Voice of Freedom’s Weblog

Source: The New York Times [edited]
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/world/americas/27salmon.html>

Virus kills Chile’s salmon and indicts its fish farming methods

(more…)

Merck, Schering Call on Doctors to Boost Vytorin Use (Update1)

By Michelle Fay Cortez and Shannon Pettypiece

March 27 (Bloomberg) — Merck & Co. and Schering-Plough Corp. are telling physicians to ignore research showing their jointly marketed cholesterol-drug Vytorin failed to halt progression of artery disease. It’s unlikely they will listen.

Preliminary findings of the study, called Enhance and released in January, drove Vytorin prescriptions down 18 percent and slashed $49 billion from the drugmakers’ market value. In an effort to retain the pill’s $2.8 billion in annual sales, Merck and Schering-Plough are doing the unprecedented: discrediting research they funded and helped design.

The trial, intended to show Vytorin can reduce artery clogging, was created to help the drug compete against Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor for a share of the $35 billion worldwide cholesterol market. The failure of Vytorin to outperform an older drug means doctors have little reason to use it. The final report, to be presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago, won’t help, researchers say.

“The study results aren’t going to influence practice much,” said Randy Thomas, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “The question we’re asking is does it lower heart attack risk. We won’t know that from Enhance.”

Sekar Kathiresan, director of preventive cardiology at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital, says research may eventually show that Vytorin and Zetia, one of the two medicines that make up Vytorin, will prevent heart attacks, strokes and death. Until studies prove that, he plans to rely on older so- called statins like Lipitor and simvastatin, a generic version of Merck’s Zocor, the other component in Vytorin

Again, statements like these show that big Pharma does not care as long as they make the bucks!

As this whole sordid episode regarding the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has played out over the last week, I wanted to understand what he ACTUALLY said in this speech. I’ve been saying all week on CNN that context is important, and I just wanted to know what the heck is going on.

I have now actually listened to the sermon Rev. Wright gave after September 11 titled, “The Day of Jerusalem’s Fall.” It was delivered on Sept. 16, 2001.

One of the most controversial statements in this sermon was when he mentioned “chickens coming home to roost.” He was actually quoting Edward Peck, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and deputy director of President Reagan’s terrorism task force, who was speaking on FOX News. That’s what he told the congregation.

He was quoting Peck as saying that America’s foreign policy has put the nation in peril:

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock.

“We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima. We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant. Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said the people we have wounded don’t have the military capability we have. But they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them. And we need to come to grips with that.”

He went on to describe seeing the photos of the aftermath of 9/11 because he was in Newark, N.J., when the planes struck. After turning on the TV and seeing the second plane slam into one of the twin towers, he spoke passionately about what if you never got a chance to say hello to your family again.

“What is the state of your family?” he asked.

And then he told his congregation that he loved them and asked the church to tell each other they loved themselves.

His sermon thesis:

1. This is a time for self-examination of ourselves and our families.

2. This is a time for social transformation (then he went on to say they won’t put me on PBS or national cable for what I’m about to say. Talk about prophetic!)

“We have got to change the way we have been doing things as a society,” he said.

Wright then said we can’t stop messing over people and thinking they can’t touch us. He said we may need to declare war on racism, injustice, and greed, instead of war on other countries.

“Maybe we need to declare war on AIDS. In five minutes the Congress found $40 billion to rebuild New York and the families that died in sudden death, do you think we can find the money to make medicine available for people who are dying a slow death? Maybe we need to declare war on the nation’s healthcare system that leaves the nation’s poor with no health coverage? Maybe we need to declare war on the mishandled educational system and provide quality education for everybody, every citizen, based on their ability to learn, not their ability to pay. This is a time for social transformation.”

3. This is time to tell God thank you for all that he has provided and that he gave him and others another chance to do His will.

By the way, nowhere in this sermon did he said “God damn America.” I’m not sure which sermon that came from.

This doesn’t explain anything away, nor does it absolve Wright of using the N-word, but what it does do is add an accurate perspective to this conversation.

The point that I have always made as a journalist is that our job is to seek the truth, and not the partial truth.

I am also listening to the other sermons delivered by Rev. Wright that have been the subject of controversy.

And let me be clear: Where I believe he was wrong and not justified in what he said based upon the facts, I will say so. But where the facts support his argument, that will also be said.

So stay tuned.

- Roland S. Martin, CNN Contributorwww.rolandsmartin.com

If you want to hear the full sermon yourself, visit Roland’s blog at: www.rolandsmartin.com/blog

Thousands of dead starfish found on beach

By Paul Eccleston
12/03/2008

Thousands of starfish have been found washed up dead on a beach in Kent. A carpet of the dead creatures covered hundreds of yards of the beach at Pegwell Bay near Sandwich.

	Dead starfish: Environment Agency is to investigate the incident

Tony Flashman, from Kingsdown near Deal, who took the photograph (right), said: “The dead starfish stretched as far as you could see in both directions.”

Fishermen and bird watchers were among the first to stumble on the bizarre sight, and it was quickly picked up by specialist websites.

The Environment Agency is investigating the incident but said it was not connected with the recent storms, pollution or climate change.

Spokesman Ian Humphries said it was not uncommon for starfish to be washed up on the shore and it was likely they had entered shallow waters in search of mussels to feed on.

“As they get hungry they get more desperate… they take risks and come into shallow water where they’re more vulnerable.” he said.

There was speculation on some of the websites that the starfish, which congregate in vast numbers, may have fallen victim to trawlers dredging the sea bottom.

The Environment Agency said it was likely the starfish corpses would provide a feast for scavenging gulls.

These animals could be the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, of environmental changes. The photograph shows an incredibly huge number of starfish for quite a distance. It is interesting that no one is yet testing the water or the starfish to find out if there is a disease or toxin killing the starfish. As the Environmental Agency suggests that there will be a feast for the gulls , lets hope that the starfish are not “toxic” to them as well.

In addition, please see Dr. Kerry Lane’s comments in First our Bees, now our Bats - Another Mystery Disease

Check out this CNN video where Glenn Beck discusses whether or not Obama might be the anti-christ with Rev. Hagee

Amazing!! Just simply amazing! Here we have a program called CNN Headline News talking about the “end days” of the Christian religion as something that the audience should accept as if it is a fact, a news item?

Yea, verily, last night, Glenn Beck hosted anti-Catholic bigot/fervent John McCain supporter John Hagee. And lo, there was a sound that arose from deep in Beck’s wordhole. And those sounds formed a question that sounded out across the airwaves unto disbelieving ears. That question: “Is Barack Obama the anti-Christ.”

(CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck ALSO referred to Clinton as the “Antichrist” on the June 6 edition of CNN Headline, but then again he also say that Javier Solana is the anti-christ)

We are not making this up. Glenn Beck, serious newsman, needed to find out if Barack Obama was the Devourer of Worlds, Son of Harlots, Bearer of the Mark of the Beast. John Hagee had to be thrilled by the question: somehow, Beck managed to make Hagee look reasonable.

Truth is, Beck fervently BELIEVES THAT THE END DAYS ARE HERE! He desperatly wants Obama to be the anti-christ….or maybe not, he might be scared as hell that the end times ARE here and it is time for the hateful ones to pay the piper!

Although Christianity, Judiasm, and Islam are all “Abrahamic” religions, the concept of an “anti-christ” is Christian one. The idea of an armageddon is, too, more of a Christian belief.

But, since the Hagee is coming out for McCain, my money is on McCain to be the Anti-Christ, lol.

Because..lifted from lala land:

The antichrist is supposed to come to power blah blah blah… so if he says mccain is the best person to lead the country LOL… and like every christian extremist he WANTS the end to come… is he saying he believes that Mccain is the antichrist and will lead to the end?

Who HIRES THESE PEOPLE?