to require girls younger than 13 years old to be vaccinated for HPV.

The following is excerpted from Nikita Stewart and Rob Stein’s article in the January 10th, 2007 Washington Post:

A parent or legal guardian would have the right to “opt out” of the requirement, Catania said, but the bill does not detail under what circumstances exemptions would be permitted.

Similar proposals are pending in Kentucky and California, and several other states are also considering such legislation. A bill to require the vaccine failed last year in Michigan.

Read the entire article here.

The Food of the Future

The Food of the Future
Video...

The corn itself is an insecticide
Industrializing food at genetic, cellular level
Patenting of seeds (now we can patent life!)
Pesticide companies have bought up the seed companies - and patented the seeds!
Getting rid of small farmers...
Gm foods take over the world!

Go Keith Olberman, and Cheney's Panic

Go Keith Olberman
(video at truthout.org)

Cheney’s panic is so blatantly obvious

What a wonderful turn of events in the uncovering of truth. Cheney himself has gone into such a state of panic that his latest response to Congress’s opposition to sending more troops to Iraq is showing more closely his true, soiled, colors.

He declared Hitler style that Bush is the only one who should have say in what happens in Iraq, there is no room for democracy in the matter, and that congress should just put up and shut up. Below are 2 quotes from today’s CNN article for your perusal:

"’The president is the commander in chief. He's the one who has to make these tough decisions,’ Cheney said.” (Never mind that the American people just screamed at the top of their lungs last November that they do not approve of Bush’s approach to the Iraq war – yet Bush blunders on with it)

"’He's the guy who's got to decide how to use the force and where to deploy the force,’ Cheney said. ‘And Congress obviously has to support the effort through the power of the purse. So they've got a role to play, and we certainly recognize that. But you also cannot run a war by committee.’"

Then he proceeds to lure Iran and Syria into our warring sights (as if it wasn’t already clear enough their next victims) by declaring the war in Iraq “an existential conflict”.

"’This is an existential conflict,’ Cheney said. ‘It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term.’"

“The White House also said Sunday that Iranians are aiding the insurgency in Iraq and the U.S. has the authority to pursue them because they ‘put our people at risk.’"

Existential conflict? What the hell does that mean? Is he referring to his twisted, yet now transparent, plee that the US is bringing freedom to the middle east? Notice how he uses this to segway into his plan of involving the US in conflicts like this for the next 20 – 40 years. Existential indeed. God is dead. And we have killed him.

Personally I’m thrilled to see such panic from Cheney. And yet I’m also afraid. Alert to the possibilities of an American populous that will not allow Bush and Cheney to wield the country as their subservient sword in the battle to take over the world. How will the American people respond to Bush’s boldface rejection?

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it?

— Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann

Help Stop the Next Wolf Massacre

Help Stop the Next Wolf Massacre

Soon, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to release a proposal to strip wolves of crucial Endangered Species Act protections across most of Wyoming and de-list wolves in Idaho, where the state is poised to kill up to 75% of the wolves living in the Lolo district of the Clearwater National Forest.

This proposal could allow the use of aerial gunning and other lethal control methods to kill as many as two-thirds of the wolves in Wyoming and as many as 54 of Idaho’s 65 wolf packs!

Help stop the massacre! Fill out the form below to urge the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Dale Hall, to maintain federal protections for gray wolves.

~~~~

My addition to the given form letter.

A form letter comes with this message, which I agree with, that has been provided to those wishing to encourage the salvaging of wolf populations in the Rockies. I am leaving that form letter at the bottom of my own comments on the issue. Thank you.~

As humans responsible for our earth environment, are we nurturing our planet and it's animals with our daily actions and creation of new legislation and planning? Are we putting the long term good of the whole of humanity and planet earth before our immediate, short term needs?

Currently we humans are witnessing changes in the planet that are likely related to our past mismanagement of resources: global warming, the death of rain forests, extinction of species at a rate never before seen, and polluted water, air and land. Not only is the planet suffering and the weather changing, but humans and animals are experiencing increased disease, deformations and malnutrition as a result.

Scientists have recently warned that if we do not change our current way of caring for the oceans, seafood may be gone by 2048. (Seafood May Be Gone by 2048, Study Says: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061102-seafood-threat.html ) In this National Geographic article the interviewed scientist Boris Worm is quoted as saying "Biodiversity is a finite resource, and we are going to end up with nothing left ... if nothing changes". Biodiversity - whether in the ocean, the Great Plains of the American Midwest, the thick pine forests of the Rockies, the desert of the American Southwest - is key to maintaining a healthy environment on each of those local scales.

The US fish and wildlife services no doubt have the best interests of the environment and animals in mind when taking wolves off of the endangered species list. The states' reaction to this change in status is worrisome, with Idaho and Wyoming planning to kill large portions of this population in some areas. My next paragraph is addressed to those states and the planning committees creating this plan of attack on wolves.

Are we creating new regulations that protect this biodiversity in our own local environments? Are we changing how we do business in order that we can maintain biodiversity and nurture our local piece of the planet? It's time that we make radical changes, and sacrifices if need be, in the short term in order to participate in bringing our planet back in the long term. Planet earth is currently doing its best to demand we give her high priority. Science has verified the current state of environmental emergency. Why is this not our highest priority? If it were, how would we comport ourselves on a daily basis - in our homes and in our government decisions? If it were, how would drastic decrease in the wolf population in the Rockies fit into this? Finding ourselves without a viable home has suddenly become a short term possibility. Plans to kill large portions of any animal population contribute to radical change in ecosystems - increasing the rate and likelihood that our local environment, and then our planet, will eventually become unliveable. Let us create wildlife plans and business plans that continually nuorish our habitat, allowing the human race and the earth to survive and thrive.

Next Solar Cycle May be Largest Ever Recorded

Got Shelter?

Next Solar Cycle May Be Largest Ever Recorded
12-Jan-2007


Predicted solar cycle
We have reported before that the upcoming 2010-2011 solar cycle is expected to be large. Now, continuing studies of the sun have led solar scientists to predict that it may turn out to be the largest ever recorded. Sunspot cycles have been recorded since the time of Galileo, and four of the five largest ever seen have been recorded in the past 50 years. Solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center explains that the current level of geomagnetic activity tells us what the solar cycle will be like in 6 to 8 years, and current levels of activity indicate that the next cycle will be extremely strong. The reason that this correlation would exist is not known, but the statistics are clear: it does work, and has show consistency using data going back to 1868.

Most compelling of all, believes Hathaway, is the work of Mausumi Dikpati and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. As previously reported by Unknowncountry.com, they have analyzed observations of the movement of the interior of the sun against a computer model that also predicts an extremely intense upcoming solar cycle.

There is a great deal of interest presently in the fact that an ancient Mayan calendar identifies December 21, 2012 as the end of the age. While there is no evidence that the sun is going to explode then or anytime remotely soon, it looks as if it will be quite active immediately prior to that date.

Cloning - The ultimate inter-breeding!

At last, the time draws near to aschew all cow products. What a wonderful niche market the country who bans animal cloning for farming (Argentina? Anyone?) will have.

US to approve cloned meat
Lack of variety is the spice of life
By Chris Williams → More by this author
Published Thursday 28th December 2006 11:00 GMT
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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will declare today that meat from cloned animals is safe to eat.

A safety assessment released on Thursday is expected to approve the entry of products from genetically identical cattle and other livestock into the human food chain.

The FDA indicated which way the wind was blowing back in 2005. Now an article published by its scientists in the journal Theriogenology dated January 1 forms the scientific basis of the approval. Larisa Rudenko and John C Matheson wrote: "[The FDA] concludes that meat and milk from clones and their progeny is as safe to eat as corresponding products derived from animals produced using contemporary agricultural practices".

The pair said no special labelling of cloned meat would be needed, which has outraged some consumer groups. AP reports Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Centre for Food Safety, said: "Consumers are going to be having a product that has potential safety issues and has a whole load of ethical issues tied to it, without any labelling."
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Clone farming has arrived
By SEAN POULTER - More by this author » Last updated at 12:40pm on 10th January 2007

The black and white calf may look unremarkable.

But Dundee Paradise is evidence that clone farming - designed to deliver supersize cows producing an astonishing 70 pints of milk a day - has arrived in Britain.

Her birth last month exposed glaring gaps in the Government's system for policing livestock farming.

It raises the prospect of milk and meat from the offspring of clones reaching the shops without proper safety checks.
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