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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (745574)	7/18/2006 2:18:11 PM
From: pompsander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

particularly gruesome from the sound of it.... ______________________ Suicide bomber in Iraq kills 59 By Khaled Farhan 25 minutes ago KUFA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 59 people in a crowded Iraqi market on Tuesday after luring Shi'ite day laborers aboard his minivan with an offer of casual work. ADVERTISEMENT The blast in Kufa, near Najaf, was one of the bloodiest attacks of the year and followed a gun and grenade attack on another market on Monday that killed a similar number. Clashes broke out between police and angry crowds demanding better security after the Kufa bomb, which also wounded 132 people in the city south of Baghdad. The bloodshed has dealt a blow to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's efforts to promote national reconciliation and avoid a slide toward sectarian civil war. Nearly 6,000 civilians were killed in May and June alone, a new U.N. report estimated. Maliki, a Shi'ite who has offered a dialogue with some Sunni insurgent groups since he took office in April, pledged to "hunt down and punish" those responsible. As the two-month-old, U.S.-backed coalition government struggles to put a lid on mounting sectarian anger, it is also trying to ease popular grievances with the promise of investment and better economic times ahead after decades of decline. A bill to attract foreign capital by setting rules for investors for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein is likely to be approved in cabinet on Wednesday and to be passed by parliament this month, Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters. Foreigners hoping to buy into Iraq's vast oil reserves, however, will have to wait a few more months for a similar law. Police in Kufa were pelted with rocks by angry crowds, many of whom demanded that militias loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take over security there. The explosion, some 50-100 metres from a golden-domed Shi'ite shrine, tore through the minibus shortly after it had pulled out of the market with a group of laborers aboard. LURED ABOARD "A man driving a KIA van with an Iraqi accent came and said: 'I need laborers'. After the laborers got on and packed the vehicle he blew it up," said witness Nasir Faisal. "Four of my cousins were killed. They were standing beside the van. Their bodies were scattered far and wide by the blast." Protesters gathered around the blackened mangle of vehicles. Blood-stained clothes lay amid the debris. "We want the Mehdi Army to protect us. We want Moqtada's army to protect us," screamed a woman dressed in a black abaya gown. Others chanted to the police: "You are traitors!" "You are not doing your job!" "American agents!" Police then fired automatic rifles into the air to disperse the crowds and confused scenes ensued. Some civilians, who appeared to be Sadr followers, were seen carrying weapons. A man with a bandage on his head in a Kufa hospital said: "Where are our human rights?" The blast was one of the bloodiest since Maliki's national unity government of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds took office in May on pledges to rein in sectarian bloodshed. Violence between majority Shi'ites and Sunnis, dominant under Saddam but now the backbone of an insurgency against the U.S.-sponsored political process, has pushed Iraq close to civil war and complicated U.S. plans to withdraw troops. Earlier this month, a suicide truck bomb ripped through Baghdad's eastern Sadr City slum, killing at least 62 people. The area is a stronghold of Sadr, who often preaches in Kufa and is a rising political figure in Maliki's government. The attack came a day after gunmen killed more than 50 people in Mahmudiya, near Baghdad. Najaf provincial governor Assad Abu-Kalal blamed the Kufa attack on the "criminal Baathists and terrorists of Mahmudiya." Witnesses said the minibus had Baghdad license plates. The blast also destroyed six cars and two restaurants in the area. Maliki has urged Iraqis to rally behind his reconciliation plan as the last hope to avert all-out war. But Shi'ite religious and political leaders have warned that mass attacks against their community by suspected Sunni insurgents meant their calls for restraint and to avoid retaliation were being ignored. Gatherings of poor laborers in crowded markets have become a favorite target of Sunni al Qaeda insurgents, who Iraqi and U.S. officials say are intent on sparking a civil war.

To: pompsander who wrote (745574)	7/18/2006 2:33:41 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769667

Re: "What is the position of the Pro-life movement on the embryos created through fertility treatments and either kept "on ice" for years or ultimately destroyed." My opinion is that they don't have the guts to raise the question in public --- because they know how successful and popular I.V.F. is. So they walk around pretending they don't exist. (In the early days they opposed I.V.F. clinics --- but they lost and gave up on that fight years ago....) Since the stem cell bill being debated before the Senate as we speak only encourages the extraction of stem cells from I.V.F. blastocytes that are ABOUT TO BE TOSSED OUT AS TRASH ANYWAY (& even then: only with full informed consent from the couple), there is no logical reason to oppose their use in potentially life-saving stem cell research... unless you also oppose the creation of 'excess' hundreds of thousands of I.V.F. blastocytes in clinics all over the States --- which are subsequently tossed out with the trash each month. But... it seems that no one has ever demanded rationality from these folks. (Really, they are just making a crass political decision: to NOT oppose something that is very popular, even beloved, across the land... because it would reflect badly upon their political/religious movement.)

To: pompsander who wrote (745574)	7/18/2006 3:46:23 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Punishment For Pregnant Women By Lynn M. Paltrow, TomPaine.com Posted on July 18, 2006 In a society that values children, it's striking how frequently our public policy falls short of our rhetoric. Too often, the notion of collective responsibility for the nation's children translates into collective demonization of pregnant women. Collective responsibility for our children should mean support for policies that help pregnant women get the care they need to have healthy babies. Instead, states and localities are increasingly blaming individual women, exaggerating the harms from individual behaviors. In Arkansas' recent special spring session, Hot Springs Rep. Bob Mathis followed up his successful proposal to make it illegal for someone to smoke in a car with children with a proposal to ban pregnant women from smoking. For those who subscribe to the view that pregnant women are vessels, treating them like cars makes perfect sense. No one disputes that smoking, drinking and using drugs raise serious health issues for everyone, including pregnant women and their future children. Addressing these health matters, however, through punitive prohibition measures does not work to protect the health of women or the babies they're carrying. Rather, focusing on pregnant women as dangerous people who require special control or punishment inevitably undermines maternal and fetal health. Such measures divert attention from pregnant women's lack of access to health services, and deters them from seeking what little help is available. That is why medical groups including the American Medical Association, the March of Dimes and the American Academy of Pediatrics overwhelmingly oppose punitive measures targeting pregnant women. Nevertheless, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee supported Mathis' proposal, saying, "A lawmaker's suggestion to prohibit women from smoking during pregnancy makes sense from a health standpoint." It only makes sense if you haven't bothered to think for a moment about the nature of addiction. Ask Rush Limbaugh, who has by word and deed made clear that addiction -- even for the most popular and economically privileged people -- can be very very difficult to overcome. According to press accounts, Huckabee added that "such a prohibition, if enacted, would probably have to cover other unhealthy activities such as drinking." Perhaps the governor forgot about America's experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. It failed miserably and there is nothing to suggest that resurrecting it for women only will work any better. Meanwhile, a county in Alabama is also pursuing public policies that punish pregnant women for their otherwise legal behaviors. Late last month in Franklin County, a woman was arrested and charged with child torture for giving birth to a baby that tested positive for methamphetamine. Never mind that Alabama's legislature has not made it a crime to continue a pregnancy to term in spite of a drug problem or that more than 90 medical researchers warn not to rush to judgment about the potential harms of prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. And just ignore the fact that access to appropriate family drug treatment for pregnant and parenting women is virtually non-existent in this country. Again, drug use and pregnancy are serious public health issues. But reinterpreting pregnancy as a form of torture and pregnant women as torturers won't help. Drug treatment, access to health care and family support will. It is highly unlikely, however that these services will be provided if the pregnant women and new mothers who need those services are stigmatized as child torturers. Recent days have also seen a California jury deadlock 6-6 in the case of a woman accused of murdering her infant son by feeding him breast milk containing methamphetamine. What was originally identified as an infant death due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome became a murder case when prosecutors found traces of methamphetamine in the baby's system. Prosecutors could not even prove the mother breastfed, but they pursued this theory anyway. The mother was convicted at her first trial. The conviction was overturned and the latest trial resulted in the deadlock. Now let's bring all this full circle. A June 13 story in The New York Times entitled "Breast-Feed or Else" reports that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently come up with a new, strident pro-breast-feeding campaign. The campaign warns that not breast-feeding may be hazardous to a baby's health and it equates failure to breast feed with risky behaviors like smoking and drinking during pregnancy. So while Washington launches a government-sponsored breastfeeding campaign built on the premise that mothers who don't breast feed are bad, prosecutors in California have been working hard to portray mothers who do breast-feed as worse, in this case as potential murderers. These seemingly unrelated events share a common feature -- they all focus attention on pregnant women and mothers as the primary threats to the health and well being of our children. Such a preoccupation with pregnant women stands in stark contrast with a government that allows coal-burning power plants to pour poisonous mercury into the environment with impunity and the 45 million people without health insurance -- including many pregnant women and new mothers who lack coverage for smoking cessation programs, addiction treatment and mental health services. These disparate interventions and proposals have something else in common. They ensure that pregnant women and new mothers will be at risk of judgment and punishment no matter what they do. It is hard to imagine a worse scenario for anyone serious about improving maternal, fetal and child health. Lynn Paltrow is the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women. © 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: alternet.org