November 1, 2007 archive

General Mills has announced they are recalling ~5 million frozen pizza products due to possible E. coli contamination. Also, information has surfaced through congressional testimony that the FDA is not inspecting ~two-thirds of drugs from foreign manufacturers.

See this link for the recall list and further information.

more below the jump…

Some news and OPEN THREAD.

1. The Guardian reports Fears grow for 150,000 people as flood chaos hits Mexico. “Tens of thousands of people have fled to shelters in south-eastern Mexico after the worst floods in living memory in the area destroyed their homes and harvests. The authorities say the floods are expected to get worse. Rooftops peeked above the water yesterday in the city of Villahermosa, capital of the state of Tabasco, which has been the worst hit by the catastrophe. Vast swaths of agricultural land throughout the state were under water. Some of the giant nine-metre [30-foot] stone heads carved by America’s first great civilisation, the Olmecs, were only half visible at the La Venta archaeological site.” Villahermosa sits below the banks of the river normally. The city is in a hole.

2. The Washington Post reports State Department diplomats resist forced duty in Iraq. “Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs.” Some Foreign Service officers “criticized fundamental aspects of State’s personnel policies in Iraq. They took issue with the size of the embassy — the biggest in U.S. history — and the inadequate training they received before being sent to serve in a war zone.”

   Service in Iraq is “a potential death sentence,” said one man who identified himself as a 46-year Foreign Service veteran. “Any other embassy in the world would be closed by now,” he said to sustained applause.

   Harry K. Thomas Jr., the director general of the Foreign Service, who called the meeting, responded curtly. “Okay, thanks for your comment,” he said, declaring the town hall meeting over.

The rest of today’s Four at Four is below the fold.

As you may recall, my SeaMonkeys went missing.  I alerted the media and there was some initial interest… until they asked me if any of the SeaMonkeys were blond. I said that I didn’t know and they hung up.

I was devastated, but I pulled myself together. I ordered a Chia Pet (AS Seen On TV) to help me through the tough times. Unfortunately, after the green hair grew out, the damned thing looked like a drunken Bill Clinton after a St. Patrick’s Day Party gone wrong. Now I like Bill but it was too spooky having his head sitting there on my coffee table staring at me. So spooky in fact, I put it in the closet.

It was then that I noticed that the SeaMonkey Aquarium I had previously  abandoned in the dark closet had changed.

It was glowing….

I’ve been preparing my home for a surgery trip with my son and listening to CNN this morning while doing it.  Dubya comes on giving a speech and is being applauded when he says something about our efforts in Iraq addressing our war on terror problems.  I pop my head around the corner and the screen says he’s giving this speech live from the Heritage Foundation……UGH!

Think about it. The Democratic Party now sits at Point “A”, second fiddle. The Party is hopeful that it can move to Point “B”, the Conductor, head of the orchestra. What might the strategy be that would accomplish that goal.

If you will allow me to use a ship and its crew resting at its home port, Point A with an agenda to get underway and move to Point B as an analogy, then I will proceed…. Thanks, I proceed.

Nick Egnatz, of Munster, Indiana, is a Vietnam vet, an articulate non-stop Veterans for Peace activist, and a formative member of the NW Indiana Coalition Against the Iraq War.  His group marched in the Chicago Rally and was part of the group appearing and speaking at Federal Plaza.

At any rate, I just received the following Press Release from him and read it in near disbelief.  The Press Release speaks for itself.

There’s more:

It continues.

BBC:

The Burmese army is forcibly recruiting children to cover gaps left by a lack of adult recruits, says a report by a US-based human rights organisation.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says children as young as 10 are beaten or threatened with arrest to make them enlist.

Both the army and ethnic rebels have been accused of using children before.

But the timing of this report is particularly damaging for the military, which is already under pressure after a crackdown on anti-government protests.

The military insists it is opposed to the use of child soldiers, but HRW says the abuses were extensive and systemic.

Retired Secretary of Death and Destruction Donald Rumsfeld used to hand write some twenty to sixty notes, called “snowflakes,” each day. Robin Wright, of the Washington Post, has obtained some of them. They were not classified, but were deemed “for official use only.”

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid “physical labor” and wrote of the need to “keep elevating the threat,” “link Iraq to Iran” and develop “bumper sticker statements” to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war.