When I lived in Vietnam I saw first hand the legacy of the use of Agent Orange the US forces had used for deforestation in the Vietnam war. 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use. I was teaching at a school that was supporting a local charity which cared for children still being born with horrific birth defects. They were the third generation to have their lives destroyed by these toxic chemicals. At the care home we visited the heroic nun in charge, who told us how she had first found the children abandoned by their parents in cages with chains around their arms. Many of those children still bore the scars on their wrists. Most would not live past 18. Their spines would curve as they grew until their organs could no longer function. They were there because they had been abandoned on the street by families too poor to look after them. I held a 4-month-old boy who had been found in a shopping bag behind a waste bin. He was deaf, blind and oblivious to the actions of others, and would be deprived of a life we take for granted.

I was recently reminded of that terrible scene after reading an article that stopped me in my tracks. It reminded me of just how horrifying, destructive and inhumane the actions of our world 'leaders' have been. And continue to be.

The news I'm referring to is a shocking revelation that is lost behind the backdrop of Halloween party costumes, the 24/7 coverage the US Presidential election circus and media hysteria of 'Frankenstom' Sandy.

A study recently published in the Environmental Contamination and Toxicology bulletin, found that the weapons and ammunition used by the US and its Imperial apparatus - NATO - in the illegal destruction and occupation of Iraq have led to significant rise in birth defects and unexplainable illnesses. In fact, there has been a five-fold increase in birth defects since the occupation began.

The embattled Greek government faces another strike - this time from journalists. Greek state television staff have begun work stoppages to protest what they say is increasing government censorship.

­The country has been shaken by two separate scandals in quick succession, in which authorities were seen as being heavy-handed and using selective justice to punish political dissenters.

One concerns presenters Marilena Katsimi and Costas Arvanitis, who were suspended "indefinitely" from a popular current affairs morning show carried by national broadcaster ERT. The suspension came after they criticized right-wing interior minister, Nikos Dendias.

ERT workers staged a walkout during scheduled programming on Tuesday morning and said they will organize 24-hour rolling strikes until Katsimi and Arvanitis are reinstated.

For at least the past four decades, the American election process has been controlled by corporations and agents connected to the Republican Party. This year's "contest" is no different.

Voter suppression campaigns have been underway across America, by Republican operatives. (See Black Box Voting and Brad Blog). Nothing is being done to stop it.

Mitt Romney has direct ties to voting machines (also see the report by Brad Freeman). His son, Tagg Romney (who wanted to punch Barack Obama in the face) and a cadre of former Bain Capital business partners are owners of Hart Intercivic, whose voting machines are used in all fifty states. And this is just one of the many companies with ties to the right-wing, which include Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. In 2004, Diebold's Walden O'Dell promised to "deliver votes" to George W. Bush. His machines did, stealing what should have been a John Kerry win.

To this day, American democracy remains privatized and hackable. Nothing has been done about it. Theft continues unabated.

The truth is that we have no idea who is ahead in the presidential race. Opinion polling has entered uncharted territory as response rates have plummeted.

When you receive an unexpected call from a private number or 1-800 number, do you answer the phone? Most people don't, and those who do are hardly a representative sample of the American population. Yet the results of all major political polls are based on the assumption that the 9 percent of us who answer the phone are perfectly representative of the 91 percent who don't.

According to a report from the Pew Research Center, only about 9 percent of Americans answer the phone and respond to opinion polls. When response rates fall this low, polls tell us less about public opinion than about who answers the phone.

It gets worse. Do Democratic and Republican voters have, on average, the same numbers of phones? If Republicans have more phones than Democrats, they're more likely to be represented in telephone polls (and, of course, vice versa).

Pew is a first-class nonprofit research organization that puts a premium on getting the numbers right. Most major political polls are quick-response jobs for impatient commercial organizations. Pew's 9 percent response rate is likely better than that of any major political poll. No major political poll reports its non-response rate.

When the Bush-Cheney administration was in power, Dick Cheney tried hard to find an excuse for military attacks on Iran. After all, according to Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO from 1997 to 2000, Cheney and other hawks had plans for attacking and destroying seven countries in the Middle East and North Africa over five years in order to transform them into U.S. client states, and he wanted to "accomplish" as much as possible before leaving office. Various options were considered. As reported by Seymour Hersh, in late 2007 the Bush-Cheney administration received congressional approval for its request for $400 million to launch major covert operations against Iran, and a presidential finding signed by Bush authorized a secret program for destabilizing Iran by supporting puppet groups purporting to represent the Iranian Arabs living in the oil province of Khuzestan, the Baluchi people, and other separatist "organizations." Aside from terrorist operations that killed many innocent Iranians, the program failed. Other venues were also tried, ranging from fabrications about Iran's alleged interference in Iraq to huge shows of force in the Persian Gulf and a campaign of lies and exaggerations.

Another option that was considered was provoking the Iranians to attack the U.S. forces, hence justifying counterattacks by the U.S. Given the long history of the attacks by the U.S. Navy on Iranian ships and offshore oil installations in the Persian Gulf, and the destruction by the U.S. Navy of the Iranian passenger jet in July 1988 that killed 290 people, creating an "incident" in the Persian Gulf to justify the attacks seemed only "natural." Then, in January 2008 five Iranian patrol boats supposedly made aggressive moves toward three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz. Bush called the incident "provocative" and "dangerous," and it appeared momentarily that Cheney's wish had been realized. But less than a week later the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the threatening radio transmission that the press had initially reported coming from the boats. In fact, it had come from a prankster.

The Supreme Court has denied the Holy Land Five appeal and will not be issuing a decision in the case. This almost definitely marks the end of the legal appeal process.

The Holy Land Five -- Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad el-Mazain, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader, Abulrahman Odeh -- were convicted of providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza through zakat committees allegedly connected with Hamas. The case relied on "secret evidence" from an anonymous Israeli intelligence source. Four of the five defendants are now serving sentences in a Communication Management Unit, or CMU, an "experimental" detention facility outside of oversight from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where two-thirds of the inmates are Arab and/or Muslim. Detainees in these facilities are subject to arbitrary policies that restrict their movement within prison cells, and minimal contact with the families and attorneys.

A police officer has appeared in court after it is alleged he used his Taser gun on a 10-year-old schoolboy who refused to clean his patrol car.

Officer Chris Webb is accused of saying to the boy he would be shown 'what happens to people who do not listen to police' during the event at Tularosa Intermediate School in New Mexico.

He is then reported to have fired the 50,000-volt weapon at the boy.

Rachel Higgins, legal representative for the seven-stone boy, known only as RD, told Santa Fe County Court he had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder since the incident on May 4.

According to the complaint filed on behalf of the boy: 'Defendant Webb asked the boy, RD, in a group of boys, who would like to clean his patrol unit.

'A number of boys said that they would. RD, joking, said that he did not want to clean the patrol unit.'

Webb is accused of responding by aiming his Taser at the child before saying: 'Let me show you what happens to people who do not listen to the police.' He then allegedly stunned RD.

The complaint continued: 'Instead of calling emergency medical personnel, Officer Webb pulled out the barbs and took the boy to the school principal's office.'

Rigged Inflation Measure Understates Inflation

Since mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Presstitutes spoon out the government's propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi's alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran's nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers.

During the Clinton administration, Republican economists pushed through a change in the way the CPI is measured in order to save money by depriving Social Security retirees of their cost-of-living adjustment. Previously, the CPI measured the change in the cost of a constant standard of living. The new measure assumes that consumers adjust to price increases by lowering their standard of living by substituting lower quality, lower priced items. If the price, for example, of New York strip steak goes up, consumers are assumed to substitute the lower quality round steak. In other words, the new measure of inflation keeps inflation down by reflecting a lowered standard of living.

Human Rights Watch report claims Israel committed war crimes in its use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells.

Israel's military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a 71-page report, the rights group said the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells in populated areas of Gaza was not incidental or accidental, but revealed "a pattern or policy of conduct".

It said the Israeli military used white phosphorus in a "deliberate or reckless" way. The report says:

- Israel was aware of the dangers of white phosphorus.

- It chose not to use alternative and less dangerous smoke shells.

- In one case, Israel even ignored repeated warnings from UN staff before hitting the main UN compound in Gaza with white phosphorus shells on 15 January.

Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory.

The announcement that the Israel Defense Forces had used phosphorus bombs in the war in Lebanon was made by Minister Jacob Edery, in charge of government-Knesset relations. He had been queried on the matter by MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz-Yahad).