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THE ORIGINS OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY

"It was impossible to hold the line. All we got was a battering from the Jews."
--John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, 1956

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"Imperial Crusades: a Diary of Three Wars" by Cockburn and St. Clair

Catch Saul Landau in New York and DC

Today's Stories

April 4, 2007

Joshua Frank
Democratic Blood Money: Sen. Feinstein's War Profiteering

April 3, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted hostage Taking

Marjorie Cohn
Coming Up Short on Habeas Corpus for Gitmo Detainees

Brian M. Downing
The Army's Road to Iraq

Corporate Crime Reporter
Coddling Pfizer: Praise the Criminal, Dis the Whistleblower

Carol Norris
A Psychologist on Sexual Assault: Yes, Virginia, There is a Sollution

Ralph Nader
Tailpipe Blues

Dave Lindorff
I Quit: A Movement of One (Or a Maybe a Million)

Scott Bontz
The Great Depletion

Thomas Dolby
Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Racism and the National Anthem

Website of the Day
Cockburn on BookTV


April 2, 2007

Gary Leupp
A Bogus Hostage Crisis

Uri Avnery
Condi in the Middle East: Olmert and the Pussycat

James Petras
Palestine: The Political Economy of a Disaster

Norman Solomon
McCain in Baghdad: Walking in McNamara's Footsteps

Robert Fisk
War of Humiliation

Stanley Heller
A Neocon Looks Two Conquests Ahead: The Ravings of James Woolsey

Sherwood Ross
How the Pentagon Cheats Iraq Vets Out of Medical Care and Disability Pay

Monica Benderman
On Keeping Men Alive: Report from Ft. Stewart

Stephen Fleischman
Winners and Losers in a Dog-Eat-Dog System

Anne McElroy Dachel
Never Mind the Mercury

Website of the Day
Midwestern Common Sense on the War


March 31 / April 1, 2007

Cockburn / St. Clair
That Was an Antiwar Vote?

Fred Gardner
How Corrupt is Malcolm Gladwell? Shilling for Enron and Breast Cancer

Greg Moses
The Pirates of Homeland Security

Gary Leupp
300 vs. Iran (and Herodotus)

Robert Fisk
Shakespeare and War

Roger Morris
The Politics of the Witch Hunt

Conn Hallinan
The Price of Fire: Oil, Water and Resistance in Bolivia

Kristin J. Anderson
A Protocol for Death

Jason Hribal
California's Most Unhappy Cows

John Ross
Strange Fruit Down South

Christopher Brauchli
Bush and the Politics of Falsehoods: If You're Going to Lie, Lie Big

David Underhill
War Breeds Stranger Bedfellows

Elizabeth Schulte
The Pentagon's "Don't Ask" Disaster

Ben Terrall
Time for Lula to Stop Doing Bush's Dirty Work in Haiti

Missy Beattie
Guess Who Isn't Coming to Dinner: The Story of King Abdullah and the O-Word

Sonja Karkar
How Palestine Became Israel's Land

Daniel Wolff
Have You Heard the News?

David Vest
A Romanian Jazz Rebel Drops a Bomb on Paris

Ron Jacobs
Wynton Marsalis Checks In on the Land That Never Has Been Yet

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt, Wigley and Landau

Website of the Weekend
Kansas City Rocks

 


March 30, 2007

Alan Maass
Oil and the Empire

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Memo on Iran: Brinksmanship in Uncharted Waters

Richard W. Behan
George Bush's Land Mine: If Iraqis Get Revenue Sharing, Exxon Gets Their Oil

Gabriel Kolko
Israel's Last Chance

William S. Lind
Operation Anabasis

Stedjan / Weis
The Cluster Bomb Treaty: Again, It's the US vs. the World

Kevin Zeese
Is Bush Lame or Is Congress?

David Busch
Homeless in LA

Fidel Castro
Biofuels and Global Hunger

CounterPunch News Service
Mistrial in Olympia 15 Case

Website of the Day
Free Shaquanda Cotton


March 29, 2007

Saul Landau
Comparing Padillas

Patrick Cockburn
When Iraqi Cops Go on a Rampage

Dave Lindorff
War and the Futures Market: Oil Traders Fear an Attack on Iran

Arthur Neslen
Normalizing Injustice: Jaffa's Ugly Truth

Michael Dickinson
Incident at Westminster Abbey

Ingmar Lee
Plantskyyd: Planting Trees with Pig's Blood in British Columbia

Aseem Shrivastava
As India Goes Global, the Public Goes Private

Marlene Martin
Sacco and Vanzetti, Revisited

Mahmoud El-Yousseph
Wake Up, You Live in America!

Michael Foley
A Citizen's Peace Lobby

Website of the Day
Impeach Bush Club Parade


March 28, 2007

Nicole Colson
The Ongoing Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

Harry Clark
Michigan Peaceworks on Palestine

Larry Everest
Another $100 Billion to Continue the War

Jonathan M. Feldman
Citigroup, Property and Theft

Dave Zirin
Yet Another Book on Muhammad Ali (and Why I Wrote It)

Jane Stillwater
How Runaway Inflation Has Slipped Under the Radar

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Pakistan's Cry for Justice

Jim Wilfong
Who Owns Maine's Water?

Hawra Karama
An Open Letter to Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi Uncle Tom

Website of the Day
Free Fire on Iraqi Civilians



March 27, 2007

Iain Boal /
Standard Schaefer
British Petroleum and the New Greenmail

Patrick Cockburn
The Hostage Game

Monica Benderman
On Ending War: Is America Ready for the Troops When They Come Home?

Corporate Crime Reporter
Political Players and Single Payer

Joshua Frank
Dems in Power: Broken Promises and Bald-Faced Lies

Harvey Wasserman
Will Al Gore Deliver Us to Solartopia?

Sen. Russell Feingold
FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act

Tillman Family
Crimes and Cover Ups are Not "Missteps"

Patrick Bond
Zimbabwe's Descent

David Judd
Arbitrary Discipline at Columbia

Website of the Day
Why Work?


March 26, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Seven Days on Iraq's Cruel Roads

Uri Avnery
Schoolbooks and Borders

Greg Moses
Hothouses for Hapless Masses on the Rio Grande

Bill Hatch
A Plague of Big Shots

John V. Walsh
The Democrats' War Funding Debacle

Diane Christian
God Does Not Love the Aggressor

Dan La Botz
The Immigration Movement at a Crossroads

Frederico Fuentes
Latin America Tells Bush to "Get Out!"

Sunsara Taylor
Democrats' Victory Means More Iraqi Deaths

Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman: Beyond the Hype

Website of the Day
DynCorp's Iraq Training Policy

 


March 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Where are the Laptop Bombardiers Now?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nuclear Saviors?: Kyoto, Gore and the Atomic Lobby

David Rosen
An American Obituary: Anna Nicole Smith and the Exploitation of Nature

Ron Jacobs
The Political History of the Car Bomb

Robert Fantina
Vietnam and Iraq, the Rhetoric Remains the Same

Alan Maass
Why Ralph Nader Took a Stand

Atul Gawande
On Washing Hands: A Surgeon's Notes on How Infections Spread in Hospitals

Marianne McDonald
Staging Anti-Colonial Protest

China Hand
Zealots Scheme to Derail North Korea Accord

Kaz Dziamka
The Iroquois Way of Impeachment

Andrew Wimmer
The Nursemaid's Tale

Don Monkerud
World's Biggest Debtor Nation

Anthony Papa
Bong Hits 4 Jesus Case

Matthew Provonsha
Return of the Black Bloc

Missy Beattie
Calling Youth and Young Adults

Stephen Fleischman
Confrontation, At Last

Poets' Basement
Newberry, Laymon, Harley and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
An Interview with Ron Jacobs

Song of the Weekend
"Who Would Jesus Bomb?"


March 23, 2007

Saul Landau
Return to Syria

Patrick Cockburn
Welcome to Iraq, Mr. Ban

Greg Moses
Protesting Immigrant Prisons in the Rio Grande Valley

Rep. Ron Paul
The War Funding Bill

Franklin Lamb
Will Hezbollah Hand Israel Its 6th Defeat?

Stephen Gowans
Mugabe Gets the Milosevic Treatment

Roger Burbach
Leftist Victory in Ecuador

Dave Lindorff
The Gutless Mini-Politics of the Congressional Democrats

William S. Lind
Candles in the Hurricane

Alan Mammoser
The New Rules of Food

Russell Hoffman
Al Gore's Nose is Glowing

Website of the Day
Global Outsourcing and the US Working Class

 

March 22, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Oil-Rich Kirkuk at the Melting Point

Robin Blackburn
Toxic Waste in the Sub-Prime Market

Michael Donnelly
Mr. Green Goes to Washington: Another Oscar Performance from Al Gore

Uzma Aslam Khan
Down Pakistan's No-Constitution Avenue

Lee Sustar
Bush's Braceros: The Ugly Truth About the Guest Worker Program

Robert D. Skeels
LA's Vicious War on the Homeless

Rev. William Alberts
The Forbidden C-Word

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Search for the Elusive Autism Gene

Mickey Z.
This is Your Brain on Meat

Website of the Day
Raimondo Does Hitchens

 


March 21, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Robbie Conal

James Petras
Meet the Global Ruling Class

Fred Gardner
A U.S. Army Pipe Dream

Corporate Crime Reporter
Cramer Comes Clean: Lies, Market Manipulation and Wall Street

Faisal Kutty
Too Guilty to Fly, Too Innocent to Charge?

Robert Fantina
U.S. Imperialism in Action

Isabella Kenfield and Roger Burbach
Brazilian Opposition to Bush-Lula Ethanol Accords

Lucinda Marshall
Missing in Action: Why is the Peace Movement Ignoring the Impact of War on Women?

Winslow Wheeler
Dem Budget Tricks: Reform Means What We Say It Means!

Website of the Day
Student Day of Action Against the War

 

 

March 20, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq is a Vast, Blood-Drenched Human Disaster

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Blank Check War

Sharon Smith
Hillary's Cojones: Our Bleached-Blond Thatcher?

Uri Avnery
The New Palestinian Unity Government

Stan Cox
Down-to-a-Trickle Economics

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Hating the Rich

Alan Farago
Why Al Gore Soft-Peddled the Environment in 2000

Richard W. Behan
Impeachment and Patriotism

Juan Antonio Montecino Latin America Has Moved On

David Krieger
The Treaty of Tlatelolco

Peter Rost, MD
An Open Letter to Pfizer's CEO: $11 Million Salary, 36% Raise, 10,000 Fired Employees

Mickey Z.
A Cat-Eat-Cat World: Beyond the Pet Food Recall

Website of the Day
Bringing the War Home

Webclip of the Day
Sunsara Taylor Beats O'Reilly, Again

 

March 19, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Crime Blotter: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Patrick Cockburn
Operation Deepening Nightmare

Stauber / Rampton
Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?

Werther
Plame Wars: Valerie Plame, the Washington Post and the Ghost of Joe McCarthy

Noam Chomsky
In Memory of Tanya Reinhart

Jeff Leys
Tap Dancing on Graves: How Democrats Bought the War

Richard May
And Then There Were None: Europe's Afghan Backlash

Ron Jacobs
Lessons of the Antiwar Movement and the Washington Post's Lessons of the Iraq War

Mike Whitney
Rove in the Dock

Website of the Day
Ringtones That Roar

 

 

March 17 / 18, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Here Comes Another "Crime Wave"

John Scagliotti
A Sissy's Manifesto

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Green Imposter: When Al Gore Was Veep

Paul Craig Roberts
The Confession Backfired

Greg Moses
Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso

Harry Clark
Thrice-Told Tales: Those Israel-Syria Peace Talks

Brian Cloughley
In the Name of Improving People's Lives: Mounting Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq

Mehran Ghassemi
An Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh on the US, Israel and Iran

William Loren Katz
A Disturbing Expulsion: Racism and the Cherokee Nation

John Ross
Being a Zapatista Where You Live

Ralph Nader
Ban the Bomblets!

Walter Brasch
An Intolerant Minority: the Witch Hunt Against Gays in the Military

Samer Assad
The Palestinian Unity Government: Another for US Diplomacy

Dave Zirin
Bowie Kuhn: Death of a Baseball Reactionary

Ron Jacobs
The Darker Nation's: Remembering and Re-examining the Third World

Missy Beattie
No to War and Pace

Don Santina
First, They Came for the Democrats

Sami Adwan
What Hillary Should Know About Palestinian Schoolbooks

Dr. Susan Block
Gods of Spring: the Erotics of the Equinox

Poets' Basement
Reed, Landau, Engel, Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
God Save Helen Mirren

 

March 16, 2007

R. T. Naylor
The Political Economy of Diamonds

Paul Craig Roberts
The Last Days of Constitutional Rule

Joshua Frank
Obama's Israel Problem

Diane Farsetta
How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups

Tom Barry
Tancredo's Putsch: Anti-Immigrant Agenda Veers Hard Right

Stephen Lendman
Plays from a Political Fake Book: Congress's Phony Opposition to War

Al Krebs
Compounding Infamy: Chiquita, Its Workers and Colombia's Death Squads

Jackie Corr
Senator Schumer and the Corruption Culture

Ramzy Baroud
Palestinians Must Redefine Struggle

Reza Fiyouzat
The Chinese Way of Capitalism

Website of the Day
Introducing: the iRak

 

March 15, 2007

Alison Weir
Strip-Searching Children at Israeli Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Under Surge

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memo to Congressional Leaders on Iraq Funding: First Stop the Bleeding

Franklin Spinney
Of Character and Contractors: the Unauthorized Rumsfeld

Standard Schaefer
Biofuels and the Green Resistance

Conn Hallinan
The Right's Stuff in Africa: Neocons, Evangelicals and Sudan

Maureen Webb
Another Patriot Act Abuse

Sonja Karkar
Rachel Corrie and Palestine

Margaret Kimberly
The Profits of Self-Hatred: Malkin and D'Souza, Incorporated

Anthony Papa
The New Capones: It's Time to Rethink Drug Prohibition

Katherine Hancy Wheeler Bush's Latin American Tour: Good Will Lost

Video of the Day
The Easiest Targets

Website of the Day
Memo to Kucinich: Watch Your Back!

 

March 14, 2007

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Peter Linebaugh on the Slave Trade, Magna Carta and the State of the Left

Philip Agee
The Decline of the US, the Rise of Latin America

Bruce Dixon
The Digital Redlining of African-Americans

John Walsh
How One Senator Could End the War

Sunsara Taylor
Red Light, Green Light: the Democrats and Iran

William Johnson
Still Reeling from Katrina: The Spirited Strike at Pascagoula Shipyards

Richard Thieme
Entitlement and Empire

Jeffrey Klein
Right-Wing Academic Values

Nicola Nasser
This Time, Israeli is Missing an Historic Opportunity

Dave Lindorff
Political Hide-and-Seek with the Democrats

Website of the Day
Oil Change

 

March 13, 2007

Catherine Wilkerson, M.D.
Scenes from a Cop Riot

Jonathan Cook
The Real Goal of Israel's Invastion of Lebanon

Robert Bryce
Beyond Redemption: the Legacy of George the Second

Corporate Crime Reporter
Coal-Powered Democrats

Pierre Rimbert
Libération and the Evolution of French Neoliberalism

Dave Lindorff
What's Good for Halliburton is Good ... for Dubai

Elizabeth Schulte
The Repackaging of John Edwards

Norman Solomon
The Pragmatism of Prolonged War

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats' Fraudulent Iraq Exit Plan

Jeff Conant
Greeting Rumsfeld in Taos

Website of the Day
Tacoma and the Big Heat

 

 

March 12, 2007

Marjorie Cohn
Patriot Act Unbound

Col. Dan Smith
Ghost Prisoners, Shadowy Jails and Secret Trials

Paul Craig Roberts
Neocons in Kafkaland

Ingmar Lee
The Sentencing of Betty Krawczyk: a 78-Year-Old Eco-Heroine

Fred Gardner
Cannabis for the Wounded: Another Walter Reed Scandal

Ron Jacobs
Showdown at Port Tacoma: Confronting the War Machine in the Northwest

Ralph Nader
Send the Bush Twins to Iraq!

John Ross
Political Prisoners in Calderon's Mexico

Stephen Fleischman
Bush's Latin American Slip

Eva Carazo Vargas
Why We Reject CAFTA

Website of the Day
Mountain Justice Spring Break

 

March 9 / 11, 2007

Sameer Dossani
Interview with Noam Chomsky: War, Neoliberalism and Empire in the 21st Century

Jeffrey St. Clair
Crude Alliance: The Bi-Partisan Politics of Oil

Dave Marsh
Bono's Bullshit: Not One Red Cent

Patrick Cockburn
Shia Pilgrims Die Despite US Offensive

Jennifer Van Bergen
A Gonzo Argument: Alberto Gonzales's Defense of NSA Domestic Spying

James P. Stevenson
Pardon Whom? Libby and the Cheney Unseen

Arthur J. Versluis
Crusade for Commercialism

Corporate Crime Reporter
Not a Dime's Worth of Difference: Congress and Corporate Crime

Missy Beattie
Too Much Info, Newt!: Sex, God and Praying

Michael Simmons
Annie Get Your Gums: Why I Like Ann Coulter

Kevin Zeese
Making Democrats Pay the Price: Voting Against the War is No Longer Enough

David Swanson
Shocking Video: The Dark Side of the Democrats

John A. Murphy
Are the Congressional Democrats Spineless?

Dave Lindorff
Bush Dodges a Constitutional Bullet in New Mexico: Abetted by Democrats

Nikolas Kozloff
Lights! Camera! Chavez!

Christopher Fons
Bush Goes to Latin America: Is It All About (N)PR?

Mike Roselle
A Thousand Miles of Bad River

Mike Mejia
Justice for Sibel Edmonds

Susie Day
Anna Nicole Smith Bombs Iran!

Michael Donnelly
LA Story: Rock Stars, Porn Stars and Peace

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know (Parts 4 and 5)

Poets' Basement
Reed, Laymon, Mezmer and Harley

Website of the Weekend
Japanese Dolphin Massacre

 

March 8, 2007

Elaine Cassel
The Tragic Case of Jose Padilla

Yifat Susskind
Iraq's Other War: Violence Against Women Under US Occupation

Corporate Crime Reporter
Politics and the Prosecutors

Col. Dan Smith
The Sins of Walter Reed

William S. Lind
The Washington Dodgers

Mark Engler
Bush's Latin American Spring Break

Roger Burbach
With Negroponte as Tour Director, Bush's Trip Destined to Fail

Dana Cloud
Return of the Campus Witch Hunts: David Horowitz and the Thought Police

Isabella Kenfield
Brazil's Ethanol Pland: Breeding Rural Poverty and Environmental Degradation

Lucinda Marshall
We Stand with the Women of the World

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction (Part 3)

Website of the Day
Filibuster for Peace


March 7, 2007

Christopher Ketcham
What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?

Christopher Ketcham
The Kuala Lumpur Deceit: a CIA Cover Up

Alexander Cockburn / Jeffrey St. Clair
Ketcham's Story: Coming in From the Cold

Winslow T. Wheeler
Mismeasuring the Defense Budget

Sean Donahue
Free Scooter Libby!

Dave Lindorff
The Fall Guy Has Fallen

Evelyn Pringle
Psychosis and Mania: ADHD Drug Warnings Come Too Late for Many

Tao Ruspoli
Just Say Know: a Personal Look at Drugs and Drug Addiction

Website of the Day
Debating Iraq: Gaffney Against the World!

 

March 6, 2007

Gary Leupp
Meet Eliot Cohen: "As Extremist a Neocon and Warmonger as It Gets"

Uri Avnery
Esterina Tartman: The Big Mouth of Israeli Fascism

Patrick Cockburn
The War on Terror is a Bust: Bush is Now Al Qaeda's Top Recruiter

Saul Landau
World in Crisis, Candidates in Denial

Corporate Crime Reporter
John Edwards' Big Lie

Ron Jacobs
The Legacy of Lordstown: The Union Makes Us Strong!

Mike Roselle
Judi Bari: Ten Years Gone

P. Sainath
Neoliberalism and the Ideology of the Cancer Cell

Joshua Frank
Dump the Dems, Unite Against the War

Aniket Alam
Women's Day, Lenin and a Riot in Copenhagen

Dave Zirin
Resurrecting Don Barksdale: Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer

Website of the Day
Physicians for a National Health Program

 

March 5, 2007

Greg Moses
Holding Suzi Hazahza for Profit

Patrick Cockburn
Exodus of Iraq's Ancient Minorities

James Petras
Bush vs. Chavez

Frida Berrigan
US Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran

Marjorie Cohn
Conscientious Objector Faces Court-Martial: the Case of Augustín Aguayo

Douglas Kammen and S.W. Hayati
The Rice Crisis in East Timor

Sen. Barack Obama
On Israel and AIPAC: "We Must Preserve Our Total Commitment to Our Unique Defense Relationship with Israel"

Michael Young
Sy Hersh and Iran: the Dark Side of Spun a Lot?

Dave Lindorff
It's the People of Washington vs. Pelosi, et al

Sonja Karkar
Raiding Nablus: Israel's Hot Winter Offensive

Website of the Day
How Obama Learned to Love Israel

 

March 3 / 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Persecution of Sami Al-Arian

Corporate Crime Reporter
"No Fingernails, No Good:" Al-Arian Prosecutor's Anti-Muslim Bias

Jeffrey St. Clair
Glory Boy and the Snail Darter: Al Gore, the Origins of a Hypocrite

Patrick Cockburn
War Reporting in Iraq: Only Locals Need Apply

Ralph Nader
Hillary, Inc.: Sen. Clinton and Corporate America

M. Shahid Alam
American Mamlukes

Gilad Atzmon
From Esther to AIPAC

Fred Gardner
It's Official!: Cannabis Reduces Pain

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Fourth World War Started in Venezuela

Rock & Rap Confidential
Do the James Brown!: "No One Could Speak More Authoritatively for Blacks"

Gillian Russom
The Court Martial of Agustín Aguayo

Michael McPhearson
My Small Act of Civil Disobedience

Kevin Zeese
The Democrats and the Peace Movement: Who Owns Whom?

Sunsara Taylor
Four Years of an Unjust War

Wendy Thompson
Re-Organizing the UAW

Kenneth Rexroth
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall"

Missy Beattie
Regarding Cheney

Don Monkerud
Jesus Turned Away at US Border

Tina Louise
Stuffed with Terror, Starved of Dreams

Poets' Basement
Richards, Landau and Davies

Website of the Weekend
John Prine: Flag Decal

 

March 2, 2007

Roger Morris
Cheney's Bagram Ghosts

Phil Gasper
Prisoners of Ideology

Mike Roselle
Buffalo Gore: The Blood-Stained Snow of Yellowstone

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Scam

John V. Walsh
Who is He This Time?: Kerry's Strange Call to Filibuster the War

Sherwood Ross
Bush and Walter Reed Hospital: Praise the Care, Slash the Budget

China Hand
Who Let North Korea Get the Bomb?

David Rosen
To Cut or Not to Cut?: the Politics of Circumcision in America

Chris Genovali
Connecting the Dots

Peter Harley
The Wall, Apartheid and Mandela

Website of the Day
Courage to Resist

 

March 1, 2007

Laura Carlsen
Return to Sender: Migrants as Globalization's Junk Mail

Paul Craig Roberts
The Tragedy of a Dozen Evil Men

Ray McGovern
How Far is Iran from the Bomb? Who the Hell Knows?

Christopher Brauchli
Bush's Theater of the Absurd

Najum Mustaq
America's Musharraf Dilemma

Brent Bowden
The War on Terror and the Terror of War

Tina Richards
Demoralizing the Troops? The Mother of an Iraq War Vet Responds

Ethan Nadelman
Mexico and the Drug War

Mike Stark
"Tough on Crime" is the Problem, Not a Solution

Wadner Pierre / Jeb Sprague
Haiti's Poor Under a State of Siege by UN

Mike Whitney
Market Meltdown: the Dead Hand of Greenspan

Website of the Day
Dylan Hears a Who

 

February 28, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
An Amazing Disgrace

Tao Ruspoli
A Conversation with Francisco Letelier

China Hand
The Shanghai Crash: Take the Money and Run

Marjorie Cohn
Why the Boumediene Case on Gitmo Detainees and Habeas Corpus Was Wrongly Decided

Sarah Olson
Is Lt. Watada an Isolated Case of Military Dissent?

Susan Van Haitsma
Mark Wilkerson: Standing for a Soldier's Right to Conscience

Nicole Colson
License to Torture

Harvey Wasserman
The Sham of Nuclear Power

William S. Lind
The Non-Thinking Enemy

Nicola Nasser
US Turnabout?: Engagement and Confrontation in the Middle East

Website of the Day
Andrew Cockburn on Rumsfeld

 

February 27, 2007

Tariq Ali
The Khyber Impasse: the Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Tom Barry
America's Crusaders: Santorum and Lieberman

Uri Avnery
The Next War

Antonia Juhasz / Raed Jarrar
Oil Grab: the Secret Scheme to Split Iraq

Jeff Nygaard
Howard Hunt and the National Memory System

Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Grenada: an Invasion Revisited

Mitchell Kaidy
Israel's Cluster Bombs: Made in USA, Ground-Tested in Lebanon

Carl Finamore
Airline Bankruptcies, Mergers and Profits

Anne McElroy Dachel
The Really Big Lie About Autism

Ramzy Baroud
Who is Really in Control?

Andrew Rouse
The Queen, Her Apothecary and the War on Iraq

Website of the Day
New York City Skyline

 

February 26, 2007

Franklin Lamb
US Israel Lobby Targets Lebanon's Jihad al-Bina

Bill Quigley
The Right to Return to New Orleans

Greg Moses
Suzi Hazahza in Haskell Hell

Col. Dan Smith
Calling All Carriers

Ralph Nader
The Bush Administration is a Threat to Our National Security

Paul Buchheit
The Income Gap

Jeff Leys
How Democrats Are Buying the Iraq War

Dave Zirin
Bojangling for Bigots: an Open Letter to Jason Whitlock

Mike Whitney
Doomsday Dick and the Plague of Frogs

Michael Dickinson
Free Kareem Amer!

Website of the Day
Beware the Chickenhawks!

 

February 24 / 25, 2007

Jeffrey St. Clair
Frightening Tales of Endangered Species

R. T. Naylor
Inside Islamic Charity

Gary Leupp
AIPAC Demands "Action" on Iran

Saul Landau
Modern Day Miracle: Rev. Haggard Cured! Thank You, Jesus!

Ron Jacobs
Missile Defense Redux

Jeffrey Blankfort
A Debate on the Israel Lobby

Chris Sands
Afghanistan in Winter: Where Death Comes Cheap

Gary Freeman
The N-Word and Black History Month

Larry Portis
Zionism and the United States: the Cultural Connection

P. Sainath
Two Million People in "Maximum Distress"

Lee Sustar
What Next for the Immigrants' Rights Movement?

Kevin Wehr
Liberal vs. Radical Enviros: the Thrill isn't Gone, It's Just Moved

Ken Couesbouc
The African Card

Soffiyah Elijah
FBI Hunting Dead Panthers: Can John Bowman Ever Rest in Peace?

Kathlyn Stone
Iraqi Labor vs. Big Oil

Dave Lindorff
Breaking the Dam in Olympia

Jason Kunin
Criticizing Israel is Not an Act of Bigotry

Kevin Zeese
Can Hillary be Trusted?

Remi Kanazi
All Roads Lead to Checkpoints

Missy Beattie
Five Words That Change Lives

Poets' Basement
Davies, Holt and Rodriguez

Website of the Weekend
Caught on Tape: an Anti-War Movement Finding Its Feet?

 

February 23, 2007

Franklin Spinney
Top Gun vs. the Axis of Evil: Is This What We Have Become?

Jonathan Cook
Watching the Checkpoints

Patrick Cockburn
The True Extent of Britain's Failure in Basra

Kathy Kelly
Do Something Good

Chris Dols
Islamophobia at Urban Outfiters: the Case for Keffiyehs

Evelyn Pringle
The Neurontin Suicides: Risks Kept Hidden for Years

Stephen Pearcy
If Bush is a War Criminal, What About the Troops?

Dan Brook
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April 4, 2007

The SSRI Pushers

Drug Companies Want Women of Childbearing Years

By EVELYN PRINGLE

Drug makers are hell-bent on recovering the antidepressant customer base represented by women of childbearing years. With doctors now reluctant to prescribe the drugs to pregnant women, a new recruitment scheme has cropped up. Screening programs are being set up all over the country to screen every pregnant woman for mental disorders.

The name-brand selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants, or SSRIs, with a stake in this controversy, include Paxil, by GlaxoSmithKline; Zoloft, from Pfizer; Prozac by Eli Lilly; Celexa and Lexapro, from Forest Laboratories; and Luvox, from Solvay.

According to one of the world's leading experts on SSRIs, Dr David Healy, a professor at the University of Wales College of Medicine, "there is quite a movement at the moment to say all pregnant women are depressed."

Every pregnant woman, he explains, can have depressive symptoms such as fatigue, disturbed sleep, and anxiety at times, along with loss of interest in sex. "But," he says, "having depressive symptoms and being depressed are two different things."

"When people get the flu," he points out, "they have a full house of depressive symptoms but doctors would not prescribe antidepressants to people with the flu."

The Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, Illinois continues to recommend that SSRIs be used to treat pregnant women even despite recent warnings concerning birth defects and other life-threatening disorders in children born to mothers who took antidepressants during pregnancy. "Any woman," the Hospital warns, "who is thinking about becoming pregnant, is pregnant, or had a baby within the past year can be affected by depression or other mood disorders."

Good Samaritan screens all new mothers, according to a March 1, 2007 Naperville Sun article, and universal screening may soon become state law in Illinois through legislation called the, Postpartum Mood Disorders Prevention Act, that was introduced in February 2007. Similar legislation has been adopted or introduced in several other states.

According to the Sun, if the new legislation introduced in Illinois becomes law, it will require health care professionals to:

"Assess women for mood disorders at least four times: at a prenatal checkup in the third trimester of pregnancy, prior to discharge from the place where they give birth, at the initial postnatal checkup and at every postnatal checkup until the child's first birthday."

And the new potential customer base for SSRIs is no longer limited to postpartum depression, it has now been expanded to include, "mood disorders."

The Good Samaritan Hospital website also instructs women to "check your symptoms for a variety of postpartum mood disorders."

"They are trying to talk women into believing they have a mental illness, says Karen Barth Menzies of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei, Goldman & Menzies, one of the attorneys leading the charge against the antidepressant manufacturers for failing to warn about birth defects. "But the symptoms they are being told to check for are no different than what any person may feel on a bad day or when they are under the weather. By their definition, everyone is mentally ill and should pop a psychotropic pill, continued Menzies.

Talk about market expansion, even in the best of cases, the odds are fairly good that a new mother may be in a bad mood on at least one of those 4 days, leading to a label of "mental illness requiring medication.

For its article, the Sun interviewed a first-time mom named, Jami. Shortly after she gave birth at Good Samaritan, a nurse psychotherapist had Jami fill out a 15-question test. And surprise, surprise, Jami flunked the test, started seeing a shrink and is now on an SSRI.

"I learned I had anxiety before," she told the Sun. "(People like me are) overachievers, our resumes look like we're 40 or 50, but when we have a baby, it can come out very intense."

So Jami agreed to take Lexapro for 6 months for anxiety, something she did not originally want to do, according to the Sun.

The old line that there,s no difference between taking insulin for diabetes and taking SSRIs for whatever, has apparently been replaced with an equally overly simplistic line as Jami explained, "People get glasses, people get braces, and now there's something for anxiety."

Some experts view it differently. "Drug makers have been trying to get a better deal with pregnant women for ages," Dr Healy says, "by saying they are under a lot more stress than most people realize, so this is now the easiest of marketing for drug companies."

"The trouble is," Dr Healy points out, "it,s almost too easy for drug companies here because lots of people are cooperative."

But it gets worse. The SSRI pushers in Illinois, have convinced Jami to start taking an SSRI the moment she even thinks of becoming pregnant again. "My psychiatrist said when my husband and I want to have another baby," she told the Sun, "it might not be a bad idea to get on something low-dosage before we even start trying."

"And I'm OK with that," says Jami. Apparently Jami,s psychiatrist didn,t tell her that she could be placing her unborn child at risk for birth defects, persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPHN), neonatal withdrawal syndrome and other potential life threatening defects and disorders.

Attorney Karen Barth Menzies, who represents more than fifty mothers who were taking Paxil and whose babies were born with birth defects, commented, "I wish Jami could talk to any mother who has watched her infant undergo open-heart surgery and then decide if she is willing to take that risk.

According to psychiatrist, Dr Grace Jackson, author of, "Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent," prescribing SSRIs as a preventative measure during pregnancy is a terrible idea. The major reason why preventive use is so dangerous, she says, is that there is research suggesting that the SSRIs exert a direct effect upon the early embryo.

For example, she notes, researchers in France published a paper in 2005 that suggests that serotonin exerts an impact on developmental processes of the embryo much earlier than previously believed. "It was already known in the 1980s and 1990s," Dr Jackson says, "that the administration of SSRIs to embryonic cultures of rats and mice leads to craniofacial and cardiac defects."

Experts critical of SSRI use during pregnancy, all agree that in the absence of any proven effectiveness of treatment with SSRIs, no potential harm to the fetus can be justified.

"Even if women are depressed or anxious during pregnancy," Dr Healy says, "there is no good reason to prescribe antidepressants, because only 1 out of 10 people are likely to respond to the drugs rather than to attention and support."

"So in essence," he notes, "nine out of 10 pregnant women will be subject to the risks of the SSRIs for the one person who might benefit."

Other experts agree. The July 2005, British Medical Journal, published a report on a review of SSRI data by Moncrieff & Kirsch, that said, SSRIs have no clinically meaningful advantage over a placebo and considering the risks, recommendations for prescribing the drugs should be reconsidered.

It's worth noting that there is not a single word in the Sun article that would indicate that Jami is aware of any of the serious birth defects now known to be associated with SSRI use during pregnancy. This concerns Harvard trained psychiatrist, Dr Stefan Kruszewski. "Informed consent," he says, "requires full disclosure."

"In every case in which a doctor writes a prescription for a drug," he explains, "the person receiving the prescription must be fully and understandably provided a statement of the risks associated with treatment."

"This is never more serious," he warns, "than when two lives are potentially at risk, such as the pregnant mom and her fetus.

"Those risks for the pregnant mom," Dr Kruszewski warns, "may include antidepressant withdrawal, akathisia or rapid mood swings."

"For the fetus," he says, "the overwhelming worry is congenital malformations, resulting in complications for both mother and child.

SSRI makers have known about the fetal harm of SSRIs for over a decade. As far back as 1996, the New England Journal of Medicine reported a study that showed higher rates of premature delivery, low birth weight, admissions to intensive care units, and poor neonatal adaptation, including respiratory and feeding difficulties, and jitteriness, in children born to women who took Prozac during pregnancy.

In 2004, the FDA revised SSRI labels to warn that some infants had developed problems requiring prolonged hospitalization, respiratory support, and tube feeding. Three FDA advisories have been issued on Paxil since December 2005, and the drug's pregnancy category has been raised from C to D, meaning there is positive evidence of fetal harm.

In February 2006, the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, reported that roughly one-third of infants exposed to SSRIs showed signs of withdrawal such as high-pitched crying, tremors, gastrointestinal problems and disturbed sleep, with 13% severe.

The April 2006, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, reported that taking SSRIs doubled the mother's risk of delivering a stillborn infant and increased the risk of premature delivery, underweight babies, and seizures.

In July 2006, the FDA issued an advisory warning that infants exposed to SSRIs were six times more likely to develop the often fatal lung disorder, persistent pulmonary hypertension (PPH), than infants who were not exposed.

The October 2006 edition of Epidemiology reported that women who took SSRIs during the second or third month of pregnancy had nearly two times the risk of having babies with congenital malformations, with the most common being cardiovascular malformations in 29%, muscle and bone malformations in 31%, and 14% had digestive malformations.

Meanwhile, the Sun reports that Good Samaritan screened 1,262 patients in 2006, and found 18% at risk for postpartum depression. Not a bad catch for SSRI makers and it can only get better when the plan for "universal screening" kicks in.

One of the latest recruitment scams involves expanding the postpartum depression market by 10% simply by including the husbands. According to an August 2006 study in Pediatrics, about 10% of fathers suffer from moderate or severe postpartum depression.

"Postpartum depression in fathers was strikingly high and more than twice as common than in the general adult male population in the U.S.," say researchers including Dr James Paulson, of the Center for Pediatric Research at the Eastern Virginia Medical School.

As a result, the authors advise, pediatricians must make a greater effort to screen moms and dads for postpartum depression.

However, this appears to be a case of the dueling researchers in medical journals because in December 2006, a Danish study in the Journal of American Medical Association, found that first-time mothers were at an increased risk for mental disorders but fathers were not.

This 32-year stdy included more than 2.3 million people, and roughly one out of 1,000 first-time mothers were admitted to a hospital with a mental illness within one year, and most were admitted within the first three months after birth. But among fathers, only 0.37 of 1,000 births resulted in a mental disorder, which the authors noted, was comparable to men without children or men with an older infant.

"This may indicate that the causes of postpartum mental disorders are more strongly linked to an altered physiological process related to pregnancy and childbirth than psychosocial aspects of motherhood," said study author Trine Munk-Olsen of the University of Aarhus, Denmark.

This is indeed the case, according to Dr Jackson. "The third trimester," she says, "is a wild time for the mother, in terms of hormonal changes that occur within her system largely because of the hormones that are produced in the placenta."

In general, she notes, the mother,s hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis is in a state of over-drive, and "the brain itself gets in on the act in terms of Steroids that are made inside the brain."

She says, researchers were very excited in the late 1990s to discover that Prozac, for example, increased levels of the neurosteroid called allopregnanolone.

Neurosteroids, Dr Jackson explains, are made in the brain itself and allopregnanolone is a chemical which acts to modulate mood and anxiety and may account for why most mothers forget the intense pain of labor. "Nature," Dr Jackson says, "has created a way to remove the memory of the most intensely painful experience which a woman can encounter during her lifetime."

Some researchers report that it takes about 90 days for the steroid levels to re-equilibrate. "Although all women experience these hormonal changes," Dr Jackson explains, "some may be more sensitive than others to the fluctuations which occur in the immediate post-partum period - a 90 day phase of steroid, withdrawal."

Giving SSRIs may help relieve this "withdrawal period by boosting the allopregnanolone artificially, she says, but many women will become addicted to the SSRIs, for a hormonal change that would have ended naturally on its own within 90 days.

Then there is the little matter of prescribing SSRIs to nursing mothers. "No one yet knows," Dr Jackson warns, "because no one has studied the long term consequences of administering SSRIs to infants via breast milk."

"It has never been proven," she notes, "that there is no effect, of giving infants these drugs during the first months or years of post-uterine existence."

Furthermore, she says, no one understands how the in utero exposure to SSRIs changes the wiring of the newborn's brain.

In regard to the overall scheme of screening all women before, during and after pregnancy and putting them on SSRIs, Dr Jackson says, "in sum, there could not be a more foolhardy public health practice than this one."

A better use for a post-pregnancy screening survey, may be to screen women who were conned into taking SSRIs during pregnancy whose babies died or were born with birth defects, to see how many of those mothers are depressed for reasons that no pill can cure.

A good place to start would be West Virginia, with the mother of twin daughters who were born with heart birth defects, after she took Paxil during pregnancy. Only one infant survived and the other died at 20-months-old.

Another infant with Paxil related heart defects was born to a mother in Omaha, Nebraska, and the baby lived only 24 days after enduring four surgeries in an attempt to save his life.

A screening should also be conducted on the Toledo, Ohio mother who took Paxil and had a baby born with heart defects who lived only 17 days after undergoing several surgeries.

Another infant was born with Paxil related heart birth defects to a mother in Westerville, Ohio, and the baby required two surgeries in the first nine months after birth and will have to undergo more in the future.

A Texas mother on Paxil also gave birth to an infant with heart birth defects who required multiple open-heart surgeries and had to have a pacemaker implanted.

The Los Angeles-based Baum Hedlund law firm has the longest track-record handling SSRI litigation in the country. The firm currently represents families in dozens of SSRI-related birth defect cases, including Paxil, and has seven attorneys assigned specifically to SSRI litigation.

Attorney, Karen Barth Menzies, has been handling SSRI cases for more than a decade involving Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft and now leads the team, along with Baum Hedlund attorney Jennifer Liakos, representing families in Paxil birth defect cases.

In addition to birth defects, SSRIs have been linked to suicidality, violence and homicide, abnormal gastrointestinal and uterine bleeding, a decrease in bone density, fertility problems, sexual dysfunction, and a severe withdrawal syndrome.

However, almost without exception, every time the FDA issues a warning about a new adverse event associated with SSRIs, the drug companies send out their paid shills to present industry-funded studies to downplay the seriousness of the warning.

Families seeking justice for infants born with Paxil related birth defects can contact Baum, Hedlund, Aristei, Goldman & Menzies at: (800) 827-0087.

Evelyn Pringle is an investigative reporter. She can be reached at: epringle05@yahoo.com

 

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