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| Puppet Masters |
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James Ball
The Guardian 2013-10-24 17:39:00
The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems. The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA. The revelation is set to add to mounting diplomatic tensions between the US and its allies, after the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday accused the US of tapping her mobile phone. After Merkel's allegations became public, White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement that said the US "is not monitoring and will not monitor" the German chancellor's communications. But that failed to quell the row, as officials in Berlin quickly pointed out that the US did not deny monitoring the phone in the past. | |
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Comment: Like we said in our radio show when 'NSA-gate' broke, drown them in data! Let them EAT DATA!
PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel |
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Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour
The Guardian 2013-10-24 16:59:00
Tony Blair attributes his success as a conflict mediator to his ability to absorb the "sense of pain" felt by participants and his skill in transmitting raw emotions from one side to the other. The former prime minister says mediators can only bring opponents together if they can understand their suffering on an "empathetic level". Blair was appointed in 2007 as envoy for the Middle East Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia - which aims to mediate a peace process in the Israel-Palestine conflict - after his success in brokering a political settlement in Northern Ireland. In a new foreword to the latest volume of diaries by Alastair Campbell, which focus entirely on the Northern Ireland peace process, Blair writes that the main participants in the negotiations became his friends because "I had inside me something of the passions they felt inside them". Campbell, whose diaries are published this weekend, likens Blair to a marriage guidance counsellor. In an interview for Saturday's Guardian, the former Downing Street communications director says: "Tony's genius was to be like a Relate counsellor. It was like he was absorbing all this angst and anger and bitterness and hatred and the rest of it. He was somehow able to make both sides feel that he kind of got it - he really did understand it." | |
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Comment: Note how the focus is on Northern Ireland,
with the legacy of his role in murdering 1.5 million Iraqis left out of
this 'psychological profile'.
But even if we look at his 'achievements' in Northern Ireland in isolation, the so-called 'peace process' has done nothing to change the fact that Northern Ireland remains occupied territory. Sectarianism in Northern Ireland is still being reinforced by the military-security apparatus that has long since infiltrated and controlled both 'sides' in the conflict. Together with Campbell, the extent of Blair's 'empathy' was to convince people and other governments that carpet bombing Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere would make the world a better place. Far from being a 'skilled mediator', Tony Blair is a dangerous war criminal. See also: Arundhati Roy: Tony Blair is a psychopath |
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Michael Krieger
Over the weekend a close friend sent me the following image, which was found spray-painted somewhere in Brooklyn:LibertyBlitzkrieg 2013-10-24 15:51:00
The words above reflect a state of mind and disposition that has been expressed by philosophers and revolutionaries for thousands of years. It is not a novel or new concept, but it is a concept that seems to have been forgotten across much of these United States. The population has largely been domesticated and this is the primary reason why there has been such little pushback to the global oligarchs looting the landscape. A pathetically large percentage of the population would rather not think, they'd prefer to be told what to believe. They would rather not have any risk in their lives, they'd prefer to have shiny gadgets handed to them. They would rather not explore the wonderful expansive world around them, they'd rather sit on the couch and watch television. Planet earth is a truly incredible place. Majestic mountains, glistening and seemingly endless blue seas, powerful dense forests. Its beauty is too profound for me to accurately put into words. At the same time, there are terrible tsunamis, horrific hurricanes, devastating floods and countless other natural disasters that pose a constant deadly threat. |
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Jane Mayer
The New Yorker 2013-10-17 01:07:00
Last night, along with the bill reopening the government, the Senate confirmed Stephen W. Preston, the top lawyer at the C.I.A., to move to the Pentagon to serve in the same role there. The vote slipped by unnoticed by most, but on close inspection, it revealed previously unreleased documents that lift the lid on an unusual standoff between Congress and the Obama Administration's C.I.A. At its core is a bitter disagreement over an apparently devastating, and still secret, report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documenting in detail how the C.I.A.'s brutalization of terror suspects during the Bush years was unnecessary, ineffective, and deceptively sold to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, and the public. The report threatens to definitively refute former C.I.A. personnel who have defended the program's integrity. But so far, to the consternation of several members of the Intelligence Committee, the Obama Administration, like Bush's before it, is keeping the damning details from public view. Preston's confirmation became a proxy skirmish in the fight. Obama reportedly hoped to get Preston confirmed before the congressional recess this past summer. Instead, Senator Mark Udall, a Democrat from Colorado, who is a member of both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee, put a "hold" on Preston's confirmation until he answered a set of additional, and previously undisclosed, questions. A copy of these seven questions, and Preston's answers, obtained by The New Yorker (see here), sheds new light on the conflict. The questions and answers make clear that Udall, who has pushed vigorously for the report's release, voted to confirm Preston only after he believed that the general counsel distanced himself from his own intelligence agency's defiant and defensive stance on the six-thousand-three-hundred page report, which cost forty million dollars to produce. Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, are pushing to declassify and publicly release it. But John Brennan, the agency's director, a career C.I.A. officer, and an Obama confidant, is apparently resisting disclosure, and challenging many of the report's conclusions. |
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The Globe and Mail
2013-10-22 20:19:00
American troops are gone from Iraq and will exit Afghanistan next year, but the United States' "War on Terror" isn't over: It has moved from boots on the ground to drones in the sky. Deployed correctly, drones can be an effective tool in counterinsurgency warfare. Their exceptional surveillance capabilities are supposed to improve accuracy and limit civilian casualties in combat. That's the theory. The practice has been less antiseptic. This week, reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International document in piercing detail how drones, President Obama's weapon of choice on "high-value" targets in Yemen and Pakistan, can sometimes be the United States' worst enemy. Researchers found that strikes in remote villages often missed their mark, with disastrous results. In Pakistan, a 68-year-old woman tending crops was blown to bits in front of her grandchildren. In Yemen, five men were killed near a mosque; only three proved to be members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The other two were bystanders. One was a cleric who often preached against jihad. | |
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Comment:
America's deadly double tap drone attacks are 'killing 49 people for every known terrorist in Pakistan' Pakistan claim 400 civilians killed by drone strikes: US refuses to release death toll figures claiming 'they're classified' UN report says drone strikes killed more civilians than publicly acknowledged |
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Raw Story
2013-10-23 20:13:00
A federal jury Wednesday concluded that Bank of America defrauded mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a lending program that fast-tracked mortgages ahead of the housing bust. The jury's ruling sets Bank of America on course for a federal civil penalty to be determined by US District Judge Jed Rakoff. The lending program was created by Countrywide, once a giant in subprime mortgages, prior to its 2008 acquisition by Bank of America. The Justice Department alleged that Countrywide created the so-called "Hustle" program in 2007 as government-backed Freddie and Fannie were tightening their underwriting guidelines and loan purchase requirements in response to rising loan defaults. Countrywide allegedly eliminated key checkpoints on loan quality and compensated employees solely based on loan volumes, leading to "rampant instances of fraud" while Countrywide informed the loan-finance firms that it tightened requirements, the Justice Department said in court papers. US Attorney Preet Bharara praised Wednesday's verdict. |
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| Society's Child |
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Dominic Kelly
Opposing Vews 2013-10-22 15:35:00
A pet dog was shot dead in front of its owner and her two-year-old son by a police officer in Boise, Idaho. Owner Gabrielle Stropaki and her son Hayden loved the dog, named Kita, dearly and are heartbroken that she was killed. Police say that they were responding to a report of theft in the neighborhood when the dog ran up to them. They say they felt threatened. "In about five seconds he pulled his weapon, asked whose dog it was, and shot her in the back of the head," said Stropaki. Neighbors who witnessed the incident also claimed that the dog gave a couple of barks at the officer, but that the dog wasn't trying to attack him. Stropaki maintains that she had let the dog out of the house to go to the bathroom without a leash and that she was watching him, along with her 2-year-old son. She says that her son witnessed the shooting as well. Now the family is outraged and says that the officer acted irrationally. |
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Michael Day
The Independent, UK 2013-10-24 15:09:00
The role of Italian mobsters in human trafficking - of the kind that saw more than 350 African migrants perish off the coast of Lampedusa in a single boat disaster earlier this month - has been laid bare by police. Members of Mafia organisations work with crime syndicates in Egypt to charge would-be illegal immigrants for the dangerous voyage from Africa to Italy - and then hold them prisoner in horrendous conditions, to extort more money from the migrants and their families, according to police reports carried by La Repubblica. Dramatic video evidence has emerged of one of the worst cases, which occurred on 23 September 2011. After paying an Egyptian crime clan to be taken by boat to Sicily, 22 Egyptian men were seized when they landed in the port of Rutta e Ciauli, near Syracuse, and locked in a dark basement for eight days without food or water. Their captors refused to release them until their families wired more money to their captors. After police freed them on 30 September, the migrants said they had only managed to survive by drinking rainwater that dripped into the dungeon. In video footage of the moment in which police break into their prison, one policeman told the reporter: "They were herded like rats... the smell was nauseating." |
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Ian Schwartz
CBS13 2013-10-23 19:59:00 Nevada City - A man wracked by the guilt of robbing a school when he was 12 years old made amends with a letter and an envelope full of money. It was 17 years ago when he broke into a classroom at Grizzly Hill Elementary School. He stole $300 that was supposed to be for a field trip. Principal James Berardi says after break-ins, stolen items never make their way back to the small school outside of Nevada City. "We're out in the country, and things disappear out here, because there's not a lot of people here," he said. But this last weekend, money that went missing almost 20 years ago showed up in a blue envelope with a note: |
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Charles Piller
The Sacramento Bee 2013-10-21 01:35:00
When Staff Sgt. Troy Torres and his wife, Sgt. Lori Torres, joined the California National Guard more than five years ago, they were stirred by patriotism and persuaded by something more tangible - the prospect of paying down some student loans. Each was promised $20,000 in loan repayments over six years, an enticement for recruits. Now, the Guard is asking for it back. Fraud and wrongdoing in the incentive program were exposed in a 2010 Sacramento Bee investigation, and since then the Guard has revisited the program to clean it up. The Guard had approved applications improperly. Now, pending payments have been suspended, and checks garnished. That means many soldiers, including some who served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, have learned that they weren't qualified for the incentives. "We have been vilified, like we have done something wrong and must be punished," after having accepted fully approved incentive payments in good faith, Troy Torres, 52, said. "Neither of us have committed a crime nor violated U.S. Army regulations." He called the situation "a financial nightmare for our family." Torres, a medic, said he and his wife, who have three children - Alec, 16, Ethan, 13, and Olivia, 11 - struggle to pay food and utility bills. They had to seek help from relatives to pay for a long-awaited educational trip to Washington, D.C., for Ethan, on top of costs for Olivia's music lessons and science camp. The couple have fallen behind on the mortgage for their Galt home. A slip in their credit rating could jeopardize Torres' security clearance - required for his job. "Lori is in Afghanistan today, at great personal risk," in part, because soldiers in combat zones earn more money, and they needed to compensate for their garnished wages, Torres said. "We live paycheck to paycheck like everyone else," he said. "When you take $1,500 out of my paycheck, you can't budget that." Torres takes home $2,100 twice a month. |
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ABC Local
2013-10-23 00:00:00
A New Jersey woman is charged with vehicular homicide after authorities say she caused a deadly accident while texting and driving. Jennifer Sahoye, 35, of Rahway, is now the first person charged with homicide in Essex County in connection with a texting-while-driving incident. Prosecutors say Sahoye was driving in the express lanes of Route 1 & 9 in Newark on October 10 when she crossed into the local lanes and hit a pickup truck driven by 58-year-old Carlos Carvalho. Authorities say they have proof that Sahoye, who was also driving with a suspended license, was texting at the time of the crash. | |
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Pranab Jyoti Bhuyan
Daily News and Analysis, India 2013-10-23 20:33:00
If your child ventures out alone in the afternoon to play in a nearby ground, you have reason to be worried. He or she could be one of the 600 children, from Navi Mumbai, who never return home, each year. According to the Navi Mumbai police records, around 50 children go missing from the city every month. While a small percentage of these are found by thepolice, and some make their way back on their own, a majority of them are lost without a trace. According to activists, there are two reasons to be anxious. Firstly, the Navi Mumbai police department never takes the issue seriously. As most parents of missing children are poor and uneducated, the police tend to ignore such cases and, at times, don't file an FIR, activists said. Secondly, there are many active begging rackets in the city, which lost children fall victim to. An RTI query filed by an NGO, Conscious Citizen Forum, revealed that the Navi Mumbai police has not taken any action under Bombay Prevention of Begging Act, 1959, in the last 10 years. Maharashtra state home minister RR Patil recently wrote a letter to Navi Mumbai police commissioner AK Sharma, asking to take the menace seriously. |
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Nick Surgey and Katie Lorenze
PR Watch 2013-10-08 00:00:00
In a story most in the media missed, protestors gathered under the dome at the Mississippi state capitol earlier this year to oppose a bill that would allow the state Department of Human Services (DHS) to privatize everything from child protective services to nutrition programs for the elderly. The bill, HB 1009, which later passed, started out as a way to allow the Mississippi DHS to hire private contractors to collect child support payments -- something which Mississippi had flirted with in the past, with less than impressive results. From 1995-2000, a wealthy but little known firm called Maximus, Inc. had been hired to collect overdue child support payments in Mississippi and, according to a joint legislative committee report, on average, had higher costs but collected less in payments than the state did during the same five-year period. During the February 2013 debate on the new bill in the state Senate, the Associated Press quoted Senator Hob Bryan as saying "I remember the disaster that Maximus was." But memories of that failed experiment did not stop Republican lawmakers from expanding HB 1009 to include a broad provision to allow the Mississippi DHS to privatize any of its functions by contracting out to private companies. "Outsourcing aid for people can't work. It's designed to make a profit," Mississippi state representative Jim Evans told CMD. Evans had joined other legislators to stop what they saw as the potential corporate takeover of a public agency providing essential services to vulnerable citizens. Despite the now lengthy list of failed -- and often disastrous -- attempts at privatizing social services in states across the country, Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed the bill into law this spring. |
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| Secret History |
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Sanliurfa
2013-10-24 14:51:00
The World Heritage List includes Hierapolis Antic City that is in the Aegean province of Denizli, Pamukkale and new historical ruins were found in there that named as “gate of hell”. The Italian team discovered a head of Aphrodite statue, oil lamps and a twin flutiste figure a few days ago. Professor Francesco D'Andria of Italy's Lecce University d historical ruins to public. A historical marble sculpture of three head dog Kerberos was found in the old temple. Hierapolis is home to some historical artifacts from the Hellenistic period until the ancient age, B.C. 600. |
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| Science & Technology |
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Steve Connor, Tim Walker
'Messenger from the sea god's palace' washed up more than 10 times
in year before Japanese tsunami - now two have been found off CaliforniaThe Independent, UK 2013-10-24 08:46:00
Long, slender and snake-like, the giant oarfish is rarely found fewer than 200 metres from the surface of the ocean. Yet in the year leading up to the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, between 10 and 20 of the deep sea creatures washed up dead along the coast of Japan. Ancient Japanese fishermen's lore suggests the oarfish - known as the "messenger from the sea god's palace" - rises to the surface to warn of impending earthquakes. Which is why people in Southern California are a little nervous at the news that, this month alone, at least two oarfish have been sighted on their beaches without any visible signs of injury or disease, leading to speculation that they were affected by some deep underwater disturbance. Rachel Grant, a lecturer in animal biology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, said there might be some truth to the Japanese legend, and she has begun a study to test the idea. "It's theoretically possible because when an earthquake occurs there can be a build-up of pressure in the rocks which can lead to electrostatic charges that cause electrically-charged ions to be released into the water," Dr Grant said. "This can lead to the formation of hydrogen peroxide, which is a toxic compound. The charged ions can also oxidise organic matter which could either kill the fish or force them to leave the deep ocean and rise to the surface." | |
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Comment: See also.Second rare oarfish washes up in Southern California
18-foot oarfish caught by Catalina marine science instructor in California Something amiss deep down? Bizarre-looking oarfish washes ashore on Cabo San Lucas beach Appearance of "Earthquake fish" spook Japanese Rare "King of Herrings" Found off Swedish Coast England: Monster of deep washes up on beach |
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Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News 2013-10-23 20:12:00
Who Controls the World's Food Supply? When the United States was founded in the 1700s, and when Thomas Jefferson served as President of the United States, about 90% of the U.S. population was employed in agriculture. By the time of the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln served as President of the United States, about 50% of the population was employed in agriculture. After the industrial boom, brought about by World War II, the percentage of those employed in agriculture started dropping significantly. Today, in 2013, less than 1% of our population is employed in agriculture and most of the food sold in the U.S., and even around the world, is controlled by just a handful of companies. At the bottom of the food chain, of course, are the seeds. No seeds, no food. This is where the most consolidation has occurred in the past few years:
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| Earth Changes |
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The Canadian Press
2013-10-24 15:27:00
A Vancouver Aquarium whale researcher is sounding the alarm over "puzzling" changes observed in the resident killer whale pods that live off the northern coast of B.C. and Alaska. Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard, a senior marine mammal scientist with the aquarium, says he fears changes in the ocean environment are prompting odd behaviour and an unusually high mortality rate, after spending the summer observing the whales aboard a research vessel. Barrett-Lennard says one resident pod has lost seven matriarchs over the past two years, an unusually high death rate, and he's also noticed a lack of vocalizations from the normally chatty mammals. |
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US Geological Survey
2013-10-24 15:34:00
Event Time 2013-10-24 19:25:12 UTC 2013-10-24 18:25:12 UTC-01:00 at epicenter Location 58.240°S 12.943°W depth=30.1km (18.7mi) Nearby Cities 791km (492mi) E of Bristol Island, South Sandwich Islands 3331km (2070mi) ESE of Ushuaia, Argentina 3561km (2213mi) SSW of Hermanus, South Africa 3565km (2215mi) SSW of Claremont, South Africa 2907km (1806mi) ESE of Stanley, Falkland Islands Technical Details |
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Brittany Lewis
wqad.com 2013-10-22 14:00:00
Lights out. No green, yellow, or red. The Checker's drive thru in East Moline was also dark. "It's been a pretty slow day. We lost power around 11:30, noon," said Stacie Vandyke, Shift Supervisor at Checker's. At the peak of the outage, more than 4,000 MidAmerican customers were in the dark. Camanche, Iowa and East Moline, Illinois were hit the hardest. East Moline Schools dismissed students at the Blackhawk Area Education Center because of the outage. MidAmerican Energy says 100 different incidents of trees hitting or downing power lines caused the outages. And then there was thick, dense fog. White snowflakes were visible, but not much else. The Moline Fire Department rescued two men aboard the Marsh Barge when their sailboat was stranded on a lateral dam on the Mississippi. "We just couldn't see anything," said Conner Morton. The visibility was so poor, the boaters - traveling from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico - needed a flare to help rescuers find them. Check out photos from the October snow - click here. As for snow blowers, they weren't quite flying off the shelves at Trevor Hardware store in Moline because of this snowfall, but they have been selling. "Oh, yeah, usually the customers that come in the beginning of the season are the ones that waited to 'til it snowed," said Lisa Trevor. The hardware store is partnering with the Toro brand, offering free snow blowers to customers if it snows less than 10% of the season's average. |
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Heidi Dahms Foster
A bobcat that attacked two quail hunters Thursday afternoon near
Prescott Valley has tested positive for rabies, Yavapai County Health
officials said Friday afternoon.bigbugnews.com 2013-10-24 13:47:00 Arizona Game and Fish Public Information Officer Zen Mocarski reported that the two hunters suffered multiple injuries when an adult male bobcat attacked them after they stopped to open a gate while hunting near Coyote Springs subdivision.
The men spotted the bobcat under some bushes, and saw it run under their truck. When one of them looked underneath the truck, the bobcat attacked, causing deep lacerations, punctures, and scratches to the man's back, shoulders, arms, and chest, Mocarski said. The man's hunting companion tried to rescue him, and the animal also attacked him, causing less severe injuries. One of the men then shot and killed the bobcat. The two drove to Yavapai Regional Medical Center with the bobcat. Mocarski said hospital personnel immediately treated both men for exposure to rabies. A Game and Fish wildlife manager picked up the bobcat and took it to the Arizona State Public Health Laboratory for testing. Results released about 4:30 p.m. Friday showed the animal was rabid. |
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Becky Oskin
LiveScience 2013-10-24 10:24:00
A powerful ash eruption shot 2 miles (3 kilometers) into the air at Indonesia's Mount Sinabung on Thursday (Oct. 24), according to news reports. There were no injuries or damage, but authorities evacuated 3,300 people living near the volcano as thick ash fell across the region. There are 29 villages within a 4-mile (6 km) radius of Mount Sinabung. The volcano awoke last month after a three-year sleep, sparking forest fires and jetting ash and volcanic gas. The 8,530-foot-high (2,600 meter) peak is one of 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia. Mount Sinabung erupted in 2010 after a 400-year period of inactivity. More than 17,500 people were evacuated at the time. |
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Heather Timmons
Quartz 2013-10-23 21:03:00
America's pork industry has been gripped by an outbreak of porcine diarrhea since mid-May, the first appearance of the condition in North America. US farmers have reported 768 cases of the disease, known as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), through the first week of October, which implies that many more thousands of animals could be affected. Although the disease is not transferable to humans, it has been devastating for the US pork industry. It causes severe "watery diarrhea and vomiting in nursing pigs," according to information from the US's National Pork Board. Almost all the piglets who get the disease die because of it, and farmers are reportedly filling "wheelbarrows of dead piglets." Now researchers at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech say they've traced the virus back to eastern China's Anhui province. Anhui is one of China's major pig-farming areas, home to companies like the fast-growing Anhui Antai Agricultural Industry Group, which slaughtered 500,000 pigs last year. Pinpointing the origin of the virus isn't going to provide much reassurance to US farmers. Years after it spread in China, it still hasn't been controlled. |
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| Fire in the Sky |
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Monique Zappa
9NEWS 2013-10-24 11:00:00
A meteor shot across the sky Thursday morning. Chris Peterson, who works at the Cloudbait Observatory, said after comparing two videos, he believes it began over Mead and ended over Yuma. It traveled about 125 mi. and the height was about 28 mi. Peterson estimates the meteor's speed to about 35,000 mph. While that sounds fast to some, it classifies the meteor as a low, slow meteor, which will most likely to drop meteorites. Peterson also said this meteor is not part of the Orionid meteor shower, which peaked a few days ago and still has some minor activity. This is a sporadic meteor that's unassociated with any other showers. |
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| Health & Wellness |
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FOX News
2013-10-24 15:23:00
At least 22 people are now suspected of having polio in Syria, where health officials are scrambling to respond to the first outbreak of the crippling viral disease in 14 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. Most of those stricken with acute flaccid paralysis - a symptom of diseases including polio - in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor are children under the age of two, WHO spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer said. "There is a cluster of 22 acute flaccid paralysis cases that is being investigated in that area," Rosenbauer told Reuters. "Everybody is treating this as an outbreak (of polio) and is in outbreak response mode." The WHO, a U.N. agency, announced on Saturday that two suspected cases of polio had been detected, the first appearance of the disease in Syria since 1999. Initial tests came back positive for polio in two of the 22 cases and final laboratory results due next week from a WHO reference laboratory in Tunis are "very, very likely" to confirm presence of the virus, Rosenbauer said. |
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Aseem Malhotra
British Medical Journal 2013-10-24 12:45:00
Scientists universally accept that trans fats - found in many fast foods, bakery products, and margarines - increase the risk of cardiovascular disease through inflammatory processes.1 But "saturated fat" is another story. The mantra that saturated fat must be removed to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease has dominated dietary advice and guidelines for almost four decades. Yet scientific evidence shows that this advice has, paradoxically, increased our cardiovascular risks. Furthermore, the government's obsession with levels of total cholesterol, which has led to the overmedication of millions of people with statins, has diverted our attention from the more egregious risk factor of atherogenic dyslipidaemia. Saturated fat has been demonised ever since Ancel Keys's landmark "seven countries" study in 1970.2 This concluded that a correlation existed between the incidence of coronary heart disease and total cholesterol concentrations, which then correlated with the proportion of energy provided by saturated fat. But correlation is not causation. Nevertheless, we were advised to cut fat intake to 30% of total energy and saturated fat to 10%."3 The aspect of dietary saturated fat that is believed to have the greatest influence on cardiovascular risk is elevated concentrations of low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Yet the reduction in LDL cholesterol from reducing saturated fat intake seems to be specific to large, buoyant (type A) LDL particles, when in fact it is the small, dense (type B) particles (responsive to carbohydrate intake) that are implicated in cardiovascular disease.4 | |
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Comment: For more information see:
Sweden touts low-carb diet as key to weight loss Swedish Expert Committee: A Low-Carb Diet most effective for weight loss The Ketogenic Diet - An Overview Saturated fat heart disease 'myth': UK cardiologist calls for change in public health advice on saturated fat Heart surgeon speaks out on what really causes heart disease |
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The Local
2013-09-23 10:08:00
Swedes who want to lose weight fast have been told to cut out the carbohydrates according to a new report by the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment (Statens beredning för medicinsk utvärdering, SBU). The report by the SBU recommends that eliminating carb-rich food such as bread and potatoes will speed up weight loss quicker than a conventional low-fat diet. However, in the long-term there is little difference between how effective various diet plans are says the report. "What was surprising about the research in our report is that we did not find any health risks associated with reducing your carbohydrate intake. Also, we were unable to establish just what types of fats you should eat," Jonas Lindblom, project director with SBU told The Local. Lindblom added that if Swedes are concerned about their weight then they should "cut out the soda" and said the impression that the country is getting fatter may not be accurate. |
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Mark Sisson
Mark's Daily Apple 2013-10-24 02:48:00
I've always said that carbs aren't bad in and of themselves. They're better in certain contexts and worse in others. Are you CrossFitting five days a week? Training for the Olympics? Breastfeeding? These are contexts in which carbs are warranted, helpful, and even healthy. Are you insulin-resistant and hyperinsulinemic? Are you a moderately active person with a few extra pounds? Are you diabetic, or nearly so? These are contexts in which a low carb intake would be warranted, helpful, and even healthy. With my Carb Curve, I've tried to establish a basic framework that works for most people who come to this site looking to get healthy. I think I've mostly succeeded. 150 grams of carbohydrates from fruit, squashes, roots, and tubers is more than enough for the vast majority of people to feel sated, healthy, and energetic without leading to weight gain or exacerbating metabolic syndrome. Add more if you need it to fuel your training; remove some if you're particularly sedentary, diabetic, or looking to lose weight; try a carb refeed every few days of 200-300 grams if you're very low carb or ketogenic. Round that out with all the non-starchy vegetables you want and you're looking at a very diverse diet rich with phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals with lots of room for nutrient-dense meat and fat sources. Not bad, right? Pretty simple, and the results speak for themselves. Despite that, there's an undercurrent that high-carb Primal and low-carb Primal are interchangeable. That macronutrient ratios don't matter regardless of health status or metabolic context, and that we evolved eating a diet rich in, if not based on, starchy tubers. Today, I'm going to address some of the most common arguments for these claims. I'm not arguing against including starch in your diet, now. I'm arguing against this notion that inclusion of large amounts of starch is the defining characteristic of an ancestral diet. Let's jump right in... |
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Michael R. Eades, MD
Blog of Michael R. Eades, MD 2013-10-22 13:21:00
Mainstream medicine's latest multimillion dollar effort to prove the effectiveness of the low-calorie, low-fat diet once again blew up in their collective faces, but that's not what this post is about. This post is about how mainstream medicine deals with data it doesn't like. How instead of presenting the data for what it is, mainstream medicine tries desperately to sweep its failures under the rug. Despite not showing what their authors want them to show, the important point about these 'failed' studies is that they move science forward. They sometimes nullify dearly held theories, which is exactly what scientists are supposed to want to do. Sadly, all too often, scientists (who should know better) fall in love with an hypothesis and set up an experiment to confirm it instead of trying to falsify it. Then when their machinations fail and the experiment is a bust, they try to put a good face on and make like the experiment really showed what they wanted it to show all along. Just as there is no doubt a bias in the mainstream news media, sad to say, there is also a bias in the mainstream medical scientific media. Most academic nutritional researchers hold two progressions near and dear to their hearts. Eating saturated fat - > elevated cholesterol - > heart disease. Exercise plus cutting calories and fat - > weight loss - > a longer, healthier life The first of those progressions is known as the lipid hypothesis; the second is the eat less, move more hypothesis. If any part of one of the above equations breaks down, then the whole thing falls apart. So God forbid that anyone should make the case that any segment of the above pathways doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Should that happen, the infidel needs to be prepared to pay the price. How do these infidels pay the price? Usually by having their data and/or their conclusions attacked in the very same journal in which their study was published. |
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| Science of the Spirit |
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Tia Ghose
LiveScience 2013-10-24 08:07:00
The moment a person slips from conscious thought into unconsciousness has long been a mystery. Now researchers have pinpointed exactly what goes on in the brain as people become unconscious after taking anesthesia. It turns out that there probably aren't individual neurons, or brain cells, responsible for consciousness. "This data shows that consciousness might not be the result of a special group of neurons, but rather might be the result of how neurons communicate with one another," study co-author Martin Monti, a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, wrote in an email. When people are conscious, information zips from one place to another along a direct route, much like an express bus, whereas the way information travels in the unconscious brain is more like taking several buses and stopping in North Dakota and Tennessee to get from New York to Los Angeles, Monti said. |
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| High Strangeness |
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| Don't Panic! Lighten Up! |
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Marl Steel
The Independent, UK 2013-10-24 15:15:00
The reason there's now such a vast network of global surveillance, we're told by British and American governments, is it's essential in defending our security against terrorist plots. So that must be why the US authorities tapped the phone calls of Angela Merkel. She doesn't look the type, but that's always the way with radical Islamic Jihadists who've worked their way into being Chancellor of Germany so they can inflict glorious holy war upon the infidels, so we should be thankful the Feds were on to her. They've probably already decoded her sinister messages, declaring, "This call here, where she says 'We must maintain the strength of the euro for the fiscal year 2013/14', it means 'Kill the bastards. Kill them all without mercy. And don't forget to strap the explosive to your chest extra tight as that Velcro tends to come undone, and if those explosives spill all over the bus you'll feel a right fool'." There are other possibilities I suppose. Maybe the FBI suspects she's part of the Berlin criminal underworld. So while she's in her office late at night, Obama's in a van outside listening to her make calls such as, "Oi Nobby. I think Plod's on to us. We've got an informer and I suspect Francois Hollande. If he asks any questions don't say nothing, he might be wearing a wire." Or she might be dealing. All evening, when the other German ministers think she's preparing her speech for a summit somewhere, she's weighing out grass and telling customers, "This is good shit. At the G20 this was everywhere, the Prime Minister of Japan was ripped all through the agreement on fishing rights." |
