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The Seattle Times

The hidden big business behind your doctor's diagnosis

By Susan Kelleher and Duff Wilson · Seattle Times staff reporters

You walk into your doctor's office for a physical exam and step on the scale. Last year, the doctor said you were overweight. Now he says you are obese — at the same weight.

A nurse takes your blood pressure. You have hypertension — with the same previously healthy reading you've had for years.

The doctor scans your wrist bone. You have a condition called "osteopenia" — with the same bone density that was fine last time you were measured.

You are suddenly sick, simply because the definitions of disease have changed. And behind those changes, a Seattle Times examination has found, are the companies that make all those newly prescribed pills.

(end snip)

Oh so much more at the link.

Think Progress

MARCH 19, 2003: Bush launches invasion of Iraq


MARCH 30, 2003: Donald Rumsfeld: We know where the WMD are


We know where the weapons of mass destruction are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

(snip)

MAY 1, 2003: Mission Accomplished

My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.

MAY 9, 2003: Paul Wolfowitz: We agreed on WMD rationale for bureaucratic reasons

The truth is that, for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason to go to war.

(snip)

tribune-cnronicle.com

SAN FRANCISCO — In March 1990, when few people had even heard of the Internet, U.S. Secret Service agents raided the Texas offices of a small board-game maker, seizing computer equipment and reading customers’ e-mail stored on one machine.

And thus the Electronic Frontier Foundation was born — 16 years ago today — taking on the Secret Service as its first case, one the EFF ultimately won when a judge agreed that the government had no right to read the e-mails or keep the equipment.

Today, after expanding into such areas as intellectual property and moving its headquarters twice along with its focus, the EFF is reemphasizing its roots of trying to limit government surveillance of electronic communications, while keeping a lookout for emerging threats even as the Internet and digital technologies become mainstream.

In one of its highest-profile lawsuits to date, the EFF has accused AT&T Inc. of illegally cooperating with the National Security Agency to make phone and Internet communications available without warrants.

From CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty
Tuesday, September 7, 2004 Posted: 2:48 AM EDT (0648 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that mid-level officials in the U.S. government were undermining his country's war on terrorism by supporting Chechen separatists, whom he compared to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Putin's charge, made in a meeting with a group of western foreign policy experts, came just days after hundreds of people, mostly children, died in the bloody end to the Beslan siege.

But Putin said each time Russia complained to the Bush administration about meetings held between U.S. officials and Chechen separatist representatives, the U.S. response has been "we'll get back to you" or "we reserve the right to talk with anyone we want."

Putin blamed what he called a "Cold War mentality" on the part of some U.S. officials, but likened their demands that Russia negotiate with the Chechen separatists to the U.S. talking to al Qaeda.

cnn.com

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2... /

Tony Blair's law chief changed his mind to give the green light for war after meeting US politicians.

Lord Goldsmith told the Chilcot inquiry he had originally warned Mr Blair military action against Saddam Hussein's regime would be illegal without United Nations' authority.

But the then Attorney General dramatically reversed his view after he flew to Washington for secret talks two months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Lord Goldsmith yesterday said that meeting, plus a conversation with Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary at the time, were the main reasons which led him to declare the invasion lawful.

His evidence reignites claims Britain was browbeaten by then US President George Bush into backing the conflict and it piles pressure on Mr Blair ahead of his appearance before Sir John Chilcot's inquiry tomorrow.

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