Smash Capitalism and You Destroy Civilization

October 26, 2011

Forbes

By Art Carden

Somewhere, there are two graduate students in the social sciences who need dissertation topics. Those students should be watching the Occupy Wall Street movement with keen eyes because as it evolves, it’s going to provide us with an interesting set of applications, illustrations, and tests of different principles in the social sciences. One student should study the on-the-ground evolution of the Occupation camps themselves. Another should look at the evolution of perceptions of the Occupations and how they have changed as data on the Occupiers’ views have emerged.

Former Clinton pollster Douglas Schoen has done a valuable service by assembling a poll—which he discusses in the Wall Street Journal—that “probably represent(s) the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.” According to Schoen, the Occupiers are united by “a deep commitment to left-wing policies.”

I agree with the Occupiers when we both answer “no” to a question like “should we bail out large financial institutions that have made a lot of bad investments?” The more radical Occupiers lose me with demands that we “smash capitalism” and “abolish private property.” It isn’t at all clear to me that they have thought through exactly what this would entail.

Perhaps they see this as the beginning of an anti-capitalist, anti-commercial revolution, but to a certain extent we have already had this conversation. The twentieth century was a long (and bloody) debate about alternative modes of social organization. Even in its present corrupted and cronyized form, “modern capitalism”—which Deirdre McCloskey defines loosely as “private property and unfettered exchange”—is a goose that lays golden eggs, and not merely for the super-rich. If you disagree, ask yourself how many of those claiming to speak for “the 99%” have smart phones, which Louis XIV couldn’t have bought for all the gold in France. The problems the Occupiers blame on “capitalism” were not caused by “private property and unfettered exchange.” They were caused by institutionalized interference with “private property and unfettered exchange.”

At the margin, a little more government intervention isn’t likely to make a huge difference. I expect long-run problems that won’t surface until long after its main proponents and sponsors are out of office, but ObamaCare by itself isn’t going to turn the US into North Korea. Nonetheless, we can’t discard what economics has to teach and expect civilization to endure. Ludwig von Mises, one of the twentieth century’s most prominent defenders of the classical liberal order, finished his magnum opus Human Action with this:

The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.

Things were much darker when Mises wrote that (1949) than they are today, but we are only a few years away from graduating the first class of college seniors that hadn’t yet been born when the Soviet Union collapsed. It has been said that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We would do well to study the intellectual, political, social, and economic history that made Mises write with such urgency and passion lest we be doomed to repeat it. Tragically, that’s exactly what will happen if those who urge us to “smash capitalism” and “abolish private property” get their wish.

Click here for the full report from Forbes.

What Would Happen if Goldman Sachs Disappeared?

October 26, 2011

DollarCollapse.Com

By John Rubino

As Europe grinds out yet another doomed banking system rescue plan, it might be helpful to examine the underlying assumption, which is that we need these big banks.

Do we really? If Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Lyonnais and five or six of their peers ceased to exist tonight, what would happen? Would their absence change the number of factories, hospitals, farms, biotech research labs, oil wells, or gold mines? Would there be fewer houses or cars? Would computers get slower or TVs lower-def? No. The world of tomorrow morning would have exactly the same amount of real wealth and productive capacity as it does today. The main thing it wouldn’t have is a lot of arcane financial instruments that don’t produce anything edible, and a hundred thousand or so bankers making inordinate amounts of money moving this paper around. To the extent that those bankers would have to take jobs making real things, the post-Goldman world would arguably be richer and more productive.

The big banks’ disappearance might, admittedly, leave some ripples in the pond. Interest rates might rise and stock prices fall as countries like the US and Japan have to suddenly live within their means. Military budgets, public services and pensions would shrink dramatically. But there would be compensations. Where today’s low interest rate regime is devastating to retirees living on the proceeds of bank CDs and Treasury bonds, higher interest rates would give them back their personal incomes, probably more than offsetting lower Social Security and Medicare benefits. For young families, falling real estate prices (also due to higher interest rates) would bring starter homes within closer reach. And all those soldiers now occupying foreign countries, or training to, would be freed up to take real jobs alongside the ex-bankers.

People who have leveraged themselves to the hilt to buy various assets would have to sell, of course, but savers — especially those with a lot of precious metals — would snap up those assets and put them to productive use. Apple and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway between them have over $100 billion of ready cash, which they’ll use to acquire and deploy cheap assets. Community banks that focus on mortgages, business loans, and customer service(!) will thrive as depositors abandon Bank of America for local institutions. Farmers markets and local farms will grow to replace a disrupted global agribusiness supply chain. Freed from all those financial sector campaign contributions, politics might even get a little cleaner.

Viewed this way, the process looks a lot less threatening, and might even be a path to the kind of world most rational people would prefer. So relax, let the big banks go, and let’s see what happens.

Click here for the full report.

Corporate Foodopoly Is Heading Us Toward Farmagedon

October 26, 2011

Natural News

By: PF Louis

The current model of modern day farming was ostensibly created to produce lots of affordable food. It has succeeded in over feeding a population with high calorie low nutrient foods while making a few multinational corporations rich. But millions still go hungry.

Those corporations – whether grain gatherers, producers of processed foods, artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or GMO seeds – are constantly merging and cross cooperating to ensure their monopoly on food. We need to escape this farmopoly before it becomes farmageddon.

Large monoculture farming is unsustainable and unhealthy

As far back as 1936, a research paper commissioned by Congress in the USA, Senate Document 264 of the 74th Congress made a startling statement on the quality of food: “… 99 percent of the American people are deficient in … minerals, and … a marked deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in disease.”

The report also informed Congress: “It is not commonly realized … that vitamins control the body’s appropriation of minerals, and that in the absence of minerals they have no function to perform. … lacking minerals, the vitamins are useless.”

This finding was based on farming topsoil mineral depletion. Large monoculture farming had become prominent. In the early 1950s, the great cancer healer Dr. Max Gerson announced that we are being exposed to toxins while eating foods lacking nutrition.

Big Ag was born. Pushing rapidly for more yields – using artificial fertilizers year after year without crop rotation or fallow periods (when soil is plowed but not seeded) to allow topsoil to regenerate minerals – had already created topsoil mineral depletion.

Then after WW II, the ‘cides arrived: Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. And these ‘cides are used in soil (sprayed on plants then soaked into the soil), seed soaking, and storage preservation. Adding GMOs exacerbates the toxic, non-nutritional commercial food chain to a point of agricultural self destruction, as several GMO farmers are now discovering the hard way.

This is the result of large monoculture factory farming with only a few large corporations in charge of food storage and distribution as well as corporate food processing.

Add large grocery retail chains to this food monopoly. It all stacks up as a huge network of centralized food cartels. Evidently, the food cartels care more about control over the world’s food supply and profit than feeding the world and getting rid of hunger.

Many grains are purchased by large food processing corporations that adulterate those grains even more. Cheap food has proven to take a high price in worsening public health. But even cheap food is threatened by potential food shortages due to excess centralization and commodity traders’ price manipulation.

Yes, Wall Street has gotten into the commodity trading act with derivative “bets”, leading to inflated food commodity price peaks that already have jeopardized millions worldwide.

Escaping the foodopoly matrix

What’s needed is gradual food distribution decentralization phased in by organic farming near enough to urban centers to feed most consumers in those local areas. Farmers need to have their rightful dignity restored and to escape their virtual serfdom from the Cargills, Monsantos, Archer Daniels Midlands, and Wall Street banksters.

Then local markets should be promoting and pushing their foods. Okay, this may not be the way to get bananas in Chicago or cherries in the winter. But at the rate the food cartel octopus is destroying the food chain, there may be a point where bananas and cherries are no longer available anywhere anytime.

A 2110 United Nations commissioned committee report, taking four years to produce by hundreds of international experts, concluded that diverse organic farming, not biotech monoculture forced on the world, is the best option for sustainable food production capable of curbing world hunger. It’s easy to understand why this report has been kept from public awareness.

Click here for the full report from Natural News

EAS Test Allows Feds To ‘Seize Control’ Of Communications

October 26, 2011

Infowars.com

By: Paul Joseph Watson

For the first time, broadcasters will have no choice on whether to partake in the nationwide alert.

Radio host Glenn Beck has spoken of his fear that the upcoming Emergency Alert System test being conducted by Homeland Security and FEMA on November 9 gives the government the pretext to “seize control” of communications in America, because for the first time broadcasters will have no choice on whether to partake.

Beck explained that in every previous instance where the EAS system was tested, broadcasters were in control of whether or not to flip the switch, although they did face losing their broadcast license if they failed to partake. However, for the very first time, the federal government will have complete control over the broadcast frequency and will be able to override all radio and television stations.

Next month’s test also marks the first time that the alert has been conducted nationwide.

“The nationwide test may last up to three and a half minutes. The public will hear a message indicating that “This is a test.” The audio message will be the same for radio, television and cable,” states a FEMA press release.

Beck warned that the first of its kind test gave the government the pretext to take over all civilian communication outlets under the guise of a national emergency.

“If the state wants to take control…they can just take it and there is nothing I can do about it,” Beck stated, adding that the process “seizes control of the broadcast frequency.”

Beck questioned the timing of the test, asking why it was being conducted in the middle of a work day at 2pm and not at midnight on a Saturday.

“Why are we testing this thing at 2pm on a Wednesday when we don’t even know if this damn thing will work – who does that?” asked Beck, drawing attention to the fact that FEMA has indicated it isn’t even sure whether television broadcasts will display a message or not during the test.

“Who takes the nation’s communications and shuts it down in the middle of a work day on a Wednesday when the whole world is in revolution? That doesn’t help calm things, Mr. President,” said Beck.
The fact that the government has also chosen a date which is the reverse of 9/11 (the 9th of November being 11/9), is also unlikely to reduce anxiety surrounding the test.

Click here for the full report from Infowars.com

Feds Order You Tube To Remove Video Of “Government Criticism”

October 26, 2011

Infowars.com

By: Paul Joseph Watson

US Authorities Hit Google With 70% Rise In Takedown Orders

The number of takedown orders received by Google from authorities based in the United States rose dramatically over the past year, with demands to remove information, including videos containing “government criticism,” increasing by 70 per cent.

“In the US, Google received 757 takedown requests across its sites and services, up 70 per cent from the second half of last year.”

“US authorities also called for the removal of 113 videos from YouTube, including several documenting alleged police brutality which Google refused to take down.”

The figures are revealed in Google’s newly released transparency report, which also details how the number of “user data requests” by US authorities increased by 29 per cent compared to the last reporting period.

The reason listed for the removal of a You Tube video in one instance is “government criticism”. The exact identity or content of the video is not divulged. The report states that the removal requests pertaining to “police brutality” were done on the grounds of “defamation” and are included in that separate category, meaning the takedown order on the grounds of “government criticism” was made by the “executive,” ie the federal government.

The report does not indicate whether or not You Tube complied with the removal request, but it did comply with 63 per cent of the total requests made.

The number of “Items requested to be removed” by US authorities was almost seven-fold the number requested to be removed by Chinese authorities, a country much maligned for its Internet censorship policies.
As we have previously documented, Google-owned You Tube has complied with thousands of requests worldwide to remove political protest videos that are clearly not in violation of any copyright or national security interests and do not constitute defamation.

One such example was You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.

When viewers in the UK attempted to watch videos of the protest, they were met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.”

Indeed, the latest figures show that takedown requests on behalf of British authorities have also skyrocketed by 71 per cent, including 44 removal orders in the first half of this year which came directly from the UK government, one of which was the Birkenhead protest footage.

In Britain, a total of 135 videos were removed from You Tube on the grounds of “national security” and 43 web search results were also blacklisted by government decree.

These figures illustrate how governments, particularly the United States and Britain, are getting more aggressive in pushing for web censorship as the state increasingly tries to strangle the last bastion of true free speech, the Internet, as authorities simultaneously try to advance draconian cybersecurity measures that would hand them complete control over the world wide web.

Click here for the full report from Infowars.com

Prescription Drug Use Now Kills More People Than Traffic Accidents

October 26, 2011

The Inquisitor

By James Johnson

In 1979 the U.S. Government began tracking drug-related deaths and for the first time those deaths have surpassed the number of traffic fatalities on an annual basis.

The most recent statistics which were taken in 2009 shows that 37,485 people died in traffic related accidents while 36,284 people died from drug related activities in a one year period.

Surprisingly the main culprit of those deaths were not street illegal drugs but rather prescription options including Xanax, OxyContin and the main culprit Vicodin which killed more people than cocaine and heroin combined.

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times a Santa Barbara sheriff said:

“The problem is right here under our noses in our medicine cabinets.”

The study also revealed that traffic related fatalities have actually fallen by a third since the 1970s even as the number of drivers using American roadways continues to increase, while drug related deaths have doubled in the last decade. Deaths among the 50-year-old to 69-year-old crowd have been even worse, tripling during the same time period.

Not all deaths have been related to drug overdoses from drug abuse, in many cases accidental double dosing by adults has been the culprit.

When asked how drug related deaths can be reduced one researcher said:

“What’s really scary is we don’t know a lot about how to reduce prescription deaths,” while adding, “It’s a wonderful medical advancement that we can treat pain, but we haven’t figured out the safety belt yet.”

In the meantime parents are urged to speak with their kids not just about street illegal drugs but also the medications found in medicine cabinets which can be just as addictive and just as deadly.

Click here for the full report.

Medical Marijuana Legal Efforts Are Being Crushed By The DEA – Who Benefits?

October 26, 2011

Natural News

PF Louis

The state of California agreed on a referendum in 1996 to legalize medical marijuana in their state. A referendum is a citizen generated ballot that is then put to popular vote. So a majority of California’s voting citizens agreed that openly selling marijuana for medical purposes is okay.

Unfortunately, Big Brother disagrees. Recently, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) began raiding California state approved medical marijuana outlets and closing them down without warning. Other states that have approved medical marijuana programs are getting nervous.

Controlled Substance Act of 1970
This act provided a list of schedules placing drugs in different categories that define their use and legality. Marijuana was categorized as a Schedule I drug. Schedule I indicates that the drug has addictive qualities without any medical use.

The addictive qualities have proven to be false, and even more studies over the past four decades have proven several different medical uses for hemp with THC and other cannabinoids. Some studies (there have been more) are listed here: http://www.cannacenters.com/blog

Yet marijuana remains as a schedule I drug. If it were moved to even schedule II, there would be no medical marijuana raids. But the DEA goons have honored their malicious masters by not allowing marijuana to be moved to even the Schedule II slot. Who will? Congress is too corrupt.

The dark side of the drug war
According to analyst James Corbett, the drug war is a device for maintaining black market control over drug production and distribution at high prices for two reasons.

One is to launder large cash amounts into major banks; this keeps them liquid enough to loan more as part of the fractional reserve lending system, which allows banks to loan ten times more than the deposits they hold.

The other is for the CIA, colluding with the DEA and the ATF, to maintain black market high prices and to have their cash cow for black ops or covert operations, which avoid Congressional approval.

A clip of a 1988 TV interview shows Ron Paul stating that there should be no drug laws. Ron wants to decriminalize all drugs completely. This is not just because of his Libertarian “no victimless crimes” philosophy. He also wants to remove the covert cash flow enabling the CIA’s illegal operations.

The Corbett video report goes through a litany of different drug running ops from WW II (before the OSS became the CIA) to Mexican cartels and Afghanistan poppy fields. Very few major dealers and traffickers get busted. Most that do are simply being removed from competing with the larger CIA cooperating cartels, who launder their money through the international banking system.

This heavy handed medical marijuana suppression is also a boon for Big Pharma’s monopoly of petrochemical based toxic medicines that can be patented.

The economics of suppressing hemp
In the late 1930s, a hemp fiber removing machine was invented that promised to put the hemp industry on the threshold of becoming a major paper, textile and plastic producer. As a result of this, in 1937 Popular Mechanics touted the prospects of hemp becoming the first billion dollar cash crop.

This made some influential industrialists anxious about serious competition. Not to worry, they had friends in high places. The U.S. Treasury Secretary then was Andrew Mellon, owner of Mellon Bank. Mellon bank had some serious investments to protect among his business cronies.

So Andrew created a new government department, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). He appointed family relative Harry Anslinger, a former top federal prohibitionist, as FBN head. Harry hastily classified marijuana as a dangerous narcotic.

Classifying marijuana as a narcotic not only killed marijuana for medical use, but it also destroyed a very promising, highly sustainable industry for hemp cultivation and product manufacturing.

Click here for the full report from Natural News.

10 Ways the Government Watches You

October 26, 2011

Security News

By Sue Marquette Poremba

In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the size and scope of the U.S. national-security apparatus has greatly expanded.

The trigger of that growth was the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 — more commonly known as the Patriot Act — which Congress overwhelmingly approved in the weeks following 9/11.

Since its inception, the Patriot Act has been controversial, and some argue that it is an attack on the freedoms protected in the Bill of Rights. In May of this year, two Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee said “Americans would be appalled if they knew how broadly the Justice Department has interpreted what the law allows government snoops to do.”

Nevertheless, President Barack Obama and Congress extended several key provisions in the Patriot Act until 2015. While some in Congress want to overturn the provisions or require the government to be more honest about how it spies on its citizens, chances are we will remain under the watchful and secretive eye of federal agencies for the foreseeable future.

State and local governments also have surveillance measures in place. Many products that make life a little easier, such using an E-Z Pass card to zip through toll booths, feed information back to the government.

Here are 10 ways government agencies watch us:

Roving John Doe wiretaps. One of the controversial Patriot Act provisions reauthorized this past spring permits roving John Doe wiretaps, which follow a “person of interest” within a broad search warrant.

For example, instead of getting a warrant to tap into a single phone line, the roving John Doe wiretap allows law enforcement to tap any and all communication lines — cellphone, landline, email, text messaging — a person of interest may be using.

FBI monitoring of email and electronic communications. The FBI implemented a system in the late 1990s known as Carnivore, which scanned emails en masse looking for keywords. It’s since been replaced by even more sophisticated software.

“Carnivore uses a list of FBI-supplied keywords to sift through email (maybe everybody’s email) to find suspicious references to call FBI attention to possibly nefarious conversations going on across the Internet,” explained Joe B. Vaughan, Jr., author of “The Suburban Manifesto: How To Get City Hall To Do Exactly What You Want” (CreatePress, 2010).

“The FBI would use this program to track terrorists, drug traffickers, etc.,” Vaughan said. “I had a conversation with an FBI agent about this. He said that this technology is necessary because of the impossible task of monitoring all of the email traffic occurring daily by federal authorities. Carnivore sifts email and when it finds matching keyword references, the FBI can zero in on the sender and receiver and monitor their email conversations more effectively.”

License-plate cameras at intersections. In order to crack down on drivers running red lights or committing other traffic transgressions, many municipalities have installed cameras at intersections.

The camera snaps a picture of the offending vehicle, and based on license-plate information, the photo and an accompanying traffic ticket are sent to the car’s owner.

“The offense, by the way, is usually never entered in the driver’s record, so their insurance rate usually will not increase for the violation — just a way for cities to make more revenue from drivers’ mistakes,” said Vaughan.

Surveillance cameras in public places. In August, Detroit officials announced that the city would be operating 350 security cameras in the central business district, joining dozens of American cities that use surveillance cameras to help prevent crime.

Cameras are installed in areas that have a history of criminal activities or in areas where crowds regularly gather — downtown, public parks or subway stations, for example. The cameras also record the everyday activities of law-abiding citizens, many of whom are unaware they are being watched.

Click here for the full report and more ways the government is watching you.

The Iraq War Isn’t Over, No Matter What Obama Says

October 26, 2011

Wired

By Spencer Ackerman

President Obama announced on Friday that all 41,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq will return home by December 31. “That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end,” he said. Don’t believe him.

Now: it’s a big deal that all U.S. troops are coming home. For much of the year, the military, fearful of Iranian influence, has sought a residual presence in Iraq of several thousand troops. But arduous negotiations with the Iraqi government about keeping a residual force stalled over the Iraqis’ reluctance to provide them with legal immunity.

But the fact is America’s military efforts in Iraq aren’t coming to an end. They are instead entering a new phase. On January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas.

The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security does not have a promising record when it comes to managing its mercenaries. The 2007 Nisour Square shootings by State’s security contractors, in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed, marked one of the low points of the war. Now, State will be commanding a much larger security presence, the equivalent of a heavy combat brigade. In July, Danger Room exclusively reported that the Department blocked the Congressionally-appointed watchdog for Iraq from acquiring basic information about contractor security operations, such as the contractors’ rules of engagement.

That means no one outside the State Department knows how its contractors will behave as they ferry over 10,000 U.S. State Department employees throughout Iraq — which, in case anyone has forgotten, is still a war zone. Since Iraq wouldn’t grant legal immunity to U.S. troops, it is unlikely to grant it to U.S. contractors, particularly in the heat and anger of an accident resulting in the loss of Iraqi life.

It’s a situation with the potential for diplomatic disaster. And it’s being managed by an organization with no experience running the tight command structure that makes armies cohesive and effective.

You can also expect that there will be a shadow presence by the CIA, and possibly the Joint Special Operations Command, to hunt persons affiliated with al-Qaida. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has conspicuously stated that al-Qaida still has 1,000 Iraqi adherents, which would make it the largest al-Qaida affiliate in the world.

So far, there are three big security firms with lucrative contracts to protect U.S. diplomats. Triple Canopy, a longtime State guard company, has a contract worth up to $1.53 billion to keep diplos safe as they travel throughout Iraq. Global Strategies Group will guard the consulate at Basra for up to $401 million. SOC Incorporated will protect the mega-embassy in Baghdad for up to $974 million. State has yet to award contracts to guard consulates in multiethnic flashpoint cities Mosul and Kirkuk, as well as the outpost in placid Irbil.

“We can have the kind of protection our diplomats need,” Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told reporters after Obama’s announcement. Whether the Iraqi people will have protection from the contractors that the State Department commands is a different question. And whatever you call their operations, the Obama administration hopes that you won’t be so rude as to call it “war.”

Click here for the full report from Wired.

Fizzy Drinks Linked With Teenage Violence

October 26, 2011

The Epoch Times

By Epoch Times Staff

Adolescents who drink over five cans of regular fizzy drinks weekly may be more likely to behave aggressively, including carrying a weapon and behaving violently towards peers and siblings, according to a new U.S. study.

The research was based on a biennial survey of 1,878 teenagers aged 14 to 18 at schools in Boston, Mass.

The number of carbonated non-diet soft drinks that each youth had drunk in the past week was measured to create two groups—low consumption (up to four cans), and high consumption (five or more cans).

Just under 30 percent of the participants were found to be in the high consumption group. The researchers found that people in this group were more likely to have drunk alcohol and smoked at least once during the last month.

They were also more likely to carry a gun or knife, and perpetrate violence towards friends and family members.

“There was a significant and strong association between soft drinks and violence,” wrote the researchers in their paper. “There may be a direct cause-and-effect relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression.”

A dose-response relationship was discovered when these results were split into four consumption categories, despite controlling for factors like drinking alcohol and smoking.

“We thought that when we controlled for cigarettes and tobacco, the effect would disappear. But instead, soft drink consumption was still what mattered,” said study co-author Sara Solnick at the University of Vermont, according to CTV News. “Even if kids used tobacco or alcohol, or they did not, it still boosted the risk.”

The number of people carrying a weapon rose from just over 23 percent in those who drank one or no cans of soft drink to just under 43 percent in those drinking 14 or more cans. Similarly, violent behavior rose as follows:

From 15 percent to 27 percent towards a partner;
From 35 percent to 58 percent towards peers;
From 25 percent to more than 43 percent towards siblings.

Overall, the researchers found that high consumption of regular fizzy drinks was associated with an increase in aggressive behavior of 9 to 15 percent. This correlation is also seen with alcohol and tobacco.

“We can’t explain why this is happening,” Solnick added. “What we have now is just an association. People who are involved in a lot of aggression also drink more soda and we don’t know why.”

Click here for the full report from Epoch Times.

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