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POPS"It is the smell of shit. Raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements" "Humanitarian & Environmental Disaster of Epic Proportions" Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing "a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions". So how did it come to this? How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago with a promise to be "a light unto the nations" end up flinging its filth at a cowering Palestinian population? ...Johann Hari
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POPS'Torturer's Dicks got Hard with New Ideas'. She didn't have a Dick!
On December 2, Detainee 063 was in an isolated, plywood interrogation booth at Camp X-Ray. He was bolted to the floor and secured to a chair, his hands and legs cuffed. He had been held in isolation since August 8, nearly four months earlier. He was dehydrated and in need of regular hook-ups to an intravenous drip. His feet were swollen. He was urinating on himself. The pattern was always the same: 20-hour interrogation sessions, followed by four hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation appears as a central theme, along with stress positions and constant humiliation, including sexual humiliation. These techniques were supplemented by the use of water, regular bouts of dehydration, the use of IV tubes, loud noise, nudity, female contact, pin-ups. An interrogator even tied a leash to him, led him around the room and forced him to perform a series of dog tricks. He was forced to wear a woman's bra and a thong was placed on his head. Author Philippe Sands is a UK Queen's Council
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POPSDying! Soon! Nuala O'Faolain, brutally frank interview., Nuala O'Faolain, best selling author and feminist campaigner. She became internationally well-known for her two volumes of memoir, Are You Somebody? and Almost There, a novel, My Dream of You, and a history with commentary, The Story of Chicago May. The first three were all on the New York Times Best Seller list.
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POPS62% Less Children's Tooth Decay: New Gum, better than Brushing The soft mints are designed to be dissolved and chewed into the biting surfaces of the back teeth, where about 90 percent of cavities in children occur. "Unlike regular candies, we want this product to be stuck in the teeth," said Mitchell Goldberg, president of Ortek Therapeutics Inc, a privately held company in Roslyn Heights, New York, that licensed the technology from Stony Brook. Goldberg said in a telephone interview that unlike sugarless gum, which fights cavities by temporarily increasing the flow of saliva in the mouth, the mints actively neutralize acids that cause cavities. ...Reuters
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POPS24 hours in pictures - April 08 15. Gloucestershire, UK: Some of the abandoned historic vessels in the boat graveyard between Sharpness and Purton on the banks of the river Severn. More than 80 vessels - which include schooners, lighters, barges and Severn trows - were beached from the 1900s to the 1960s 1 London, UK: Katharine Witty makes a statement on behalf of Mohamed Al Fayed after leaving the high court 5 Yala province, Thailand: Forensic experts examine a site of a roadside bomb blast in which two rangers were injured
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POPSMaiming in your Name: "the sovereign" Bush In a 2003 memo released yesterday, the US justice department extended the sweeping wartime powers claimed by Bush to military interrogators, giving them freedom from criminal laws when questioning al-Qaida suspects. The 81-page brief was released by the American Civil Liberties Union, which fought the administration in court to secure the release of documents. ...Guardian
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POPS"Deep" Itch to save your Life. Cancer! “I just can’t stop scratching! Sometimes the itch is in other areas, but mostly it’s down there.” She pointed to a place on her lower back. “I have to claw at it all the time, and it doesn’t ease up. It’s a different kind of itch, like I’m getting eaten up on the inside.” I examined the area, but it was remarkable only for its scratch marks. I reviewed her history. No diabetes, no recent bites, no hives, no recent infections, no new drugs or allergies, and no change in her emotional state that might account for this malady. Greta also said she had no liver, gall bladder, or kidney disease. She was not a drinker, smoker, or drug user. She had suffered with this persistent itch for almost a year and had never had any symptoms like it before. For the first few months that she experienced the itch, she was pregnant with her second child. “This didn’t happen the first time. I figured maybe it was just something that happens. But then after I had the baby it kept going on,” she said.
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POPSPenile/Dick Cancer: Up for Inspection? Three months on, relentless chemotherapy and doses of interferon had turned Edwards, whose frame reaches well over six foot, into a grey-haired shadow. But worse was to come. "One day there was an explosion in my groin," he recalls. "This horrible Vesuvius -- like a giant boil." Edwards was whisked straight to A&E. The eruption turned out to be cancerous and marked a potentially terminal decline in Edward's health. It was then that doctors confronted him with the worst decision a man could face. "They asked for permission to amputate my penis," Edwards says. Demoralised, exhausted and full of drugs, Edwards gave his answer. "No, I told them. I just could not face another operation." Edwards started arguing with the consultant, whom he later nicknamed Slasher. "I told him unless you can say for certain this will save me, I'd rather die with my penis on, thank you very much." ...Alternet
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POPSPsychological Appeal of Prostitutes for (stupid) Men Michael Bader is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in San Francisco. He is the author of "Arousal: The Secret Logic of Sexual Fantasies" and the forthcoming book "Male Sexuality: Why Women Don't Understand It -- and Men Don't Either." He has written extensively about psychology and politics.
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POPSGood news: COMMAND RAPE Down. 1,516 reports involved the Army; 565, the Air Force; 394, the Navy; and 213, the Marines. The active duty Army, which is by far the largest service with about 518,000 soldiers, also saw the highest rate of reported sexual assaults. The Army had 2.6 reports per 1,000 soldiers; the Air Force, 1.6 reports per 1,000; the Marines, 1.1 per 1,000; and the Navy, 1 per 1,000 sailors. The average was 1.8 sexual assaults reported per 1,000 military members. Also, this is only the second full year in which the military has included in the totals sexual assaults that are filed under a program that allows victims to report the incident and receive health care or counseling services but does not notify law enforcement or commanders. Of the 2,688 reports filed last year, 705 were initially made under that restricted program. But victims are allowed to change their minds and pursue an investigation later, and that was done in 102 of those cases, thus 603 remain restricted.
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POPSViagra & the Sky-killers (IAF) With combat pilots operating hi-tech equipment in low-pressure environments, doctors believe the drug could enhance their operational abilities. “The Viagra family of drugs is considered effective in these conditions because when there is a long shortage in oxygen it leads to high blood pressure in the lungs, and the drugs help fight that,” a military medical officer told the weekly magazine.
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POPSEU Confirms POW TORTURE at Gitmo "Deghayes and Banna arrived back in Britain with a third British resident, Abdennour Samuer. Banna, from north-west London, was arrested in the Gambia in 2002 after he did not accept an MI5 request to become an informant. Irene Nembhard, a lawyer for the men, said it was time for them to be allowed to rebuild their lives." ...Guardian
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POPSCommand Rape: Silenced in Barracks (death) "In 2003, a firestorm of media reports and investigations, prompted by an anonymous whistle-blower at the Air Force Academy, exposed the prevalence of sexual assault in the armed forces and its training centers. That same year, the results of a study conducted by Dr. Anne Sadler of the Iowa City VA Medical Center found 28 percent of female veterans having suffered MST while on active duty. In response, Congress called on the Department of Defense to overhaul its approach to sexual assault within its ranks. The 2005 defense authorization bill mandated the creation of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), which, according to its website, has since served as “the single point of accountability and oversight for sexual assault policy.” ...AlterNet
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POPSAmnesty: Sexual Abuse of Schoolgirls "In the US, 83% of girls in public schools aged between 12 and 16 said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment. In Latin America, sexual harassment in schools was found to be widespread. Girls living in war torn countries were particularly vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual violence, the report found. A Unesco study published last year found that 40% of the 77 million school-age children not attending school lived in areas affected by conflict." ...Guardian
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POPSPesticides may be a hidden danger to child IQ Not really a surprise, and there are some really nasty pesticides, that are a problem because they don't break down. It just seems to be another one of the things about a 'civilized' lifestyle, that can be a serious danger to long term health. In the short term they may make many things seem easier, but in the long term we have yet to see some of the most serious effects. Particularly with the way a number of these things can compound problems.
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POPSBBC: Cuba's Health Aid in Bolivia "We treat anyone who walks in, and we do it for nothing," Then there is the joint Cuban-Venezuelan literacy programme. One hundred and eighteen Cuban and 18 Venezuelan trainers backed with texts and television sets have taught Bolivian teachers the best ways of getting people to read and write. "We give our services free, bring our own supplies and equipment, and don't take any patients from the Bolivian doctors. Our staff have been accused by those who object to our presence here of being careless and unqualified. But they have never been able to stand their objections up,"
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