CIA terrorists spread their tentacles in South Punjab

The Americans have increased their contacts with local influential figures in South Punjab to establish a network of their secret service operatives there, informed sources have revealed.The renewed efforts at extension of their clandestine operations through setting up bases of CIA’s cobra operatives in the region where demands for autonomy fuelled by rising sense of deprivation have increased in recent months – come after Pakistan refused permission to the USZ to establish its consulate in Multan. And now the Americans are using the diplomatic facade to secure niches for their spies and hitmen in and around Multan, following their agenda of weakening Pakistan.

India Nervous over Pak-China Alliance

While US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been visiting India this week, US ties with Pakistan have taken a new, downward twist with the decision by the US Justice Department to charge two men with being in the pay of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

The last few months have been tumultuous for US-Pakistan relations, with the recent haltingof $800 million* in military aid marking a new low. And, as Pakistan looks for support elsewhere, it seems inevitable that China will be waiting in the wings to capitalise on the spat. All this raises the question of how Clinton’s hosts will cope with the China-Pakistan alliance at a time when Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are all already being slowly drawn into China’s orbit.

120 confirmed killed in Russian ship sink

The confirmed death toll from the sunken cruise vessel Bulgaria has risen to 120 people, after the divers discovered one more body on the riverboat, the Emergencies Ministry said on Sunday. "Another body has been discovered. Therefore, the confirmed death toll has risen to 120", the ministry said. The twin-deck riverboat Bulgaria capsized and sank on the Volga River on July 10.

There were 201 people aboard the riverboat. As many as 79 people were rescued. The fate of two people is yet unknown. The ship was delivered to shallow waters late on Saturday, allowing the divers to continue their search for missing persons. Rescuers are expected to finish their work on Sunday to seal the riverboat and pump out water and transfer the cruise ship to the Investigative Committee for investigation.

America, a nation of psychotics

Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux. Once upon a time, antipsychotics were reserved for a relatively small number of patients with hard-core psychiatric diagnoses – primarily schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – to treat such symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, or formal thought disorder. Today, it seems, everyone is taking antipsychotics. Parents are told that their unruly kids are in fact bipolar, and in need of anti-psychotics, while old people with dementia are dosed, in large numbers, with drugs once reserved largely for schizophrenics. Americans with symptoms ranging from chronic depression to anxiety to insomnia are now being prescribed anti-psychotics at rates that seem to indicate a national mass psychosis.

It is anything but a coincidence that the explosion in antipsychotic use coincides with the pharmaceutical industry’s development of a new class of medications known as “atypical antipsychotics”. Beginning with Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel in the 1990s, followed by Abilify in the early 2000s, these drugs were touted as being more effective than older antipsychotics like Haldol and Thorazine. More importantly, they lacked the most noxious side effects of the older drugs – in particular, the tremors and other motor control problems. The atypical anti-psychotics were the bright new stars in the pharmaceutical industry’s roster of psychotropic drugs – costly, patented medications that made people feel and behave better without any shaking or drooling. Sales grew steadily, until by 2009 Seroquel and Abilify numbered fifth and sixth in annual drug sales, and prescriptions written for the top three atypical antipsychotics totaled more than 20 million.  Suddenly, antipsychotics weren’t just for psychotics any more.

Not just for psychotics anymore