Why Can’t We Say “Empire”?
October 28, 2011
Salon Media
By David Sirota
Early Saturday morning, I spent two hours at 30 Rockefeller Plaza with a distinguished panel of guests on Chris Hayes’ terrific new MSNBC show “Up.” The theme of the discussion, which you can watch here, was the state of national security policy after Moammar Gadhafi’s death and President Barack Obama’s announcement of the end of the Iraq war. The conversation soon turned to a topic that is almost never mentioned, much less seriously explored, in the traditional media: the subject of American Empire. Our dialogue provided a perfect example of how troublesome newspeak continues to muddle our foreign policy discussions.
Here’s the excerpted exchange that kicked it off; I introduced the subject and then P.J. Crowley, my former colleague at the Center for American Progress, fired back (there was a break in between, so I’ve put the two statements together for brevity’s sake):
SIROTA: On my radio show in Denver, you are talking to callers every day, and every so often I mention the fact that if you look at the last 50 years after WWII, American foreign policy is in part about empire — it’s an imperial project. You’ll get some folks who will agree with you, but you get conservative callers who say that is the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard. Now if you look at it empirically, I think our foreign policy has been a project of empire.
CROWLEY: I just couldn’t disagree more… In the last 100 years there’s been a battle against fascism, a battle against communism, and there’s been the construction of a remarkable what John Ikenberry at Princeton calls a liberal hegemonic project where you have a World Trade Organization, a functioning United Nations, an open liberal system, a remarkable number of democracies that have come into the world in the last 30, 40, 50 years. The United States is the lone superpower in the world. We throw our weight around. Not all of our policies are effective or consistent necessarily with our values. But you cannot describe the United States as an empire. We have created a system that we invite everyone in the world to participate in. And the last point is that, look, an Empire would never leave Iraq. The fact is, we had a negotiation, Iraq said we can’t live with these conditions, and we are in fact leaving. That’s not what an Empire does.
A former public affairs officer for the National Security Council and then mouthpiece for the U.S. State Department, Crowley was a perfect guest for this discussion. Despite his recent — and laudable — acknowledgment of the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning, this is a guy who has been a loyal spokesman for America’s national security establishment. Consequently, his retort is an important example of how that establishment employs euphemisms and coded phrases to mainstream, sugarcoat and obscure an imperial project that might make rank-and-file Americans uncomfortable.
Crowley bridles at the idea that America’s long history of geopolitical aspirations, invasions, occupations and various extensions of power is part of an imperial project. Instead, we are told that it’s all just one “liberal hegemonic project” (as if alleged liberalism somehow makes it a “hegemonic project” not an “imperial project”). Yet, even beyond this almost overt contradiction of himself, his examples betray what really drives American foreign policy.
The World Trade Organization, for example, uses the imperial threat of sanctions to help American corporate interests trample the will of local governments in order to exploit host nations for profit. Likewise, the United Nations — which certainly does a lot of good, important work — is still structurally rigged with a security council to make sure America has outsize imperial influence in proportion to its population.
While Crowley is correct that “a lot of democracies have come into the world in the last 30, 40, 50 years,” many of those democracies have emerged in spite of America’s imperial ambitions — not because of America’s non-imperial benevolence (think: Latin American democracies emerging in the face of Reagan administration meddling, or Egypt’s move toward democracy in spite of the Obama administration’s backing of dictator Hosni Mubarak). Additionally, more democracies might have come into the world if the U.S. hadn’t been propping up dictators.
Finally, the idea that we wouldn’t end an imperial occupation if we were an empire not only assumes that we actually are leaving Iraq (a shaky assumption, to say the least), but also glosses over the fact that forcibly bringing another nation into our sphere of influence, or fully propping up a client government, is also a part of the imperial project — it’s just more polite than a full-on military occupation.
Click here for the full report from Salon.
Silver Manipulation: The iShares Silver ETF And J.P. Morgan’s Conflict Of Interest
October 28, 2011
ETF Daily News
By Jeff Nielson
JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM) is the largest silver short-seller in the history of the world. JP Morgan is the “custodian” for the largest “long” silver fund in the history of the world, making this one of the largest conflicts of interest in all of history.
If the unit-holders of the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE:SLV) make a small amount of profit on their holdings (per unit), JP Morgan suffers massive losses on its “short” position in the futures market – and then at least one hundred times that amount of additional losses on its unimaginably huge, leveraged, silver derivatives. We know this thanks to the loquacious banker, Jeffrey Christian, formerly of Goldman Sachs and now head of the CPM Group, one of two “consultancies” who are quasi-official record-keepers for the gold and silver markets. Obviously JP Morgan has a gigantic personal incentive to try to make sure that holders of SLV units make as little as possible on their investment.
This alone should disqualify JP Morgan from serving as “custodian” for all of the silver JP Morgan supposedly holds on behalf of those unit-holders. Amazingly, with JP Morgan claiming to be sitting on the two largest, single silver-holdings in all the world it has never been required to have both of those holdings audited/verified. Thus JP Morgan has been able to indulge in this blatant conflict of interest while so-called “regulators” actually help it to conceal its activities.
However, the absurdity of allowing the world’s largest “silver fox” to guard the world’s largest “silver henhouse” with absolutely no public scrutiny is only the beginning of this outrage. Those who follow the silver market will have noted an amazing “coincidence” in recent years since the creation of SLV: JP Morgan’s massive short position always closely mirrors the size of the total holdings of SLV.
This led me immediately to a rather obvious conclusion. Each time someone purchases a unit of SLV, JP Morgan uses the proceeds to acquire that one ounce of silver (as it is supposed to do). However, instead of that silver being used to “back” that unit of SLV (in JP Morgan’s role as “custodian”), JP Morgan increases its short position by one more ounce – and then uses the new silver to back its own short position (in JP Morgan’s role as “greedy banker”).
Note that as long as the supposed “regulator” of the silver market (the CFTC) never requires JP Morgan to demonstrate that it has enough silver to “back” both its own, massive short position and its own, massive custodian obligation, then there is nothing stopping JP Morgan from permanently/perpetually using the “long” investors of SLV to fund and “back” virtually its entire shorting operation in the Comex futures market.
Should an ordinary individual acquire the power of invisibility, and thus be able to monitor JP Morgan’s secret silver hoard inside its bullion vault, what they would undoubtedly see is an impressive mountain of silver. On 364 of the 365 days of the year, there would be a sign in front of that stack of bullion reading “JP Morgan’s short position”, while on that other day of the year (when SLV’s “auditor” shows up to supposedly verify that JP Morgan is honouring its duty as “custodian”) the sign in front of the bullion is changed to read “iShares Silver Trust”.
It is a neatly symmetrical scam, and one only made possible in the U.S.’s “world” of faux-regulators. However, one aspect of this sham always bothered me despite its wonderful symmetry. Knowing how Wall Street banksters love to leverage everything they touch by at least 30:1 (and in the case of silver derivatives by more than 100:1) it always seemed oddly conservative that JP Morgan’s SLV sham was leveraged by a mere 2:1. Enter (again) Jeffrey Christian.
It was Jeffrey Christian who helped to confirm the existence of gold manipulation in “The Great Gold Debate” between himself and GATA stalwart, Bill Murphy. Immediately after Christian claimed that he had “never seen” any evidence of gold manipulation in all of his years as a banker, he then proceeded to describe some of those acts of manipulation. One example Christian gave was how the bullion banks would (falsely) spread rumors that a particular European central bank was about to dump more gold onto the market, in order to “spook” the longs and depress the price.
When I heard that Murphy and Christian were going to reprise their roles in a second debate (at the current “Silver Summit”), this time with greater emphasis on the silver market, I couldn’t wait for what new revelations would slip past Christian’s lips. I wasn’t disappointed, as Christian was kind enough to supply the reasoning behind JP Morgan’s mere 2:1 leveraging of SLV’s silver (i.e. 100% of the silver for JP Morgan, 0% of the silver for SLV unit-holders).
The explanation is found in one of the last remaining “weapons” which the banksters can use to manipulate the gold and silver markets: calling up their good friends who run the Comex (the CME Group) and “complaining” that margins need to be raised again in the gold and/or silver markets. Christian observed that when it comes to the impact of raising margin requirements there is an important distinction between whether the various players in this market have “backed” or “naked” positions:
Click here for the full report.
The Economic Agony of Today’s Twenty-Somethings
October 28, 2011
The Daily Ticker
By Daniel Gross
Most of the coverage of today’s economic difficulties focuses on older folks. How will the mid-career people who lost their jobs during the deep recession of 2008-2009 find new posts? Will the Baby Boomers, and whether they will be able to rely on Social Security and Medicare? What can be done to help homeowners and families caught up in the mortgage mess?
In a recent cover story in New York, Noreen Malone offers a sharply reported take on a demographic group that is often overlooked: twenty-somethings. As Malone and I discuss in the accompanying video, today’s twentysomethings, while they may have fewer financial and familial obligations than their parents, and more time to prepare for a straightened future than the Baby Boomers, face their own unique challenges.
Here are some of the tough economic data points facing the “It Sucks to Be Us” generation:
Entering the workforce in a tough time has long-term impacts. Since the average workers get 70 percent of total raises in their first decade as a worker, “having stagnant or nonexistent wages during that period means you hit that springboard at a crawl,” Malone writes. Seventeen years after entering the workforce, people who graduate college during a recession earn 10 percent less than those embarking on their careers during good economic towns. “In hard, paycheck-shrinking numbers, the salary lost over that stretch totals around $100,000.”
Students today leave college with far more debt than they did in past years. The Class of 2009 had an average of $24,000 in student loans. “I almost don’t even blink when someone says I have $100,000 in debt, just from undergraduate.” According to one measure, “student loans have surpassed credit cards as the largest source of debt in the country.”
Tough economic times mean twenty-somethings have a difficult time launching into independence — and that has an economic impact. They’re more likely to rely on families and parents for support, thus cutting back on the old folks’ ability to save, spend, and invest. ” Thirty-nine percent of us in a 2010 National Journal poll were getting financial help from relatives, including a full quarter of those with full-time jobs,” Malone writes.
The slow formation of households is holding back recovery in the housing market: “The median age of first marriages has crept up by about a year since 2006—a statistically huge increase—and the overall marriage rate is at an all-time low. The number of women between 20 and 34 rose by about a million between 2008 and 2010, but the number of children born to the group dropped by 200,000.”
A college degree used to be insurance against a tough job market. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for college graduates over the age of 25, the unemployment rate is about 4.5 percent. But for recent college grads, Malone says, the rate is closer to 14 percent.
Click here for the full report.
Natural News Issues Consumer Alert About Adya Clarity
October 28, 2011
Natural News
By Mike Adams
A product called Adya Clarity has been sweeping across the natural health community in the last year or so. It has been sold with recommendations for internal use — taking “super shots” — and often accompanied by wide-ranging claims that it treats cancer, kidney stones, hormone regulation, arthritis, and that it removes radiation and heavy metals.
Because so many readers have been asking me about Adya Clarity, I decided to look further into the issue. I was aided by some timely tips that came my way which I began to check out as an investigative journalist. What I found — much of which is detailed in this report — absolutely shocked me. But what do YOU think? Read my report and decide for yourself.
Unsubstantiated health claims
The claims that Adya Clarity is good for treating kidney stones, hair loss, arthritis and even cancer are, I discovered, entirely unsubstantiated for this product. There is simply no reliable clinical evidence supporting Adya Clarity to be safe or effective for any health condition whatsoever. Furthermore, there are many facets of this story that have raised red flags in my mind as the editor of NaturalNews.
For starters, Adya Clarity is primarily composed of sulfuric acid, iron sulfate and aluminum sulfate. Before being diluted and bottled, Adya Clarity starts out as Themarox, a mineral deposit mined in Japan just a few dozen miles away from Fukushima. This Themarox has a very acid pH value, near 0.5. In this state, aluminum sulfate is present in a concentration of 10.9 grams per liter, according to our research.
To make Adya Clarity, Themarox is diluted at roughly 10:1, raising the pH and diluting the sulfuric acid. Once bottled, Adya Clarity contains the following concentrations of metals and minerals, according to its label:
Iron: 2,000 PPM
Magnesium: 400 PPM
Calcium: 250 PPM
Potassium: 200 PPM
Manganese: 20 PPM
… and so on.
Do you see what’s missing from this list? The aluminum sulfate. By my calculations, given that the aluminum sulfate starts out at 10.9 grams per liter, the diluted form of Themarox — Adya Clarity — contains roughly 1.2 grams per liter of aluminum sulfate. This is 1200 mg per liter, which is almost exactly 1200 PPM (parts per million). (Source: The MSDS provided to me by Adya, Inc. as a Word document, see below. This also corresponds to the PPM of aluminum claimed by the manufacturer, Shimanishi Kaken Co.,Ltd.)
Curious as to why aluminum sulfate was not listed on the label in the appropriate order of concentrate (under Iron and above Magnesium), I contacted Matt Bakos, the owner and importer of Adya Clarity and asked him this question. The reason he didn’t list aluminum concentration on the label underneath iron, he told me, was because “I don’t want to.” He said it was listed as a “trace mineral” and that was sufficient. There was no need to list the 1200 PPM of aluminum in Adya because it “is not required,” he told me.
I bet many of the people who paid $100+ per bottle for Adya Clarity would also be interested to learn there’s quite a significant concentration of aluminum in the product they may have already begun ingesting.
So I pressed further. When challenged on this a second time, Bakos became angry and rather belligerent with me on the phone, and what began as a conversation quickly devolved into something of a screaming competition between he and I. When I suggested that the product name “Adya CLARITY” should achieve “clarity” on the label by offering full disclosure of its mineral and metal content, he became further outraged and ultimately accused me of not knowing what I was talking about and then threatened to involve his lawyers.
To me, these are classic red flags of people about which I have serious reservations. When I ask honest questions and instead of getting answers I get angrily attacked, I know something’s up. This is doubly true given that I am well known as a friend of the nutritional products industry — someone who consistently shares good news about products that offer substantial benefits and safety to informed consumers. (I’ve been doing this for eight years. This isn’t new territory for me.)
By the end of this conversation, it was clear to me that I was not dealing with a person who was willing to provide reasonable answers to legitimate safety questions. I have this entire conversation recorded and on the record, with Bakos’ permission no less, and I reserve the right to publicly release this recording if I think it serves the public interest. (I am not ashamed of my use of profanity in this context, which will become crystal clear to you if you hear this recording. It got quite heated.)
Imported as “battery acid”
One of the tips NaturalNews received on this story claims that Adya, Inc. was importing Adya Clarity under the description of “battery acid.” I could hardly believe this was true, so I checked it out myself.
What I found was surprising but true: On the ImportGenius.com website, a query of “Adya Inc” from Coldwater, Michigan turns up numerous entries of imported materials from the SHIMANISHI KAKEN CO. in Japan to ADYA INC in Coldwater Michigan.
The contents of these shipments?
INORGANIC CHEMICALSHS CODE 3824 BATTERY FLUID ACID
You can see this yourself at:
http://www.importgenius.com/importe…
If you join this website to view more records, you will find other importation records with these descriptions and dates:
SHIMANISHI KAKEN CO. LTD. ADYA INC. 9/21/2011 3,060 Tokyo Los Angeles California MOL LOIRE INORGANIC CHEMICALS BATTERY FLUID ACID HS CODE 3824.90
SHIMANISHI KAKEN CO. LTD. ADYA INC. 8/23/2011 1,920 Tokyo Los Angeles California VIRGINIA BRIDGE INORGANIC CHEMICALSHS CODE. 382490
SHIMANISHI KAKEN CO. LTD. ADYA INC. 5/31/2011 1,180 Tokyo Los Angeles California VICTORIA BRIDGE INORGANIC CHEMICALS THEMAROX HS CODE 3824.90
SHIMANISHI KAKEN CO. LTD. ADYA INC. 2/23/2011 1,420 Tokyo Long Beach California MOL LOIRE SULPHURIC ACID THEMAROX HS CODE 3824.90
SHIMANISHI KAKEN CO. LTD. ADYA INC. 12/22/2010 905 Tokyo Long Beach California VIRGINIA BRIDGE INORGANIC CHEMICALSHS CODE 3824.90 BATTERY FLUID ACID
What these import records appear to indicate is that Adya, Inc. is importing materials which are described as battery acid. What’s wrong with that? Well, Adya Inc. is not in the battery business. They are in the business of selling an acidic liquid as a water additive labeled for human consumption. It is rather evident that the “battery acid” liquid claimed on the shipping manifests is, in fact, the raw material ingredient for Adya Clarity.
“Super shots” for internal use
The Adya Clarity product has also been widely promoted by Adya Inc distributors as something for internal use, via the taking of “super shots.”
The Adya Clarity bottle label even directs customers to consume the product:
“Add 1 teaspoon per 1 gallon of water, stir and enjoy the crisp, clean taste of Adya Clarity water,” it says. This clearly implies drinking the water containing the Adya Clarity (how else would you “taste” and “enjoy” it?) Thus, the product label itself is promoting the product for internal use.
Much of the promotional material also recommends Adya Clarity for internal use. This is an oft-repeated message in the videos and webinars used to promote the product.
Click this Bing search for more examples of Adya Clarity being promoted for internal use:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=adya+c…
Adya Clarity is a food?
During my recorded conversation with Matt Bakos, he insisted that Adya Clarity was a “food” and compared it to eating bananas and other fruits. This, on its face, is absurd.
Not by any stretch of reason is Adya Clarity a “food” anymore than, say, uranium is a food because it is also mined out of the ground. Adya Clarity is derived from a mineral deposit to which sulfuric acid is added. Adya Clarity does not grow on trees or bushes. In fact, it is derived from rocks mined near Fukushima and pulled right out of the ground, then combined with sulfuric acid as part of its manufacturing process.
Adya Clarity might be described as a collection of industrial chemicals used for water purification, which is of course almost exactly what was described on the shipping documents with the phrase, “INORGANIC CHEMICALS.”
Adya Clarity has been widely mislabeled
In my interview with Bakos, he claimed that the current labeling of Adya Clarity is incorrect because “someone hacked into their computers” causing all their labels to carry incorrect information. (Really? Don’t you check your labels before printing them? Or before labeling the products? Or before shipping out the products? Is there really this much lack of quality control at Adya Inc? This is truly concerning…)
I asked Bakos if he had issued a product recall as a result of the mislabeling. He explained no, there was no need because the product was not “contaminated” with anything.
So I asked if there was an effort under way to email all the customers and inform them of the mislabeling. Again, he said no, giving an unsatisfactory explanation of why this was not necessary.
So I asked if his new labels appropriately listed the amount of aluminum contained in Adya, in the appropriate order of concentration, underneath Iron and above Magnesium. He replied that no, aluminum was not listed there because he “didn’t want to” list it there. Instead, it was listed under “trace minerals” along with other trace minerals and elements.
Now, to be fair, there is a trace amount of aluminum in lots of things, including Himalayan salt, bananas, and even some brands of baking powder (among other foods). A trace level of aluminum is not typically a concern, although cumulative levels of aluminum do begin to become a concern if consumed regularly. On that note, 1,200 PPM of aluminum sulfate — when people are drinking “super shots” of this liquid — is very concerning to me, just out of a sense of caution and basic knowledge of biochemistry.
That Bakos admittedly made a conscious decision to avoid listing aluminum sulfate in its 1200 PPM concentration on the label, and instead put aluminum in the “trace minerals” section of his product’s label, smacks of deliberate deception. Why would Adya go out of its way to hide the aluminum concentration in Adya Clarity even though the other macro minerals and metals are clearly listed with their accompanying concentrations?
It appears that there’s not as much “clarity” with Adya Clarity as we might have hoped.
Where is the official MSDS?
Everywhere I turned to ask more questions about Adya Clarity, I found unsatisfactory answers. When I inquired about the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), which is required for all hazardous materials being transported in large quantities, I was given a Word document which looks like somebody just typed it up on their own. That’s very different from an official MSDS, which should look more like this (from an unrelated website):
http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?…
The MSDS I was given could have been easily modified in a text editor. Even then, it contains the following warnings:
Handling and storage; Handle with acid-proof tools made of plastic or stainless steel. The workers should wear acid-proof clothes and gloves. The products should be stored in acid-proof containers such as plastics. These containers should
be stored indoor location.
Click here for the full report from Natural News.
Ovarian Cancers Caused By IVF Infertility Treatments
October 28, 2011
Natural News
By S. L. Baker
In vitro (which means “outside the body”) fertilization, better known as IVF, is the joining of a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm in a laboratory dish. The fertilized egg is placed in the lining of the woman’s womb and, if the fetus continues to grow, a baby is born in about 9 months. Although a huge money making part of the infertility industry, IVF has many downsides including the fact it is enormously expensive. A single IVF cycle treatment can cost over $12,000 and it can take many IVF treatments to achieve a pregnancy.
What’s more, the success rate after spending all this money is only about 13 to 43 percent, depending on the age of the would-be mother, with older moms having less chance of a successful pregnancy. On top of these drawbacks, the drugs given for ovarian stimulation have a host of side effects, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including bloating, abdominal pain, mood swings and headaches.
Now there’s evidence of an even more potentially horrendous side effect to this baby making technology — ovarian cancer. Researchers from the Netherlands have discovered that women whose ovaries are stimulated into producing extra eggs for IVF double their risk of having ovarian malignancies later in life, compared to women who never undergo IVF. The study was just published in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction.
The specific type of ovarian growths found that are most likely spurred by IVF are known as borderline ovarian tumors. While far less deadly than invasive ovarian malignancies, they are nothing that can be ignored. The researchers found that of the 25,152 women with fertility problems included in their study, 77 developed ovarian cancers. Surprisingly, of the 61 women who had ovarian malignancies in the group that had been treated with IVF, 31 had borderline ovarian cancer and 30 had invasive ovarian cancer.
Unusually high number of ovarian tumors in later years
In a statement to the media, lead researcher Professor Flora van Leeuwen, who heads the Department of Epidemiology in The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, noted this proportion of ovarian borderline tumors was unusually high. She warned that although borderline ovarian tumors have a low potential to be fatal, they “would require extensive surgery and cause substantial morbidity.”
Even after the research team adjusted for factors that could confound the results such as the age of the women, if they had already given birth and the cause of their fertility problems, the long-term risks for ovarian malignancies and borderline ovarian tumors were significantly higher in the IVF treatment group compared with the group of women not treated with IVF. For all ovarian malignancies and for borderline ovarian cancer, there was a two and four-fold higher risk, respectively, in the IVF treatment group. In addition, although not seen as “statistically significant,” the bottom line is that invasive ovarian cancer was also increased somewhat in the IVF treatment group.
“Our data clearly show that ovarian stimulation for IVF is associated with an increased risk of borderline ovarian tumors and this risk remains elevated up to more than 15 year after the first cycle of treatment,” Professor van Leeuwen said in the media statement.
Click here for the full report from Natural News.
Another Attack on Human Health: UK Scientists Grow Super Broccoli Which ‘Lowers Cholesterol’
October 28, 2011
DavidIke.Com
By David Ike
Oh really? Good then? No, the opposite of good. Cholesterol doesn’t cause heart attacks just as sensible exposure to the sun does not cause skin cancer.
Sun blockers full of chemicals cause skin cancer after ‘They’ told you that you must protect yourself from the ‘deadly’ sun.
What’s more, we need vitamin D from the sun to be healthy and cholesterol is vital to turning ultraviolet light from the sun into vitamin D in the body.
So the scam is to demonise the sun so that people use sun blocker (and raise the risk of skin cancer) and to demomise cholesterol so that what little sunlight that gets through does not become the vital vitamin D in the body.
A lack of vitamin D causes a stream of body malfunctions which Big Pharma loves because it parasites off human disease.
No, cholesterol-reducing ‘super broccoli’ is not good.
Click here for the full report.
‘Get Your Freak On Girl’ TSA Screener Fired
October 28, 2011
Prison Planet
By Paul Joseph Watson
In a rare example of the federal agency caving to public outrage, the TSA has been forced to fire the screener who left a lewd message in lawyer Jill Filipovic’s checked bag after conducting an inspection and finding a sex toy.
After arriving at her hotel, Filipovic discovered that her bag had been searched and a TSA inspection form had been amended with the words “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” written on the reverse side.
Having initially only suspended the TSA screener responsible, the federal agency was forced to go a step further only after the story went viral and caused substantial public outrage.
“[The TSA] has initiated action to remove the individual from federal service,” a TSA spokesperson said. “Like all federal employees, this individual is entitled to due process and protected by the Privacy Act. During the removal action process, the employee will not perform any screening duties.”
Ironically, the TSA refuses to reveal the name or gender of the culprit, citing the Privacy Act.
Filipovic rightly suggests that the TSA’s decision to lay the blame on one person only serves to hide the all-pervading disregard for privacy within the whole agency.
“It’s easy to scape-goat one individual here, but the problem with the note is that it’s representative of the bigger privacy intrusions that the U.S. government, through the TSA and other sources, levels every day,” wrote Filipovic. “The invasion is inherent to the TSA’s mission, regardless of whether a funny note is left behind — the note only serves to highlight the absurdity of all this security theater. As much as this is a funny and titillating story, when I put the note on Twitter for what I thought was a relatively limited audience I was hoping it would open up a bigger conversation about privacy rights (or lack thereof) in post-9/11 America.”
Click here for the full report from Prison Planet.
Why Lovin’ the McRib Isn’t Heart Smart
October 28, 2011
Time
By Meredith Melnick
Blink and it’s gone. The ephemeral McRib sandwich appears at McDonald’s infrequently and only for a limited time. If you haven’t indulged in one yet, here’s what you’re missing: azodicarbonamide, ammonium sulfate and polysorbate 80 — those are just three of the 70 ingredients (34 in the bun alone) that go into the BBQ pork sandwich, according to the restaurant’s website.
These components are in small enough quantities to be innocuous. But it’s still a little disconcerting to know that, for example, azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent that is most commonly used in the manufacture of foamed plastics like in gym mats and the soles of shoes, is found in the McRib bun. The compound is banned in Europe and Australia as a food additive. (England’s Health and Safety Executive classified it as a “respiratory sensitizer” that potentially contributes to asthma through occupational exposure.) The U.S. limits azodicarbonamide to 45 parts per million in commercial flour products, based on analysis of lab testing.
LIST: Health-Washing: Is ‘Healthy’ Fast Food for Real?
The McRib enjoys a bizarre cult following, in part because of its impermanence. Reports Brad Tuttle over at Moneyland:
First introduced in 1982, the sandwich first disappeared in 1985, but then has periodically resurfaced in McDonald’s in the U.S. and abroad. The McRib’s cult-like following has generated not only Facebook pages, but McRib Locator websites and a Twitter account.
This fall, the McRib made news as McDonald’s re-introduced it once again — this time, making it available in all U.S. locations through Nov. 14. The obvious question is: if the McRib is so popular, why doesn’t McDonald’s sell it year-in, year-out, at all locations?
The answer is that, sort of in the same way that some people are attracted to bad boys (or girls) who won’t commit, the elusiveness of the McRib is part of its appeal.
If the chemistry-lab ingredient list isn’t enough to put you off the McRib’s saucy allure, perhaps the nutrition information will: with 980 mg of sodium (more than half your recommended daily intake) and 10 g of saturated fat, the sandwich is, quite literally, not for the faint of heart.
Click here for the full report from Time.
ABC And CBS News Both Cut Away Due To Technical Difficulties At Onset Of Oakland Police Violence
October 28, 2011 by William
Filed under Government
October 28, 2011
Disinformation.Org
By Jacob Sloan
In more on the mainstream media’s bizarre coverage of Tuesday night’s police brutality in Oakland, a number of blogs have commented on this — both ABC and CBS local affiliates had helicopters providing live feeds as events unfolded in front of Oakland’s City Hall. Allegedly, both television channels cut their transmissions when the police began attacking protesters, and both said it was due to their helicopters’ needing refueling. That’s right — both the ABC and CBS helicopters ran out of fuel at the same moment. The moment when the newsworthy events began to occur. One can only say, wow. Oakland Local writes:
OPD gave us 5 minutes to disperse, and then attacked the crowd with tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets. I was there until that point, and I can testify that it was a peaceful march until the police attacked it.
Moreover, they just happened to begin firing tear gas into the crowd right after the two major media outlets that were covering it with live feeds turned off their cameras. That coincidence was quite a coincidence. ABC and CBS later claimed their helicopters had to refuel, and they did show footage from later. But what a coincidence that they turned off their cameras just before the police attacked? And that their helicopters ran out of gas at precisely the same time, that time?
Click here for the full report.
The Cholesterol Controversy
October 28, 2011
Life Extension
By William Faloon
A heated debate continues about the role of cholesterol in the development of atherosclerosis and heart disease. Based on our analysis, both sides still have it wrong!
Almost comical is the role reversal this controversy has taken. When progressive individuals first proposed that high cholesterol increases heart attack risk, the medical establishment ridiculed the idea. The FDA went so far as to make it illegal for food companies to claim that diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol had any relationship to artery disease. (Note: High-saturated fat diets cause blood cholesterol to spike.)
The dispute raged for decades until the medical establishment (and the FDA) not only embraced the concept that high cholesterol causes heart attacks, but claimed this scientific area their exclusive domain.1-5 Many of today’s complementary medicine practitioners, who would have been early proponents of low-saturated fat diets, now question the association between cholesterol and vascular disease.
The fact that confusion still exists over this straightforward medical principle helps explain why atherosclerotic disease remains today’s leading preventable killer.
If we travel back to 1913, we would learn of an impressive study showing that rabbits fed a high-cholesterol diet develop atherosclerotic lesions that closely resemble those seen in humans.6 This research was initially criticized because rabbits are plant eaters whose normal diets are not the same as humans. When dogs and rats are fed high-cholesterol diets, they do not develop artery disease. It was later discovered that dogs and rats efficiently convert cholesterol to bile acids that are excreted. When these excretion mechanisms are blocked, however, dogs and rats do develop atherosclerosis in response to cholesterol feeding.
The cholesterol theory gained a bit more credibility when atherosclerotic lesions were readily induced in guinea pigs,7,8 goats,9 hens, parrots,10 and even primates11 in response to cholesterol elevation.
Interestingly, the first hints that high cholesterol caused atherosclerosis in humans occurred back in 1889.2,12 A doctor reported a case of a child with a rare genetic disorder that caused massive overproduction of cholesterol. The child died suddenly at age 11. An autopsy revealed extensive atherosclerotic-like lesions in large arteries.
Early History of Cholesterol and Arterial Disease
It was not until 1939 that a publication in the Archives of Internal Medicine pulled together the evidence linking this rare genetic disorder (familial hyper-cholesterolemia) to coronary artery disease.2,13 It was argued back then, however, that the extraordinarily high cholesterol levels in those with this genetic defect could not be extrapolated to people with only moderate cholesterol elevations.
By 1955, the cholesterol-heart attack connection was attracting some respectability. A study was done that measured cholesterol blood levels in people from seven different countries. Citizens of Finland, who ate the most saturated fats, had an average cholesterol reading of over 260 (mg/dL). The Japanese, who consumed the least saturated fat, had average cholesterol readings of a little over 160. Over a 10-year period, the number of fatal heart attacks per 1,000 men was about 70 in Finland and a little less than 5 in Japan. Saturated fat made up 20% of the Finnish diet, but only 2.5% of the Japanese diet.2,14
These findings had a significant impact on the cholesterol debate, but the vast majority of physicians and the federal government still proclaimed that high cholesterol had nothing to do with heart attack risk.
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