The intolerance of religious people.

Over the years I have discovered that to tell people that I no longer believe in any religion is to either frighten them off or to invite an angry outburst. Apparently I am not alone in having had such experiences.

In 2008, Atheist Nexus recorded stories from some 8000 people who described themselves as atheist, humanist, freethinker, agnostic, skeptic, and so on.

One said, “I've had people literally, physically BACK away from me upon hearing I am atheist. My children were told to run away from our evil home."

Another said: “My wife told me that I'm caught in Satan's grip, and confessed that after I deconverted she considered leaving me.”

Elsewhere a young woman tells of losing thirty-four Facebook friends when she announced her lack of belief.

In the U.S. atheists are less electable than reviled minorities including Muslims and gays. Seven states still have laws on the books that ban non-believers from holding public office.  A Florida minister whose deconversion recently made national news said that job interviews were cancelled when prospective employers found out. If such is the case in an advanced country like America just imagine how much worse it would be in the fanatically religious Muslims countries. Muslims are notorious for refusing to accept any arguments against their religion.

In the minds of many believers non-belief is linked with immorality, and despite tons of evidence to the contrary, religious leaders reinforce this stereotype.

How America helps to suppress the Palestinians and other arabs.

This article is by Anna Lekas Miller.

It's odd to see an Israeli flag flying in rural Pennsylvania.
Still, until very recently, the Israeli flag flew right alongside the American flag against the bucolic landscape of Jamestown, Pennsylvania. The nondescript warehouse-like buildings surrounding the two flags are not the factories of a local Pennsylvania Jewish-owned business, as one might guess. Rather, they are the headquarters of Combined Systems, Inc.—one of the largest manufacturers and international suppliers of teargas, stun grenades and other "non-lethal" crowd control devices in the world.
Israel, or more accurately, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is their most frequent client. And Combined Systems' relationship with the IDF is an emblem of a global system that binds together US weapons companies, repressive governments and taxpayer money.
Here's how this system generally works: a foreign government requests a certain amount of military assistance from the United States government. If the US government chooses to accept this request, Congress appropriates the amount into the budget, and once the budget is passed, the recipient can use the money to purchase weapons from US manufacturers. Israel is a case in point.
The United States has given foreign aid to Israel since 1949. In the beginning it was only used for economic development. It wasn’t until 1959 that the United States began a modest military loan program to Israel. By 1962, this money was used to fund the purchase of US weaponry, forming the foundation of the relationship between the US government and Israeli military.
Due to an Israeli economic crisis during the 1980s, military loans to Israel were eliminated and replaced with grants. In 2008, all economic aid was eliminated and replaced exclusively with military aid.
Today, Israel receives about $3.1 billion annually from the United States in foreign military financing, or more simply, military aid. Since this form of foreign assistance is part of the congressional budget, this collective amount is financed entirely by the US taxpayer.
Despite proposing drastic cuts to domestic programs, President Obama's most recent budget proposal suggests increasing US military aid to Israel by $25 million. Aside from this increase, the Israeli government has recently requested an additional $700 million to construct more Iron Dome and Magic Wand missile and rocket defense batteries.
Once President Obama submits a budget request, Congress reviews—and in the case of military aid to Israel—will most likely appropriate the proposed changes into the budget. Within 30 days of the budget's passing, Israel receives the lump sum of $3.1 billion in an interest-bearing account. This is an anomaly, as any other country receiving US military aid can only receive the grant in quarterly installments.
As soon as Israel receives the grant, it can begin to purchase weapons and other military devices from US manufacturers.
According to a recently released report from the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, US aid to Israel financed the transfer of over 600 million weapons in 500 different categories to the IDF from 2000-2009. These weapons and military devices include the technologically equipped spy towers that monitor checkpoints along the separation barrier, advanced missile systems and the highly toxic white phosphorous dropped on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2009.
But it is more than just these direct agents of war that US taxpayers subsidize. It is also the teargas canisters, flash-bang grenades and other "non-lethal" methods of crowd control that have been used to violently break up nonviolent demonstrations in Palestine for years. In more recent months, non-lethal weapons have also enabled police crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrations in other parts of the Middle East. These supposedly non-lethal weapons have killed five unarmed Palestinian civilians and permanently injured two US citizens in the Palestinian territories alone in the past decade. These devices are seen most vividly in the empty teargas canisters that litter the West Bank village of Bil'in once a week after the weekly demonstrations protesting the separation barrier are broken up.
It is not only occupied Palestine that experiences the effects of non-lethal weapons. Egypt—the second largest recipient of US military aid at $1.3 billion per year—also purchased the teargas and stun grenades fired with abandon in Tahrir Square during the Egyptian Revolution from Combined Systems, Inc.
The governments of Tunisia, Bahrain and Yemen have also recently purchased extensive amounts of teargas from US manufacturers to suppress pro-democracy demonstrations. In Bahrain, more than a dozen deaths have been attributed to the firing of tear gas at opposition protesters, according to Amnesty International. Bahrain reportedly buys its tear gas from Combined Systems, Inc.
"Protesters throughout the Middle East—and people watching in solidarity from around the world—saw that every time there was a teargas canister, that symbol of repression of democracy and human rights was 'Made in the USA,'" Patrick Connors, an organizer with the Palestine solidarity group Adalah New York observed.
That "Made in the USA" label exemplifies the tight-knit alliance between foreign governments, the United States government and corporate war profiteers. This alliance ties US taxpayer hands behind their backs, forcing them to be financially complicit in the occupation of Palestine and the global crackdowns on nonviolent demonstrations.
"The US taxpayer and the US citizen are deeply implicated in everything that the Israeli military does to abuse the rights of Palestinians and to prolong and entrench their 44-year military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip," Josh Ruebner, advocacy director for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, told AlterNet.
At the individual level, US military aid to Israel alone costs each American taxpayer $21.59—funding $300 worth of weapons for every Israeli man, woman and child. Of course, this money is not spent by individual Israeli citizens, but the numbers illustrate the US taxpayer’s role in making the IDF one of the more formidable armies in the world.
"Everything that the Israeli military does—every time a Palestinian civilian is killed, every time a Palestinian is prevented from going to work or farming his or her land or has their land stolen to build illegal Israeli settlements—all of these actions are executed with US weapons that are paid for by us, the taxpayers," Ruebner emphasized.
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has also broken down US aid to Israel at the state level, and published how many affordable housing vouchers, green jobs training programs or early reading education programs could be funded if this money were redirected to domestic programs. In California, over 42,000 low-income people could have affordable housing vouchers and more than 57,000 unemployed workers could be trained for the green jobs economy if US aid to Israel were redirected domestically.
Israel receives massive amounts of US aid despite the fact that it is not a poor country. According to the International Monetary Fund, Israel is the 28th wealthiest country in the world, ranking higher than New Zealand, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. If Israel wished to sustain the military occupation of Palestine on its own time, it would be more than financially able to purchase weapons, internationally or domestically, on the open market.
Still, as we fill out our taxes, we can’t help the fact that $21.59 of our hard-earned money goes to fund human rights violations committed by the Israeli military. Another good portion funds the suppression of democracy and dissent in other countries with US-made products. Instead of financing affordable healthcare, housing and education, our government is using our money to finesse an international reputation as the power that violently crushes resistance to repression.

Horrific sexual references in the bible.

I have written before about Islam and about Muhammad's sexual behaviour which Muslims are mostly unaware of. Here are a few facts about the Bible and Christianity which are equally shocking and which most Christians are ignorant of.

If Christians read their Bible, they would know that the biblical model of sex and marriage has little to do with what they believe. Stories in that "holy" book  depict rape, incest, master-slave sexual relations,  polygamy, coerced marriage of young virgins and more, their god endorsing all of them to the point of providing detailed regulations.

Polygamy is a norm in the Old Testament and accepted in the New Testament. At least 40 biblical figures had multiple wives. The list includes patriarchs like Abraham and Isaac. King David, the first king of Israel, may have limited himself to eight wives, but his son Solomon, had 700 wives and 300 concubines (sex slaves)! The Bible gives instructions on acquisition of several types of sex slaves.

A Hebrew can sell his daughter to another Hebrew, who then has certain obligations to her once she is used. For example, he can’t then sell her to a foreigner.

In the book of Numbers (31:18) God commands the Israelites to kill all of the used Midianite women who have been captured in war and all the male children, but to keep all of the virgin girls for themselves. The Law of Moses spells out a purification ritual to prepare a captive virgin for life as a concubine. It requires her owner to shave her head and trim her nails and give her a month to mourn her parents before the first sex act (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). A Hebrew girl who is raped can be sold to her rapist for 50 shekels (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). He must then keep her as one of his wives for as long as she lives.

Hallelujah!

Americans call him deranged but is he really that?

The following is by Robert Fisk of the Independent:

I'm getting a bit tired of the "deranged" soldier story. It was predictable, of course. The 38-year-old staff sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar this week had no sooner returned to base than the defence experts and the think-tank boys and girls announced that he was "deranged". Not an evil, wicked, mindless terrorist – which he would be, of course, if he had been an Afghan, especially a Taliban – but merely a guy who went crazy.

This was the same nonsense used to describe the murderous US soldiers who ran amok in the Iraqi town of Haditha. It was the same word used about Israeli soldier Baruch Goldstein who massacred 25 Palestinians in Hebron – something I pointed out in this paper only hours before the staff sergeant became suddenly "deranged" in Kandahar province.

"Apparently deranged", "probably deranged", journalists announced, a soldier who "might have suffered some kind of breakdown" (The Guardian), a "rogue US soldier" (Financial Times) whose "rampage" (The New York Times) was "doubtless [sic] perpetrated in an act of madness" (Le Figaro). Really? Are we supposed to believe this stuff? Surely, if he was entirely deranged, our staff sergeant would have killed 16 of his fellow Americans. He would have slaughtered his mates and then set fire to their bodies. But, no, he didn't kill Americans. He chose to kill Afghans. There was a choice involved. So why did he kill Afghans? We learned yesterday that the soldier had recently seen one of his mates with his legs blown off. But so what?

The Afghan narrative has been curiously lobotomised – censored, even – by those who have been trying to explain this appalling massacre in Kandahar. They remembered the Koran burnings – when American troops in Bagram chucked Korans on a bonfire – and the deaths of six Nato soldiers, two of them Americans, which followed. But blow me down if they didn't forget – and this applies to every single report on the latest killings – a remarkable and highly significant statement from the US army's top commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, exactly 22 days ago. Indeed, it was so unusual a statement that I clipped the report of Allen's words from my morning paper and placed it inside my briefcase for future reference.

Allen told his men that "now is not the time for revenge for the deaths of two US soldiers killed in Thursday's riots". They should, he said, "resist whatever urge they might have to strike back" after an Afghan soldier killed the two Americans. "There will be moments like this when you're searching for the meaning of this loss," Allen continued. "There will be moments like this, when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back. Now is not the time for revenge, now is the time to look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your discipline, remember who you are."

Now this was an extraordinary plea to come from the US commander in Afghanistan. The top general had to tell his supposedly well-disciplined, elite, professional army not to "take vengeance" on the Afghans they are supposed to be helping/protecting/nurturing/training, etc. He had to tell his soldiers not to commit murder. I know that generals would say this kind of thing in Vietnam. But Afghanistan? Has it come to this? I rather fear it has. Because – however much I dislike generals – I've met quite a number of them and, by and large, they have a pretty good idea of what's going on in the ranks. And I suspect that Allen had already been warned by his junior officers that his soldiers had been enraged by the killings that followed the Koran burnings – and might decide to go on a revenge spree. Hence he tried desperately – in a statement that was as shocking as it was revealing – to pre-empt exactly the massacre which took place last Sunday.

Yet it was totally wiped from the memory box by the "experts" when they had to tell us about these killings. No suggestion that General Allen had said these words was allowed into their stories, not a single reference – because, of course, this would have taken our staff sergeant out of the "deranged" bracket and given him a possible motive for his killings. As usual, the journos had got into bed with the military to create a madman rather than a murderous soldier. Poor chap. Off his head. Didn't know what he was doing. No wonder he was whisked out of Afghanistan at such speed.

We've all had our little massacres. There was My Lai, and our very own little My Lai, at a Malayan village called Batang Kali where the Scots Guards – involved in a conflict against ruthless communist insurgents – murdered 24 unarmed rubber workers in 1948. Of course, one can say that the French in Algeria were worse than the Americans in Afghanistan – one French artillery unit is said to have "disappeared" 2,000 Algerians in six months – but that is like saying that we are better than Saddam Hussein. True, but what a baseline for morality. And that's what it's about. Discipline. Morality. Courage. The courage not to kill in revenge. But when you are losing a war that you are pretending to win – I am, of course, talking about Afghanistan – I guess that's too much to hope. General Allen seems to have been wasting his time.

Noam Chomsky on attacking Iran.

The media resound with warnings about a likely Israeli attack on Iran while the U.S. hesitates, keeping open the option of aggression – thus again routinely violating the U.N. Charter, the foundation of international law.

As tensions escalate, eerie echoes of the run-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the air. Feverish U.S. primary campaign rhetoric adds to the drumbeat.

Concerns about “the imminent threat” of Iran are often attributed to the “international community” – code language for U.S. allies. The people of the world, however, tend to see matters rather differently.

The nonaligned countries, a movement with 120 member nations, has vigorously supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium – an opinion shared by the majority of Americans (as surveyed by WorldPublicOpinion.org) before the massive propaganda onslaught of the past two years.

China and Russia oppose U.S. policy on Iran, as does India, which announced that it would disregard U.S. sanctions and increase trade with Iran. Turkey has followed a similar course.

Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace. In the Arab world, Iran is disliked but seen as a threat only by a very small minority. Rather, Israel and the U.S. are regarded as the pre-eminent threat. A majority think that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons: In Egypt on the eve of the Arab Spring, 90 percent held this opinion, according to Brookings Institution/Zogby International polls.

Western commentary has made much of how the Arab dictators allegedly support the U.S. position on Iran, while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the population opposes it – a stance too revealing to require comment.

Concerns about Israel’s nuclear arsenal have long been expressed by some observers in the United States as well. Gen. Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, described Israel’s nuclear weapons as “dangerous in the extreme.” In a U.S. Army journal, Lt. Col. Warner Farr wrote that one “purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons, not often stated, but obvious, is their ‘use’ on the United States” – presumably to ensure consistent U.S. support for Israeli policies.

A prime concern right now is that Israel will seek to provoke some Iranian action that will incite a U.S. attack.

One of Israel’s leading strategic analysts, Zeev Maoz, in “Defending the Holy Land,” his comprehensive analysis of Israeli security and foreign policy, concludes that “the balance sheet of Israel’s nuclear policy is decidedly negative” – harmful to the state’s security. He urges instead that Israel should seek a regional agreement to ban weapons of mass destruction: a WMD-free zone, called for by a 1974 U.N. General Assembly resolution.

Meanwhile, the West’s sanctions on Iran are having their usual effect, causing shortages of basic food supplies – not for the ruling clerics but for the population. Small wonder that the sanctions are condemned by Iran’s courageous opposition.

The sanctions against Iran may have the same effect as their predecessors against Iraq, which were condemned as “genocidal” by the respected U.N. diplomats who administered them before finally resigning in protest.

The Iraq sanctions devastated the population and strengthened Saddam Hussein, probably saving him from the fate of a rogues’ gallery of other tyrants supported by the U.S.-U.K. – tyrants who prospered virtually to the day when various internal revolts overthrew them.

There is little credible discussion of just what constitutes the Iranian threat, though we do have an authoritative answer, provided by U.S. military and intelligence. Their presentations to Congress make it clear that Iran doesn’t pose a military threat.

Iran has very limited capacity to deploy force, and its strategic doctrine is defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to take effect. If Iran is developing nuclear weapons (which is still undetermined), that would be part of its deterrent strategy.

The understanding of serious Israeli and U.S. analysts is expressed clearly by 30-year CIA veteran Bruce Riedel, who said in January, “If I was an Iranian national security planner, I would want nuclear weapons” as a deterrent.

An additional charge the West levels against Iran is that it is seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries attacked and occupied by the U.S. and Britain, and is supporting resistance to the U.S.-backed Israeli aggression in Lebanon and illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Like its deterrence of possible violence by Western countries, Iran’s actions are said to be intolerable threats to “global order.”

Global opinion agrees with Maoz. Support is overwhelming for a WMDFZ in the Middle East; this zone would include Iran, Israel and preferably the other two nuclear powers that have refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: India and Pakistan, who, along with Israel, developed their programs with U.S. aid.

Support for this policy at the NPT Review Conference in May 2010 was so strong that Washington was forced to agree formally, but with conditions: The zone could not take effect until a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and its Arab neighbors was in place; Israel’s nuclear weapons programs must be exempted from international inspection; and no country (meaning the U.S.) must be obliged to provide information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.”

The 2010 conference called for a session in May 2012 to move toward establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East.

With all the furor about Iran, however, there is scant attention to that option, which would be the most constructive way of dealing with the nuclear threats in the region: for the “international community,” the threat that Iran might gain nuclear capability; for most of the world, the threat posed by the only state in the region with nuclear weapons and a long record of aggression, and its superpower patron.

One can find no mention at all of the fact that the U.S. and Britain have a unique responsibility to dedicate their efforts to this goal. In seeking to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of Iraq, they invoked U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which they claimed Iraq was violating by developing WMD.

We may ignore the claim, but not the fact that the resolution explicitly commits signers to establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East.

THIS IS HOW ASSAD TORTURES HIS OPPONENTS.

This article is from the UK's Independent newspaper.

It was a single egg that made Jolan, a 28-year-old activist, realise he was going to survive Syria's notorious torture chambers. He was blindfolded and locked in what he describes as a metal coffin, and each morning his tormentors would push a small piece of bread and a hard-boiled egg through a narrow opening by his head. But his cramped box – so short he could not straighten his legs – was tilted and his hands were bound, so for five days the egg would simply roll away and drop to the floor through a hole by his feet.

Days earlier, Jolan had been sitting in a park in Damascus on a sunny morning, waiting for a friend from the burgeoning protest movement aimed at forcing President Bashar al-Assad from power.  Instead, about 30 regime security personnel surrounded him. Before he could even think about fleeing, a rifle butt to the back of the head knocked him out cold.

Trussed and forced to relieve himself where he lay, Jolan did not know how long he would be there. He did not know how he could survive. But he knew that somehow he must eat the egg. "So the fifth day," he says, "I put my heel in this hole and I stopped the egg rolling out. I managed to push the egg all the way up my body to my mouth. It was filthy, it still had the shell on it, but I ate it and, when I did, I knew I was going to live."

Jolan, who gave a pseudonym because he remains active in Syria's protest movement, is one of thousands of political prisoners who human rights groups say have been thrown in jail by a regime determined to use its full force to crush the biggest threat to its rule since the Assad family took power 41 years ago.

From a secret location in Damascus, Jolan gave a detailed testimony to The Independent on Sunday of his torture during 21 weeks in detention. Although his full account is impossible to corroborate independently, Human Rights Watch, the international watchdog, confirmed that many of the torture techniques he described are commonplace. Many Syrian rights groups have also documented Jolan's time in detention.

The regime has denied the allegations of torture in its prisons. Its spokesmen say they are fighting an armed uprising sponsored by Islamist groups. But Human Rights Watch has interviewed more than 100 people detained since the protests began in March last year, and the group has collected harrowing testimony of torture against children as young as 13 and of deaths in custody.

For Jolan, his seven days in the metal box was the first of dozens of humiliations and torments. Next, still blindfolded, he was put in a tiny room just one metre high, where he was forced to stand, bent double, for another seven days. Then his captors finally started to interrogate him.

"For eight hours a day they asked me everything about co-ordination, about the people of the revolution. They wanted to know how they worked, how they take the injured from place to place," he says.

Jolan refused to talk, causing the torment to become even more cruel. He was given 50 lashes with a metal cable in the morning and 50 in the evening. He was then subjected to what Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch describes as the "dulab" method. A tyre is forced over the victim's neck and his legs so he is folded forward. He is then tipped on his back, immobile, and beaten. Another day, Jolan says, he was suspended from the ceiling by a cable. On his 45th day in detention, they finally took the blindfold off. But Jolan was not prepared for the sight that greeted him. "When I opened my eyes, I could see two girls who were taken from the demonstrations. They were religious girls – usually they would wear the veil – but they were totally naked: the only item they were wearing was a blindfold," he says. "From this moment, I started crying."

With this image etched on his mind, he was taken back to the interrogation room and told that unless he talked, his mother and sister would be hauled in, also stripped naked and tortured in front of him. The UN report details similar "psychological torture, including sexual threats against them and their families".

But still Jolan refused to talk. Exasperated, his captors transferred him to the Adra civilian prison in Damascus, where he was kept in filthy, cramped surroundings. Over the next few months he was called before a court to answer a litany of charges, including attacking the standing of the state, encouraging problems with minorities, going to a protest without a permit, and setting up an unlicensed field hospital. He was allowed a lawyer, but says his statements were ignored in the court. Jolan says he was saved only by pressure from some international human rights organisations. Eventually, towards the end of December, he was freed with a 1,000 Syrian pound (£11) fine.

Since then, he has continued his work, moving around by night to safe houses to collect supplies, trying to gather more crowds for the weekly demonstrations after Friday prayers. There are physical signs of his time behind bars – he is gaunt, and is missing four front teeth from the beatings. He chain smokes nervously. But he is determined to fight on. Fifteen days ago, the authorities told his uncle that Jolan must stop his activism or face "a bullet in the head". So he switched mobile phone numbers and went underground for 10 days.

Mr Houry says: "Syria's torture chambers belong to the Middle Ages. The security forces believe that by torturing people, including children, they will reinstate the wall of fear in Syria. But these torturers should know that their methods have only served to energise the protesters and that it is only a matter of time until they face accountability."

A history of seductive drugs.

By Jacqueline Detwiler, The Fix 1) Alcohol: Ancient SumeriaThisFans of alcohol are in good company; this is a drug that's been in use since the dawn of human time—if carbon dating of jugs found in Jiahu, China to around 8,000 BC is to be believed. But it wasn’t until we settled into agricultural societies that the wine really got flowing. Written records from ancient Sumeria document the uses and quantity of the beer—called "kash"—that was brewed. They even indicate that Sumerians had regulated drinking places similar to modern-day bars. The booze, for its part, was considered worthy of offering to the gods, and even thought to have a civilizing effect: The Epic of Gilgameshmentions a wild man named Enkidu who was seduced to join civilization after he drank seven jugs of beer, “became expansive and sang with joy.” (A harlot was also, apparently, involved.) 2) Peyote: Mexico Mescaline—the psychoactive ingredient in the peyote plant that's native to Mexico and the Southwest US—has probably been used in religious ceremonies since 3780–3660 BC, according to carbon dating of dried buttons found in a cave on the Rio Grande in Texas. Written records began once Catholic Spanish conquerors arrived in Mexico and were alarmed by the practice of eating or drinking peyote during religious festivals. In an effort to discourage use, priests were in the habit of asking their new congregationalists to confess to having experienced the drug’s hallucinogenic effects, right after they asked “Have you eaten the flesh of man?” and “Do you suck the blood of others?” 3) Marijuana: Siberia Think medical marijuana is a new phenomenon? Not exactly. Chinese emperor Shen Nung first recommended brewing the leaves into a tea to relieve the symptoms of menstrual cramps, rheumatism, gout, malaria and even—hilariously—absentmindedness back in 2737 BC. Scythians, a people that lived in Siberia around the 7th century BC, were more into the drug for the fun; they were known to throw marijuana seeds onto stones that were heated during funeral ceremonies, inhaling the fumes to become intoxicated. Russian archeologists began to suspect that both male and female Scythians smoked marijuana regularly for pleasure when they found primitive pot pipes in tombs in 1929. 4) Opium: Greece Those Sumerians were really into their substances. In addition to brewing beer, they also cultivated the opium poppy, which they called “the joy plant.” The Sumerians passed on their knowledge of opium-induced joy to the Assyrians, who in turn passed it on to Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks. By the time of the Greek classical period, farmers on the island of Cyprus had invented harvesting knives of surgical quality to get the most out of the poppies, and extracts of the flower were a common additive to the poison hemlock cocktail used in executions. During this period, poppies were considered of such usefulness in inducing sleep and forgetfulness that they are often depicted as part of the clothing or possessions of three gods of the Greek pantheon: Hypnos (sleep), Nix (night), and Thanatos (death). 5) Coco: Peru Early use of coca leaves resulted from a fortuitous correlation between optimal growing weather and the high altitudes in the South American Andes Mountains. From the reign of the Inca until the South American revolutionary wars, native laborers and soldiers chewed the leaves to increase alertness and oxygen intake, helping them fight, ferry goods or messages over long distances, or mine without requiring much food or rest. As one European visitor noted in later years, “Where Europeans would have halted and bivouacked, the ill-clad, barefooted Indians merely paused, for a short interval, to chew their Coca.” 6) Laudenum and Morphine: Great Britain/USA The opium poppy may have been discovered in the Near East, but the processing of it into innocuous-seeming salts, injections and liquids was a product of the industrial revolution in the West. In the 1800s, white women in particular were fond of a liquid opium preparation called laudanum that was sold through mail order companies and at local apothecaries. This preparation was also a favorite of English writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who may have been inspired to pen his poem Kubla Khan while in a laudanum-induced dream. After the US civil war, injured soldiers with morphine habits expanded the need for opium products, and opium-smoking dens started popping up in major cities like New York and San Francisco. 7) Cocaine: Austria Once Coca was synthesized into cocaine and introduced to the world at large in the late 1800s, it found an unlikely proponent in the world’s most famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. Even after attempting to cure a friend’s morphine habit by introducing him to the drug (the man died, addicted to both drugs, within seven years), Freud touted cocaine as a cure for everything from headaches to depression to sexual impotence. Not unexpectedly, he used quite a bit of the white lady himself, writing licentious letters to his fiancée containing such passages as: “When I come, I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward, you should see who is the stronger—a gentle little girl who doesn't eat enough, or a big, wild man who has cocaine in his body... I am just now busy collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.” 8) Amphetamine: Germany German scientist Lazăr Edeleanu first synthesized amphetamine in 1887, and it became a useful cold remedy and diet pill throughout the world over the next 50 years. Once World War II broke out, however, amphetamine—along with injectable methamphetamine produced in Japan—became a weapon on a par with submarines and fighter planes. Thousands of soldiers on all sides of the conflict were issued drugs to keep them awake during all-night bombings, and Japanese kamikaze pilots used methamphetamine before every flight. The German blitzkreig, in particular, is well known for having been influenced by the use of meth among pilots. By the end of 1940, however, the German army had cut back substantially, having determined that the substance was incredibly addictive. 9) MDMA: USA Though it was discovered in 1912 by a chemist working for Merck, not much was known about the psychoactive effects of MDMA until an eccentric chemist named Alexander Shulgin synthesized it as part of a pet project at Dow Chemical in 1967. When Shulgin gave a small gift of the drug to a psychologist friend, it became the focus of therapeutic zeal in the psychology community, with one doctor even calling it “penicillin for the soul.” Soon after, MDMA popped up in the club dance scene in Dallas, and the DEA held hasty meetings to add the drug to the illegal schedule—fighting tooth and nail with psychologists all the way. Shulgin, meanwhile, wrote and published a book called PIHKAL, short for Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved, which is still known worldwide as a club drug cookbook. 10) Benzodiazepines: New Jersey While researching potential tranquilizers for Hoffman-LaRoche in New Jersey in the 1930s, Polish American scientist Leo Sternbach discovered the benzodiazepine that came to be known as Librium. Next came Valium and Klonopin—both of which were also discovered by Sternbach. Before long, the high anxiety culture of the mid-20th century led to increased use of benzos and thousands became addicted. Sternbach, meanwhile, continued his successful career, likely because he never developed an addiction to the drugs himself. “My wife doesn't let me take [them],” he once told the New Yorker. Former neuroscientist Jacqueline Detwiler edits a travel magazine by day, but moonlights as a science writer. Her work has appeared in Wired, Men's Health, Fitness and Forbes.

The hypocracy of believers.

Did you see the photo of the Syrian president Assad praying to his Allah? Does he and millions of other Muslims really believe that God is so stupid that He wouldn't have noticed the horrendous crimes they have committed against their fellow humans and if He did that he could be placated by praying to him? By flattering him with such utterances as GOD IS GREAT or by bowing to him in a mosque?

 

I have met quite a few hypocrites in my life (some closely related to me) so I don't really need to be made aware of bastards like Assad, Bush, Blair, Gaddafi, the catholic priests, and all the monks and imams who deface our planet!

--
AZIZ ANOM

Read these Doctor's Comments about Drugs.

"The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine." William Osler, M.D. "The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure." Charles E. Page, M.D. "If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity."  O.W. Holmes, (Prof. of Medicine Harvard University) "Every drug increases and complicates the patients condition." Robert Henderson, M.D. "In sickness the body is already loaded with impurities. By taking drug - medicines more impurities are added, thereby the case is further embarrassed and harder to cure." Elmer Lee, M.D. "The necessity of teaching mankind not to take drugs and medicines, is a duty incumbent upon all who know their uncertainty and injurious effects; and the time is not far distant when the drug system will be abandoned." Charles Armbruster, M.D.

Aljazeera watched by open-minded people.

A study has found that if you are more open-minded or smarter, you are likely to watch Aljazeera English than CNN or BBC. I am inclined to add that fans of Fox News Channel would have turned out to be even more dumb.

Foods that are not good for your sex life.

Carbohydrate-rich processed foods.

Fried Foods With High Trans Fat Levels, like burgers.

Soy.

Foods with high levels of oxalic acid, such as green leafy vegetables.

Mint.

Its Ron Paul, stupid!

If Americans knew what was good for them they would get rid of fakes and frauds like Obama and Gingrich and vote for Ron Paul in the upcoming presidential elections. But of course they wouldn't  --  such is the level of education in their country.

A speech Obama should have given but didn't.

The following is taken from an article by Simon Tisdall which appeared in the 
guardian.co.uk, on tuesday 24 January 2012.




In his state of the union address, Barack Obama has the opportunity to promulgate a three-pronged 'axis of virtue'. 
The best-known, or most notorious, state of the union address of recent times was delivered 10 years ago by George Bush, in January 2002, when he (or rather his speechwriter, David Frum) coined a phrase that has resonated ever since: the "axis of evil". Bush was referring to three "rogue" states: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which he had already privately earmarked for US-facilitated regime change, Iran and North Korea. "States like these, and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world," Bush declared.


Barack Obama's state of the union speech tonight is unlikely to throw up a catchy phrase or soundbite to compare with Bush's portentous effort, although White House aides doubtless toiled until the last minute to try to attract the headline writers. Nor is Obama's election-year address, with a strong emphasis on domestic woes, likely to set the international agenda the way Bush did. After all, much of the decade after 2002 was taken up with US efforts, overt and covert, successful and floundering, to eliminate perceived threats emanating from the terrible trio.


This is a missed opportunity. If Obama really wanted to set the nation and the world talking, and breathe vigorous life into his so far underwhelming bid for a second term, he might do well to try new approaches to old problems. Instead of attempting to manage issues such as Iran's suspect nuclear programme, or skip over difficult challenges such as repeat sub-Saharan food emergencies, he could take a chance and propose radical solutions. Instead of trying to make a media splash, he could try to make a difference. In short, he could promulgate a three-pronged "axis of virtue".


Here are key excerpts from the "axis of virtue" speech Obama probably won't deliver:


1. "My fellow Americans. War with Iran in 2012 is not inevitable. It is not desirable. It is not practicable. And it is not necessary. There is no evidence – not one shred – that Iran has built or acquired a usable nuclear weapon. Nor is there good reason to believe it would use such weapons, against Israel or anybody else, should it obtain them in the future. Iranians are no different from Americans and Europeans. They are not suicidal. They wish to defend themselves against attack. Our job is to assure them they are not under threat.


"So today I announce that my administration will prepare and ask Congress to sign into law a non-aggression pact with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This pact will form the springboard for immediate, unconditional, across-the-board bilateral negotiations on restoring diplomatic and political ties, trade, investment, and people and cultural exchanges between our two great countries. We want to welcome Iran back into the family of nations. It has been absent for too long. For good measure, we are also planning full diplomatic relations with the state of Palestine and with Cuba. The days of big countries bullying weaker ones are over."

A Brief History of America's Dumb Policies Towards Iran.

The following is by Tom Engelhardt

In more than 50 years, America’s leaders have never made a move in Iran (or near it) that didn’t lead to unexpected and unpleasant blowback.
   
These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the U.S. and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered.  Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:

Summer 1953: The CIA and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country’s oil industry.  In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police.  He runs the country as his repressive fiefdom for a quarter-century, becoming Washington’s “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf -- until overthrown in 1979 by a home-grown revolutionary movement, which ushers in the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs.  While Khomeini & Co. were hardly Washington’s men, thanks to that 1953 coup they were, in a sense, its own political offspring.  In other words, the fatal decision to overthrow a popular democratic government shaped the Iranian world Washington now loathes, and even then oil was at the bottom of things.

1967: Under the U.S. “Atoms for Peace” program, started in the 1950s by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Shah is allowed to buy a 5-megawatt, light-water type research reactor for Tehran (which -- call it irony -- is still playing a role in the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program).  Defense Department officials did worry at the time that the Shah might use the “peaceful atom” as a basis for a future weapons program or that nuclear materials might fall into the wrong hands.  “An aggressive successor to the Shah,” went a 1974 Pentagon memo, “might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran’s complete military dominance of the region.”  But that didn’t stop them from aiding and abetting the creation of an Iranian nuclear program.

The Shah, like his Islamic successors, argued that such a program was Iran's national “right” and dreamed of a country that would get significant portions of its electricity from a string of nuclear plants.  As a 1970s adby a group of American power companies put the matter: “The Shah of Iran is sitting on top of one of the largest reservoirs of oil in the world.  Yet he’s building two nuclear plants and planning two more to provide electricity for his country.  He knows the oil is running out -- and time with it.”  In other words, the U.S. nuclear program was the genesis for the Iranian one that Washington now so despises.

September 1980: Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein launches a war of aggression against Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran.  In the early 1980s, he becomes Washington’s man, our “bulwark” in the Persian Gulf, and we offer himour hand -- and also "detailed information" on Iranian deployments and tactical planning that help him use his chemical weapons more effectively against the Iranian military.  Oh, and just to make sure things turn out really, really well, the Reagan administration also decides to sell missiles and other arms to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran on the sly, part of what became known as the “Iran-Contra Affair” and which almost brings down the president and his men.  Success!

March 2003: Saddam Hussein is, by now, no longer our man in Baghdad but a new “Hitler” who, top Washington officials claim, undoubtedly has a nuclear weapons program that could someday leave mushroom clouds rising over U.S. cities.  So the Bush administration launches a war of aggression against Iraq, which like Iran just happens to -- in the words of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- “float on a sea of oil.”  (Bush officials hope, in the wake of a “cakewalk” of a war to revive that country’s oil industry, to privatize it, and use it to destroy OPEC, driving down the price of oil on world markets.)  Nine years later, a Shiite government is in power in Baghdad closely allied with Tehran, which has gained regional strength and influence thanks to the disastrous U.S. occupation.

So call it an unblemished record of a kind not easy to find.  In more than 50 years, America’s leaders have never made a move in Iran (or near it) that didn’t lead to unexpected and unpleasant blowback.  Now, another administration in Washington, after years of what can only be called a covert war against Iran, is preparing yet another set of clever maneuvers -- this time sanctions against Iran’s central bank meant to cripple the country’s oil industry and crack open the economy followed by no one knows what.

And honestly, I mean, really, given past history, what could possibly go wrong?  Regime change in Iran?  It’s bound to be a slam dunk and if you don’t believe it, check out Pepe Escobar’s latest, “The Myth of ‘Isolated’ Iran.”

 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published in November.)

American democracy is a sham.

These Republican primaries are a sideshow – and so is the presidential election.

By Tom Mendelsohn


While we’re all going doolally over which malignant Republican replicant is the least tragically flawed – a process which will be stretched over the course of six glorious months – the culture wars are still being fought just under the radar.

The fact is, this beauty pageant of machine politics is a total red herring, and a dangerous one at that. None of this historic field of jokers, morons and shills could ever get close to unseating Obama. They’re either too mad to win over the country, or they’re having to pretend to be so mad that they won’t be able to win over the country. See, to win the primaries, they’re having to appeal to the Republican base – a base that has veered painfully hard to the right in the last few decades – using a rightwing narrative of such repugnance that they’ve toxified themselves in the eyes of America’s sane majority.

It once suited the GOP to indulge the fears, prejudices and ignorances of its base. It made delightful political sense; they could chip away at the Democrats and Clinton and Obama with any kind of poison they picked when they were a minority in government. There was practically no lie or obfuscation that the base would not lap up, scoring cheap political point after cheap political point. But eventually the lies got so big and so persuasive that the narrative ran away from the establishment string-pullers, and the lunatics (in the shape of the Tea Party) took over the asylum. Now GOP bigwigs are in thrall to their own monster, forced to pay visible lip-service to the insanity they themselves fermented in the name of political expedience.

The upshot is that we’ll either get a mad’un like Santorum or a pretending-to-be-mad‘un like Romney. And when we do get Romney, he’ll be cut to little gristly shreds in the main election, as the Obama campaign quietly keeps playing clips of him saying all the crazy things he needed to say to win the nomination. Couple that with the huge lack of enthusiasm his own party has in him and all his insincerities, and he won’t come within a parsec of the popular vote.

But here’s the thing: that doesn’t matter. The presidential election is a sideshow. The office of the president is not this all-powerful bully pulpit it’s cracked up to be. The US government is designed to stymie itself, packed as it is with checks and balances. Obama can’t get much of substance done on his own; he has no control over the budget or passage of bills, and precious little over the states. He couldn’t reshape the US into a leftist paradise if he even wanted to.

Which, I hasten to add, he does not. He is not the agent of hope, change and social democracy we all thought. Politically, he’s a hipper David Cameron: he loves financial services and slight regulation, and doesn’t really care about the significant trappings of the welfare state that we decadent pinko Euros thought he did. In any case, he’s as good as powerless, unwilling to act where he could, and unable to act where he wanted. He’s a figurehead, and that’s it.

The real battlegrounds in US politics are lower than the presidency – in Congress and in the states. And while the country may not like the GOP narrative at the top level, in the state houses and in Washington, the rightist agenda still goes great guns.

The states turned alarmingly red during the 2010 elections, and they continue to throb an ominous shade of crimson. There are 29 Republican governors and 20 Democrats, and the former are all pursuing radical right-wing agendas, nigh-on unchecked. Even a governor as unpopular as Scott Walker, who is currently in the throes of a historically unprecedented recall election for his union busting attempts, still clings fairly handily to power.

The fact that these red governors, and their red state assemblies, are still in power shows that the right is not losing the argument on the ground, no matter how wacky their marquee guys may be. They still get voted in and they are still empowered to enact all manner of destructively ideological far-right policies.

The House of Representatives has a huge Republican majority, which they use to thwart all progressive policies. It would take a massive turnaround and significantly higher poll numbers for Obama to even dent this majority. Meanwhile they’ll vote in near lockstep on anything that will hurt their foes and keep the economy faltering on the president’s watch.

The Senate may enjoy a slim Democrat majority, but rightwing obstructionism has choked it into uselessness. Without a ‘supermajority’ of 60 senators, the minority party can and does filibuster with impunity, making it another major thorn in the side of the liberal cause. More blue seats are in play in 2012 than red ones, and many of them are potentially vulnerable – because the GOP still retains credibility in the states that it lacks on a federal level.

On top of all that, the third branch of government, the Judiciary, is also hamstrung by an obstreperous Senate. Obama is struggling to appoint judges at any level in the face of an activist conservative bloc willing to put a filibuster-shaped kibosh on any of his nominations.

He’s not helped by the 5:4 conservative-liberal split in the Supreme Court, which puts a cherry on the eye of this perfect storm. The majority of the court is now openly hostile to liberal democratic aims and lawmaking, making another huge obstacle in the left’s already treacherous path.

So, like I say, all this presidential sound and fury is a red herring. Obama will beat any of the malingerers thrown in front of him, the GOP will take a bit of a hit from being so silly, and America’s inexorable rightward march will continue.

Why is America jailing so many of its citizens?

This article is from the UK's Guardian, written by Sadhbh Walshe.


We like locking people up in America. If incarceration were an Olympic sport, the United States would come away with every gold medal available and break a few world records in the process. On average, Americans are locked up at a rate four times higher than any other nationality, and we have the world's largest female prison population by a considerable margin.

Before the "get tough" policies adopted in the 1970s, less than 200,000 on average were behind bars. Now that number is closer to 2 million. That may make you feel more safe, or less, if you consider that all of our chances of ending up in prison someday have increased exponentially. With that in mind, we kind of owe it to ourselves to at least know what goes on behind prison walls.

With this new series, we hope to shed some light on what life is like inside our prisons by hearing directly from inmates, their families, correction officers and anyone else whose life is impacted by the practice of incarceration.? So far, my correspondence with inmates has revealed a fascinating world of endurance, resourcefulness, terrible choices, terrible cruelty and a lot of pain and suffering.

The most disturbing aspect of the corrections model, as it currently stands, however, is how much it has failed to either rehabilitate offenders or deter them from re-offending. No matter how harsh the prison stay, at least four in ten inmates will end up back inside soon after their release, usually on a more serious charge and for a longer, and more expensive, stay.

One of my correspondents, who is 20 years into a life sentence he earned for a crime he committed while serving time for a lesser offense, gave me his take on why prisons are often better at turning small-time crooks into full-on felons rather than model citizens.

"We do not live in a civilised society here. It could be, but rather than separate repeat violent offenders and have programs/services designed to show young, confused, antisocial people how to become productive members of society once released, or just allow them to learn enough in a safe enough environment to be able to draw on later when they run out of piss and vinegar, they throw us all together with a pile of bones to fight over like hungry dogs."

It's no surprise that prison yards are brutal places or that overcrowding and deteriorating conditions would lead them to be even more so. What is surprising is that rather than trying to reduce prison populations or improve conditions, the response has been to build tougher, meaner prisons to contain the violence by isolating the so-called "worst of the worst" in Secure Housing Units (SHUs), otherwise known as the "box" or the "hole" ? or, in polite parlance, a solitary confinement cell. My correspondent described how he earned his place in one of these solitary units two years into his prison stay.

"I came to the SHU for being involved in a melee. That's how it was described in my write-up. Doesn't sound so bad right? A donnybrook, a knockabout, a melee, involving myself and five other prisoners. There were some escalating racial tensions on the yard at that time. Several white folks had been stabbed or beaten in previous months.

"I was actually only out there waiting on a transfer to another prison. Had a bus ticket already and I expect the course of my life would have been much different had I caught that bus. But somebody said something somebody else didn't like and the next thing flat, there were four guys on one side and two of us on the other, trying to make the others meet with Jesus. We fought with knives and chains and teeth and claws.

"I got an additional two years added to my sentence, a one-way ticket to the SHU, 40 stitches, a broken hand and a nice little scar as a reminder."

Eighteen years later, he's still in the SHU, and presumably, his chance of inflicting violence on other inmates or being subjected to violence has considerably diminished. Still, the SHU has its downside. Aside from driving many occupants to the insane asylum or to suicide, they come with the rather hefty price tag ? of approximately $75,000 per inmate per year, about three times the cost of a regular prison stay.  So far, this guy's prison term has cost the taxpayer around $1,350,000.

One can't help but wonder what a difference it might have made to his life, or to the lives of others like him, had even a fraction of that sum been invested in his well-being before the spectre of prison crossed his horizon.

Not every person who gets locked up has such an extreme experience, nor are they all choir boys who have been falsely accused. But when you consider the degenerative nature of incarceration and the fact that we generally accept that prisons are hellholes that drive both captor and captive to do terrible things, you'd think we'd be doing everything in our power to keep people out of them.

We're not, of course, and for the time being, nearly 2 million people are languishing behind bars, some deservedly so, others not so much. It's easier, I realise, to turn a blind eye, but we should know what goes on inside our prisons. After all, even if you never end up in one yourself, you will be paying dearly for the many others who will.

What if Iran said it already had the bomb...

What if Iran were to say to the arrogant West and to their Zionist buddy that it has no need to make a nuclear bomb because it has already acquired a finished product (perhaps from Pakistan or North Korea) and is ready to use it if its security is threatened. Will its enemies be prepared to call its bluff? I don't think so. They are more likely to back off.

A vegetarian diet against cancer.

The following is by

Kathy Freston

a health and wellness expert.  

 

"...the most compelling evidence against eating animal products comes from China, and shows that the carcinogenic nutrient in meat is protein, rather than fat. In one of my favorite books on the subject of health, The China Study: Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health, author T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., a Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, explains that animal protein is the most carcinogenic substance we consume and presents powerful data showing that animal products both cause and fuel cancer and other deadly diseases.

 

Dr. Campbell's study is the most comprehensive survey of the connection between diet and disease in medical history, and he has looked at all of the clinical, epidemiological, and other evidence, and it all backs up what he documented in China.

 

His final statement on what we should all be eating?

 

Here's how he explains it in "Why China Holds the Key to Your Health": "The data from the China Project suggest that what we have come to consider as 'normal' illnesses of aging are really not normal. In fact, these findings indicate that the vast majority perhaps 80 to 90% of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented, at least until very old age, simply by adopting a plant-based diet."

 

These are strong words from a man who was raised on a dairy farm, got his Ph.D. in animal nutrition, and worked on a project to produce animal protein more efficiently.

 

The Deadly Connection Between Animal Protein, Blood Cholesterol, and Carcinogens:
Dr. Campbell now believes it best to avoid animal protein altogether. According to Campbell, blood cholesterol levels can be reduced by eating plant protein instead. "Some of the plant proteins, particularly soy," he says, "have an impressive ability to reduce blood cholesterol." This might explain a finding released a few months back that "eating tofu can slash ovarian cancer risk."

 

"At the outset of the China Study," writes Dr. Campbell in his book, "no one could or would have ever predicted the relationship between cholesterol and any of the disease rates. What a surprise we got." Dr. Campbell and his team found that as blood cholesterol levels decrease, a slew of cancers decreases as well, including "cancers of the liver, rectum, colon, male lung, female lung, breast, childhood leukemia, adult leukemia, childhood brain, adult brain, stomach and esophagus (throat)."

 

According to Campbell, in addition to animal protein causing cancer, it also fuels cancer that exists. So you can have a carcinogen in your body, but it doesn't get "turned on" until you ingest animal flesh. Animal protein causes the carcinogen to grow and spread. Even so-called lean cuts of meat, as well as fish and chicken, are high in fat and protein, and as Dr. Campbell says, animal protein only causes "mischief."

 

Choose Health: Choose Vegetarian

From animal products doubling your risk of endometrial, to soy foods lowering your risk of contracting ovarian cancer, to carcinogenic arsenic in your chicken (and other meat, though in lower levels), to the news that animal protein is the big cause of dietary cancer (and remember, the American Cancer Society says that about 30 percent of cancer comes from what you eat!), it sure is looking like the "vegan thing" is making a lot more sense in a lot of different ways.

 

I highly recommend checking out The China Study to get the full scoop, which is full of fascinating information and gripping statistics. I give it out so much that I think I should be getting a commission. The book also gives tips on making the transition to a vegetarian diet, as does my last column, "One Bite at a Time: A Beginner's Guide to Conscious Eating."

 

aziz anom

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Palestine and that crazy Newt Gingrich.

If the Palestinian identity is largely an invention (as stated by that adulterer, Newt Gingrich) so are many other countries. Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and the United States were all forged over time. The U.S. did not come into existence until 1776 and was not a unified nation until 1865; Italy and Germany were created at roughly the same time. Britain and France had to be forged out of regional identities. The process of creating France, for example, took centuries. Does this lover of Zionism have any brains? What a mess he would create in the world if he were elected to be the next US president! 

 

aziz anom

If you have back pain -- don't eat brown bread..

I have periodically suffered from back pain and over time I have learned that eating whole grain wheat was the culprit. Which means to say that white bread is okay.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The occupy wall street people should form a party.

The protesters against corporate greed and corrupt politicians should abandon their sit-ins and start a political party of their own to challenge the status quo. They need also a TV station to spread their message. That is the only way they can ever hope to bring about change.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Britain deserved the ransacking of its embassy in Iran.

Those who were horrified to witness the ransacking of the British embassy in Tehran should ask themselves if that action was more abhorrent than the behavior of Britain and its allies  towards Iran during the past? I am thinking of the overthrowing of the democratically elected government of Mossadeq, the imposition of a Zionist state on their fellow-Muslims in Palestine and now the unprovoked economic sanctions. Britain, along with the rest of the western world, is behaving in a criminal and a childish way towards Iran. Iran has every right to develop nuclear technology and to produce nuclear bombs if it wanted to.  If the west wanted it to stop such activities then they should dismantle their own nuclear arsenal first and that of their darling baby, Israel.

 

aziz anom

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Beware of hospitals.

 

This article is by  Anneli Rufus

 

Infection: How Hospitals Are Breeding Grounds for Superbugs You've Never Even Heard Of

We don't think of hospitals as places where we can get sick. But that's what they are, far more commonly than the healthcare industry wants us to know.

  

 

 

Hospitalized for pneumonia, Lisa Thayer's mother was suddenly gripped with painful cramps and a bout of diarrhea that Thayer calls "explosive."

"It had a horribly distinctive smell -- a gross almost-sweetness that made me close my eyes. The hospital staff recognized it immediately," says Thayer, a Houston architect. "They said, 'Uh oh. It's C-diff.'"

Thayer had never heard of C-diff, aka Clostridium difficile: a potentially lethal colon-destroying bacteria. It spreads via fecal-oral contact. An infected person's feces contain bacteria that form sturdy disinfectant-resistant spores that can survive in the open for five months. A hand touches a contaminated surface, then enters a mouth. Think you're not eating shit? In hospitals, you quite possibly are.

According to a recent article in American Family Physician, 13 percent of patients hospitalized for up to two weeks catch Clostridium difficile, as do 50 percent of those hospitalized for four weeks or more. But you needn't be a patient to catch C-diff. All you need do is visit a hospital.

Over the last decade, C-diff has morphed into a superbug. A new epidemic strain emerged in 2004 that is now making C-diff ever more virulent, drug-resistant, prevalent and lethal. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that C-diff kills nearly 30,000 people in America every year. Some experts call this a low estimate.

We think of hospitals as places where diseases go away, not as places where we can get sick.

But that's what they are, far more commonly than the healthcare industry wants us to know. In a crisis that costs American hospitals some $40 billion every year, millions of infections are contracted annually within these ostensibly sanitary institutions. Collectively, they're called hospital-acquired infections, nosocomial infections or HAIs. Patients face the gravest risk, but visitors are far from immune.

C-diff is the meanest new microbial kid on the block, but it's not the only one. Another hospital-dwelling superbug is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, aka MRSA: a drug-resistant staph infection that is on the CDC's "high priority" list and kills about 18,000 every year in the US. Infection rates have skyrocketed since 1980 as MRSA evolves at warp speed, outsmarting antibiotics that now can't kill it. Contracted through cuts in the skin, MRSA can cause deadly bone, blood and organ infections. Nearly 90 percent of MRSA cases originate in hospitals.

Swing by to see Dad after his hip-replacement surgery, and you could catch something that ravages your bowels, causes flesh-eating pneumonia, and/or kills you.
Children, seniors and people with health problems -- especially those taking antibiotics or undergoing chemotherapy -- face the highest risk of contracting C-diff when visiting hospitals.

"But anyone can develop C-diff if the spores enter their mouth," says former New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey, who combats HAIs through her advocacy group, the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. "Visiting a hospital recently, I saw a child in the elevator eating French fries and touching all the surfaces. I wished that I could explain to the parents that these invisible C-diff spores are on everything."

That is, everything that infected people's feces have touched. And those explosive, watery C-diff feces have a knack for traveling. We're talking walls, sinks, toilets, linens, light switches, furniture, wheelchairs, drapes, handles, knobs, telephones, trays, uniforms, buttons, doors and floors. Standard cleaning methods with alcohol and ammonia products won't kill C-diff spores; pretty much only bleach can.

"Don't bother using alcohol-based hand sanitizers," McCaughey warns. "They won't work. Wash with soap and water -- but even then, you're not killing the germs. Soap doesn't kill them. You're just washing them down the drain.

"Children are especially at risk of infection because when they visit Grandma in the hospital, they don't behave in risk-averse ways. They crawl on the floor. They pick things up and eat them. They touch everything. They're unaware that this is a very perilous environment."

Parents planning hospital visits "should leave their children home. Get a babysitter," McCaughey urges. To protect oneself as well as the patient and fellow visitors, she says, "bring a canister of bleach wipes and rubber gloves instead of flowers or fruit."

C-diff spores and other pathogens can cling to those gifts and cards that pile up in patients' rooms. McCaughey advises never touching these items and, if bringing someone home from the hospital, leaving gifts and cards behind.

"They're infected. Do you want to take those bugs home to your family?"

MRSA bacteria are hardy, too. According to one study, they can survive up to 56 days on polyester-cotton fabric and three months on plastic. Other studies found MRSA bacteria surviving a week on plain cotton fabric and two weeks on terrycloth.

Alcohol can kill MRSA bacteria, but that matters little if surfaces aren't scrubbed.

"Every hospital has a procedure for hygiene," says Lisa Thayer, who remembers watching in horror as an orderly who had just cleaned Thayer's mother opened an ostensibly sterile closet with clearly contaminated hands. "In some, staff are required to wash their hands for two minutes before entering a unit. How many people do you think wash their hands for two solid minutes? That's how these infections spread."

Another study found bacteria in 75 percent of the rooms of patients with MRSA, and on the uniforms of 65 percent of nurses who had performed procedures on patients with MRSA earlier that day. Shockingly, MRSA bacteria was also found on 42 percent of hospital personnel who had not even touched such patients, but had touched contaminated surfaces.

Don't hug the staff.

The HAI risk for hospital visitors "is a really important and underestimated issue," declares McCaughey, who says she once met a woman who had most of her hand amputated after contracting MRSA through a cut while visiting a sick friend.

McCaughey exhorts hospital administrators to enforce rigorous cleaning protocols and discourage children from visiting. She applauds the 27 state laws now on the books requiring hospitals to track and disclose their HAI rates. Delaware's Hospital Infections Disclosure Act, for example, penalizes noncompliant hospitals with fines and yanks their licenses.

"And shame on the CDC for not updating their statistics often enough to show people how bad this crisis really is. They can tell you how many people died last year of heart attacks and the flu, but not how many died of HAIs. That's just wrong. The CDC is not nearly as aggressive about this as it should be."

Picture this: While visiting Dad post-surgery, you sling your backpack over a chair, tap a wall, and/or open the curtains. Then before washing your hands, you idly chew your fingernail or lick donut crumbs off your thumb. It's enough to spawn paranoid fantasies -- which spring from virulent, if microscopic, grains of truth.

Visiting the sick is compassionate. In Judaism, it's considered a mitzvah: a good deed that helps enact tikkun olam, the process of repairing a shattered world.
Perform it at your own risk.

 

Anneli Rufus is the author of several books, most recently The Scavenger's Manifesto .

 

 

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Why do Muslim women cover their hair?

One of the sights that disgusts me is that of a woman with a headscarf. Not very long time ago one rarely saw Muslim females go around with their hair covered. Now they all do it and as time has gone by they even cover their entire face, as well as putting scarves on children. It seems Muslims, instead of being more enlightened, are going backwards, religion having completely taken hold of them . Now I am not concerned here about what their holy book, the Quran, says or does not say. The Quran is definitely not the work of any God; it is the work of Muhammad himself, embellished later on by his followers. There is ample evidence for that if one does a little study of historical documents as well as of the Quran itself. I am simply concerned about the logic of not showing one's hair.

What has hair got to do with how good a person is. Who does the hair of a female offend? God? Certainly not, for if it did the almighty (if he existed), would have made sure that all females were born bald. You cannot give a person hair and then say to them: Don't show them to everybody! That would make God very stupid, wouldn't it and God by definition cannot be stupid.

Certainly hair makes a person attractive to the opposite sex and so the argument goes that that person is more likely to be sexually attacked. If that is so why isn't there an epidemic of sexual assaults against non-Muslim women?

And why are Muslim men not required to wear the scarves? Okay, they are unlikely to be thrown down and raped by a woman. But women do look at attractive men and they have ways to get a man to sleep with them if they wanted to. In fact it doesn't take much to seduce a man, if she really wanted to. So if the purpose was to protect a woman against a man with a headscarf, then a man too should be protected with it against the advances of a woman. All this is just another example of Islam considering women to be inferior to men. The following Quranic text (4.34) actually confirms this. What is more, Islam advocates violence against women:

"Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme."


(For a proper understanding of their religion, Muslims should read "Muhammad, a biography of the prophet of Islam" by Maxime Rodinson.)

aziz anom

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Why Danes Are So Much Happier Than Americans.

Kerry Trueman, the author of this article, is the co-founder of EatingLiberally.org

Danish happiness has been attributed to their legendary income equality -- but there's more to it than that

Americans may be deeply divided about what ails our country, but there's no denying we're a nation of unhappy campers.

Danes, on the other hand, consistently rank as some of the happiest people in the world, a fact attributed at least in part to Denmark's legendary income equality and strong social safety net.

Forbes recently cited another possible factor; the Danes' "high levels of trust." They trust each other, they trust 'outsiders,' they even trust their government. 90% of Danes vote. Tea party types dismiss Denmark as a hotbed of socialism, but really, they're just practicing a more enlightened kind of capitalism.

In fact, as Richard Wilkinson, a British professor of social epidemiology, recently stated on PBS NewsHour, "if you want to live the American dream, you should move to Finland or Denmark, which have much higher social mobility."

While we debate whether climate change is real and a tax on unhealthy foods is nanny state social engineering, the Danish are actually trying to address these problems head on.

They can afford to, because they don't spend all their waking hours worrying about whether they're about to lose their job, or their house, or how they're going to pay their student loans, or their health insurance premiums.

Could Danish-style democracy catch on here at home? If the way to a nation's heart is through its stomach, there may be hope. After all, the hottest trend on the culinary horizon these days is the new Nordic Cuisine, "which seeks to turn the culinary dial back toward the natural world," as the New York Times reported a few weeks back.

One of the pioneers of this movement is the dynamic Danish chef and climate change activist Trine Hahnemann, whose latest book is The Nordic Diet. Trine has a genius for creating earthy, easy, elegant meals, but she's equally passionate about cooking up social change while she's at it. I had a chance to get her two cents on our respective cultures when she passed through NYC recently. Following is a condensed version of our conversation:

KT: The cover of your latest book declares that you can "Eat Your Way to Health and Happiness with The Nordic Diet." Americans are so stressed and depressed these days, we're more likely to Eat Our Way to Illness and Misery. And the worse we eat, the worse we feel. Any ideas on how to break out of this vicious cycle?

TH: To change the whole political system takes a long time, so, that's not my first suggestion. Cooking your own meals is essential to staying healthy, because that's the only way you can control your diet. And sharing meals with family and friends, having a sense of belonging, that's a very big part of happiness.

Your meal culture has been blown apart, it's a huge problem. I understand when people say "but I get off work at 8 o'clock and I have to shop and go home and cook," but it's a cycle that just goes around and around and nobody's breaking it. You have to start cooking your own food, and it is doable, even on a lower income.

Danes actually eat a lot of crap, a lot of frozen vegetables, but they cook at home every day and sit down and eat together. This is the main thing in our culture, because take-out and processed convenience foods are more expensive. Fruits and vegetables have to be the cheapest thing, cheaper than eating at McDonald's. It all comes down to economics.

So, we're not these 'holy people' who can manage everything, we just have different ethics. We don't subsidize corn like you do, and also, there is a 25% VAT. And it's socially acceptable to leave work at around 4 or 5 o'clock and pick up your kids from school, go home, share a family meal. From a management point of view, if people have a nice family life, they'll be more productive.

KT: Denmark is famous for having so much less income inequality; do kitchen workers in Danish restuarants make a decent salary?

TH: Yes, a dishwasher in Denmark gets $25 an hour.

KT: Do they get sick days and benefits, too?

TH: Yes, and a pension, and health care, and maternity leave. To me, the more equal your society is, the better it is for everybody. It's not right for a country as rich as yours to have so many poor people. This thing with Americans and taxes, I don't understand it.

I make quite a lot of money, I pay 67% tax on much of it, and I don't mind. I like the idea that the girl who's sitting next to my daughter, whose mother is a cleaning lady, has exactly the same opportunity to get an education that my daughter has. I don't think that's socialism. To me, that's human decency. That girl didn't choose her parents, why shouldn't she have the same opportunities?

KT: The government of Denmark has a very ambitious agenda to eliminate your country's dependence on fossil fuels by 2050. The Danes are early adopters when it comes to conservation and renewable energy.

But Denmark's a relatively small country with a temperate climate, and a homogenous population that doesn't doubt the science on climate change. What lessons do you think the U.S., with all its diversity and division, could learn from your example?

TH: We can't change the world. We're only five million people, but as you say, we're homogenous. Danes trust their government. Over 90% of our population votes. Our news is not as polarized as yours. We're a good place to try out a model.

And cities around the world can draw from our experience. If we don't adapt, there's not going to be water, there's not going to be electricity, why not find solutions now?

KT: How does your role as a climate change activist influence the way you cook?

TH: I use a lot of whole grains, I cut down on meat, I eat very seasonally. In my company, Hahnemann's Køkken, we have a very seasonal profile, our food waste is really low, we use everything that gets into the kitchen.

And I'm working with some engineers to design an energy-efficient professional kitchen. We hope to convince people to buy new equipment. They say, "oh no, it's so expensive," but then you show them how much they could save over ten years on their electricity bill. There are so many old fridges out there that cost a fortune to run.

We need government guaranteed loans to buy new equipment, there are some very interesting models. There's a baker in Germany who has so much leftover bread because people come in at 6 o'clock and demand the same variety he has at 1 o'clock -- that's ridiculous! But he'll lose business if he doesn't cater to that, so all the bread that's left everyday goes into his energy system. He burns it, and that runs the ovens for the next day.

KT: So it's like a kind of biofuel? Does it smell like burned toast?

TH: (laughs) I don't know!

KT: In The Nordic Diet, you note that folks in Denmark bicycle everywhere, to get to work, to go shopping -- entire families routinely go bicycling together, and you don't let lousy weather stop you. You quote the Danish saying, "There is no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothing."

But even when the weather's fine, you might work up a sweat and get windblown biking around. Here in the U.S., our surgeon general got in hot water when she noted that too many American women don't exercise because they don't want to mess up their hair.

So, is it socially acceptable in Denmark to arrive at one's destination looking like a sweaty, dishevelled mess?

TH: We don't have an obsession with hair like you have over here, we don't have that hair that sits in one place; that's never been in fashion. But if you bicycle ten miles to work on a racing bike, let's say, you'll have your regular clothes in a bag and most work places in Denmark provide a shower and a changing room.

KT: And what about the time that it takes to get changed into your work clothes, are you on the clock? Is it like taking a lunch break?

TH: Yeah, but Danes are like the Swiss, we're always on time. Danes are not late -- being on time is a big part of the culture.

KT: So, it's acceptable to show up with messy hair, but not to be late?

TH: Yes.

KT: How did you feel about the Copenhagen Climate Change talks, and where do you see the climate change movement heading?

TH: I was so disappointed. I was in tears. Our politicians failed us gravely. America and China came with nothing. And Saudi Arabia was working behind the scenes, I'm told, to sabotage it.

It's a shame people aren't more disappointed with the politicians. I am. I'm really disappointed that they can't step up and do the right thing. Why aren't we doing more? I'm not even satisfied with what we're doing in Denmark. I love that we have these goals and I will help to work towards them through the things I can do as a chef and a responsible citizen.

But I think it will have to get much worse before people realize how bad it is. It's potentially just as catastrophic as terrorism -- or worse -- but nobody's paying attention. Everybody's just hoping it will go away.

On the food side, I'm more optimistic, I see a lot of changes, a lot of goodwill, people wanting to cook and eat more ecologically.

We've got to change the way we eat, we've got to change the way we source, we've got to change the way we waste. For me, first of all, it's cutting back on the meat. Eating meat everyday has only been part of our diet since World War II. No matter what, only eat meat twice a week.

And everyone should get a composting bucket, so they can see how much they waste. You could save $2,000 a year if you stopped wasting food. Our grandmothers would never have wasted all that food.

We have to take that older mentality and new technologies and put them together for new solutions. I agree with Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner when he says, "Every time you shop, you vote." That's the best thing you can do as an individual who doesn't hold political office.

aziz anom

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About Me

aziz anom

I qualified as an aircraft engineer at London's Imperial College. After graduation, however, I realized that engineering was not really for me, so when I later moved to Denmark I took up psychology at the University of Copenhagen. I did not qualify in that subject but I did a lot of research (lasting some12 years) in Behavioural Psychology, my chosen field. The result was a paper which I called REINFORCING BEHAVIOUR THERAPY which you can access from the link below.

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