From ths at psalience.org Tue Feb 7 09:36:46 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:36:46 +0100 Subject: [THS] Bob Marley's 60th Was A Moving Success! Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120207093606.048fe490@mail.messagingengine.com> Bob Marley's 60th Was A Moving Success! 12,000+ Joined us in Kingston--Millions on TV & Radio This is the newletter we sent out exactly 7 years ago today in 2005 after hosting Bob's 60th Earthday in Kingston. It still amazes me that the Jamaican government turned this milestone birthday of their favorite son over to Julia and I! Bob's message of One Love is growing and is even stronger today. On Sunday Feb. 6, 2005 in downtown Kingston, Jamaica an overflowing crowd, plus millions more who joined us via every Jamaican TV station, many radio stations and the Internet, joined us to celebrate Bob's milestone birthday. The huge concert, called "Bob Marley-Natural Mystic:The Legend Lives On," was a collaborative effort of the Jamaican Government, the Bob Marley Foundation and our family. However, the concert was more than a celebration. It was a calling to Jamaica, and every person joining us, to claim their God-given destiny of teaching One Love in their lives. My address below explains the vision of Jamaica that we now share with many. PERFORMERS: Abijah, Ernie Smith, Bunny Wailer, Culture, Mackie Conscious, Warrior King, Cherry Natural, Fab 5, Prezident Brown, Janieve & Robert Bailey, Junior Reid & The One Blood Family, Stitchie, Luciano, Fanton Mojah, DYCR, Nomadzz, Stella Maris Dance Troup, C Sharp, Mark Stephenson, Nexus Performing Group, L'Acadco Dance Troup, Toisis, and The Immaculate Conception Orchestra. SPEAKERS: Dr. Barry Chevannes, Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson, Women One Love Healers and the Roskind Family. EMCEES: Elaine Wint, Denise "Isis" Miller, Daniel Thompson & Richie B. On stage: Bunny Wailer, Abijah, Mackie Conscious, Luciano, Robert, Alicia & Julia Roskind, Stephanie Marley Bunny Wailor Was Aglow Greetings, my brothers & sisters, and welcome to Bob Marley's 60th birthday party. I want to thank all of the conscious artistes and speakers, and our many Jamaican supporters, for accepting our family's invitation and adding your voice to ours on this historic night. All have donated their time and energy for free, as a gift to their people. One Love, my brothers and sisters. Photo by Roy Sweetland Joseph Hill & Culture Took Us Higher This event is a collaborative effort of the Jamaican Government, The Bob Marley Foundation and our family. I want to thank the JCDC, the Ministry of Education, Education Minister Maxine Henry-Wilson, Sydney Bartley, Hopeton Murray & Michael Nicholson for their tireless efforts to make this night possible. I want to thank the Stephanie Marley and the Bob Marley Foundation for joining their efforts with ours and for their keeping the music and message of Brother Bob vibrant and alive in the world for so long. And I want to thank the Jamaican Government for their collaboration and enlightened decision to re-instill Bob's message of One Love in the hearts and minds of your people. You have taken an historic step towards the healing of the nation. Photo by Roy Sweetland Abijah sings "Revelation" We stand before you as a American family who first visited this mystical land 4 years ago and returned home with our faith in humanity refreshed. Through our contact with you, we were reminded of the healing power of love. We speak for the multitudes who have been profoundly touched by your people and your music. Photo By Roy Sweetland Ernie Smith Opened Everyone's Hearts Like many here, our family is not immune to suffering. I was born into a Jewish family immediately after the Holocaust. I was raised by an black woman in the pre-civil rights South. I had to flee my government's attempt to send me to fight an immoral war in Vietnam. Even our young daughter has not escaped the pain of a world out of balance. In the last 2 years she has buried 4 friends lost to suicide and alcohol and drug-related incidences. We are all here in pain together. And all of us here want, more than anything else, to love and be loved. Photo by Roy Sweetland Prezident Brown Sings "To Jah Only" To millions worldwide, Jamaica is a guiding beacon of love and inspiration. Like others who visit your island and met your people or listen to your conscious One Love music, we see you quite differently than you may see yourself. We do not read your papers or watch your news everyday. We do not define you by the worst of your citizens but by your best. We do not define you by a few gunman and corrupt leaders but rather by the two and a half million citizens who get up each day and strive to lead a decent and righteous life often against great odds. We see you as a country that has risen above great suffering both in your past and present to offer the world a beautiful message of One Love--a message that the world very much needs right now. And if God's currency is love, we see you as one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We see your pledge that Jamaica may "play her part in advancing the welfare of the whole human race" not as a future promise but as a present reality . Mackie Conscious Sings "What If" This is our 54th One Love concert our family has organized in Jamaica. Along with Abijah and other conscious artistes, we have taken an invitation to your schools island-wide, especially your inner-city schools. Our invitation is simply this: join us in healing your lives individually and your country as a nation by claiming your God-given destiny to be a healer--a teacher of love--in your life. Get up each day and love and forgive as much as you can. As Bob Marley demonstrated, rise above the skepticism, the disillusionment, the hopelessness, the criticism, the negativity, and the anger and teach this One Love in your families, your schools, and your workplaces. Photo by Roy Sweetland Junior Reid & The One Blood Family God has not assigned any of us the task of ending all injustices and suffering in our countries. He has only asked that we do as much as we can in our own daily lives. No one alone can heal all of Jamaica but each one of us can heal our personal Jamaica, the small piece of Jamaica that the Creator has assigned to us. And we do this through our love, our kindness, and our compassion and mostly through our forgiveness as we forgive our enemies as the Master Teacher has asked us to do. Photo by Roy Sweetland Jamaican Women Invite All Women To Join them as Healers We understand Jamaica is going through a difficult period. In reality my country and the entire planet is going through a difficult time as well. Great challenges call for new approaches, so along with the traditional solutions, let's try love. Let us see if humanity has evolved enough to heal itself with the love in the heart of its people. And no society is better prepared to undertake and succeed at such a noble endeavor than Jamaica. Bob Marley and other conscious artistes have planted the truth of love and justice deep into the heart and soul of every Jamaican. Gospel Recording Artist Stitchie As Richie, the young man who washed windshields at the corner of Trafalgar and Hope Rd, showed us, each assignment is vital. Before his tragic murder, he got up each day and gave every motorist he encountered a loving vibe. The outpouring of love upon has death proves that every persons assigned path is important no matter how humble it may appear. Richie, in his sweet and simple way, may have done more to advance the consciousness of this island than many of its acknowledged leaders. Photo by Roy Sweetland Warrior King Praising Jah So join us our brothers and sister. If you want a more peaceful Jamaica, become a more peaceful Jamaican. If you want a more loving Jamaica, become a more loving Jamaican. Claim yourself as a teacher of love. Keep your covenant with your Creator to love others as He has loved us. Photo by Roy Sweetland Dub Poet Cherry Natural We as individuals need to heal our lives through One Love. Jamaica as a nation needs to heal herself through One Love. And the world needs Jamaica to demonstrate the power of a people choosing unity over divisiveness, commitment over anger and love over fear. Jamaica heal yourself and let your motto become, Out of Many, One People. Out of One People, One Love, Robert Roskind Cherry Natural, Loraine & Elaine Wint Bob's Daughter Stephanie with Family & Friends What's next? We have returned home to the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina where we await our next assignment. We'll keep you posted. What's your next assignment? Keep us posted too. One Love Photo by Roy Sweetland Alicia, Julia & Robert Roskind Authors of "Rasta Heart" & "The Gathering of the Healers" PO Box 2142 Blowing Rock, NC 28605 (828) 295-4610 roskind at boone.net www.onelovepress.com From ths at psalience.org Tue Feb 7 09:46:08 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:46:08 +0100 Subject: [THS] Global Research: Diet Drinks: America's Passion for Poison Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120207094027.04355150@mail.messagingengine.com> [remember: ASPARTAME approval was forced through the FDA by none-other-than your torturer-in-chief, 9/11 helmsman and world population correction planner, Dick Cheney, when he was CEO of Searle. -ths] Diet Drinks: America's Passion for Poison By Charles Foerster Global Research, February 1, 2012 URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29029 There is a great controversy raging between good and evil at the soda fountain or pop machine but the general public does not seem to be aware of it. The consequences of the dietary changes that have occurred since the introduction of artificial sweeteners into our lives since the early 1980's has likely increased dramatically but in many cases, silently. However, there is a coterie of medical doctors and research scientists that are aware of the effects and have published volumes. Unfortunately, their voices are largely drowned out by the industry. As in politics and other endeavors where mind-control plays a prominent role, advertising and propaganda are the most effective tools of those who are pitching a program or a product. The reasons for large infusions of cash could be to cover corporate wrongdoing, agency corruption, incompetency or just to hide plain carelessness but usually, profit motive is the driving force. Ethical business practices should promote periodic reviews but it appears that the only aspartame reviews have been on the annual reports. Of course, there are reports of side effects but why would that not have triggered an ongoing review by the agency responsible for approval in the first place? The FDA says that they monitor scientific literature for indication of potential health issues but they are not aware of credible evidence at this time to reverse the approval of aspartame. Perhaps they have not heard of Dr. Morando Soffritti? On April 23, 2007, Morando Soffritti, MD was honored with the Collegium Ramazzini's third Irving J. Selikoff Award at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, USA. Dr. Soffritti was recognized for his "outstanding contributions to the identification of environmental and industrial carcinogens and his promotion of independent scientific research.? The attitude of the FDA and industry would present the case that the only credible scientific evidence comes from government agencies or from corporate sources. Danger signs anyone? Could it be that we are so taken in by the all-encompassing custodial nature of total government that we have lost the ability to think and act on matters that concern our most vital possession, our health? On a personal level there is no in-between on diet drinks, either you like them or you hate them. No matter what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says or what any critical medical study shows, people are fiercely loyal to their diet drinks. There are also unimaginable numbers of other products that contain aspartame besides diet drinks but these products do not generate the intense loyalty as the fizzy cola thirst-quenchers. Included in these unnecessarily altered products are medicines, toothpaste, yogurt, baked goods and other specialty drinks. Commercialism forges ahead of good science and another man-made substance of questionable value has been added to the food chain. The detractors don't buy it but those addicted purchase it with an irrational compulsion. Like those with a narcotic habit, they don't seem to mind paying to satisfy the craving. And pay they do, to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Just what is this magical potion, aspartame? It is a combination of methanol and two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid. In 1965, James Schlattler, a chemist working at G.D. Searle discovered the substance quite by accident while working on a drug for another medical purpose. It was found to be many, many times sweeter than sugar but without the calories. The chemistry of aspartame as it breaks down in the human body is well documented but acceptance of the science depends on one's alliance with the industry or with the skeptic side. Regardless of one's position on the subject, metabolism of aspartame in the human body and the side-effects, or lack thereof, continues to be a intensely controversial subject. National Institutes of Health (NIH) describes a metabolite as any substance produced during metabolism (digestion or other bodily chemical processes). In medical terms, a metabolite usually refers to the product that remains after the drug is broken down (metabolized) by the body. Virtually all industry funded studies discount any adverse effects of aspartame metabolites. Typical ?friendly? clinical reviews of aspartame toxicity will most likely find the authors are closely related to the producers of aspartame. Conversely, and almost without fail, independent studies claim serious and deleterious consequences as result of aspartame consumption. A similar parallel could be drawn from the life-cycle of a popular non-food product. The Model 35 Beech Bonanza airplane was fast, comfortable, sexy and was immediately recognizable with its unique v-tail. Together, these attributes made it an easy sell to eager post-war consumers. It quickly became the darling of those who could afford the luxury and prestige of traveling in their own Rolls-Royce with wings. It was also very deadly. From its initial debut in 1947, to its end of production in 1982, the plane had suffered about 250, in-flight structural failures which resulted in hundreds of deaths of its pilots and innocent passengers. An engineering ethics study done at the University of Texas found that depending on year model, either the wings separated or the v-tail assembly failed. In 1952, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted a 12-year study and found out what they already knew; the airplane had an unusually high incidence of in-flight structural failures. No further action was taken and the study was terminated. As compared to the aspartame controversy a similar triumvirate of players were involved; the designer/manufacturer, the government agency that certified the design and the consumer. In the aviation example, Beech presented their design to the FAA; the FAA did their certification which assured the public that the product was airworthy and the aviation community quickly made it one of the most successful private airplanes ever produced. Never mind it also produced an inordinate number of fatalities. Concerning the lethal attributes of this airplane, the manufacturer could say the design was approved by the FAA so it was certified safe, therefore any crash must have been due to pilot error. The FAA said that it followed routine design certification procedures so they could find no reason to ground the airplane. Someone has to be culpable so it was necessary to shift the blame to the last one holding the controls. And so it was for about 35 years. After the introduction of the Model 33 and later, the Model 36 (same airframe except both of these models had the more conventional straight tails), it was found that the v-tails had 24 times the number of in-flight structural failures. So much for the engineering ethics and invincibility of manufacturers and government agencies. Admitting mistakes and correcting deficiencies comes hard for these two groups. Now, back to the controversial aspartame story. The diet food and drink industry is a multibillion dollar industry and the ravenous consumption by the thirsty public defies comprehension. As in the airplane example, success and profit motives are not necessarily bad things but any industry can be its own worst enemy if its ethics are less than scrupulous.The story of aspartame, its evolution and time-line from its discovery to FDA approval is replete with political maneuvering, suspected malfeasance and intrigue. It is rather difficult not to suspect wrong-doing when all the parts of the puzzle are laid on the table. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as the final authority to control the introduction of certain additives into the food chain should have exercised the most extreme caution in blessing this product which could conceivably effect the lives and health of millions of people. Many of these people are children and other trusting or unsuspecting individuals incapable of exercising caution. However, in all fairness, this is indeed exactly what they did from the mid-sixties until 1983, when greed, ego and politics triumphed over sound judgment, good science and ethics. As we have seen before, sometimes as little as five thousand dollars worth of potential personal gain can trigger an unethical act, especially if it is thought that no one is watching. When potential profits range in the neighborhood of hundreds of millions of dollars the temptation for concealing critical information about one's products might become too much to resist. When greed, gain and other human frailties are considered, a cynical person could suspect therein exists a possible root-cause for wrongdoing. A colossal industry is at stake and it is only natural for those companies that manufacture it or those that use it in their products to protect their industry and cash flow, even when their products have the potential to harm untold numbers, including children. Early testing was conducted in the fall of 1967 when Dr. Harold Waisman, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin, led aspartame safety tests on infant monkeys on behalf of the Searle Company. Of the seven monkeys that were being fed aspartame mixed with milk, one died and five others had grand mal seizures. The entire file can be found online at dorway dot com/raoreport.pdf. On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweeteners, and Reagan's new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and G.D. Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame. The preceding three paragraphs were reported by the National Institute of Science, Law, and Public Policy, Washington, D.C. While the components of the additive are well known, the team that pushed the approval process were perhaps not quite as well known. Donald H. Rumsfeld was Chief Executive Officer at G.D. Searle from 1977 to 1985 which was during the aspartame approval process. As a hard-driving business executive at Searle he was awarded the "Outstanding Chief Executive Officer" in 1980 and 1981 for his efforts to reshape the company. He may have helped reshape America too with the help of the FDA and the diet food and drink industry. Cronyism scored a direct hit. Since 1983, when the FDA approved aspartame for human use in diet drinks, the public has taken the bait for an easy fix to get rid of a flabby gut and extra pounds. Why not drink yourself out of obesity? It would seem, at the onset, a completely rational thing to do; watch the pounds float away by drinking a sugar-free can or bottle of pop, many times a day. Ka-ching, ka-ching, the profits roll in on a mix of carbonated water, caramel flavoring and coloring, sweetened with a white crystalline powder called aspartame. The FDA says it's safe so every day millions of people drink, eat and brush their teeth with concoctions laden with aspartame. As noted earlier, many medications even contain the substance. A Massachusetts pharmacist created a list of about 150 aspartame-containing drug products of which many are targeted for children (not including generics). The retailers wrap the package with usual advertising gimmickry and the campaign rolls on with insidious get-thin quick implications. It even goes to war; we supply our troops with a refreshing drink of home, never mind that it has been reported to trigger aggressive behavior and anger. On the other hand, maybe a little bottled road-rage on the battlefield is desirable? Not to worry, any long-term medical consequences to our best and brightest can be shoved over to the Veterans Administration where the budget is already strained to the breaking point. It is unfortunate that studies like the following have to be done after and not before the genie gets out of the bottle. Studies such as those done by the Ramazzini-Soffritti group in Italy and by P. Humphries, E. Pretorius and H. Naud? at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, show that aspartame is a potent neurotoxin and endocrine disruptor. The latter study was published in European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2008. A neurotoxin is like rattlesnake venom or poison from a black widow spider. Endocrine glands include the thyroid, adrenal and pituitary glands. On the pro-aspartame side, company scientists report that certain fruits contain more methanol than does aspartame. While this fact may be true, what they don't say is that ethyl alcohol is also found in natural fruits which is the antidote for methanol. On the left side, independent medical doctors, scientists and chemists say that is an essential and critical difference. When consumed alone, methanol (wood alcohol) is extremely dangerous and can cause blindness and even death. According to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), animal data and human historical epidemiological information show that methanol may produce acute toxicity. Casarett and Doull's Toxicology (Klaassen et al 1986) points out that whenever access to ethanol had been restricted (e.g., during Prohibition in the 1920s), the incidence of methanol poisoning has increased. ?The characteristic results of an epidemic are that a third of those exposed to methanol recover with no residues, a third have severe visual loss or blindness, and a third die. Thus in sufficiently high doses methanol has profound systemic effects." The General Foods study by Roak-Foltz and Leveille, found that the average adult will ingest approximately 87 mg of methanol on a daily basis when substituting artificial sweeteners in their food. Since this date was gathered in 1977-1978, it is likely the amounts have increased substantially. Both the U.S. Air Force magazine "Flying Safety" and the U.S. Navy magazine, "Navy Physiology" published articles warning about the many dangers of aspartame including the cumulative deleterious effects of methanol and other reactions. The articles note that the ingestion of aspartame may make pilots more susceptible to seizures and vertigo (U.S. Air Force 1992). Many pilots appear to be particularly susceptible to the effects of aspartame ingestion, probably because of trying to stay hydrated in a low-humidity atmosphere. They have reported numerous serious toxicity effects including grand mal seizures in the cockpit. A grand mal seizure is caused by abnormal electrical activity throughout the brain. If it is not a good idea to see a pilot at the controls experience a grand mal seizure one would assume it would be equally disturbing to see a passenger at 30,000 feet undergo the same physical incapacitation. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) published a study done by the Department of Experimental Physiology, Medical School, University of Athens, Greece, on the the effect of aspartame metabolites on human erythrocyte membrane acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity. It is concluded that low concentrations of ASP (aspartame) metabolites had no effect on the membrane enzyme activity, whereas high or toxic concentrations partially or remarkably decreased the membrane AChE activity, respectively. Additionally, neurological symptoms, including learning and memory processes, may be related to the high or toxic concentrations of the sweetener metabolites.This was a short-term study done on healthy adults. It is therefore not difficult to predict the same or even more dramatic effects when infants and children consume diet products throughout their formative years. The same information was published by the EPA at their Health & Environmental Research Online (HERO) website. Their stated purpose is to provide an easy way to view the scientific literature behind EPA science assessments. HERO is an EVERGREEN database which means that scientists can keep abreast of new research. There are more than 300,000 scientific articles from peer-reviewed literature and new studies are continuously added. HERO is part of the open government directive to conduct business with transparency, participation and collaboration. Through HERO, the public can participate in the decision-making process. One would assume that the FDA and the EPA would share or coordinate scientific studies. Need we go further? The academic and medical community apparently thought yes, the safety of aspartame must be fully explored since it is being offered in a wide variety of food and drink products which are consumed by the general public and heavily used by children. An aspartame study by C. Trocho et al, was conducted by the staff of the Biology Department at the University of Barcelona. It clearly shows that aspartame which was labeled with carbon 14 isotope was transformed into formaldehyde in the bodies of the living specimens and that when they were examined later, the radioactive tagged formaldehyde was found throughout the vital organs of their bodies. This conclusively proves that aspartame does indeed convert to formaldehyde in the bodies of aspartame consumers, and that many of the symptoms reported by victims of aspartame toxicity are indeed those associated with the poisonous and cumulative effects of formaldehyde. Merriam-Webster describes formaldehyde as a colorless, toxic, potentially carcinogenic, water-soluble gas, CH 2 O, having a suffocating odor, usually derived from methyl alcohol by oxidation: used chiefly in aqueous solution, as a disinfectant and preservative, and in the manufacture of various resins and plastics. What would renowned French Chef Julia Child have had to say about this metabolite of aspartame? You can be assured it would not have been ?bon app?tit?. Beyond Ms. Child, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an intergovernmental agency part of the United Nations World Health Organization classifies formaldehyde as a Group 1 carcinogen. In a study at the Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center of the European Ramazzini Foundation it was demonstrated for the first time that aspartame is a multipotent carcinogenic agent when various doses are administered with feed to Sprague-Dawley rats from 8 weeks of age throughout the life span. In the second Ramazzini-Soffritti study it was concluded that the results reinforced the first study and when life-span exposure to aspartame begins at fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased. When considering what should have been done to protect the public there is little doubt in many minds that the ethics of the FDA and its safety net for the general public were severely compromised at best, non-existent at worst. Some of the adverse symptoms that have been reported include the following: impotence, reduced female response, numbness, tingling nerves, aggressive behavior, spontaneous anger, anxiety, aggravation of phobias, depression, grand mal seizures and a combination of symptoms that mimic a heart attack. Since another aspartame constituent (phenylalanine) tends to inhibit serotonin process in the human body, it might be important to examine another phenylalanine/serotonin imbalance. That imbalance shows cause for concern. Professor Michele Ernandes and colleagues at the University of Palermo offer an explanation of the relationship of reduced brain serotonin synthesis and behavioral consequences. In their studies the reduced brain serotonin synthesis was brought on by a specific dietary imbalance. Could it be that a similar dietary imbalance occurs when large amounts of aspartame are introduced into the diet? Ernandes states that serotonin deficiency involves several behavioral consequences such as tendency towards aggressive behavior, increase of intraspecific competition, increase of magic thought or religious fanaticism. The professor focuses on cereals utilized for human feeding. His target is maize which has a very low ?trp/LNAAs? value (tryptophan/Large Neutral Amino Acids ratio). Maize was firstly and largely utilized by Native American peoples and this is particularly interesting in the study of the Aztec human sacrifice/cannibalism complex. Historical data reveal that cannibalism occurred in period of the year when maize dependence was greater, supporting the hypothesis of Ernandes and his associates that serotonin deficiency among the Aztecs might have accentuated their religious and aggressive behavior patterns on the one hand, and on the other it might have led them unconsciously, towards anthropophagy in order to attenuate it (rising ?trp/LNAAs? value by means of human proteins) when it became too strong. It would seem that the study by the Ernandes group would have a correlation with many of other studies that show adverse behavioral consequences of aspartame consumption. There are also numerous other neurological symptoms that have been reported. If any of these conditions are present, would it not be beneficial to eliminate consumption of any product that contains aspartame? It will take some label-reading but it is a cost-free endeavor. After a few months of abstention from all products that contain aspartame you may feel like a new person or perhaps your mate will feel like you're a new person. If not, you've possibly lost nothing but a few pounds. Could it be that the low pH of soft drinks (around 3.0) causes the body to retain fluids trying to re-balance the body's natural pH balance of 6.5 or so? The Harvard School of Public Health reports that a eight-year study conducted by Department of Medicine, Division of Clinical Epidemiology, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas, found that of nearly 3,700 residents of San Antonio, Texas, those who averaged three or more artificially sweetened beverages a day were more likely to have gained weight over an eight-year period than those who didn't drink artificially sweetened beverages. Although this finding is suggestive, keep in mind that it doesn't prove that artificially sweetened soft drinks caused the weight gain. The San Antonio study group went on to say that their findings raise the question whether AS (artificial sweeteners) use might be fueling--rather than fighting--our escalating obesity epidemic. If you are a regular or long-time consumer of artificially sweetened products and have not yet experienced any side effects of aspartame and its metabolites, perhaps you are just lucky or have a natural immunity to carcinogens and/or neurotoxins. If however, you don't like the odds or have doubts about natural immunity or about the controversial science, there might be an easy way to protect yourself. For fundamentalists there is a long-term, pragmatic approach; simply drink water. God created it to be used for human consumption about the same time he created man, some 6,000 years ago. For those who believe in the Big-Bang theory of evolution, water has a phenomenal record of satiating the thirst of man, beast and fowl for millions of years. For the person climbing the corporate ladder or for an individual on the fast-track to the top of the class, there are some sheik, expensive and exotic waters from many parts of the world that will make a statement on fashion or status while at the same time quenching one's thirst. By choosing clear, uncontaminated natural waters as your favorite thirst-quencher you just might be rewarded with serene composure, vitality, good mental and physical health, strength and stamina, a steady hand and freedom of pain. Stay thirsty my friends! But remember, "caveat emptor? is the catch-phrase when reading the labels on products that you intend to introduce into your body. Charles Foerster is a former Naval Aviator and professional pilot. jcfoers at msn.com Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. From ths at psalience.org Tue Feb 7 14:15:14 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:15:14 +0100 Subject: [THS] The Armageddon Plan Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120207141242.03e371d0@mail.messagingengine.com> Re: Aspartame: Rumsfeld not Cheney was CEO of Searle. Both are implicated in "the plan" however. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm Published in the March, 2004 issue of The Atlantic The Armageddon Plan by James Mann At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area?where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency. After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man?joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet?slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations. Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role. The inspiration for this program came from within the Administration itself, not from Cheney or Rumsfeld; except for a brief stint Rumsfeld served as Middle East envoy, neither of them ever held office in the Reagan Administration. Nevertheless, they were leading figures in the program. A few details about the effort have come to light over the years, but nothing about the way it worked or the central roles played by Cheney and Rumsfeld. The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Vice President Cheney urged President Bush to stay out of Washington for the rest of that day; Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his deputy Paul Wolfowitz to get out of town; Cheney himself began to move from Washington to a series of "undisclosed locations"; and other federal officials were later sent to work outside the capital, to ensure the continuity of government in case of further attacks. All these actions had their roots in the Reagan Administration's clandestine planning exercises. The U.S. government considered the possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union more seriously during the early Reagan years than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Reagan had spoken in his 1980 campaign about the need for civil-defense programs to help the United States survive a nuclear exchange, and once in office he not only moved to boost civil defense but also approved a new defense-policy document that included plans for waging a protracted nuclear war against the Soviet Union. The exercises in which Cheney and Rumsfeld participated were a hidden component of these more public efforts to prepare for nuclear war. The premise of the secret exercises was that in case of a nuclear attack on Washington, the United States needed to act swiftly to avoid "decapitation"?that is, a break in civilian leadership. A core element of the Reagan Administration's strategy for fighting a nuclear war would be to decapitate the Soviet leadership by striking at top political and military officials and their communications lines; the Administration wanted to make sure that the Soviets couldn't do to America what U.S. nuclear strategists were planning to do to the Soviet Union. Under the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations the U.S. government had built large underground installations at Mount Weather, in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and near Camp David, along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, each of which could serve as a military command post for the President in time of war. Yet a crucial problem remained: what might happen if the President couldn't make it to one of those bunkers in time. The Constitution makes the Vice President the successor if the President dies or is incapacitated, but it establishes no order of succession beyond that. Federal law, most recently the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, establishes further details. If the Vice President dies or cannot serve, then the speaker of the House of Representatives becomes President. After him in the line of succession come the president pro tempore of the Senate (typically the longest-serving member of the majority party) and then the members of the Cabinet, in the order in which their posts were created?starting with the Secretary of State and moving to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and so on. The Reagan Administration, however, worried that this procedure might not meet the split-second needs of an all-out war with the Soviet Union. What if a nuclear attack killed both the President and the Vice President, and maybe the speaker of the House, too? Who would run the country if it was too hard to track down the next living person in line under the Succession Act? What civilian leader could immediately give U.S. military commanders the orders to respond to an attack, and how would that leader communicate with the military? In a continuing nuclear exchange, who would have the authority to reach an agreement with the Soviet leadership to bring the war to an end? The outline of the plan was simple. Once the United States was (or believed itself about to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country, and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President. If the Soviet Union were somehow to locate one of the teams and hit it with a nuclear weapon, the second team or, if necessary, the third could take over. This was not some abstract textbook plan; it was practiced in concrete and elaborate detail. Each team was named for a color?"red" or "blue," for example?and each had an experienced executive who could operate as a new White House chief of staff. The obvious candidates were people who had served at high levels in the executive branch, preferably with the national-security apparatus. Cheney and Rumsfeld had each served as White House chief of staff in the Ford Administration. Other team leaders over the years included James Woolsey, later the director of the CIA, and Kenneth Duberstein, who served for a time as Reagan's actual White House chief of staff. As for the Cabinet members on each team, some had little experience in national security; at various times, for example, participants in the secret exercises included John Block, Reagan's first Secretary of Agriculture, and Malcolm Baldrige, the Secretary of Commerce. What counted was not experience in foreign policy but, rather, that the Cabinet member was available. It seems fair to conclude that some of these "Presidents" would have been mere figureheads for a more experienced chief of staff, such as Cheney or Rumsfeld. Still, the Cabinet members were the ones who would issue orders, or in whose name the orders would be issued. One of the questions studied in these exercises was what concrete steps a team might take to establish its credibility. What might be done to demonstrate to the American public, to U.S. allies, and to the Soviet leadership that "President" John Block or "President" Malcolm Baldrige was now running the country, and that he should be treated as the legitimate leader of the United States? One option was to have the new "President" order an American submarine up from the depths to the surface of the ocean?since the power to surface a submarine would be a clear sign that he was now in full control of U.S. military forces. This standard?control of the military?is one of the tests the U.S. government uses in deciding whether to deal with a foreign leader after a coup d'?tat. "One of the awkward questions we faced," one participant in the planning of the program explains, "was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them." For one thing, it was felt that reconvening Congress, and replacing members who had been killed, would take too long. Moreover, if Congress did reconvene, it might elect a new speaker of the House, whose claim to the presidency might have greater legitimacy than that of a Secretary of Agriculture or Commerce who had been set up as President under Reagan's secret program. The election of a new House speaker would not only take time but also create the potential for confusion. The Reagan Administration's primary goal was to set up a chain of command that could respond to the urgent minute-by-minute demands of a nuclear war, when there might be no time to swear in a new President under the regular process of succession, and when a new President would not have the time to appoint a new staff. The Administration, however, chose to establish this process without going to Congress for the legislation that would have given it constitutional legitimacy. Ronald Reagan established the continuity-of-government program with a secret executive order. According to Robert McFarlane, who served for a time as Reagan's National Security Adviser, the President himself made the final decision about who would head each of the three teams. Within Reagan's National Security Council the "action officer" for the secret program was Oliver North, later the central figure in the Iran-contra scandal. Vice President George H.W. Bush was given the authority to supervise some of these efforts, which were run by a new government agency with a bland name: the National Program Office. It had its own building in the Washington area, run by a two-star general, and a secret budget adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Much of this money was spent on advanced communications equipment that would enable the teams to have secure conversations with U.S. military commanders. In fact, the few details that have previously come to light about the secret program, primarily from a 1991 CNN investigative report, stemmed from allegations of waste and abuses in awarding contracts to private companies, and claims that this equipment malfunctioned. The exercises were usually scheduled during a congressional recess, so that Cheney would miss as little work on Capitol Hill as possible. Although Cheney, Rumsfeld, and one other team leader took part in each exercise, the Cabinet members changed depending on who was available at a particular time. (Once, Attorney General Ed Meese participated in an exercise that departed from Andrews in the pre-dawn hours of June 18, 1986?the day after Chief Justice Warren Burger resigned. One official remembers looking at Meese and thinking, "First a Supreme Court resignation, and now America's in a nuclear war. You're having a bad day.") In addition to the designated White House chief of staff and his President, each team included representatives from the Departments of State and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, and also from various domestic-policy agencies. The idea was to practice running the entire federal government with a skeletal crew during a nuclear war. At one point there was talk of bringing in the governors of Virginia and Maryland and the mayor of the District of Columbia, but the idea was discarded because they didn't have the necessary security clearance. The exercises were designed to be stressful. Participants gathered in haste, moved and worked in the early-morning hours, lived in Army-base conditions, and dined on early, particularly unappetizing versions of the military's dry, mass-produced MREs (meals ready to eat). An entire exercise lasted close to two weeks, but each team took part for only three or four days. One team would leave Washington, run through its drills, and then?as if it were on the verge of being "nuked"?hand off to the next team. The plans were carried out with elaborate deception, designed to prevent Soviet reconnaissance satellites from detecting where in the United States the teams were going. Thus the teams were sent out in the middle of the night, and changed locations from one exercise to the next. Decoy convoys were sometimes dispatched along with the genuine convoys carrying the communications gear. The underlying logic was that the Soviets could not possibly target all the makeshift locations around the United States where the Reagan teams might operate. The capstone to all these efforts to stay mobile was a special airplane, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, a modified Boeing 747 based at Andrews and specially outfitted with a conference room and advanced communications gear. In it a President could remain in the air and run the country during a nuclear showdown. In one exercise a team of officials stayed aloft in this plane for three days straight, cruising up and down the coasts and back and forth across the country, refueling in the air. When George H.W. Bush was elected President, in 1988, members of the secret Reagan program rejoiced; having been closely involved with the effort from the start, Bush wouldn't need to be initiated into its intricacies and probably wouldn't re-evaluate it. In fact, despite dramatically improved relations with Moscow, Bush did continue the exercises, with some minor modifications. Cheney was appointed Secretary of Defense and dropped out as a team leader. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse, the rationale for the exercises changed. A Soviet nuclear attack was obviously no longer plausible?but what if terrorists carrying nuclear weapons attacked the United States and killed the President and the Vice President? Finally, during the early Clinton years, it was decided that this scenario was farfetched and outdated, a mere legacy of the Cold War. It seemed that no enemy in the world was still capable of decapitating America's leadership, and the program was abandoned. There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before. Operating from the underground shelter beneath the White House, called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Cheney told Bush to delay a planned flight back from Florida to Washington. At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld instructed a reluctant Wolfowitz to get out of town to the safety of one of the underground bunkers, which had been built to survive nuclear attack. Cheney also ordered House Speaker Dennis Hastert, other congressional leaders, and several Cabinet members (including Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and Interior Secretary Gale Norton) evacuated to one of these secure facilities away from the capital. Explaining these actions a few days later, Cheney vaguely told NBC's Tim Russert, "We did a lot of planning during the Cold War with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident." He did not mention the Reagan Administration program or the secret drills in which he and Rumsfeld had regularly practiced running the country. Their participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States?inhabitants of a world in which Presidents come and go, but America keeps on fighting. James Mann, former Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, is senior writer-in-residence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, D.C. This article is adapted from his book 'Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet' to be published this month. Copyright ? 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group From ths at psalience.org Fri Feb 10 01:37:38 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:37:38 +0100 Subject: [THS] Senate votes to let drones operate in US airspace Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120210013656.064ad1e0@mail.messagingengine.com> http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/among-liberties-advocates-outrage-over-expanded-use-of-drones/#more-159441 February 7, 2012, 9:35 pm Among Liberties Advocates, Outrage Over Expanded Use of Drones By CHANNING JOSEPH A measure passed by the Senate on Monday that would require the Federal Aviation Administration to give unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, expanded access to airways in the United States has civil liberties organizations fuming. Under the measure, the drones, similar to those used to track Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would share airspace with conventional planes by Sept. 30, 2015. Until now, the F.A.A. has sought limits on the use of drones in national airspace because of concerns that the devices did not have sufficient safety mechanisms to prevent midair collisions. But the F.A.A. bill would sharply curtail those limits, and civil liberties groups are in an uproar over potential privacy concerns posed by the drones ? some of which are as small as a hummingbird and can be equipped with infrared and video cameras as well as radar. ?Our main concern is that this technology is growing by leaps and bounds,? said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, in a telephone interview. ?We?d like to see rules put in place.? Mr. Stanley is the co-author of a Dec. 15 report calling for drones not to be deployed unless the government has obtained a warrant and ?there are grounds to believe that they will collect evidence on a specific crime.? Americans ?don?t want to have to worry that every time we step out our front door that we are going to be tracked,? he said. The legislation is part of a larger bill authorizing $63.4 billion in financing over four years for the F.A.A. that was passed by the House on Friday and is headed to President Obama, who is expected to sign it into law. The aircraft, which can be controlled by remote or operate on their own, are already being used for surveillance by some local and state law enforcement authorities. United States Customs and Border Protection uses drones to patrol the nation?s borders, and authorities in Texas have used them in drug investigations. ?Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft,? Mr. Stanley wrote on the A.C.L.U.?s blog. ?This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.? The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties and digital-rights group in San Francisco, is also apprehensive about the impact of drones on privacy. The foundation filed a lawsuit last month against the United States Department of Transportation, demanding that the agency release information on which entities have been given authorization to use drone aircraft and why. Any public entity ? like law enforcement agencies or state universities ? seeking to fly unmanned aerial vehicles at a height above 400 feet must obtain certification from the F.A.A. (which is part of the Transportation Department). The government has not yet publicly released a comprehensive list of the entities holding these certifications, but the F.A.A. acknowledged that it had issued hundreds of such authorizations by the end of 2010. Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer with the foundation, said after the bill?s passage, ?I think now more than ever the public is entitled to see the records we are suing the F.A.A. to get.? Proponents of drone technology maintain that it has become useful in criminal investigations and immigrations enforcement, offering a cheaper and less obtrusive alternative to helicopters. Customs and Border Patrol, for example, says on its Web site that it has achieved ?unprecedented success in homeland security, law enforcement and in support of disaster relief efforts? with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. But Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy in Washington and a senior analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed concerns about safety as well as privacy. ?The use of drones domestically raises a whole range of questions that have hardly been asked, let alone answered,? Mr. Aftergood said in an e-mail. ?What is the probable impact of drone operations on personal privacy? What are the worst-case safety consequences of a drone failure? What is the current and future role of drones in domestic military operations?? When asked about the drone measure, Laura Brown, an F.A.A. spokeswoman, said, ?This is something we are not really in a position to comment on right now.? From ths at psalience.org Fri Feb 10 12:53:30 2012 From: ths at psalience.org (The Harder Stuff in news and commentary) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:53:30 +0100 Subject: [THS] "The Thing" About to Appear? Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20120210125153.06de0c80@mail.messagingengine.com> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_ANTARCTIC_LAKE?SITE=OHALL2&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Feb 10, 6:29 AM EST Putin hails Antarctic lake discovery World Video MOSCOW (AP) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has praised Russian scientists who have reached a gigantic freshwater lake in Antarctica hidden under more than two miles of ice. Putin on Friday hailed the discovery of Lake Vostok as a "great event" in remarks carried by Russian newswires, and said the research team members will receive state awards. The Russian researchers hit the lake Sunday at a depth of 3,769 meters (12,366 feet) about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) east of the South Pole in the central part of the continent, after more than two decades of drilling. Touching the surface of Lake Vostok, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, was a major discovery avidly anticipated by scientists around the world who expected it to hold life from the distant past and clues to the search for life on other planets.