eurekalert.org - Low vitamin D levels may contribute to development of Type 2 diabetes

Public release date: 5-Dec-2011
The Endocrine Society

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/tes-lvd113011.php

Study finds low vitamin D levels associated with higher degrees of insulin resistance

A recent study of obese and non-obese children found that low vitamin D levels are significantly more prevalent in obese children and are associated with risk factors for type 2 diabetes. This study was accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

High rates of vitamin D deficiency have been found in obese populations and past studies have linked low vitamin D levels to cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. The mechanisms by which obesity and its comorbidities are related to vitamin D deficiency are not fully known. This new study examined associations between vitamin D levels and dietary habits in obese children, and tested whether there were correlations between vitamin D levels and markers of abnormal glucose metabolism and blood pressure.

"Our study found that obese children with lower vitamin D levels had higher degrees of insulin resistance," said Micah Olson, MD, of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and lead author of the study. "Although our study cannot prove causation, it does suggest that low vitamin D levels may play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes."

In this study, researchers measured vitamin D levels, blood sugar levels, serum insulin, BMI and blood pressure in 411 obese subjects and 87 control non-overweight subjects. Study participants were also asked to provide dietary information including daily intake of soda, juice and milk, average daily fruit and vegetable intake, and whether or not they routinely skipped breakfast.

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Medical News Today - High Level Of Waste In Health Spending, Says Medicare And Medicaid Boss

Medical News Today, 05 Dec 2011

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/238654.php

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, head of Medicare and Medicaid until last Thursday, stated that up to 30% of spending on health is wasted with absolutely no benefit to beneficiaries (patients). He added that his agency's cumbersome and archaic regulations are partly to blame. He claims too many resources and too much time is dedicated to things that do not help patients one bit; something doctors are fully aware of too.

In an interview last Thursday, Dr. Berwick said:

"Much is done that does not help patients at all,
and many physicians know it."

During the interview, Berwick talked about the previous 17 months, while he was at the helm as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, his failures, successes and frustrations, and dealing with criticisms from Republican lawmakers.

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Medical News Today - High Fruit And Veggie Diet In Females Reduces Stroke Risk

Medical News Today, 05 Dec 2011

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/238638.php

Females who consume lots of fruit, vegetables and grains have a lower risk of stroke, even if they have a history of cardiovascular disease, compared to women who don't, researchers from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, reported in Stroke.

First author, Susanne Rautiainen, said:

"Eating antioxidant-rich foods may reduce your risk of stroke by inhibiting oxidative stress and inflammation. This means people should eat more foods such as fruits and vegetables that contribute to total antioxidant capacity."

Free radicals, oxidative stress and antioxidants

Oxidative stress occurs when there is an imbalance between the production of free radicals, which damage cells, and the human body's ability to neutralize them or repair the subsequent damage, which results in blood vessel damage, stiffening and inflammation.

Oxidative stress can be inhibited by antioxidants, such as vitamins E and C, flavonoids, and carotenoids - antioxidants scavenge the free radicals. Flavonoids, for example, can help improve endothelial function, blood pressure, inflammation, and reduce blood clotting.

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Chris Hedges - Where Were You When They Crucified My Movement?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/where_were_you_when_they_crucified_my_movement_20111205/

Posted on Dec 5, 2011

By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges gave an abbreviated version of this talk Saturday morning in Liberty Square in New York City as part of an appeal to Trinity Church to turn over to the Occupy Wall Street movement an empty lot, known as Duarte Square, that the church owns at Canal Street and 6th Avenue. Occupy Wall Street protesters, following the call, began a hunger strike at the gates of the church-owned property. Three of the demonstrators were arrested Sunday on charges of trespassing, and three others took their places.

The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance. The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young. Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Timur Zolotoev - Western Hemisphere: 33 Latin American countries to form a New Bloc. U.S. and Canada not invited

By Timur Zolotoev

Global Research, December 4, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28023

Thirty-three Latin American leaders have come together and formed a new regional bloc, pledging closer economic and political ties. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) pointedly excludes the US and Canada.

On the second day of a summit in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, all Latin American leaders, both right and left, officially signed into effect the formation of the CELAC bloc. The foundation of the bloc has been praised as the realization of the two-centuries-old idea of Latin American “independence” envisioned by Simon Bolivar.

Analysts view CELAC as an alternative to the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) and as an attempt by Latin American countries to reduce US influence in the region.

“As the years go by, CELAC is going to leave behind the old and worn-out OAS,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said at the inauguration of the bloc on Friday.

“It's the death sentence for the Monroe Doctrine,” said Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega said.

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Dr. Mercola - How Ghostwritten Medical Articles Can Impact Your Health

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/26/medical-journals-using-ghost-writers.aspx?e_cid=20111126_DNL_art_2

Unfortunately, the practice of employing ghostwriters can have very serious ramifications for your health. For example, an August 4, 2009 New York Times article reported how Wyeth Pharmaceutical Company used this ghostwriting practice to successfully peddle hormone replacement therapy in women. Physicians prescribed these drugs based on 26 studies published in the medical literature, affirming the benefits and downplaying the risks of hormone replacement. 
As a result, sales of Premarin and Prempro soared. 
However, all the papers turned out to have been written by ghostwriters hired by Wyeth, and many women have since sued the drug maker for health problems suffered from these drugs. 

• Wyeth-Ayerst—Redux. Wyeth paid $20,000 for an article on the "therapeutic effects" of their diet pill, Redux (dexfenfluramine). As detailed in the book Our Daily Meds, Dr. Richard Atkinson, a professor at the University of Wisconsin was to receive $1,500 in return for putting his name to the finished piece. An excerpt from Our Daily Meds reads:

"When the article was complete, Dr. Atkinson sent a letter to Excerpta, praising the ghostwriter's work. "Let me congratulate you and your writer on an excellent and thorough review of the literature, clearly written," the doctor wrote. "... Perhaps I can get you to write all my papers for me! My only general comment is that this piece may make dexfenfluramine sound better than it really is."

A year later, the drug was pulled from the market as doctors began reporting heart valve injuries in as many as one-third of patients taking the drug. Redux, Pondimin (a similar drug), and fen-phen (of which dexfenfluramine was a part) were later linked to dozens of deaths.

• Parke-Davis (acquired by Pfizer in 2004)—Neurontin. Parke-Davis contracted with a medical education communication company (MECC) to write articles in support of the drug to the tune of $13,000 to $18,000 per article. In turn, MECC paid $1,000 each to friendly physicians and pharmacists to sign off as authors of the articles, making the material appear independent.Last year, Pfizer was found guilty of violating U.S. racketeering laws by illegally promoting off-label uses of Neurontin, and were fined more than $142 million in damages. 
  Merck—Vioxx. This deadly drug, which was eventually blamed for some 60,000+ deaths, was also linked to a number of shameful scandals relating to fraudulent studies and the use of ghostwriters to boost sales. The New England Journal of Medicine admittedly published an erroneous and biased Vioxx study, and the Annals of Internal Medicine found itself in similar hot water when one of the "authors" of a 2003 Vioxx study confessed he had little to do with the research.

William deBuys - The Age of Thirst in the American West

Posted on December 4, 2011, Printed on December 5, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175475/

Coming to a Theater Near You: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization 
By William deBuys

Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale:biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought.  As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat.  It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix, as usual, leading the march toward unlivability. This past summer, the so-called Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoe-melting 110º F or higher. (The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007.)

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Max Blumenthal - From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security

Published on Al Akhbar English (http://english.al-akhbar.com)

By: Max Blumenthal [1]

Published Friday, December 2, 2011

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-“occupy”-israelification-american-domestic-security

New York - In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, [2] an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked [3] the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition [4] and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine [5], a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”

Training alongside the American police departments at Urban Shield was the Yamam, [6] an Israeli Border Police unit that claims to specialize in “counter-terror” operations but is better known for its extra-judicial assassinations [7] of Palestinian militant leaders and long record of repression [8] and abuses [9] in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Urban Shield also featured a unit from the military of Bahrain, which had just crushed a largely non-violent democratic uprising by opening fire [10] on protest camps and arresting [11]wounded demonstrators when they attempted to enter hospitals. While the involvement of Bahraini soldiers in the drills was a novel phenomenon, the presence of quasi-military Israeli police – whose participation in Urban Shield was not reported anywhere in US media – reflected a disturbing but all-too-common feature of the post-9/11 American security landscape.

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Glenn Greenwald - Congress endorsing military detention, a new AUMF

SALON.COM   THURSDAY, DEC 1, 2011 5:00 AM ESTHTTP://WWW.SALON.COM/2011/12/01/CONGRESS_ENDORSING_MILITARY_DETENTION_A_NEW_AUMF/SINGLETON/#COMMENTS

BY GLENN GREENWALD

(updated below – Update II)

A bill co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and GOP Sen. John McCain  (S. 1867) — included in the pending defense authorization bill — is predictably on its way to passage. It is triggering substantial alarm in many circles, including from the ACLU – and rightly so. But there are also many misconceptions about it that have been circulating that should be clarified, including a possible White House veto. Here are the bill’s three most important provisions:

(1) mandates that all accused Terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system; it alsounquestionably permits (but does not mandate) that even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil accused of Terrorism be held by the military rather than charged in the civilian court system (Sec. 1032);

(2) renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); and,

(3) imposes new restrictions on the U.S. Government’s ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo (Secs. 1033-35).

There are several very revealing aspects to all of this. First, the 9/11 attack happened more than a decade ago; Osama bin Laden is dead; the U.S. Government claims it has killed virtually all of Al Qaeda’s leadership and the group is “operationally ineffective” in the Afghan-Pakistan region; and many commentators insisted that these developments would mean that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. And yet here we have the Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, acting not only to re-affirm the war but to expand it even further: by formally declaring that the entire world (including the U.S.) is a battlefield and the war will essentially go on forever.

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Bill Quigley - 20 Ways the Obama Administration Has Intruded on Your Rights

By Bill Quigley, AlterNet

Posted on November 30, 2011, Printed on December 4, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153283/20_ways_the_obama_administration_has_intruded_on_your_rights

The Obama administration has affirmed, continued and expanded almost all of the draconian domestic civil liberties intrusions pioneered under the Bush administration. Here are twenty examples of serious assaults on the domestic rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, the right to privacy, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience that have occurred since the Obama administration has assumed power. Consider these and then decide if there is any fundamental difference between the Bush presidency and the Obama presidency in the area of domestic civil liberties.

Patriot Act

On May 27, 2011, President Obama, over widespread bipartisan objections, approved a Congressional four year extension of controversial parts of the Patriot Act that were set to expire. In March of 2010, Obama signed a similar extension of the Patriot Act for one year. These provisions allow the government, with permission from a special secret court, to seize records without the owner’s knowledge, conduct secret surveillance of suspicious people who have no known ties to terrorist groups and to obtain secret roving wiretaps on people.

Criminalization of Dissent and Militarization of the Police

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