Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

  Tools of mass communication that were once the province of governments and corporations now fit in your pocket. Cell phones can capture video and send it wirelessly to the Internet. People can send eyewitness accounts, photos and videos, with a few keystrokes, to thousands or even millions via social networking sites. As these technologies have developed, so too has the ability to monitor, filter, censor and block them.

  A Wall Street Journal report this week claimed that the “Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world’s most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.” The article named Nokia Siemens Networks as the provider of equipment capable of “deep packet inspection.” DPI, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “enables Internet Service Providers to intercept virtually all of their customers’ Internet activity, including Web surfing data, e-mail and peer-to-peer downloads.”

  Nokia Siemens has refuted the allegation, saying in a press release that the company “has provided Lawful Intercept capability solely for the monitoring of local voice calls in Iran.” It is this issue, of what is legal, that must be addressed. “Lawful intercept” means that people can be monitored, located and censored. Global standards need to be adopted that protect the freedom to communicate, to dissent.

  China has very sophisticated Internet monitoring and censoring capabilities, referred to as “the Great Firewall of China,” which attracted increased attention prior to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. A document leaked before a U.S. Senate human rights hearing implicated Cisco, a California-based maker of Internet routers, in marketing to the Chinese government to accommodate monitoring and censorship goals. The Chinese government now requires any computer sold there after July 1, 2009, to include software called “Green Dam,” which critics say will further empower the government to monitor Internet use.

  Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, a media policy group, says the actions of Iran and China should alert us to domestic surveillance issues in the U.S. He told me: “This technology that monitors everything that goes through the Internet is something that works, it’s readily available, and there’s no legislation in the United States that prevents the U.S. government from employing it. ... It’s widely known that the major carriers, particularly AT&T and Verizon, were being asked by the NSA [National Security Agency], by the Bush administration ... to deploy off-the-shelf technology made by some of these companies like Cisco.” The equipment formed the backbone of the “warrantless wiretapping” program.

  Thomas Tamm was the Justice Department lawyer who blew the whistle on that program. In 2004, he called The New York Times from a subway pay phone and told reporter Eric Lichtblau about the existence of a secret domestic surveillance program. In 2007, the FBI raided his home and seized three computers and personal files. He still faces possible prosecution.

  Tamm told me: “I think I put my country first ... our government is still violating the law. I’m convinced ... that a lot more Americans have been illegally wiretapped than we know.”

  The warrantless wiretapping program was widely considered illegal. After abruptly switching his position in midcampaign, then-Sen. Barack Obama voted along with most in Congress to grant telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon retroactive immunity from prosecution. The New York Times recently reported that the NSA maintains a database called Pinwale, with millions of intercepted e-mail, including some from former President Bill Clinton.

  U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was recently asked by Sen. Russ Feingold if he felt that the original warrantless wiretap program was illegal:

  Feingold: “[I]s there any doubt in your mind that the warrantless wiretapping program was illegal?”

  Holder: “Well, I think that the warrantless wiretapping program, as it existed at that point, was certainly unwise, in that it was put together without the approval of Congress.”

  Feingold: “But I asked you, Mr. Attorney General, not whether it was unwise, but whether you consider it to have been illegal.”

  Holder: “The policy was an unwise one.”

  Dissenters in Iran and China persist despite repression that is enabled in part by equipment from U.S. and European companies. In the U.S., the Obama administration is following a dangerous path with Bush-era spy programs that should be suspended and prosecuted, not extended and defended.
 
  Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
 

  © 2009 Amy Goodman

By Dr Hasan Shamsi Basha

For its factories were prepared and created  by Allah in the mothers' body, its composition excelled the composition of any other milk, in it there is everything needed by the baby from nutrition to protection, it also gives the mother a feeling that strengthens the ties between the mother and her baby. However, the percentage of natural breast feeding in Europe and the US reached a very low level in the fifties, where a large number of mothers – due to negative advertisement- thought that artificial feeding is better than  natural breast feeding, and that the artificial milk contains elements not found in mothers' breast milk.

Many of our women in the Arab and Muslim world followed the Western example, and that led to the spread of artificial feeding and natural breast feeding become at that time an old practice. Since then studies and scientific research continued in Europe and the US that proved a single truth that is: Breast Milk is Best.

It shouldn't be strange to see well known medical experts in the world spreading their research, and writing  studies  about the advantages of breast milk.

Professor Ruth Lawrence[1], of Rochester University who is an expert in Neonatalogy says: "Women ought to know that breast milk is the best nutrition for the baby. Despite the fact that medical science has improved, it still has not been able to, in any way whatsoever,  produce an equivalent to breast milk, and there isn't on the face of Earth a biological composite equivalent  able to substitute breast milk completely".

Professor Boresden says: "If mammals need their mother's breast milk and a close physical connection with the mother for several years, then human babies should have the priority in receiving their mother's breast milk with all its advantages for four years".

Allah the Exalted says what means in the Holy Quran what means  {Mothers shall suckle their children for two whole years; (that is) for those who wish to complete the suckling.} Al-Baqara verse no. 233

The West has awakened to this fact recently, and the medical media in Europe and the US started notifying women about the importance of returning back to natural breastfeeding.

The Lancet (www.thelancet.com), a famous British medical magazine published an article asking the author: “why isn't the return to breastfeeding go at a higher rate than it currently is, despite the majority of medical opinions supporting the importance of breast milk and its prevalence over artificial milk”.

The author cites the reason for the aforementioned to be the control of artificial milk manufacturers over many organizations that are involved in children matters, and the large scale advertisement done by those manufacturers to convince mothers, despite being a big false truth less lie, that artificial milk supersedes breast milk.

In a time when the use of artificial milk is getting more common in our Islamic and Arab countries, we find that the British Govt. had made, thirteen years ago, an order that bans those companies from advertising the various types of artificial milk and thereafter those ads. disappeared completely from television and other media in Britain.

The Lancet also published an article with the following:

95% of mothers are able (if they desire) to breastfeed their newborns for a period of 4 to 6 months and they are able to, in this period of time, provide enough milk for their newborns to grow in a natural way.

Some women are able to breastfeed (without the need for artificial milk)their newborns for a period of at least twelve months or more. Babies who are fed artificial milk are more likely to suffer stomach and intestinal infections.

A report for the W.H.O. (World Health Organization) showed discontent with the situation in the third world where artificial milk is accepted in the time where Europe and the USare diminishing its use.

The author says: “The use of artificial milk is constantly increasing in the third world even though there are some dangerous implications to that on the child’s health”. And adds: “Companies producing artificial milk are competing through marketers who are advertising for those products in various ways”. The author also warns those companies that the world will wake up sooner or later and return to the use of natural breast milk, and that they (the companies) should not expect a growth in sales.

Professor Lawrence says: “Even though natural science has had great strides in the area of nutrition, it has only been able to imitate just a few properties found in breast milk. There are more than one hundred enzymes in mothers breast milk, all of which are not available artificial milk. Mother’s natural milk contains special antibodies and protection against spoilage unavailable in any other type of nutrient.

Professor Lawrence finished her article asserting: “There is no biological compound on Earth that is able to replace breast milk, secure live cells, provide effective enzymes, guard against infections, and other psychological advantages”.

Dr. Peny Stanway author of the book “Breast Is Best” [2] says : “there is o doubt that breast cancer , which is the most common cancer among women, has become more common during the past two decades and scientists estimate that one out of every twenty women in the West dies of breast cancer, and also one out of every four women complains about one of the several breast disorder (disease) in her lifetime”.

Why is such high frequency? And why is this happening to women's breasts?

Dr Stanway answers: “ it is highly probable that women treat the breast in an unnatural way and disobey the natural duty of the breast, which is nursing. Women deny their breasts the natural and main role (breast feeding), they then pay a very expensive cost by catching related diseases or disorders. Breast feeding is the most important tool used for birth control around the globe, where Menstruation process is biologically suspended  during the period of suckling ; it is known that uterine cancer has a strong relationship with breast cancer. It is probable that those large number of  menstruation  that women go through in their lives (average of about 450) have effects on the uterus, since every month the breasts and the uterus go through physiological and anatomical changes, and the female’s reproductive system becomes ready for oval fertilization and thereafter fetal formation”.

In our modern life, only one or two females ova are fertilized since women usually give birth to just one or two children during complete lifetime while their bodies go through an average of four hundred and fifty menstrual cycles, so the great majority of those menstrual processes go useless (ie no ovum is fertilized). The body goes through a lot of changes without pregnancy year after year but with only one or two probable pregnancies and this might be a reason for reproductive system disorders”.

This is was what Dr. Stanway said in his book, and in this he is talking about the women of modern era, when they try not to give birth to more than one or two children, and by doing so they subject their reproductive organs to such disorders and diseases.

Prophet Mohammad(peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)  said: “ Marry the loving , the bearer of children, I'm indeed proud of your  number profusion” Narrated by Abu Dawood and An-nisaa’I, Saheeh Aljame As-sagheer 2940. 

Dr. Stanway also says: “Breast and Uterine Cancer are really common where one of every five women ends getting her uterus removed sometime in her lifetime. Women should get pregnant early in her life after puberty, and it has been shown that when a women has her first child in an early age before twenty, she takes one of the most important measures in the prevention of Breast Cancer. Women’s reproductive system says for a period of 12 to fifteen years unable to bear the first child until menstruation, and if we decide to continue barring this system from bearing children then we will put our women into a lot of problems”.

Regarding the period of breast feeding, Dr. Stanway says: “it might be enough for the infant to breast-feed for a period of eight months in the Western society, but in regards to the mother’s advantage, all the reasons are available for the mother to continue breast feeding even if the baby reaches an age where he/she is able to get the necessary nutrients from other types of food. Continuous nursing through the nipples stimulate hormones in the mother that prevent the release of an ovum from the ovary to the uterus for several months”.

“Henceforth nursing doesn't only function as a natural birth control, but also suspends the monthly changes in the menstrual period which relaxes the reproductive system from such burden.”

The Late Sayid Qutub (may Allah bless his soul) said in his book In the Shade of Al-Quran[3]:”Allah obligates for the baby that his mother nurse him for a period of two years because Allah the Exalted knows that this period of time is the optimal time considering all the physical and psychological aspects for the baby (for those who wish to complete the period of nursing). Research on health and psychology prove that a period of two years is necessary so that a baby grows in a healthy manner.

[1]Ruth A. Lawrence, MD, Neonatology , http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/gchas/s_f/LAWREN_R.HTM

[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Breast-Best-Penny-Stanway/dp/0330436309

[3] In The Shade of Al-Quran (1/248)

Lately I have decided that it is time to move and I have accepted a position in another firm. This was not an easy decision and took a lot of consideration. However, I am confident that my new role will help me to move towards some of the goals I have set for my career.

I wish both my manager & colleagues and the company every good fortune and I would like to thank them for the opportunity they gave me.


   

In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it's too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth's riches and change its patterns of consumption.

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

More than a movie, HOME will be a major event all over the globe : for the first time ever, a film will be released on the same day in over 50 countries and on every format : movie theaters, TV, DVD and Internet.

Production Director: Yann Arthus-Bertrand

HOME official website
http://www.home-2009.com

PPR is proud to support HOME
http://www.ppr.com

HOME is a carbon offset movie
http://www.actioncarbone.org

More information about the Planet
http://www.goodplanet.info

HOME (Trailer)