Alliance for Natural Health - Durbin and Waxman Strike Again!

Alliance for Natural Health  November 22, 2011

http://www.anh-usa.org/durbin-and-waxman-strike-again/

Their latest move targets supplements while giving drugs and vaccines a free pass. New Action Alert! [1]

Senator Dick Durbin and Congressman Henry Waxman are trying a new tactic in their attack on supplements after previous legislative failures [2]. They have asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review adverse event report data—but only for supplements. The GAO operates at the call of Congress, so some action on this request is inevitable. Here is their letter [3].

In a statement, Sen. Durbin said, “The FDA has the tools necessary to determine which supplements can cause and have caused severe health problems—they should use them effectively.”

This is nonsense. There is no evidence that legitimate supplements, those that comply with existing law, have caused severe health problems. What the FDA needs to do is not evaluate and approve each supplement, but rather enforce existing law.

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Henry Giroux - Occupy Colleges Now -- Students as the New Public Intellectuals

Monday 21 November 2011

by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-colleges-now-students-new-public-intellectuals/1321891418

The police violence that has taken place at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Davis does more than border on pure thuggery; it also reveals a display of force that is as unnecessary as it is brutal, and it is impossible to justify. These young people are being beaten on their campuses for simply displaying the courage to protest a system that has robbed them of both a quality education and a viable future.

Finding our way to a more humane future demands a new politics, a new set of values, and a renewed sense of the fragile nature of democracy. In part, this means educating a new generation of intellectuals who not only defend higher education as a democratic public sphere, but also frame their own agency as intellectuals willing to connect their research, teaching, knowledge, and service with broader democratic concerns over equality, justice, and an alternative vision of what the university might be and what society could become. Under the present circumstances, it is time to remind ourselves that academe may be one of the few public spheres available that can provide the educational conditions for students, faculty, administrators, and community members to embrace pedagogy as a space of dialogue and unmitigated questioning, imagine different futures, become border-crossers, and embrace a language of critique and possibility that makes visible the urgency of a politics necessary to address important social issues and contribute to the quality of public life and the common good.  

As people move or are pushed by authorities out of their makeshift tent cities in Zuccotti Park and other public spaces in cities across the United States, the harsh registers and interests of the punishing state become more visible. The corporate state cannot fight any longer with ideas because their visions, ideologies and survival of the fittest ethic are bankrupt,  fast losing any semblance of legitimacy. Students all over the country are changing the language of politics while reclaiming pedagogy as central to any viable notion of agency, resistance and collective struggle.

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William Pfaff - Why Does Obama Suddenly Want a War With China?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_does_obama_suddenly_want_a_war_with_china_20111122/

Posted on Nov 22, 2011

By William Pfaff

One might think that a bitter Central Asian war in Afghanistan, spilling into Pakistan, with no sign of ending, and an as yet ambiguous military commitment to a defeated and incompletely reconstituted Iraq, now overshadowed by Iran and the Arab Awakening across the Middle East, would be enough for President Barack Obama to cope with.

He was, after all, elected to reduce American military commitments. He was going to end things in Iraq, fight the “right war” in Afghanistan, which Gen. David Petraeus told him could be wound up in a year. Unaccustomed to generals as he might have been, he surely did not expect “Af-Pak” to turn into a permanent activity and a source of income for the Pentagon and the American arms industry.

Why then does he now want a war with China? No one seems to have made much of this in American press reports and comment, but others have noticed, most of all in China. His journey to Asia this month proclaimed a Pax Americana for Asia—which as such is absurd. The effort is likely to become just the opposite: a steadily deepening and costly engagement in suppressing China’s attempt to reclaim the Asian preeminence it held for more than a thousand years.

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David Swanson - The Last Whistleblowers

Counterpunch.org  November 22, 2011

by DAVID SWANSON

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/22/the-last-whistleblowers/print

Whistleblowing in our federal government may soon be a thing of the past, not because whistleblowers face more vicious retribution than ever before — although that is true; and not because important acts of whistleblowing now result in fewer reforms and less accountability than they used to — although that is also true and is getting closer; but fundamentally because the actions against which we need whistles blown are publicly acknowledged.

 How would one expose war or indefinite imprisonment or assassinations or drone attacks or wiretapping or profiteering or bribery or massive money transfers to Wall Street?  I understand how, even a few years ago, such things could be exposed by courageous whistleblowers.  I understand how retired officials who missed their chance at being timely whistleblowers can now expose the steps through which these crimes have been normalized.  But I have a hard time understanding how one would leak to the media or reveal on one’s blog what has been openly acknowledged, legalized, formalized, and normalized.

Starting from the model of whistleblowers, one is tempted to suggest that we begin supporting those individuals who will resist immoral orders and assignments: resisters instead of whistleblowers.  But we have one whistleblower for every 100,000 or so government employees informed of the abuses exposed.  We are likely to have infinitely fewer inside resisters.  Clearly we need a different model.  We need to all be whistleblowers, since we all know about the crimes.  We need to insist on viewing policies differently, rather than viewing different policies.  We need to expose what happens where the bombs land and the defunding of human needs hit home.  And we need to organize massive resistance from outside the government, with the potential for creating massive resistance within the government as well.

I expressed my concerns and raised these questions to some of our most praiseworthy whistleblowers at an event Monday evening in Washington, D.C.

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Rick Rozoff - U.S. Arms Persian Gulf Allies For Conflict With Iran

By Rick Rozoff
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27731
Global Research, November 18, 2011
Stop NATO
Rumors and reports of, speculation over and scenarios for attacks against Iran’s civilian nuclear power facilities and military sites by the United States, Israel or both have flared up periodically over the past several years, especially since early 2005. However, recent statements by among others the president and defense minister of Israel and a leading candidate for the American presidency in next year’s election – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Mitt Romney respectively – before and after the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program manifest a more stark and menacing tone that has been heard in a long time. Standing U.S. head of state Barack Obama recently stated, “We are not taking any options off the table.” The above threats and others of the same tenor have been noted in the capitals of countries around the world. Last week the Global Times, a publication of the Communist Party of China, featured an unsigned editorial entitled “Winds of war start blowing toward Iran,” which contained these excerpts:

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Garret Wood - Supplements Set to Become Illegal in 2012 under FDA

FoodFreedom.com   October 30, 2011

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/supplements-set-to-become-illegal-in-2012-under-fda/

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/supplements-set-to-become-illegal-in-2012-under-fda/

By Garret Wood

The FDA has issued new rules that, if enacted, will enable them to ban many of the supplements you are now taking.

Think I’m exaggerating? Then please listen to the full story …

Back in the early 1990s, the FDA tried to make many supplements illegal.  Consumers were so alarmed by the FDA’s bullying that they staged a massive revolt. The result was that Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). That law protected supplements from the FDA unless the FDA could prove a supplement wasn’t safe.

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Ethan Evers - Green tea supplements prevent flu better than vaccination

by Ethan Evers

http://www.naturalnews.com/034218_green_tea_flu_season.html

(NaturalNews) Flu season is now in full swing and seasonal vaccinations are being pushed from every corner. Nonetheless, a recent clinical trial showed that green tea-based supplements reduced the risk of flu by 75%. This is far better than the 60% risk reduction recently reported in the Lancet for vaccinations. Given that green tea provides a host of other health benefits and none of the risks of injections, it would appear to be a far superior alternative to vaccination.

Green Tea: Natural Antiviral and Immune Enhancer

For many years it has been known that green tea polyphenols actively suppress many bacterial, fungal and viral species. On the virus front, green tea suppresses the adenovirus, Epstein-Barr, herpes simplex, HIV-1 and influenza viruses. EGCG, one of the main polyphenols in green tea, is mainly responsible for this suppression. Specifically, ECGC binds to the hemagglutinin of the influenza virus, which blocks it from attaching to (and infecting) target receptor cells. EGCG also alters the virus cell membrane, which further inhibits its ability to infect other cells. Another important component of green tea is the amino acid L-theanine, which has been shown to activate human gamma-delta-T lymphocytes to proliferate and make interferon-gamma, a potent antimicrobial cytokine. These lymphocytes are considered to be the body's first line of defence against infection. Green tea therefore offers a two-pronged protection from the flu which vaccination simply cannot match. But for final proof, we need clinical trials.

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Science Daily - Evidence Supports Ban On Growth Promotion Use of Antibiotics in Farming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111115103514.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2011) — In a review study, researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine zero in on the controversial, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals and fish farming as a cause of antibiotic resistance. They report that the preponderance of evidence argues for stricter regulation of the practice. Stuart Levy, an expert in antibiotic resistance, notes that a guiding tenet of public health, the precautionary principle, requires that steps be taken to avoid harm.

"The United States lags behind its European counterparts in establishing a ban on the use of antibiotics for growth promotion. For years it was believed that giving low-dose antibiotics via feed to promote growth in cows, swine, chickens and the use of antibiotics in fish farming had no negative consequences. Today, there is overwhelming evidence that non-therapeutic use of antibiotics contributes to antibiotic resistance, even if we do not understand all the mechanisms in the genetic transmission chain," says Levy, MD, professor of molecular biology and microbiology and director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance at Tufts University School of Medicine.

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Michael A. Smith, MD - Why Your Homocysteine Level Matters to Your Health

http://blog.lef.org/2011/11/homocysteine-level-heart-health.html

By Michael A. Smith, MD

Homocysteine is an amino acid that can inflict damage to your inner arterial lining (endothelium) and other cells of your body. In 1968, a Harvard researcher observed that children with a genetic defect that caused them to have sharply elevated homocysteine levels suffered severe atherosclerotic occlusion and vascular disorders similar to what is seen in middle-aged patients with arterial disease.

This was the first indication that excess homocysteine could be an independent risk factor for heart disease. Despite traditional doctors failing to recognize it, Life Extension has identified elevated homocysteine as one of 17 independent risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

How is Homocysteine Produced?

All homocysteine in the body is biosynthesized from methionine, an essential amino acid found abundantly in meats, seafood, dairy products, and eggs. Vegetables, with few exceptions (e.g., sesame seeds and Brazil nuts), are pretty low in methionine; even protein-rich legumes like beans, peas, and lentils contain relatively small amounts of methionine compared to animal-derived foods.

An important reaction occurs in the body when the amino acid methionine is converted by a series of chemical reactions into homocysteine. Once it’s formed, homocysteine can do two things:

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Miller-McCune Media - Study: Ethical People More Satisfied With Life

University of Missouri economist Harvey James finds a relationship between life satisfaction and low tolerance for unethical conduct.

Miller-McCune Media, November 19, 2011

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture/study-ethical-people-more-satisfied-with-life-36792/?utm_source=Newsletter188&utm_medium=email&utm_content=1122&utm_campaign=newsletters

“The just man is happy, and the unjust man is miserable,” Plato declares in The Republic. A noble thought, to be sure, but Socrates’ most famous student didn’t have data to back up his belief. Harvey James, on the other hand, does. The University of Missouri economist finds a relationship between life satisfaction and low tolerance for unethical conduct. He discussed his findings, first published in the journal Kyklos, with Miller-McCune staff writer Tom Jacobs.

The research
“I found a correlation between how people responded to ethics questions and their satisfaction with life. As part of the 2005-06 wave of the World Values Survey (which examines attitudes around the globe), respondents were asked in face-to-face interviews: On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your life? There were also four ethics questions that ask how acceptable or unacceptable they felt a particular practice is: claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled; avoiding paying your fare on public transportation; cheating on taxes; and accepting a bribe.

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