#78: Hunger!/Peace!/Ecology/Medicine: NeuRx Diaphragm:----------

Hunger!

Severn Cullis-Suzuki: http://tinyurl.com/3dtqhz : Wiki Jun19,08 : A Child's Cry for the Hungry: http://tinyurl.com/2qd47o --------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- http://tinyurl.com/57zgty

PEACE!

“SEEK PEACE AND PURSUE IT”

Psalms 34:14

Third Anniversary Of Commencement of Iraq War: Saturday, March 18^th

Saturdays at Noon—One Hour silent vigil for Peace

U.S. Capitol, West Lawn

Our silent gathering has continued each week since October 15, 2002, as a witness to our concern for peace in Iraq, its neighbors, the Middle East, and around the world.

Our silent vigil and witness for peace and nonviolence was started by a Quaker from the Langley Hill Friends Meeting in McLean, Virginia but we come from many religions and beliefs.

Our message is a positive one. We are encouraging the Congress and the nation to seek peace and build peace. We believe that a reverence for life should guide our nation’s actions, and that our country’s great strength should further the ideal of an international community based on respect and law.

We see many positive opportunities for diplomacy, trade, aid, multilateral organization building and military restraint that will sow the seeds of peace rather than plant the seeds of war.

Our vigil takes place every Saturday at noon for one hour on or near the West lawn of the U.S. Capitol. All who are seeking peace are welcome to join us in silence for our time here. As is our custom we stand with our only banner with the quote from Psalms 34:14, “Seek peace and pursue it.”

During our time here we are grateful for the support of our fellow citizens and foreign visitors who are also seeking peace in their own way. In our silence we are praying for all those affected by war, service people and civilians.

If you would like to join us for only a minute, or for the entire hour, that would be most welcome. Together we can hold your loved ones and the concern for peace in The Light. We welcome all peace-seekers, of any belief, race, or nationality, to gather with us in this silent witness.

For more information about the vigil, or to be on our list serve: garvey73@erols.com

“We have grasped the mystery of the atom, and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.”

---General Omar Bradley

“No one is so foolish as to prefer to peace, war, in which, instead of sons burying their fathers, fathers bury their sons.”

---Croesus, King of Lydia, in Herodotus’ The Persian Wars

“If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”

---Moshe Dayan

“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it.”

---Eleanor Roosevelt

“Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love, or total war.”

---David Dellinger

“Ever gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

---Dwight Eisenhower

“I hope…that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace.”

---Benjamin Franklin

“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.”

---Helen Keller

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

---Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack the way of life.”

---A.J. Muste

“We must be prepared to make heroic sacrifices for the cause of peace that we make ungrudgingly for the cause of war. There is no task that is more important or closer to my heart.”

---Albert Einstein

“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

---Nelson Mandela

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Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet. Posted June 19, 2008.

Think Blackwater's days are numbered? Think again. Jeremy Scahill explains why its slaughter of Iraqis has not stopped the notorious mercenary firm.

On June 3, Jeremy Scahill's bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army was released in fully revised and updated paperback form. The new edition includes reporting on the now-famous Nisour Square massacre on Sept. 16 of last year, in which Blackwater mercenaries opened fire in a Baghdad neighborhood, brutally murdering 17 Iraqi civilians. The killing spree, which the U.S. Army would label a "criminal event," would reveal the extent of the lawlessnewss enjoyed by private contractors abroad and the lengths the Bush administration will go to protect its private army of choice.

Antonia Juhasz caught up with Scahill on the phone the day the new edition was released. A fellow at Oil Change International and author of The Bush Agenda, Juhasz is also the author of the forthcoming book The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do to Stop It. Juhasz and Scahill discussed, among other topics, the story behind Blackwater, congressional inaction, radical privatization, Barack Obama, corporate vs. independent media, GI resistance in the age of private mercenaries, getting real about challenging corporations and the power of dissent.

--------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- USA's Iraq: http://tinyurl.com/4nusda

Published on Thursday, June 19, 2008 by The New York Times

'Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back'

Andrew E. Kramer

BAGHDAD - Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP - the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company - along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.

The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.

------------------------------ GSA=Georgia Strait Alliance, BC, Canada: http://www.georgiastrait.org/

Georgia Strait Alliance is the only citizens' group focused on protecting the marine environment in and around the whole Strait of Georgia – Canada's most at-risk natural environment, and the place where 70% of British Columbians live, work and play. We are committed to a future for our region that includes clean water and air, healthy wild salmon runs, rich marine life and natural areas, and sustainable communities. LEARN MORE ABOUT WHO WE ARE > --------------------------------

'Electric Muscle Stimulation with NeuRx Diaphragm Pacer: More Natural Breathing Without a Ventilator'

medGadget: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Filed under: Rehab , Surgery

The FDA has given clearance to Synapse Biomedical, Inc. (Cleveland, Ohio) to market their NeuRx Diaphragm Pacing Stimulation system for people with spinal cord injury. The device, that is typically implanted through minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery, is indicated for patients with diaphragm dysfunction.

The new device, already approved in Europe last year, uses electrodes attached directly to the diaphragm to electrically stimulate its movement. The result is more natural breathing, and, hopefully, reduced potential to develop pulmonary complications.

From the press release:

In the clinical trial, NeuRx DPS™ provided 98% of SCI patients who had been dependent on mechanical ventilation via a tracheostomy with an alternative that allowed them to breathe normally and live more active lives. To date, over 50% were able to be completely eliminate their need for mechanical ventilation. Patients may be able to transfer from ventilator wards to home or assisted living, and even travel. Speech patterns, often laborious and strained in ventilatordependent patients, return to normal. The senses of taste and smell, severely diminished in ventilatordependent patients, return.
Controlled through a fourchannel battery powered external pulse generator, the NeuRx DPS™ eliminates the need for a source of electricity and the concern for power outages. Patients and caregivers are easily trained in the use of the NeuRx DPS™ reducing the need for external medical supervision. Elimination and reduction of the use of a mechanical ventilator also greatly reduces the patient’s risk of a serious complication: Ventilator Acquired Pneumonia (VAP). In a peer review 2007 report in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinical of North America by Stephen P. Burns MD, the incidence of SCI pneumonia for initial admitted patients was reported to be as high as 50 percent. The associated mortality from pneumonia was reported as 28% in the first year.

Company video explaining the workings of the system...

Press release: Synapse Biomedical Receives FDA Approval of NeuRx Diaphragm Pacing System (DPS)™ For Spinal Cord Injury Breathing Applications

Product page: NeuRx Diaphragm Pacing Stimulation (DPS)™ System ...