Western Drugmakers Tested Medicines on Unwitting East Germans

Until the fall of the Wall, Western pharmaceutical companies conducted drug trials in East German hospitals. More than 50,000 patients served as subjects, often without their knowledge, and many died. The human experiments haven't been fully investigated to this day despite fresh evidence of wrongdoing.

Nicole Preiss was nine when her mother died in 1986. The woman had been stricken by skin cancer, which was deemed benign at first. But there was something, a strange remark, that little Nicole didn't understand. Why on earth, her stone-faced father and grandparents had asked at the time, did the doctors administer "drugs from the Berlin Westapotheke pharmacy " to the woman? And why did her condition worsen considerably after that?

Preiss, now 37, is still searching for answers today, still trying to understand what East German doctors did to her mother at a hospital in the city of Erfurt.

She suspects the doctors tested a new drug from the West on their patient. "My mother's case was even presented in the lecture hall," says Preiss. But the treatment didn't do her any good. "There are too many secrets associated with her death, at the age of only 30," says her daughter, who is now seeking to finally gain access to the files and find answers to the questions of which drugs, which tests and which pharmaceutical companies played a role in her mother's death.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/western-drugmakers-tested-medicines-on-unwitting-east-germans-a-899594.html

Israel police guard women praying at Jewish site

Source: Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police with metal barriers and human chains on Friday held back thousands of ultra-Orthodox protesters who tried to prevent a liberal Jewish women's group from praying at a key holy site, the first time police have come down on the side of the women and not the protesters. The switch followed a court order backing the right of the women to pray at the Western Wall in the Old City with practices Orthodox Jews insist are the role of men alone.

The "Women of the Wall" group has been holding monthly prayer services on the first day of the Hebrew month at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for more than two decades, wearing prayer shawls and performing religious rituals reserved for men under Orthodox Judaism. Accused by ultra-Orthodox leaders of violating "local custom" at the holy site, many of the group's members have been arrested.

On Friday the tables were turned because of the court ruling. Police protected the women and arrested three ultra-Orthodox men for disorderly conduct, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

It's a turning point for the group. Along with the arrests, the women have faced heckling and legal battles in a struggle to attain what they say is their right: to worship at the wall — the holiest place where Jews can pray — as men do. Then last month a Jerusalem court instructed police to stop detaining the women.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/israel-police-guard-women-praying-jewish-070503660.html

Nigeria 'baby factory' raided in Imo state

Source: BBC

Seventeen pregnant teenage girls and 11 babies have been rescued from a house in Nigeria's south-eastern Imo state, police have said. They say they are looking for a woman suspected of planning to sell the babies.

"The girls claimed they were fed once a day and were not allowed to leave the home," said spokeswoman Joy Elomoko.

The rescued girls said they had all been made pregnant by a 23-year-old man, who has been arrested, reports the AFP news agency. The European Union says Nigeria, along with China, is one of the biggest sources of people trafficked into Europe, where they are often forced into prostitution. In 2011, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (Naptip), said their investigations showed that babies are sold for up to $6,400 (£4,200) each.

Poor, unmarried women face tough choices if they get pregnant in Nigeria, often facing exclusion from society, correspondents say. Naptip says desperate teenagers with unplanned pregnancies are sometimes lured to clinics and then forced to turn over their babies.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22484318

Making of "The Shining"

Baseball Hall-of-Famer Steve Carlton's nutty squirrel-shit interview from 1994:

"I came to Durango in 1989 to get away from society," he says. He is a big man, 6–5, 225 pounds, dressed in a Western shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He is standing beside his truck in the thick snow that covers the land around his bunker and rests gently on the branches of the low-lying piñon trees that dot his 400 acres. It is a few days before Christmas.

He makes a sweeping gesture with a long arm, encompassing his bunker, his barn with its turkey, pheasants and horses, and more than 160 fruit trees he has planted. "This is sacred land," he says. "We're self-sufficient here. There's no one around us. We grow our own food."

He points to sliding glass doors that lead inside his bunker to the greenhouse off his bedroom. "We have our own well," he says. "And 16 solar batteries for heat and electricity."

Even his telephone works on cellular microwave transmitters. That way no one can tap his wires.

"The house is built with over 300 yards of concrete," he says. "Three-feet-thick walls covered by another three feet of earth." Why? He looks startled, like a huge bird. His small eyes blink once, twice, and then he says, "So the gamma rays won't penetrate the walls."

Built under the house is a 7,000-foot storage cellar. He's stocked it with canned foods, bottled water, weapons. "Do you know if you store guns in PVC pipe, they can last forever underground without rusting?" he says.

He glanced sideways again. "The Revolution is definitely coming." He believes in the Revolution, only he isn't precisely sure which of a myriad of conspiratorial groups will begin it. Possibly, he says, it will be started by the Skull and Bones Society of Yale University. Or maybe the International Monetary Fund. Or the World Health Organization. There are so many conspiracies, and so little time. Sometimes all those conspiracies confuse him and he contradicts himself. One minute he'll say, "The Russian and U.S. governments fill the air with low-frequency sound waves meant to control us," and the next he'll say, "The Elders of Zion rule the world," and then, "The British MI-5 and-6 intelligence agencies have ruled the world since 1812," and, "Twelve Jewish bankers meeting in Switzerland rule the world," and, "The world is controlled by a committee of 300 which meets at a roundtable in Rome." The subterfuge starts early. Like the plot by the National Education Association to subvert American children with false teachings. "Don't tell me that two plus two equals four," he once said. "How do you know that two is two? That's the real question."

http://thestacks.deadspin.com/thin-air-in-the-mountains-with-steve-carlton-armed-co-478492324

Incoming NRA President Calls Civil War The ‘War Of Northern Aggression’

In a 2012 speech to the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, where he also refers to President Obama as a “fake president” and calls Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly unAmerican,” incoming National Rifle Association President Jim Porter applied an odd label to the war that ended slavery in the United States and put down the single greatest act of treason in our nation’s history:

The NRA was started, 1871, right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the “War of Northern Aggression.” Now, y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south.

But that was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/03/1958961/incoming-nra-president-calls-civil-war-the-war-of-northern-aggression/


1. So the incoming NRA president has ZERO idea about the history behind the original formation of his organization...

2. Is this guy from nineteen fuckin' fifty-five or something? He's just making southerners look bad...

Incoming NRA President Calls Civil War The ‘War Of Northern Aggression’

In a 2012 speech to the New York Rifle & Pistol Association, where he also refers to President Obama as a “fake president” and calls Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly unAmerican,” incoming National Rifle Association President Jim Porter applied an odd label to the war that ended slavery in the United States and put down the single greatest act of treason in our nation’s history:

The NRA was started, 1871, right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the “War of Northern Aggression.” Now, y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south.

But that was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/03/1958961/incoming-nra-president-calls-civil-war-the-war-of-northern-aggression/


1. So the incoming NRA president has ZERO idea about the history behind the original formation of his organization...

2. Is this guy from nineteen fuckin' fifty-five or something? He's just making southerners look bad...

Desert heat: World Cup hosts Qatar face scrutiny over 'slavery' accusations

(CNN) -- Zahir Belounis has spent the best part of the last two years without wages, a club or any prospect of returning home but the French Algerian footballer now faces his immediate future without the most basic of commodities.

Food.

"I will stop food, a hunger strike, I want to do that," explained the 33-year-old striker.

"It's going to start next week. They treat me like a dog but I will fight. I will die here in Qatar," he said in an interview with CNN last week.

Belounis, who had played in the lower reaches of French football, now plays for the Qatari first

Or at least, he claims, he should be.

Despite, he alleges, holding a contract that lasts until 2015 he claims to have been frozen out, threatened, moved to other clubs against his will, gone unpaid and finally barred from leaving the country, leaving him, his wife and two young daughters trapped in Qatar.

A hunger strike, Belounis says, is his final throw of the dice.

"I will stop the food and sit there [in front of the Qatar Football Association office] and bring some documents until some important people listen to me," he said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/30/sport/football/football-qatar-world-cup-2022-worker-rights/

It's still not too late to yank the WC 2022 from Qatar...It was an absurd joke for them to even get it in the first place...

The tragic irony of feminists trashing each other

Is sisterhood sacred or soul-crushing?

Within the feminist movement, the answer is less clear than one might hope. Trashing each other and exclusion have been hallmarks since the movement began, and each generation of feminist activists seems to suffer the same in-fighting. But contrary to simplistic ideas about catty, back-stabbing women, feminists don't fight each other because women are uniquely competitive or cruel. Though we care about the movement, it happens because we've internalized a narrative of scarcity: we act as though we're fighting for crumbs.

In her recent New Yorker article about the life of the feminist pioneer Shulamith Firestone, Susan Faludi details how the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s fractured. She quotes a line from Ti-Grace Atkinson's resignation from a New York feminist group:

Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.

It seems that no one walked away unscathed, and today, little has changed. Online feminism faces many of the same challenges our foremothers faced: not enough support, too much attention for the dominant groups, vicious internal attacks, and bitter frustration and disillusionment. The same dynamics of "trashing" that Jo Freeman wrote about in 1976 are alive today. Trashing, she says, is not about opposition or critique:

"It is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy."

That dynamic is, of course, not unique to feminism. Is there any social movement that hasn't had splits, arguments and active dissent?

-MORE-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/02/feminism-trashing-shulamith-firestone

Robbie Rogers trains with LA Galaxy after coming out and quitting soccer

Robbie Rogers, the US international who quit soccer after revealing that he is gay, is back in training with the Los Angeles Galaxy.

In a breakthrough week for US sports, with basketball player Jason Collins having come out as the first openly gay player in one of the four traditional major American professional sports leagues, Rogers trained with the Galaxy, two months after announcing that he was gay and saying he was "stepping away" from the game.

The former international, 25, was released by Leeds United in January, after a loan spell at Stevenage, and in February said he was leaving the game that had "hid his secret". But on Tuesday he trained with the Galaxy, whose coach, Bruce Arena, said it was "open-ended" as to what his future with the club might hold. The Chicago Fire hold Rogers' Major League Soccer rights, meaning the Galaxy would need to work out a trade in order to sign him.

"He looked a lot sharper than I thought he would today, given the fact he's been away from the game for a while" Arena told the Galaxy's website. "The timing I guess is good. I think our league is a progressive league. Our league is a league comprised of all different races, colours and creeds, and to be accepting of a gay athlete I don't think is anything that's difficult for our league.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/may/01/robbie-rogers-gay-footballer-la-galaxy