It’s official: Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide causes birth defects

A new report by some top scientists has nailed it down, and Monsanto isn’t going to be happy. The Agri-giant has built its entire business model, including genetically modified (GMO) crops that dominate the US market, around its Roundup brand herbicide. They last thing they want to admit is that it causes birth defects! http://redgreenandblue.org/2011/06/08/its-official-monsantos-roundup-herbicide-causes-birth-defects/

YOUR CHILD AT RISK: AUSTRALIA’S MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING

This is a post from Bec Sferco I thought important enough to share.
YOUR CHILD AT RISK: AUSTRALIA’S MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING
Is it a license to drug our children with potentially dangerous stimulants, antidepressants or antipsychotics?
TAX DOLLARS CREATE CHILD ABUSE?
The May 2011 Budget allocated $2.2 billion for mental health over the next five years, much of it for “youth mental health.” Sound beneficial? Not really! What taxpayers and parents may not know is that children from the age of three will be screened for “emotional and behavioural” disorders passed off as a “health check”.
While medical diseases will also be screened for, these can all be verified by physical tests; however, there is no such test — brain scan, blood or urine test or x-ray — to confirm any “behavioural” or “mental disorders”. From this screening, children can be prescribed stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety drugs or tranquillisers, placing them at risk of ill-health and potentially dangerous side effects, some even deadly.
Teachers will be expected to complete the “Australian Early Development Index (AEDI)” checklist on children with nearly $22 million of federal taxpayer dollars allocated for its implementation. “Key information about children’s mental health and wellbeing will be collected through data on their social, emotional, behavioural and physical development,” which will be made publicly available for around 96% of Australian local communities. Any mental health or behavioural screening can potentially be used to monitor your child such as the one planned for all NSW children aged 0-10 years, who will be tracked for the next 20 years.
NO MEDICAL SCIENCE TO SUPPORT MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING
The questions are so subjective that any child could be at risk of being labelled mentally ill and potentially recommended for a prescription for a psychiatric drug. Such as:
• Would you say this child: Listens attentively, completes work on time, can’t sit still, is restless, is distractible, has trouble sticking to any activity, is disobedient, has temper tantrums, is impulsive or inattentive? Answered negatively, this could be determined to be the symptoms of “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD). And that can lead to cocaine-like stimulants being prescribed.
• Other questions include asking if the child appears worried, cries a lot, is nervous, high strung or tense? This could be misconstrued as depression or anxiety, with antidepressants or anti-anxiety pills prescribed. Depression Screening tools are notoriously faulty with one admitting an 84% chance the teenager will be wrongly stigmatised as depressed.
• Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, states, “There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases.”
DRUG SIDE EFFECTS
• Antipsychotics may cause diabetes, liver failure, muscle twitching, pancreatitis (inflammation of pancreas), restlessness or pacing, seizures, convulsions, and Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome—a potentially fatal toxic reaction. Nearly 10,000 Australian children under 18 (almost 300 aged 6 and under) are prescribed antipsychotics, with 15 DEATHS linked to antipsychotics for those under 19.
• Stimulants such as Ritalin and dexamphetamine: hallucinations, psychosis, weight loss, stunted growth, heart irregularities, heart attacks. Suicide is a risk during withdrawal.
• Antidepressants: In Australia more than 13,179 adverse reactions were reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration for antidepressants; of these, 30 were for completed suicides and 244 were for suicidal thoughts. A staggering 513 were for children and adolescents under the age of 19, including 5 deaths in the 10-to-19-age group.
• Withdrawal Effects: Like illicit drugs, mental health drugs provide no more than a temporary relief from problems, unwanted behaviour or unpleasant emotions. If a child taking these drugs experiences a “rebound effect” where their original mental symptoms return even worse once they begin withdrawing, medical experts point out that this is the drug effect, not “mental illness.” Withdrawal effects are common, indicating psychotropic medications are addictive.
Psychiatrist David Healy warns: “If there is withdrawal, then there is physical dependence.”
FAMILY COERCION
Under the Budget, from July 2011, the payment of the end-of-the-year Family Tax Benefit (approx $726) to parents on income support will be conditional upon those children turning 4 undergoing a pre-school “health assessment” which includes subjective mental disorders. No screening, no rebate! This could be construed as coercion.
HEADSPACE: “YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH” CONCERNS
Almost $200 million of taxpayers’ money is to establish 30 more so-called youth mental health centres called headspace. As a May edition of Australian Doctor reported, headspace is “unevaluated, unproved and yet to show it really works.” The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has awarded $10 million to several leading Australian psychiatrists with financial
ties to drug companies to study “prediction, prevention and early intervention” for youth mental disorders. The researchers admit that headspace centres “are becoming ‘clinical laboratories’ for applied research.” In other words, youths attending headspace may be little more than guineapigs for psychiatric research and “early intervention”.
“EARLY INTERVENTION”: THE DANGERS
Australian psychiatrists have pioneered an invented disorder “Psychosis Risk Syndrome” that claims to be able to determine symptoms in teens (12-14 years old) that can predict future psychosis or mental disorder. Allen Frances, professor of psychiatry, calls Psychosis Risk Syndrome “ill conceived and potentially harmful.” It would “misidentify many teenagers who are not really at risk for psychosis” and the “treatment they would most often receive (atypical [new] antipsychotic medication) has no proven efficacy; but it does have definite dangerous complications.” There is
also an error rate of between 70-90%, “meaning that between two and nine youngsters would be misidentified for every one accurately identified.” PRS is “a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry,” for which patients would pay the “high price [of] adverse effects, dollars, and stigma,” the psychiatrist stated.
SIGN THE PARENT’S EXEMPTION FORM (see my other note)
Parents can try protecting their child from mental health screening by signing the Parent’s Exemption Form Prior to Mental Health and Psychological Screening or Counselling. Provide a copy to the school principal and if you have one, a lawyer. Copies can also be given to Citizens Committee on Human Rights:
P.O. Box 440 Marrickville 1475
GET THE FACTS
Log onto Citizens Committee on Human Rights Psychiatric Drug Side-effect Database at cchr.org.au.
For further information, Email: enquiry@cchrnsw.org.au
CCHR was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Professor of Psychiatry Thomas Szasz from University of New York Health Science Center, Syracuse, New York. Its purpose is to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights and bring about patient protections and reforms.

Geomagnetic storm to slam planet on Wednesday, earthquake frequency to rise

“This is the type of time where people should have their earthquake kits handy,” TWS Senior Meteorologist Kevin Martin said. “There isn’t much evidence, but it is a growing fact that solar storms trigger earthquakes here on Earth. Peru just had a magnitude-6.0 earthquake, and this usually means Baja and California are next in line.” http://www.theweatherspace.com/news/TWS-06_07_2011_geoquake.html

Homebuilt $70,000 single-person spacecraft tested

Sending a man to outer space in a home built spacecraft worth US$70,000 may seem like a crazy idea to most of us, but not for a Danish group of enthusiasts who call themselves Copenhagen Suborbitals. Their shoestring-budget single-person flying bullet might have come one step closer to an actual manned flight, thanks to a partially successful test flight last Friday (June 3). http://www.gizmag.com/homebuilt-single-person-spacecraft-tested/18816/