"Bernie Sanders" - Six Demands to Make of Wall Street

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/12-6

by Bernie Sanders

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous, and secretive economic and political force in America.

If this country is to break out of the horrendous recession and create the millions of jobs we desperately need, if we are going to create a modicum of financial stability for the future, there is no question but that the American people are going to have to take a very hard look at Wall Street and demand fundamental reforms.  I hope these protests are the beginning of that process.   

Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse.  Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again.  

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"Bill McKibben" - Obama’s Failing Emails: Where Did the President’s Mojo Go?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/11-6

Published on Tuesday, October 11, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

by Bill McKibben

For connoisseurs, Barack Obama’s fundraising emails for the 2012 election campaign seem just a tad forlorn -- slightly limp reminders of the last time ‘round.

Four years ago at this time, the early adopters among us were just starting to get used to the regular flow of email from the Obama campaign. The missives were actually exciting to get, because they seemed less like appeals for money than a chance to join a movement.

Sometimes they came with inspirational videos from Camp Obama, especially the volunteer training sessions staged by organizing guru Marshall Ganz. Here’s a favorite of mine, where a woman invokes Bobby Kennedy and Cesar Chavez and says that, as the weekend went on, she “felt her heart softening,” her cynicism “melting,” her determination building. I remember that feeling, and I remember clicking time and again to send another $50 off to fund that people-powered mission. (And I recall knocking on a lot of New Hampshire doors, too, with my 14-year-old daughter.)

It’s no wonder, then, that I’m still on the email list. But I haven’t been clicking through this time. Not even when Barack Obama himself asked me to “donate $75 or more today to be automatically entered for a chance to join me for dinner.” Not even when campaign manager Jim Messina pointed out that, though “the president has very little time to spend on anything related to the campaign… this is how he chooses to spend it -- having real, substantive conversations with people like you” over the dinner you might just win. (And if you do win, you’ll be put on a plane to “Washington, or Chicago, or wherever he might be that day.”)

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"Scott Klinger" - Stop the Offshore Piracy

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/12-8

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by the Albany Times-Union

by Scott Klinger

Ships laden with tens of millions of dollars of American treasure pull into beautiful ports in places like the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas every day, offloading profits made on sales to U.S. consumers. These voyages -- all technically legal -- cost taxpayers $100 billion a year.

Now the corporate captains of these pirate ships have sent Congress an ominous ransom note that says: "Allow us to return these profits to American territory at a deeply discounted tax rate of 5.25 percent, or you'll never see your cash again."

The regular corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

Of course, modern pirates don't need cargo ships. They transmit booty instantaneously via electronic bits to satellite dishes that link the world's 50 tax havens. There, shell-company subsidiaries, often little more than a brass plate on the wall and a post office box, handle the transaction. Ugland House, a non-descript five-story building on Grand Cayman Island, houses nearly 19,000 subsidiaries of the world's largest businesses.

American corporations have stashed more than $1.4 trillion offshore. Much of this loot is reaped from accounting tricks.

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"Mary Bottari" - Chicago to Wall Street: Pay US Back!

Published on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by PR Watch

by Mary Bottari

While the Occupy Wall Street movement is sweeping the country and peaceful arrests are mounting, Chicagoans took to the streets this week to hold the big banks accountable for crashing the economy and to demand city, state and federal policies that work for working families.

For many, the goal was stopping the foreclosure mill and telling the big banks it was time to Pay US Back! for the $4.7 trillion bailout. For others, the demands focused on the bailout from the financial crisis including contentious contract negotiations with the administration of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

For most, the range of issues were inextricably linked.

Emanuel Goes to Bat for the Big Banks

At the height of the financial crisis in March of 2009, a new president was grappling with an unprecedented meltdown. Huddled with his closest advisers, his instincts were sound.

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"Bill Van Auken" - Ex-SDS leader seeks to herd Wall Street protest behind Obama

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Ex-SDS-leader-seeks-to-her-by-Bill-van-Auken-111012-577.html

October 12, 2011 By Bill van Auken The month-old Occupy Wall Street movement that began in lower Manhattan has since spread to scores of cities across the US. It has won widespread sympathy from millions of working people, who welcome the prospect of a struggle against the capitalist banks, corporations and financial aristocracy that are responsible for the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. At the same time, this movement has prompted duplicitous statements of support and advice from a socio-political layer of pseudo-lefts and former activists in the middle class protest movements. These elements view the emerging movement against Wall Street with some trepidation and with the aim of foisting onto it a definite political agenda. An op-ed column by Todd Gitlin, published in the New York Times Sunday is representative of this layer of ex-lefts, whose principal preoccupation is how to channel this movement behind the Democratic Party and the upcoming campaign to reelect President Barack Obama. Gitlin, who was the president of the Students for a Democratic Society in 1963-64 and later an organizer of protests against the Vietnam War, has since secured a comfortable berth in academia as a tenured professor of journalism and communications at Columbia University in New York City.

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"Progressive Radio Network Christiane Brown, Thursdays @ 3pm(EDT") - Accountability – Just Do it.

By Christiane Brown

As American citizens finally rise up and place our bodies on the gears of power and the avenues of commerce, rightly protesting against the nation’s war mongers, corporate thieves, health insurance gluttons and mass polluters, the most important demand we make must be our call for accountability and justice.

This demand, above all others, is crucial in opening the floodgates of change and truly restoring America to a nation of laws and not men.

Until the stamp of felon is irrevocably emblazoned on the foreheads of our nation’s criminal elite, their perfect storm of unrestrained power and hubris will continue to rage in this country. Only through the process of indictment, prosecution and incarceration will we be able to set in motion the systematic collapse of this lawless regime and remove the cloak of legitimacy that empowers it.

With more than 700 peaceful protesters mass corralled on the Brooklyn Bridge and 1252 Keystone XL demonstrators arrested during their two week protest in front of the White House, it is clear that the trend of incarcerating those who stand up to power will continue.

Isn’t it time that we, the citizens, demand that the right people are put behind bars?

As our numbers swell across the country it up to us to finally demand redress for the glaring omission by the Congress, the Justice Department and the President of the United States to prosecute our nation’s “most wanted,” and force our legal system to shine an unwavering spotlight on the inside track of corruption that has dominated this country for over a decade.

A massive outcry for investigations and trials of the elite one per cent who crashed the world economy, illegally waged a pre-emptive war with impunity, drained our treasury, rounded up and tortured enemy combatants, spied on American citizens, exposed the identity of a CIA counter terrorism operative, and allowed an American city to drown, would be a good start.

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"WebMD Health News" - Walnuts May Fight Breast Cancer

WebMD Health News

http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20090421/walnuts-fight-breast-cancer

April 21, 2009 (Denver) -- Just two handfuls of walnuts a day may keep breast cancer away, a study in mice suggests.

And if you have breast cancer, walnuts may help curb tumor growth, the study suggests.

Researcher W. Elaine Hardman, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, W.Va., credits the disease-fighting omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and in particular, phytosterols, in walnuts.

“Phytosterols bind to estrogen receptors, so they would be expected to slow growth of breast cancers,” she says. Estrogen fuels the growth of some breast tumors.

Eat More Walnuts or Not?

Although the study was done in laboratory animals, people should heed recommendations to eat more walnuts, Hardman tells WebMD.

“Research suggests that walnuts can be a healthful part of the diet for the prevention not only of breast and other cancers, but also diabetesand cardiovascular disease,” she says.

But Peter G. Shields, MD, deputy director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., says it’s “outrageous” to recommend that people eat more walnuts based on a study in mice.

He notes that animal studies once suggested that beta-carotene reduced lung cancer. "But when we did the [pivotal] study in humans, smokers given beta-carotene got more lung cancer,” he tells WebMD.

“This is a nice study that calls for more research. There needs to be a lot more understood” about how walnuts might prevent breast tumors, Shields says.

The findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 100th Annual Meeting.

Walnuts Delay Breast Tumors by 9 Years

Hardman and colleagues studied genetically altered mice that were programmed to develop tumors within six months.

Half consumed a diet that contained the human equivalent of two 1-ounce servings of walnuts per day. “One serving fits in the palm of your hand,” she says.

The other half was fed a diet that did not include walnuts.

Standard testing showed that eating walnuts cut the risk of developing breast tumors in half.

“If mice did get breast tumors, the growth rate was also slowed, by 50%,” Hardman says.

Looked at another way, eating walnuts delayed the development of tumors by at least three weeks in the mice. “Extrapolating to humans, this would be about a nine-year delay,” she says.

The researchers are now testing the benefits of the walnut-rich diet in male mice genetically altered to develop prostate tumors.

Hardman says she expected similar results, with the nuts both preventing and slowing the growth of

"Science Daily" - Industry Conflicts of Interest Are Pervasive Among Medical Guideline Panel Members, Experts Say

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111011192426.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2011) — Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that conflicts of interest (COI) are prevalent and potentially underreported among individuals participating in the development of clinical practice guidelines, which inform standards of patient care. The findings provide further evidence of the potential influence of industry on medical practice recommendations. The study is published online Oct. 12 in BMJ: The British Medical Journal.

To assess COI, the Mount Sinai team reviewed the panel members involved in the development of clinical practice guidelines for two highly prevalent conditions -- diabetes and high cholesterol -- from major organizations in the United States and Canada, such as the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the American Heart Association (AHA), and government-sponsored organizations, such as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

Of the 288 total panel members evaluated, 150 (52 percent) had COI. In addition, they found that panel members developing government-sponsored guidelines had significantly fewer conflicts than those from the non-government sponsored guideline panels. Lastly, they revealed that one out of nine panelists who formally declared no COI did in fact have COI.

"Guidelines inform evidence-based practice and ultimately protect patients, so safeguarding against potential sources of bias is important," said the study's lead author Jennifer Neuman, MD, Instructor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

"The majority of guideline panel members and half of guideline panel chairs in our study received some sort of compensation from industry, indicating a risk of industry influence on guideline recommendations," said Dr. Neuman "But, we found that government agencies were able to effectively staff their guideline panels with individuals with few conflicts of interest, therefore it is possible to convene panels with minimal COI."

The authors support the efforts by the Institute of Medicine and other prominent medical organizations around the world to increase transparency and decrease potential industry bias on guideline development panels. "Conflict-free guideline panels are feasible and would help to improve the quality of the guideline development process," they concluded.

J. Neuman, D. Korenstein, J. S. Ross, S. Keyhani. Prevalence of financial conflicts of interest among panel members producing clinical practice guidelines in Canada and United States: cross sectional study. BMJ, 2011; 343 (oct11 2): d5621

"Alliance for Natural Heatlh" - Shame on AMA’s Archives of Internal Medicine

Alliance for Natural Heatlh, October 11, 2011

http://www.anh-usa.org/shame-on-ama-archives-of-internal-medicine/

Did you hear the breaking news last night—that multivitamins may shorten your life? Here’s how junk science from the AMA set off the media frenzy.

Bloomberg phrased it this way ^[1]: “Multivitamins and some dietary supplements, used regularly by an estimated 234 million US adults, may do more harm than good, according to a study that tied their use to higher death rates among older women.” The study’s authors outrageously concluded, “We see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements.”

The study ^[2], published in the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Archives of Internal Medicine, assessed the use of vitamin and mineral supplements in nearly 39,000 women whose average age was 62. The researchers asked the women to fill out three surveys, the first in 1986, the second in 1997, and the last in 2004, reporting what supplements they took and what foods they ate, and answering a few questions about their health.

That’s right, all the data was self-reported by the study subjects only three times over the course of the 19-year-long study. To say the data is “unreliable” would be a generous description. This kind of “data” has no place in a valid scientific study.

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"Bill Faloon" - How Regulation of Medicine is Bankrupting the United States and What Congress Can Do to Stop It

Life Extension Magazine October 2011

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2011/oct2011_Regulation-of-Medicine-is-Bankrupting-the-United-States-What-Congress-Can-Do-to-Stop-It_01.htm

By William Faloon

A fierce debate is raging as to who will pay for this nation’s skyrocketing sick-care costs. Private companies have scaled back sharply on health care coverage they used to provide. Employees now pay an increasing percentage of their medical insurance premiums, along with higher deductibles, co-pays, and no-pays (i.e., exclusions). Many businesses provide no health coverage to their employees.1,2 Based on the median income in the United States, the typical family cannot come close to paying the staggering cost of health care themselves. It seems rather odd, but since neither business nor individuals can afford today’s sick-care costs, the burden is increasingly being borne by the sector least able to pay, i.e., heavily indebted state and federal governments. The federal government is already saddled with a huge unfunded Medicare liability. No one has figured out where the money will come from to cover these future health care costs. To put this into context, the most recent estimate of Medicare’s unfunded liability is $24.6 trillion.3 Yet total federal tax revenues taken in annually (which include Medicare premiums) are only around $2 trillion.4,5 As our current President stated last year, we are approaching a point where the government will have to spend more money on Medicare than every other federal program combined!6 The most recent government report states that the Medicare hospital trust fund will go bankrupt five years sooner than what was projected a mere twelve months earlier.7

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