Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
NICOLE WINFIELD, - NBC29/Associated Press
Stephan: Here is more of the trend of the Holy See assaulting American nuns.
VATICAN CITY (AP) – The Vatican on Monday sharply criticized a book on sexuality written by a prominent American nun, saying it contradicted church teaching on issues like masturbation, homosexuality and marriage and that its author had a ‘defective understanding’ of Catholic theology.
The Vatican’s orthodoxy office said the book, ‘Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics’ by Sister Margaret Farley, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order and emeritus professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, posed ‘grave harm’ to the faithful.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that in the 2006 book, Farley either ignored church teaching on core issues of human sexuality or treated it as merely one opinion among many.
Farley said Monday she never intended the book to reflect current official Catholic teaching. Rather, she said, she wrote it to explore sexuality via various religious traditions, theological resources and human experience.
The Farley critique, signed by the American head of the congregation, Cardinal William Levada, comes amid the Vatican’s recent crackdown on the largest umbrella group of American sisters. The Vatican last month essentially imposed martial law on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, accusing it of undermining church teaching and imposing […]
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Wednesday, June 6th, 2012
ARSHAD MOHAMMED, - Reuters
Stephan: This is driving the Right crazy. I have gotten five emails today about this story, describing it as the first act of Obama's plan to ban all firearms, and breach the Second Amendment. All couched in almost hysterical language.
I don't think that is not what is going on here at all. We need to regulate the arms trade, even though, in the short term it will hurt the U.S. economy, because so much of our policy orientation has been to be merchants of death. By making it universally consensual one can see it as a weakness, every nation has a veto. But I believe history is going to show it is a strength. If every nation can agree on at least some aspect of arms control, then a legal structure can be developed, to regulate growth in arms, which is to everyone's benefit.
Geopolitically, and speaking entirely from a chauvinist American position I think it is particularly a win, because it sets laws in place before the Chinese decide that arms sales should become a national priority.
And, in the long term, imagine the extraordinary technological industry committed to arms put to work on behalf of converting to new energy as quickly as possible, and in devising ways a stable democratic culture can get through the perfect storm of transition that is coming.
WASHINGTON — The United States reversed policy on Wednesday and said it would back launching talks on a treaty to regulate arms sales as long as the talks operated by consensus, a stance critics said gave every nation a veto.
The decision, announced in a statement released by the U.S. State Department, overturns the position of former President George W. Bush’s administration, which had opposed such a treaty on the grounds that national controls were better.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States would support the talks as long as the negotiating forum, the so-called Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty, ‘operates under the rules of consensus decision-making.’
‘Consensus is needed to ensure the widest possible support for the Treaty and to avoid loopholes in the Treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly,’ Clinton said in a written statement.
While praising the Obama administration’s decision to overturn the Bush-era policy and to proceed with negotiations to regulate conventional arms sales, some groups criticized the U.S. insistence that decisions on the treaty be unanimous.
‘The shift in position by the world’s biggest arms exporter is a major breakthrough in launching formal negotiations at the United Nations in order […]
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SHALMALI PAL, Contributing Editor - Perelman School of Medicine/MedPage Today
Stephan: If you are one of the many post-menopausal women taking this medication perhaps you should take this report in and discuss it with your physician.
Source references:
Meier R, et al 'Increasing occurrence of atypical femoral fractures associated with bisphosphonate use' Arch Intern Med 2012; DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2012.1796.
If you are one of the many post menopausal women taking this medication perhaps you should take this in and discuss it with your physician.
Bauer D 'Atypical femoral fracture risk in patients treated with bisphosphonates' Arch Intern Med 2012; DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2012.1827.
Bisphosphonate therapy appears to be associated with an increased risk of atypical fractures of the femur, and may be driven by the duration of treatment, according to new research.
Of 477 patients hospitalized at one center, 39 had atypical fractures and 438 had common fractures. Among those with atypical fractures, 82.1% had been taking bisphosphonates compared with just 6.4% of those with common fractures, Raphael P.H. Meier, MD, from University Hospitals of Geneva, and colleagues reported online in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
They also noted that the atypical-fracture group had a longer treatment period on bisphosphonates — including alendronate (Fosamax), risedronate (Actonel), pamidronate (Aredia), and ibandronate (Boniva) — than the classic-fracture group, at a mean of 5.1 years versus 3.3 years (P=0.02).
Nonetheless, compared with a 200-patient fracture-free control group, use of bisphosphonates was associated with a 47% reduction in the risk of common fractures (OR 0.5, 95% CI 0.3 to 0.9), making the absolute risk:benefit ratio of bisphosphonates a positive one, they added.
The current evidence on bisphosphonate use and atypical fractures is conflicting. A recent meta-analysis of randomized trials found no association. But a registry-based study suggested that the risk of atypical fracture was more than doubled when bisphosphonates were taken […]
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JOSH ROGIN, - Foreign Policy
Stephan: This is what the Theocratic Right is moving towards, and if this doesn't scare you, you haven't been paying attention.
The congressional drive to update a 1948 law on how the U.S. government manages its public diplomacy has kicked off a heated debate over whether Congress is about to allow the State Department to propagandize Americans. But the actual impact of the change is less sinister than it might seem.
On May 18, Buzzfeed published a story by reporter Michael Hastings about the bipartisan congressional effort to change the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (as amended by the Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987). The story was entitled, ‘Congressmen seek to lift propaganda ban,’ and focuses on the successful effort by Reps. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) and Adam Smith (D-WA) to add their Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 as an amendment to the House version of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act.
The new legislation would ‘authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences.’ The Buzzfeed article outlines concerns inside the defense community that the Pentagon might now be allowed to use information operations and propaganda operations against U.S. citizens. A correction added to the story notes that Smith-Mundt doesn’t apply to the Pentagon in the first place.
In fact, the Smith-Mundt act (as amended in […]
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ANNE SEWELL, - Digital Journal
Stephan: Here is an example of how the Virtual Corporate States own and control the U.S. government, showing how the government works on behalf of its corporate masters. This is a major failure of the Obama Administration but, once again, as bad as it is, under a Rightist administration it would be much worse.
Coming soon after France bans GMO maize, WikiLeaks cables expose details of ‘military-style trade wars’ against countries who reject Monsanto GMOs.
France banned the Monsanto MON 810 ‘Yieldgard’ maize due to environmental and health concerns. And now the European Union is stepping in to re-secure Monsanto’s presence in that country, against the will of the nation itself.
Back in 2007, the U.S. ambassador to France, Craig Stapleton, who is a business partner of George W. Bush, stated that nationals who do not accept Monsanto’s GMO crops will be ‘penalized’. He stated that the nations should be threatened with ‘military-styled trade wars’.
So it is no surprise that the move to maintain Monsanto’s grip on France is all about the fact that the U.S. and other nations are continually pushing Monsanto’s agenda.
Monsanto has major (and most likely financial) connections with political heads that have actually threatened to use these trade wars.
In January, WikiLeaks cables came to light revealing the information concerning the deep involvement of Monsanto in political circles.
In this cable, is a statement made by Craig Stapleton:
‘Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, […]
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