Wednesday, October 19, 2016

IS leaders flee Mosul as Iraqi forces close in

Around 3,500 to 5,000 IS militants are dug into Mosul, while tens of thousands of Iraqi forces have massed to recapture Iraqi's second city

Wednesday 19 October 2016

Islamic State (IS) group leaders have been fleeing Mosul as US-backed local forces close in on the militants' last Iraqi stronghold, a US general said on Wednesday.

US Army Major General Gary Volesky, who heads the land component command of the US-led coalition to defeat IS, predicted that foreign fighters will end up forming a large contingent of militants remaining in the city, as they have nowhere else to go.

An estimated 3,500 to 5,000 IS militants are dug into Mosul, while tens of thousands of Iraqi forces have massed to recapture Iraq's second largest city in an offensive that began on the outskirts on Monday.

"We are telling Daesh that their leaders are abandoning them. We've seen a movement out of Mosul," he told reporters in a video briefing from Baghdad, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

He declined to say how many leaders had left, when they did, or where they were headed, but said they were targeted with air strikes as they fled.

"Where they are going, I will leave that to our (missile) targeteers to take care of," Volesky said.

He noted that the Iraqis would screen anyone leaving Mosul, and attempts by foreign fighters to blend in to an expected exodus of displaced people would be thwarted.

"It's difficult for them to blend into the local population based on the number of different types of foreign fighters that there are," Volesky said.

"We expect that they will be the ones (who stay and fight), because they really don't have any other place to go."

Also on Wednesday, the US said that the coalition will not support Shia militias who might seek to participate in the campaign to retake Mosul from IS, stressing that it is up to Baghdad to decide their role.

"It's difficult for them to blend into the local population based on the number of different types of foreign fighters that there are"

Launched on Monday, the long-awaited advance on Mosul was making quick progress, but US President Barack Obama joined a chorus of warnings that the battle ahead would be tough.

Officials have also warned that the hundreds of thousands of civilians still in the city could be used as human shields.

The United States expects the IS militants to use crude chemical weapons as they try to repel the Iraqi-led offensive, although US officials said the group's technical ability to develop such weapons is highly limited.

US forces have begun to regularly collect shell fragments to test for possible chemical agents, given the use of mustard agent by IS militants in the months before Monday's launch of the Mosul offensive, one official said.

In a previously undisclosed incident, US forces confirmed the presence of a sulphur mustard agent on IS munition fragments on 5 October, a second official said.

IS militants had also targeted local forces, not US or coalition troops.

"Given ISIL's reprehensible behavior and flagrant disregard for international standards and norms, this event is not surprising," the second official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, and using an alternative acronym for the IS group.

Separately, General Joseph Votel, who heads the US military's Central Command, warned that the battle would last for weeks to months.

"This is going to be a complex fight," Votel told a Washington think tank.

"The Islamic State has had two years to prepare this area. We should expect there will be some setbacks. We expect that there will be some very heavy fighting."

"We don't respect their ideology, but we respect them as an adversary. They are working diligently to try to come up with new ways that they can have an impact on us."

"This is going to be a complex fight"

Late on Tuesday, the Shia-dominated paramilitary force said it would support the Iraqi army's offensive west of Mosul, raising fears of sectarian strife in the mainly Sunni region.

The announcement came despite warnings from human rights groups that involvement of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), a coalition of mostly Iranian-trained militias, could ignite sectarian violence.

"As far as the Shiite PMF, the coalition only supports those elements that are under the direct command and control of the Iraqi security forces - and the Shiite PMF are not," said Volesky, using a different acronym for the PMU.

Three Filipinos seriously injured after police van rams into them during anti-US rally

Image via YouTube

19th October 2016

SEVERAL protesters in the Philippines were seriously injured when a police van rammed into them during an anti-U.S rally which turned violent on Wednesday at the American embassy in Manila.

According to the Associated Press, protest leader Renato Reyes said at least three student activists had were rushed to hospital after the van driven by a police officer plowed into them.

Footage of the incident showed the van repeatedly ramming the protesters as it drove wildly back and forth after protesters had surrounded and started hitting it with wooden batons they had seized from the police.

SEE ALSO: Filipinos trust US more than China, poll reveals as Duterte starts Beijing visit

Rally-goers hurled red paint at the policemen and a U.S. government seal at the seaside embassy leading to the arrests of 23 protesters who broke into a police cordon.

“There was absolutely no justification for it,” Reyes was quoted as saying. “Even as the president vowed an independent foreign policy, Philippine police forces still act as running dogs of the U.S.”

He said police dispersed about 1,000 protesters violently in the protest.

The group was demanding the end of U.S. military presence in the former American colony, echoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s foreign policy shift to reduce dependency on it’s longtime treaty ally in favour of China and Russia.

SEE ALSO: US says Duterte’s harsh words ‘at odds’ with reality

Duterte is in China this week in a visit to bolster ties with Beijing. Since taking office in June, the president has in recent months had a falling out with the U.S., largely due to his controversial war on drugs which had claimed more than 3,500 lives in the past few months.

Brazilian politician who led Rousseff impeachment arrested on corruption charges

Eduardo Cunha, former lower house speaker who was expelled from office, being investigated for allegedly taking bribes to liberate funds from state bank

Eduardo Cunha is also accused of taking up to $37m in bribes as part of the Lavo Jato investigation. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP

Matt Sandy in Rio de Janeiro-Wednesday 19 October 2016

Eduardo Cunha, the Brazilian politician who orchestrated the impeachment of the country’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff, has been arrested on corruption charges.

Federal police detained the former speaker of the lower house in Brasilia on Wednesday and executed a search warrant at his home in Rio de Janeiro.

Compared by some to Frank Underwood from House of Cards, Cunha also has been accused of taking up to 116.5m reais ($37m) in bribes as part of the Operation Car Wash investigation into mammoth corruption at state oil giant Petrobras.

The arrest was ordered by federal judge Sergio Moro, who has gained celebrity inBrazil by leading that probe, which has ensnared dozens of leading politicians.

Moro has been investigating Cunha for months but could only arrest him after he was expelled from the chamber of deputies last month, and lost his parliamentary immunity.

“[His freedom] posed a risk to the investigation of the case, to public order, as well as the concrete possibility of that he would flee due to the availability of hidden funds abroad, in addition to his dual nationality (Cunha is Italian and Brazilian),” federal prosecutors said in a statement.

The statement quoted Moro, who said: “Until there is full traceability of money, there is a greater risk that he will flee, since the accused could use illegal funds to facilitate his escape and refuge abroad.”

The court order, signed by Moro on Tuesday, allows for his indefinite detention while the investigation continues. However, he can appeal to the supreme court to be freed.

The reviled evangelical politician, 58, played a crucial role in the impeachment of Rousseff in August. As the speaker of the chamber of deputies, he initiated proceedings against her. Rousseff, who was not accused of personally enriching herself, has claimed that Cunha and his allies were motivated by her refusal to shutdown Operation Car Wash.

Rousseff’s successor, and her former vice-president, Michel Temer is of the same Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB) party as Cunha but has distanced himself. Cunha, who built his powerbase on knowing the secrets of others, is said to be writing a book.

After his removal from congress by 450 votes to 10, he was banned from politics for eight years, a punishment more severe than that handed to Rousseff, who was ejected from office but – in an unprecedented move – was allowed to keep her political rights.

Cunha is now being investigated for a wide range of allegations, including taking bribes relating to Petrobras and Caixa Economica Federal, a state bank. He is said to have stashed $2.3m in Swiss bank accounts but prosecutors believe that is a fraction of the total.

Credit card statements, leaked by prosecutors, showed Cunha and his family spent out $40,000 on a nine-day family holiday in Miami at the end of 2013, then went on shopping and restaurant sprees in Paris, New York and Zurich. Cunha and his wife are also said to own a fleet of eight luxury cars, including a Porsche, which were registered under the name of Jesus.com and C3 Productions.

He originally rose to notoriety as a radio host after converting to the Assembly of God, one of Brazil’s biggest evangelical churches. He was elected to congress in 2003 and became speaker in 2015. He is consistently one of the most disliked politicians in Brazil and “Cunha out” has become a popular slogan, summing up widespread disgust at the political class.

Opposition politicians predicted if Cunha made a plea bargain with prosecutors, the government could fall. “Eduardo Cunha has just been arrested,” Lindbergh Farias of Rousseff’s Workers’ party told the senate. “And I sincerely hope he makes a deal. If he makes a deal, the government of Michel Temer will not last a day.”

Burma faces ethnic violence. Has Aung San Suu Kyi ignored the plight of her people?

Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi was in New Delhi on Oct. 18 as part of a three-day state visit. (Poulomi Basu/For The Washington Post)

By Annie Gowen October 19

NEW DELHI — Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi said this week that it will “take time” to address her country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis and deflected charges that she has not done enough to speak out on behalf of Burma’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim community.

Suu Kyi spoke to The Washington Post as her administration marks six months in office, and as fresh violence threatens to derail the country’s peace process.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate and dedicated critic of the former military government came to power at a time when she must deal with a worsening humanitarian crisis that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

The crisis deepened this month when assailants thought to be part of the Rohingya community attacked three police posts in the western part of the country, killing nine police officers. Scores of people were killed and villages torched in a military crackdown that followed.

Suu Kyi said Tuesday that video of the alleged attackers shows “clearly” that their intentions were to wage jihad and that they had exhorted their brothers from the Muslim world to join them.

“We are of course determined to contain the situation and to make sure that we restore peace and harmony as soon as possible,” Suu Kyi said. “We are not going to allow either the security or stability or the integrity of our country to be threatened.”

Suu Kyi’s government came to power in March after the country’s first election following decades of military rule. She said continuing the peace process with ethnic militias fighting in the country’s north and east was her top priority.

But her civilian government must find ways to work with the still-powerful military and take steps to rejuvenate an economy that faltered during decades of brutal military rule. Burma, also known as Myanmar, remains one of the poorest countries in Asia.

In August, Suu Kyi appointed former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan to look into the situation with the Rohingya. More than 1 million Rohingya Muslims live in Burma, but they are considered stateless and have long been denied basic rights.

More than 120,000 are still living in fetid camps in Rakhine state after violent clashes with their Buddhist neighbors in 2012. They have little access to health care and 30,000 of their children do not have proper schools, according to a U.N. report in June.

The report cited a “pattern of gross human rights violations” against the Rohingya, acts that it said could rise to the level of “crimes against humanity” in a court of law.

The government restarted a process of citizenship verification for the Rohingya in June, but many of the Rohingya refused to participate, Suu Kyi said. Human rights activists say they were suspicious that some kind of new card would mean a further erosion of their rights.

“Things take time,” she said. “The situation in the Rakhine is a legacy of many, many decades of problems. It is not something that happened overnight. We’re not going to be able to resolve it overnight. It goes back even to the last century.”

Suu Kyi told the U.N. investigator that the government would avoid using the term “Rohingya,” which many Burmese consider incendiary. Many Burmese call the Rohingya “Bengali,” a reference to the fact that some migrated from Bangladesh years earlier.

“This is inflammatory,” Suu Kyi said. “We simply say Muslims of Rakhine state. Because this is just a factual description which nobody should object to. But of course, everybody objects because they want their old emotive terms to be used.”

Suu Kyi brushed aside the frequent criticism that, as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, she has not done enough to speak out about the Rohingyas’ plight. She did not go near the camps on a campaign swing through the state last fall and spoke of the conflict only in the vaguest terms.

“Well, I have spoken about it, but people don’t like the way I talk about it because I don’t take sides,” she said. “Nobody takes any account of that because that is not what they want to hear. They want me to make, you know, incendiary remarks, which I am not going to do. I’ve made it very clear that our work is not to condemn but to achieve reconciliation.”

Richard Horsey, a longtime Burma analyst and adviser to the International Crisis Group, said that Suu Kyi had made strides in addressing the issue after her government took over, including the appointment of Annan. But the spate of violence may change that, he said.

“These recent attacks have completely changed the landscape here and what’s possible to do right now,” Horsey said. “It has a huge potential to make the situation much, much worse and much harder to fix.”

Suu Kyi, whose official title is state counselor, spoke at Burma’s embassy while on a trip to India this week. The country is familiar terrain for her, as she spent part of her high school and college years living in New Delhi while her mother was ambassador here.

Suu Kyi, now 71, spent decades campaigning against the military dictatorship in her country, including a total of more than 15 years under house arrest. For her efforts, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

She was freed in 2010 shortly before the military generals began economic reforms that were supported by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.

Despite the resounding victory of her National League for Democracy in last November’s elections, Burma’s generals retain a tight grip on power, reserving 25 percent of the seats in the country’s parliament, which gives them veto power over any constitutional amendment. The military also appoints the key ministers in home affairs, border affairs and defense.

“Tacitly neither will challenge the other much,” Horsey said. “She’s not challenging the military on security issues and not pushing for changes in the constitution, and they’re not showing signs of actively undermining her civilian government.”

When Suu Kyi visited Washington and met with President Obama last month, he announced that he would remove remaining economic sanctions on the country.

They include a longtime ban on imports of gems from the country’s jade and ruby mines and a list of individuals and companies barred from doing business with U.S. entities. This final move should spur foreign investment from the United States, which remains a fraction of the estimated $9 billion in foreign investment in the country this year, experts said.

“We’ve depended on sanctions long enough,” Suu Kyi said. “Sanctions were put into place at a time we most needed a little leverage. I think it’s time that we moved on to a different phase.”

Indonesia’s President Believes Chemical Castration Will Stop Pedophilia

BY SIOBHÁN O'GRADY-OCTOBER 19, 2016

In May, after a gang of adult men raped and murdered a 14-year-old Indonesian girl, President Joko Widodo proposed legislation to make punishments for pedophiles even harsher than before. Instead of just jail time, he suggested male perpetrators should be treated with chemical castration, in which they would be injected with female hormones to reduce their sex drive.

To the dismay of the Indonesian Doctors Association, lawmakers passed the bill and legalized the process earlier this month.

And in an interview with BBC on Wednesday, Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi) said the Indonesian constitution “respects human rights, but when it comes to sexual crimes there is no compromise.”
“In my opinion…chemical castration, if we enforce it consistently, will reduce sex crimes and wipe them out over time,” he said.

Experts disagree, saying that the procedure can be reversed with hormone therapy and would force doctors to breach ethical codes by forcibly harming patients without actual consent. The process has already been used in a number of other countries, including Poland, Russia, and even some U.S. states, including Texas and California. Some repeat offenders in the United States have even requested castration in order to avoid long prison terms, at times going beyond chemical treatment to request their testes be removed in surgery. Human rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have criticized state governments for allowing the exchange of castration for reduced prison sentences, saying the treatment is “cruel and unusual.”

Still, Indonesian Minister for Women Empowerment and Child Protection Yohana Susana Yembise said her administration was turning to prayer to ensure the success of the castration program, asking God to ensure the new law “will have the desired effect.”

“Now we have the harshest punishments: the death penalty, life in prison, chemical castration, the public naming of perpetrators and the electronic chip,” she said. “These are now law, so even if you hate the idea of them, everyone now has to support this.”

Prijo Sidipratomo, chairman of the medical ethics committee at the Indonesian Doctors Association, disagreed. “My message to all doctors across Indonesia is that as long as you’re a doctor, you cannot do it, even if the government says it is to punish a rapist,” he said in a statement. “It is harmful and it’s against human rights.”

The new legislation has prompted fears among members of the LGBT community that gay men, or those suspected by the government as being LGBT, would be labeled sex offenders only so that the government could forcibly take away their sex drive. The Indonesian government has repeatedly targeted the LGBT population by stoking fears that LGBT adults were trying to normalize non-heterosexual relationships in order to undermine Indonesian traditions. In February, Indonesia banned gay pride emojis from mobile phone applications, saying they could stir “social unrest.”

On Wednesday, Widodo tried to justify the government’s position toward LGBT rights, disparaging them as a threat to the country.

“We are the world’s largest Muslim nation and we have religious norms,” he said. “You have to remember that and know that. We have social norms.”

Photo credit: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

Donald Trump: The Dress Rehearsal for Fascism

In the 1990s I watched an impotent, nominally democratic liberal elite in the former Yugoslavia fail to understand and act against the population’s profound economic distress. The fringe demagogues whom the political and educated elites dismissed as buffoons—Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudman—rode an anti-liberal tide to power.

by Chris Hedges

( October 17, 2016, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) Americans are not offered major-party candidates who have opposing political ideologies or ideas. We are presented only with manufactured political personalities. We vote for the candidate who makes us “feel” good about him or her. Campaigns are entertainment and commercial vehicles to raise billions in advertising revenue for corporations. The candidate who can provide the best show gets the most coverage. The personal brand is paramount. It takes precedence over ideas, truth, integrity and the common good. This cult of the self, which defines our politics and our culture, contains the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity, self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation, and incapacity for remorse or guilt. Donald Trump has these characteristics. So does Hillary Clinton.

Our system of inverted totalitarianism has within it the seeds of an overt or classical fascism. The more that political discourse becomes exclusively bombastic and a form of spectacle, the more that emotional euphoria is substituted for political thought and the more that violence is the primary form of social control, the more we move toward a Christianized fascism.

Last week’s presidential debate in St. Louis was only a few degrees removed from the Jerry Springer TV show—the angry row of women sexually abused or assaulted by Bill Clinton, the fuming Trump pacing the stage with a threatening posture, the sheeplike and carefully selected audience that provided the thin veneer of a democratic debate while four multimillionaires—Martha Raddatz, Anderson Cooper, Clinton and Trump—squabbled like spoiled schoolchildren.

The Clinton campaign, aware that the policy differences between her and a candidate such as Jeb Bush were minuscule, plotted during the primaries to elevate the fringe Republican candidates—especially Trump. To the Democratic strategists, a match between Clinton and Trump seemed made in heaven. Trump, with his “brain trust” of Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, would make Clinton look like a savior.

A memo addressed to the Democratic National Committee under the heading “Our Goals & Strategy” was part of the trove ofJohn Podesta emails released this month by WikiLeaks.

“Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to the majority of the electorate. We have outlined three strategies to obtain our goal …,” it reads.

The memo names Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Ben Carson as candidates, or what the memo calls “Pied Piper” candidates who could push mainstream candidates closer to the positions embraced by the lunatic right. “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously

The elites of the two ruling parties, who have united behind Clinton, are playing a very dangerous game. The intellectual and political vacuum caused by the United States’ species of anti-politics, or what the writer Benjamin DeMott called “junk politics,” leaves candidates, all of whom serve the interests of the corporate state, seeking to exaggerate what Sigmund Freud termed “the narcissism of small differences.”

However, this battle between small differences, largely defined by the culture wars, no longer works with large segments of the population. The insurgencies of Trump and Bernie Sanders are evidence of a breakdown of these forms of social control. There is a vague realization among Americans that we have undergone a corporate coup. People are angry about being lied to and fleeced by the elites. They are tired of being impotent. Trump, to many of his most fervent supporters, is a huge middle finger to a corporate establishment that has ruined their lives and the lives of their children. And if Trump, or some other bombastic idiot, is the only vehicle they have to defy the system, they will use him.

The elites, including many in the corporate press, must increasingly give political legitimacy to goons and imbeciles in a desperate battle to salvage their own legitimacy. But the more these elites pillage and loot, and the more they cast citizens aside as human refuse, the more the goons and imbeciles become actual alternatives. The corporate capitalists would prefer the civilized mask of a Hillary Clinton. But they also know that police states and fascist states will not impede their profits; indeed in such a state the capitalists will be more robust in breaking the attempts of the working class to organize for decent wages and working conditions. Citibank, Raytheon and Goldman Sachs will adapt. Capitalism functions very well without democracy.

In the 1990s I watched an impotent, nominally democratic liberal elite in the former Yugoslavia fail to understand and act against the population’s profound economic distress. The fringe demagogues whom the political and educated elites dismissed as buffoons—Radovan Karadzic, Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudman—rode an anti-liberal tide to power.

The political elites in Yugoslavia at first thought the nationalist cranks and lunatics, who amassed enough support to be given secondary positions of power, could be contained. This mistake was as misguided as Franz von Papen’s assurances that when the uncouth Austrian Adolf Hitler was appointed the German chancellor in January 1933 the Nazi leader would be easily manipulated. Any system of prolonged political paralysis and failed liberalism vomits up monsters. And the longer we remain in a state of political paralysis—especially as we stumble toward another financial collapse—the more certain it becomes that these monsters will take power.

Chris Hedges, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

India must release Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Parvez, U.N. experts say

Wed Oct 19, 2016

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The Indian government must immediately release a prominent Kashmiri human rights activist arrested last month on charges of involvement in activities against the public order, a group of United Nations experts urged on Wednesday.

Khurram Parvez, 39, coordinator of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCSS) has long campaigned against human rights violations committed by state forces in India's volatile Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir.

In a statement issued by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), four Special Rapporteurs said Parvez's detention appeared to be an attempt by the government to stop his work.

"Mr. Parvez is a well-known and outspoken human rights defender who has had a long-standing and positive engagement with the U.N. human rights mechanisms," said the U.N. experts on arbitrary detention, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of expression and enforced disappearances.

"His continued detention following his arrest just a few days before his participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council, suggests a deliberate attempt to obstruct his legitimate human rights activism."

Government and police officials in Kashmir declined to comment on the statement by the U.N. Special Rapporteurs Michel Forst, Sètondji Adjovi, Maina Kiai and David Kaye.

The JKCCS has published research into the role of Indian security forces in containing a separatist insurgency in India's Kashmir state that first flared a quarter of a century ago.

At least 78 civilians have been killed and thousands wounded in more than two months of clashes between protesters and security forces, sparked by the killing of a leading separatist militant in a joint army and police operation on July 8.

The unrest is the worst in the Muslim-majority region for six years, and critics have accused Indian forces of heavy-handedness as they struggle to contain the protests.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir since independence in 1947. Both claim the territory in full but rule it in part.

Parvez, who is also the chair of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), was stopped by authorities at New Delhi airport on Sept. 14 when he was on his way to Geneva to attend the U.N. Human Rights Council.

He was detained on Sept 16, released four days later and then detained again the same day.

The experts said they were concerned Parvez was still in preventive detention under the highly controversial Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, which allows for people to held for up to two years without judicial intervention.

India had so far provided no clear details on the exact nature of the charges against Parvez, and the government's rationale relied "mainly on vague accusations of alleged 'anti-India' activities" to disturb public order, said the statement.

"In a democratic society, the open criticism of Government is a legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression of every person," the experts said.

"We are seriously concerned that the arrest of Mr. Parvez may represent a direct retaliation for his legitimate activities as a human rights defender and the exercise of his fundamental freedoms, including freedoms of expression and association."

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla. Additional reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar. Editing by Katie Nguyen.

Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

FDA Hearings on OxyContin for Children an Ego-Fest for Self Interest

Studies are being conducted on children using OxyContin and there is no outrage!

Image: Medical Daily

Oct-19-2016

(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) - On September 15 and 16, I attended an FDA meeting to discuss the appropriate development plans for establishing the safety and efficacy of prescription opioid analgesics for pediatric patients.

On September 15, the day was filled with physicians giving their "expert" opinions on neonatals and newborns being given opioids for pain -- after all they feel the pain of "needle sticks". One expert said the discussion was like "elephants in a room". I describe it as "egos in a room" and there were many of them.

I wrote about my experience during these two days for Global News Centre and Salem-News.com. Links are provided below and I encourage you to read both articles and prepare for the FDA to approve opioids for neonatals and newborns as they did when they approved OxyContin for children as young as 11 years old.

My writing on approval of OxyContin for 11 year olds reveals there was no outrage from any advocacy group or organization such as Partnership for a Drug Free Kids when the FDA was holding hearings on this life-threatening issue.

Where were you all? And, more importantly, where will you all be when neonatals and newborns receive approval by the FDA for opioid therapy?

On the second day of the hearing, the FDA held what they refer to as an "Open Public Hearing". Anyone "preapproved" by the FDA could make a statement regarding pediatric guidelines.

Strange that although they are supposed to advise prior to statements who will be testifying, they did not provide the names of individuals for the "Open Public Hearing". They did make reference to conflict of interest before the four individuals made their time monitored statements.

Without any forewarning of who was to speak, I was taken aback by Stacy Baldridge who called herself a "nurse by training" but now a clinical scientist for Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin. Was this considered a "public" hearing by a pharmaceutical company who will profit in the billions of dollars if neonatals and newborns receive opioids?

Ms. Baldridge, clinical scientist, did not have to worry about a conflict of interest in working for Purdue Pharma because the FDA is quick to say "The decision to publicly disclose interests and statements made to disclose such interests are at the discretion of the open public hearing speaker."

So, Ms. Baldridge skated free -- she chose not to disclose any conflict of interest. I started thinking what could she have said about conflict of interest and came up with this idea:

“

My name is Stacy Baldridge and I work for Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin. The same pharmaceutical company that pleaded guilty in 2007 to misleading the medical profession about the addictive qualities of OxyContin.

Our three CEO's Michael Friedman, Paul Goldenheim, MD and Howard Udell, Chief Counsel were fined and sentenced to community service for their parts in the epidemic of deaths and addictions due to their lies. Our CEO's avoided prison terms because Purdue Pharma had the legal expertise of one Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of NYC as their lead attorney.

Purdue Pharma also had a physician named J. David Haddox, MD who pioneered the word "pseudo-addiction" which meant if patients exhibited addiction to OxyContin, it was not addiction, it was pseudo-addiction. Haddox further instructed physicians to increase the dose of OxyContin. In this way, addiction would not be exhibited by the patient and they would become more and more addicted as their dosage was increased.

Purdue Pharma also had the foresight to recruit physicians as their spokespeople to convince the medical profession to liberally prescribe OxyContin. Some of these very well paid physicians were Nathaniel Katz, MD, Russell Portenoy, MD, Scott Fishman, MD, Perry Fine, MD and Lynn Webster, MD. They were heads of pain foundations and traveled the country pushing opioids and in particular OxyContin for chronic pain patients -- long term.

Our strategy worked and we now have a nation of chronic pain patients addicted to opioids as well as an out of control heroin problem. Physicians realizing their patients were, in fact, addicted to OxyContin contrary to what they were led to believe, cut the patients off from their prescribed opioid and street drugs became the only option for what we referred to as the "legitimat
e pain patient."

Purdue Pharma will in all probability be calling upon the physicians I name in my conflict of interest statement as experts to give testimony in the safety of neonatals and newborns being given opioids.

My employer, Purdue Pharma is grateful to the FDA for the opportunity to make even more in billions of dollars with the most vulnerable being victims. We are holding out hope there will be no outrage from the non-profit advocacy groups or Partnership for a Drug Free Kids because they certainly did not show outrage when 11 year olds were given approval for OxyContin.

I personally would like to thank the FDA for all their efforts in making the owners of Purdue Pharma, the Sackler Family one of the ten richest families in the U.S. -- without any concern for human life.

”

I posed this question in my August 17, 2015 article "FDA has Purdue Pharma conduct its own studies on children being prescribed OxyContin!":

Representatives from pharmaceutical companies paid between $20,000 and $35,000 to send one of their representative to meetings with staffers from FDA. Was this in an effort to get fast track approval of painkillers? No it can’t be. This would be almost as criminal as the FBI asking Charles Manson to consult with them on murder and home invasion cases.

So I began to think. Is this, for lack of better words, criminal activity with children’s lives at stake because of a pay-to-play involving the FDA? Is the Senate aware of this? Well, they will be and very soon.

In the meantime, I think it may benefit me to reach out to the private attorneys I have had the good fortune of working with all over the country in my 13 years of investigating this prescription opioid holocaust and ask them — "Do you feel led to becoming involved in legal action to keep our children from becoming statistics in death and addiction due to OxyContin?"

I believe they will be on board — they have consciences.

LP - Enzo and Matthew what a great year it has been as a union. For the faith, love and support to you and from you, I am so grateful.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

TNA WANTS NEW UNSG TO WORK FOR A PERMANENT & HONORABLE PEACE IN SRI LANKA

António Guterres, a UN photo)

18/10/2016

Welcoming the appointment of Mr. António Guterres as the Secretary General Designate of the United Nations, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) of Sri Lanka says that it looks forward to working with the new Secretary General to bring about a permanent and honorable peace in Sri Lanka at the earliest.

While wishing him well in his new role, the TNA assures Mr. Guterres of its continued commitment towards the reconciliation process in Sri Lanka and its support towards achieving lasting peace on the basis of justice and equality, within an undivided country.

“The TNA also takes this opportunity to urge Mr. Guterres to continue the work of the outgoing Secretary General, Mr Ban Ki Moon in facilitating efforts to ascertain the truth, and ensure justice with reparation and non-recurrence for the victims in Sri Lanka”, says the statement

The statement is singed by by Hon. R. Sampanthan MP, Leader – Tamil National Alliance and Leader of the Opposition – Sri Lankan Parliament.

ONUR and Women’s Affairs Ministry to provide relief for war-affected women

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

The Office for National Unity and Reconciliation (ONUR) has been established to catalyse the process of achieving reconciliation in Sri Lanka. ONUR’s principal role is to ensure a durable peace by building bridges between all our peoples.

Towards this objective, the role of women both as beneficiaries and participants of the process is seen as vital. The ONUR with the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs have embarked on an ambitious journey to promote the role of women in reconciliation.

It has been brought to ONUR’s notice that post-conflict programmes for peace-building and reconciliation, accord insufficient attention to the vast range of problems faced by women and that there exist serious gaps in the services and opportunities available to war affected women, especially war widows including military widows and female-headed households.

Following several consultations; Personal security issues related to the post-conflict context (and violence against women in general), Psycho-social Support, Social Security issues and Livelihood Development related issues have been identified as priority areas

To initiate this long term process and as an immediate step to provide relief to affected women, ONUR and Ministry of Women and Child Affairs are organising the ‘Liya/Mahalir Shakthi’ programme in collaboration with the Registrar General’s Department, Registration of Person’s Department, the Department of Pensions, the Department of Immigration and Emigration, the District Secretary’s Office and the Divisional Secretariats to issue vital documents to those women who have so far been unable to obtain such documents due to various challenges.

As the first phase of this programme, stalled cases have been identified with the assistance of the District Secretary in Kilinochchi and over 1,500 cases have been sent to the relevant departments to identify as to why there have been delays in the issuance of documents or why documents were not issued so far. The next step is to take the resolved cases back to Kilinochchi and to complete the necessary formalities with the relevant person so that the document issue can take place thereafter so that affected women can access the benefits and services available to them.

This programme was initiated with the participation of a large number of people seeking the services in Kilinochchi District which covered Karachchi DS Division on 13 October and Poonakari DS Division on 14 October. Similar events will be held in Kandavalai DS Division on 20 October and Pachchilaippalli DS Division on 21 October.

The Kilinochchi District events were organised with the support of National Center for the Empowerment of Widows and Women Headed Families affiliated to the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs. The ONUR and Ministry of Women’s Affairs intend to continue this programme into other provinces during the rest of the year and the beginning of 2017.

SRI LANKA: LEAKED DRAFT OF THE PROPOSED COUNTER TERRORISM ACT

( October 18, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)Read the draft Counter terrorism Act of Sri Lanka here;

sri-Lanka-leaked-copy-of-draft-legal-framework-for-new-Counter-Terrorism-Law.pdf by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Sri Lanka's 6th Amendment to be Challenged at the UN by TGTE

Oct 18, 2016

The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) starting on October 24th, coinciding with this year’s UN day, is calling all lawyers from the homeland, the Tamil Diaspora, Global Tamils, and all progressive lawyers across the globe to lend their support and provide legal representation in the communication to be filed by the TGTE with the UN Human Rights Committee with respect to the 6th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution.

It is expected that the TGTE will be citing several internationally well known cases and argue with the UN that the 6th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution criminalizes peaceful advocacy for an independent state and that it is a violation of freedom of conscience and freedom of speech guaranteed in the international covenant on civil and political rights.

The cases in point are as follows:

1) The European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Okçuoğlu v. Turkey, and Arslan v. Turkey 8 July 1999 held that convictions for disseminating separatist propaganda violated the guarantee of freedom of expression in the European Convention of Human Rights.

2) In the case of Erdoğdu and Incev.Turkey also July 8, 1999, the Court held that convictions for disseminating propaganda against the indivisibility of the state violated the guarantee of freedom of expression in the Convention.

3) The Court, in the case of Association Ekin v. France held on July 17, 2001 that the banning of a book advocating Basque separatism violated the guarantee of freedom of expression in the Convention.

4) In the case of IsakTepe v. Turkey the Court on October 21, 2008 held that a charge without a conviction for disseminating separatist propaganda violated the guarantee of freedom of expression in the Convention.

The present call by the TGTE to Lawyers across the globe is reminiscent of the 1976 Trial-at-Bar proceedings against the Tamil leaders for distributing to the public copies of the Vaddukoddai Resolution. A record of 67 lawyers represented the Tamil leaders then, including late S.J.V. Chelvanayagam QC, Late G.G. Ponnampalam QC, and late M. Thiruchelvam QC.

The TGTE will set up a website in which interested lawyers will be able to log their names, affiliation, and their country of residence in order to express their interest in joining this call for legal representation. Eelam Tamils are called upon to campaign for legal personnel in the homeland as well as around the world, Tamils and non-Tamils alike, to sign up with this timely project.

It is to be emphasized that while the 6th Amendment criminalizes advocacy for independent state in Sri Lanka, calling for the repeal of the 6th Amendment is not prohibited by this law.

Attorney and human rights activist, David Matas, is coordinating this effort.