Take the headline about how Vitamin E causes prostate cancer, for example. What won’t they think of next?

One of their main conclusions, so important that it was included in the abstract, said that the results were not significant. Translated, that means that they were aware that they had proven nothing. You still with me?

Not wanting to admit that Vitamin E may not be dangerous for men, they continued collecting data for several more years – after the study ended – until they had met their goal, found more men from their original group who had developed prostate cancer, and could insist, according to their new and rewritten rules, that Vitamin E IS dangerous.

Huh … ??? Are we still in Kansas?

This study had so many weaknesses that it is hard to know where to begin. So here are just a few items that make for questionable results.

1. The sponsors of the study, various components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have a very long standing grudge against using non-pharmaceuticals to control disease. They have repeatedly tried and sometimes succeeded in either forcing supplements off the market or regulating access to them. The only reason we now have relatively free access to supplements is because of public outrage directed at past FDA shenanigans. Did you think your opinion didn’t matter?

I was there in person when FDA agents discussed ways they could ‘get’ vitamin makers. No joke.

2. As these authors acknowledge, there has been well done research linking Vitamin E and good prostate cancer control. Therefore, we have to wonder if their real goal was to find a way to contradict those studies, especially since they didn’t end the study as scheduled in their own protocol.

They seem to have continued collecting data for a number of years until they thought they had accomplished their real job: discrediting a vitamin.

3. A huge weakness, as always, was in the study design. They say the study included ‘healthy men’ which seems to mean that the men didn’t have prostate cancer when the study began.

Not having cancer does not mean that one is healthy. Smoking is a major risk factor for all kinds of cancer. How many smokers did they include? No mention of this or many other factors linked to cancer, like geography, diet, other health factors and diseases, and chemical exposure. They must have collected this data. Why is it not discussed in the article?

These are the kind of ‘confounders’ that routinely turn research results into garbage.

Would I suggest that anyone stop taking Vitamin E based on these results? Are you kidding me? Remember those other major and better-done studies showing that this vitamin is actually protective? This article gives no reason whatever to change our minds or our habits.

Besides, the amount of Vitamin E they administered – 400 IU/d – is probably too small to make much difference of any kind.

________________________

Does taking multivitamins increase the risk of death in women? This study also made the news.

The publishing journal hasn’t yet allowed public access to the text of this article so their study design and methods can’t be vetted. However, results given in the abstract fail the smell test.

The abstract say that all vitamins, both separately and combined, increase the risk of death. Does that seem reasonable to you?

Or does it sound like more anti-vitamin hype paid for by either big business or big government? Hmmm. Is there a difference? No disclosure of the study funding sources.

Medical research is rife with nonsense and contradictions that blur important news, quite often because of the bias of the researcher or the funding source.

As a peer reviewer I reviewed articles for an international medical journal. I rarely approved a study for publication because of the abysmal quality of so much medical research.

Unfortunately, a lot of junk ends up in the hands of journalists who don’t recognize what they are looking at and don’t take the time to find out.

As usual, I will ignore these headlines.

That, of course, is as expected, a natural result of the politics of no holds barred financial capitalism with a criminal, taxpayer subsidized underpinning to ensure its continuity.  Only the wealthy need apply.

U.S. financiers and their co-conspirators in Washington have fine tuned the art of sucking the economic life out of the rest of the country. Institutionalized fraud is now an accepted way of life among those who make the rules.

First there were the trillions of dollars in 2008 bank bailouts.  After massive popular resistance to then Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson’s railroad act, Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, decided that he should hand out additional trillions more discretely, meaning without informing the public.  So he very discretely turned on the printing presses.

Mission accomplished with no more of that messy interference from voters as their wealth was diluted and transferred to the East Coast to prop up domestic and foreign banks, river boat gamblers, thugs and other assorted criminals.

A far less expensive and less destabilizing alternative might have been for the government to find a way to guarantee credit and the pension funds lost in the morass and then allow the banks to fail.  But there was no time for thinking. Mr. Paulson, grifter in charge, insisted on action NOW, and those bought–and-paid-for lackeys in Congress agreed without hesitation. Ominously, there was no daylight between then-Democratic front runner Barack Obama and Hank.

The second thing that has enriched the East Coast are our tax dollars that pay inflated government salaries and benefits to millions of Washington-based employees, contractors, retirees and military.

When the average salary of border patrol agents in Texas was $92,000 in 2009, plus health care, pension, cost of living and ‘locality’ adjustments, you’ll have to guess what all those high level managers and super managers in D.C. bring home and into retirement because official information is hard to come by. Undisputed is the fact that there has been enormous inflation in the number of federal uber-managers in recent years.  A common personnel tactic to compensate for a salary freeze is to simply  promote.

How long will the East Coast governing and capitalist classes get away with enriching themselves while depleting the rest of us?

As demonstrations break out in the U.S. and across the globe, protesting joblessness and an often IMF-imposed decline in the standard of living, as race/ethnic and class polarization marches on, voices answering ‘Not for long,’ are beginning to sound reasonable.  At the far end of the looking glass, somewhere in the foggy distance, the dissolution of the 50 United States may be lurking.

The first person on record to predict the disintegration of the United States was a Russian professor named Igor Panarin, who survived the 1990s collapse of the USSR, took another look at its nemesis on the other side of the globe, and predicted the future:  the U.S. was no more likely to go the distance than his country had.  He believed that the US was headed for extinction because of capitalist excesses leading to high unemployment and the virtual shutdown of entire cities, as well as the problem of financialization:  too much money in too few hands, too few manufactured goods, too much in personal losses.

He says now that a number of other factors are also contributing to the fragmentation of the U.S., including political stalemate, civil dissension and a lack of unified national laws.

He left out the rest of it. In addition to politics and the economy there is also geography.

The continental U.S. stretches 3000 miles  from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from sub tropics to the frozen north,  across 4 time zones.

It encompasses tens of thousands of square miles of increasing cultural differences, from the financial and governing centers on the East Coast, to the wide Hispanic band along the southern border, to the Asian enclaves of California, to the one-off culture of the Pacific Northwest.  There are other unique areas:  the Great Lakes, Texas, the High Plains and the mountain states, and the Great Plains, once known as The Great American Desert.  (Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner).  Toss in incipient problems with water resources, the disappearance of the oil economy, the weakening bonds of a unifying national language, and come face to face with the possibility of an eroded nation-state.

If Professor Panarin is right and the 50 united states are destined to eventually dissolve into autonomous regions, we should expect bumpy times ahead since the U.S.A. is no more likely to allow peaceful secession now than it did in 1861.

As others have noted, there is no reason to expect a different response at home than the U.S. government often uses to get its way abroad:  Those weapons of mass destruction, paid for with our tax dollars, may be used domestically, along with the many thousands of jobless, returning military vets who might be happy to earn a living subduing unrest in the streets.

But there will be resistance.  In no other Western nation is the population so armed and prepared to defend itself.

The U.S. is far from the only nation facing upheaval. From Cairo to Tel Aviv, from Madrid to India to China, anti-government demonstrations have been everywhere this year. According to the New York Times:

‘….  [Demonstrators] are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box. … protesters say they so distrust their country’s political class and its pandering to established interest groups that they feel only an assault on the system itself can bring about real change.”

Sound familiar?

History-wise, the twenty-teens could be an interesting decade indeed.

Cuba — There is no Official Warning for this country. …Normal security precautions should be observed while in Havana and other Cuban cities….

***************

U.S. State Department’s travel advisory for Cuba:

Cuba is a totalitarian police state which relies on repressive methods to maintain control. These methods include intense physical and electronic surveillance of both Cuban citizens and foreign visitors. Americans visiting Cuba should be aware that any on-island activities could be subject to surveillance, and their contacts with Cuban citizens monitored closely.

*************

I stood transfixed on the third floor balcony of my hotel room in Old Havana and watched what looked like a carefully choreographed game of chicken in the huge, bustling, intersection below. Bicycle taxis, horse-drawn carriages, vintage cars circa 1955, cabs, motorcycles and pedestrians all rushed through in different directions at the same time. With no traffic signals, lane markers or pedestrian cross walks, this intricate, strangely civil ballet with its hundreds of moving parts played out from sunrise to dark every day. Despite the horn honking it appeared that no one ever got hurt, not even the drunk who passed out in the middle of the hubbub.

With its free education and health care, with food and other rations for the month costing only pennies, with a stable government and apparently incorruptible leaders, Cuba had always been an anomaly among poor countries. When U.S. travel restrictions loosened this year, I had to see for myself.

The first things a visitor familiar with the third world notices in Cuba are the roads and the drivers. The highway from the airport into Havana was as good as any in the U.S. As we toured Western Cuba I kept looking for the rutted, impassable roads that are common in countries without the tax base needed to create adequate  infrastructure. We never saw any. Plus, there were gas stations, fittingly called Negro Oro (Black Gold) at reasonable intervals.

Even more surprising were the Cuban drivers. Unlike all other third world countries I’ve visited, not to mention a number of industrialized nations, the driving was surprisingly sane. There seems to be several reasons for this. One is that drivers are licensed, something that can never be taken for granted in poor countries. The second reason is enforcement. In Cuba there was a quiet and unobtrusive police presence on the roads as well as in the cities. Order on the highways is a great gift to citizens, not least because it cuts mortality. Maybe it is also the mark of an orderly society.

After being wowed by the roads, we were stunned by the state of decay of what was once, clearly, a glorious city. Many buildings in historic Old Havana are in such a state of disrepair that it is unlikely that they can ever be restored. The relatively small number of buildings that have been restored are interspersed among the ruins, creating a surreal landscape of elegance literally next door to devastation. In any case, it is easy to understand why Earnest Hemingway fell in love with 1950s Havana.

Although we were warned not to talk politics with the locals, it seemed that everyone we met was willing to discuss the details of their lives. Here are some of the things we learned:

– The average salary in Cuba, paid by the government which holds almost all property, is less than USD $20/month. Doctors and police (!) make about $40/month. Entrepreneurs like the owners of bicycle rickshaws or taxicabs pay the government a set fee.  The moneyed class in Cuba consists of those who work in tourism because tourists leave tips that are not taxed. Our tour guide’s parents were both physicians but his income was many multiples of theirs, combined. Taxi drivers and waiters we talked to also considered themselves fortunate to have high paying jobs. As in other third world countries, waiting tables is almost always a man’s job.

– The number of cattle in the country is strictly regulated. The government recognizes that cows are one of the least efficient uses of land and are unnecessary to a healthy diet, so it insists that property be used in other ways. Pork, fish and chicken are more readily available.

– Cuba has a population of about 11 million, 4 million of whom live in Havana. What keeps Havana from turning into another Calcutta or Los Angeles? Internal immigration policy, that’s what. As in many countries, Cuba requires a national identity card subject to random checks by police. The Cuban government recognized long ago that a city could easily out strip its resource base and become unmanageable. Official permission is required to move from the countryside to Havana.

– The U.S. lease on Guantanamo expired in 2001 and, predictably, was not renewed by Cuba. The U.S. sends Cuba a check for a few thousand dollars every year which Fidel tears up and tosses into the trash. (OK, maybe Fidel doesn’t do it himself.)  Flags in Cuba never fly at full staff as a memorial to, and reminder of, Guantanamo.

– The Cuban economy is so controlled that it allows only limited personal expression – the source of much popular dissatisfaction. In the late 1950s, Fidel and his revolutionaries were determined to throw out the capitalists who prevented most Cubans from benefiting from their own labor. In fact, it was the nationalization of the American sugar industry that precipitated the U.S. embargo. It is the lobbying of Miami’s Cuban ex-pat population that keeps it going.

– The arts and sports of all kinds are supported by the government, from the ballet to choirs to boxing, you name it.

– Unlike Americans, every Cuban is familiar with the wet-foot-dry-foot policy of the U.S., which gives any Cuban reaching land the right to stay, collect a stipend, get medical care through Medicaid, food stamps, a green card in one year and citizenship in 3 years. A number of Americans on the tour with us couldn’t believe their ears.

– Why does anyone stay in Cuba, you ask? Cuban citizens, to a person, expect their economic fortunes to change with the passing of Fidel. There seems to be a deep reservoir of affection for the old man who, 50 years ago, redistributed land, guaranteed that no citizen would starve, provided free education to the university level as well as free health care, and raised the standard of living and quality of life for 75% of the population – those who stayed.  Our hot-shot 20-something tour guide actually teared up when someone brought up Fidel’s declining health.

Most people in the third world would think they had died and gone to heaven to live in such a country.

In addition to being an intellectual and a visionary, Fidel Castro and his brother, Raoul, to whom he has passed the presidency, are recognized by Cuban citizens as a men of scrupulous integrity, a stark departure from the leaders of most third world countries.  And some might say most countries of any kind.

I hope Cuba can find a way to keep the accomplishments of Fidel without Fidel. There is already talk of eliminating the ration system and raising salaries. No one seems to be asking if salaries can be raised enough to compensate for the price of food.

The Dominican Republic is part of the next large island southeast of Cuba and there is no comparison whatever between the two. The Dominican’s roads, except in tourist areas like Puerto Plata and the capitol, Santo Domingo, are usually next to impassable due to potholes. The joke is that you can drive into one side of a Dominican pothole and out the other. Parents pay a fee to send their kids to school, and in an impoverished country you can guess how well educated the population is. Neither health care nor food are ever taken for granted and police protection seemed nonexistent.

You can drive for hours in the DR without seeing a gas station. Roadside mom-and-pop stands sell gas by the liter or part of a liter, literally in soda bottles. We saw one boy on a moped drive into the only gas station we ever saw and fill an empty Coke bottle with gas. He then roared off into the potholes with the gas wedged next to the steering column. He was a rolling Molotov cocktail. We saw nothing similar in Cuba.

Government graft has been a major problem in the Dominican as in Haiti. Many accounts blame invasions by the U.S., U.S. policy, and U.S. support for corrupt dictators as a major influence on the dismal economies of both countries.

U.S. influence has, of course, been mostly absent from Cuba, except for the embargo and numerous CIA assassination attempts. Fidel jokes that when he dies no one will believe it. After a body guard estimated 638 CIA assassination attempts in the years since 1959, Castro said “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”

The CIA may not have been able to kill Fidel, at least so far, but it has succeeded in making his life difficult. For years he has rotated between a series of safe houses.

The last assassination attempt is believed to have been in 2006, but to this day the U.S. remains a neighbor from hell.

There is no American embassy in Cuba but there is an ‘American interests’ facility that functions like an embassy. Cubans still talk about the ticker tape scroll denouncing their country that was posted at this embassy-that-isn’t by their American guests.

The embargo and American insistence that other countries fall into line with it has left Havana’s harbor still and virtually unused. By depriving Cuba of needed supplies, the U.S. and complicit Cuban ex-pats in Miami hoped to dislodge the uppity government that stands in the way of profiteering.

After 50-odd years, maybe its time to give it up.

My plane was taxiing into the gate at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport when the end-of-flight announcements came on. Seatbacks in upright position, trays closed and locked, baggage under the seats, you know the drill. On an in-bound international flight, I was headed for my second trip through TSA security in 3 hours.

Since I’ve been in five airports, some more than once, in the U.S. and Central America, in the past month or so, I’m beginning to feel like a reluctant – and unhappy – expert on airport security in a few these places. I can say for sure that I’ve found no place as paranoid as the U.S. But then, no other government can hold a candle to the range and variety of enemies the U.S. has created from scratch as part of official policy.

By way of comparison, I encountered no such thing as official government gropers outside of the U.S. In no other country I visited do passengers take off their shoes. There was no such thing as the irradiation of travelers anywhere else. Here in the Deep South, I’ve never encountered a TSA agent who knew that their porno scanners were actually x-ray machines. How exactly are those people trained?

These days, a traveler can go through security before boarding the flight and, at least in Atlanta, again after arrival. There can never be too much security. Has any miscreant ever been caught during exit screening with a weapon missed by the before-flight screeners?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one result of such a before and after screening policy is to require even more of the Michael-Chertoff-get-rich-quick body scanners installed in more locations in every airport.

I’ve also learned that the number of travelers subjected to the digital strip search depends entirely on the supervisor in charge. S/He can send everyone in line to be x-rayed or send them to be groped by coworkers or forget the the whole thing and send them only through the metal detector. It is all up to the person in charge.

U.S. travelers are far from the only ones fed up with the U.S.government’s security delusions.

Scanners are in use in some airports in Britain, the Netherlands and Italy. Other European countries, like Spain and Germany which is scheduled to ignore popular protests, some nude, and roll them out this summer, have issues with the invasion of privacy and radiation and haven’t been shy about saying so. They also say that the machines can be easily fooled by creases in clothing, meaning that the digital frisking must be accompanied by metal detector screening and pat downs.

The chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, has made it clear that he sees increasing U.S. demands for ever-more security (Michael Chertoff again?) as a form of idiocy. He says that U.S. airport security is “completely redundant” and is urging other European nations to resist. The recent flight of a U.S. passenger without so much as a ticket indicates that security measures may also be useless.

One more thing: Remember how many times we’ve been told that the scans are not kept after the person clears security? Then why does the U.S. demand that Europeans keep theres indefinitely?

US security authorities had demanded that original pictures taken by the machine – which display the contours of the body – be saved for possible later use. However, the German Interior Ministry has insisted that all images be deleted after passengers pass through the airport.

I’m getting ready for another cross country trip but this time I will escape government intrusion by driving. I won’t have to take off my shoes to start my car and no one will know whether I’m carrying bottles larger than 3 oz. Plus, without either a ticket or a GPS device, it won’t be easy for them to track me.

Take that, TSA!

At first they were 90% sure that they had killed Osama Bin Laden, meaning a one in ten chance that they had screwed up. Pretty poor odds for an assassination. Then the odds went to 95%, and finally, after the fastest DNA analysis in history, to 99.9%.

What that tells us is that they still weren’t positive that they had their man. The problem is that they matched the DNA of the dead man to the existing DNA of other Bin Ladens, of which there are hundreds. Assuming accurate DNA testing and reporting, what they showed was that they had killed one of the many Bin Ladens. There was no DNA match of Osama with Osama.

Then, there was what they seemed to regard as the thrilling announcement that Al-Qaeda itself said OBL had been killed. If we already knew, why the breathlessness? Further, there is some doubt about the legitimacy of those claiming to represent al-Qaeda, since their announcement showed that they were unaware that the body had been buried.

The entire pursuit of OBL has been fraught with inconsistency and credibility issues.

We were told after 9-11, that Osama Bin Laden was a sick man, using kidney dialysis and in generally poor health. Word came from numerous credible sources in early 2002 that he had died. If true it would certainly have been inconvenient for President Bush who was itching for a war in Afghanistan, which may have something to do with his statement in 2003 that OBL didn’t matter to the war effort.

The Rambo squad took video of the entire compound after assassinating whoever it was and four others. One of the items captured on tape was the medicine shelf, which was carefully dissected by news crews. Turns out there was nothing on that shelf more potent than nasal spray and aspirin. No sign of any dialysis machinery. Actually, the people who lived there seemed to be in good health. But Osama was in poor health, wasn’t he?

Osama Bin Laden was a wealthy man. The people who lived in that compound were not. Despite the efforts of the administration and the lapdog media to paint his home as a luxurious mansion, videos told the truth. The buildings where those people lived were more shabby hovel than an upper class Shangri La. Would Osama, raised with wealth, really have ever spent time there, much less six years, with no sign of luxurious furnishings? Aw, c’mon.

The break in and murder were captured on real time video via cameras attached to the commandos’ helmets. If the film is ever released, we’ll be able to see for ourselves how much the man resembled Osama before he was murdered. Does that have anything to do with the refusal to release it?

There are two quite different pictures of a man we are told was OBL, when the reality for anyone who compares them is that the pictures are of different persons. The media tells us that the second Osama dyed his beard black. If the consequences weren’t so serious we might be inclined to think that was a punch line in a sick joke. What are the chances that the leader of an international terrorist organization would bother? Who are we supposed to believe he was trying to impress? Or is the joke on us?

Most recent is the picture from the back and left of someone watching a video, using a remote device with his right hand. Although everyone, including those in the progressive press, have accepted the government’s contention that the man is OBL, it’s impossible to confirm visually. Regardless, we know that Osama was left handed. So who is in the picture?

Despite the fact that Osama was six feet four and slender, there has been no information about the dimensions of the body. We’re supposed to believe that the commandos just forgot to bring a measuring tape. OK. Well, there must have been one on the ship where the body was taken. Oh. They didn’t have one either?

Identifying the dead is a basic of any coroner’s job and usually means that someone who knew the person can testify to his identity. But not us. We relied on the man’s wife who supposedly called his name. Was that in English? Plus, dubious DNA evidence, plus the comments of a person identifying himself as a member of al-Qaeda. We assassinated a foreign national in a sovereign country. Is that all we’ve got?

When the commandos blasted and shot their way into the compound – in the dark – killing four persons after crashing a helicopter, their only orders, according to Leon Panetta, were to kill Osama if they found him and get the hell out if they didn’t. There seemed to be nothing in those orders that required a positive identification. In fact, the months and years of training, with the President and other high officials watching on a closed circuit, with their sky-high emotional investment in the mission and the pressing need for speed before the Pakistani military arrived, working in the dark, what exactly are the chances that they would have been able to tone down their adrenalin rush long enough to say, ‘Excuse me, but I need to see your driver’s license’? It seems more likely that they would shoot first and let others justify later.

American officials have been spinning the Pakistani government’s lack of knowledge of the hideout as incompetence. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s an indication that Osama was not hiding in Abbottabad after all.

We are hardly getting the other side of the story.

… maybe after our government talks to his wives we’ll get the truth….

Some questions:

If Bin Laden could have been eliminated with 25 commandos, why have 4800 Americans, so far, been sent to a desert to die?

The commandos were wearing headset cameras that filmed everything in their path and sent pictures back to their superiors. We’re told that no proof of Bin Laden’s death will be released because the gruesome nature of the pictures could further inflame his supporters. But not all pictures were taken after his death. Where are the pictures of Bin Laden as he was being confronted by his executioners before he died?

At the time the commandos broke into his bedroom Bin Laden clearly posed no threat. He was not armed and did not resist. He could have been taken alive, except that, as CIA director Leon Panetta finally admitted, the commandos were there for only one reason: to kill him. Why?

The SEALS ransacked the house, taking hard drives and papers, looking for anything that might turn into usable intelligence. But the greatest source of information had been standing right in front of them before they double-tapped, a quaint term for shooting twice at point blank range. Was this their way of discouraging Bin Laden from talking? If given the chance, what might he have said?

In all parts of the civilized world nations pride themselves on their judicial systems and the rule of law. Observers are starting to question the legality as well as the means of America’s extrajudicial administration of ‘justice’ in a sovereign foreign state.

And to what end, exactly, was the deadly Rambo exercise? Terrorism is much more likely to emanate now from Yemen than anywhere Bin Laden travels. Are we safer with Osama out of the way? Well, no one believes that. Even Joe Lieberman warns us to expect retaliation.

The murder of Osama Bin Laden is a win for the Obama reelection campaign, the budgets of Homeland Security, TSA, and the military which now has a victory to shore up lagging support at home. The losers are all other domestic programs, from an underfunded educational system to our tattered social safety net — victims of the Bush-Obama wars as surely as our soldiers have been.

Which brings me to my next question: Exactly who are the people willing to become trained assassins? Can they ever be safely released from the indoctrination of the lawless U.S. military back into the general population? Others must have the same question because the administration now finds it necessary to spin them as lovable, somewhat scruffy, all-American guys-next-door who love their wives and play softball with their kids in their spare time away from work.

Administration spokesmen have been anxious for us to believe that torture works. They tell us that that’s how they got the break leading to their prey. The fact that they found the name of the courier who led them to Bin Laden’s compound in documents released by Wikileaks has received almost no mention in the media. That bit of information seems to have been disappeared.

As the insurgency in Libya geared up a few weeks ago and crowds gathered in the street, three snipers began to fire from the roof of a nearby building. From reports, the shots were remarkably effective, killing a number of the unsuspecting in the crowd below with precise bullets to the head.

The American media blamed the Gaddafi forces for the sniper fire, but wait a minute. That third world country has an unsophisticated, third rate military. What are the chances that it could or would provide care, feeding and training for snipers? Plus, Libya has no recent history of militarism.

Where did those assassins come from?

Have we said a final goodbye to the illusion of America’s moral superiority?

Who are we?

You came out of the meeting with Republican leaders and stood in front of cameras saying that you were optimistic about compromise to improve serious domestic problems.

They came out of the meeting saying that their base liked gridlock and they intended to maintain it.

Were you at the same meeting?

How much clearer can those troglodytes be? What in your background has made conciliation and suck up-ness your most important priorities?

When they say they don’t intend to cooperate with you, they insist on tax cuts for the wealthy, they believe that institutionalized gridlock is the way to accomplish their main goal which is to get rid of you, you need to join the rest of us in the real world and get your head out of the Land of Oz, or wherever it is.

You will not have another chance if you continue to screw up this one. And only your dedicated, appointed, staff believes you haven’t screwed up – so quit talking to them and start listening to us!

You might also disband your insistence on harmony long enough to admit that it doesn’t exist, you can’t create it out of thin air, and no one on the other side wants it.

It was you who lost control of the House, and it was not because of Republican intransigence. It was because you refused to meet them head on. Other presidents, FDR, Harry Truman, had stiff opposition but they used their bully pulpit to disable it. Try to channel them long enough to look presidential.

Where are those principles we thought you had two years ago? Where is your willingness to call injustice by its name and challenge it? Why does Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) have to do it instead of you?

You have been criticized by the usual talking heads for taking your message to the late night talk shows and The View. But it was your explanation that was pathetic. You said that the networks refused to interrupt their own programming to carry your message so you had to resort to social sites to talk to citizens. With all due respect, has anyone ever mentioned to you that the airways that make the networks rich and fat are a PUBLIC resource. Is the real problem less their opinion that you are boring than the fact that you don’t want to cross big campaign donors?

Saying that we, your base, are not happy wildly misses the mark. We are disgusted to the point that many of us will likely sit out the next election, so we too are playing into the hands of the troglodytes. But it is you and not they who are responsible.

Thanks to the conflict-loving media, we understand what you are up against and we get it. We don’t need you to win every battle. We need you to lead, to set a standard, to communicate honestly.

We need you to take a principled stand when health insurers, to protect their profits, insist that they will only ‘allow’ national health care if every citizen is forced to buy health insurance.

We need the drug companies brought under control because of the harm they do – not just in their expensive promotions for dangerous drugs but in their buy out of American medicine.

We need you to clearly state your own grave concerns about the wars in the Middle East and the intimidation tactics used by the military industrial complex to keep you in line.

We need you to think through, once and fall all, those ongoing and ever-increasing corporate bailouts that, despite the happy hype about our improving economy, fools no one and may send our currency into a death spiral. We need you to call corporate socialism what it is and insist on equal treatment for citizens.

We need you to stop the compromise banter and insist on allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse. You can then begin work on a permanent middle class tax cut and let the Republicans take the fall if they oppose it.

We need you to take a clear look at your administration and get rid of the ethically challenged people, like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, who never belonged there in the first place.

But you can’t do any of that, can you? Anyone who glances at your campaign financing underwriters understands why.

You’ve also done nothing to support campaign finance reform.

Your base is likely to throw up its hands and walk away in 2012.

A Swedish study published recently maintains that mammograms for women in their 40s saves lives. It contradicts numerous studies done over the past 20 years, as well as recommendations from The American College of Physicians in 2007 and from the expert U.S. Preventive Services Task Force in 2009 which concluded that the benefits of mammography screening before age 50 do not outweigh the risks, something that has been widely acknowledged in public health circles since mammography became big business in the late 1980s.

First, the Swedish study. You’d never know it to listen to the TV docs and their cheering section, but the Swedish study has been widely criticized by scientists for its lack of internal consistency. The research group that received mammograms was not similar to the comparison group that did not and also did not weigh risks against benefits. No conclusions of any kind can be drawn from such a hodgepodge.

Next: that cheering section. It’s understandable that 24 hour news channels require something to fill air space and that they will glom on to anything that might hold a viewer’s attention. It is not so understandable that they would ignore a study published a week or two earlier from Norway and Harvard that not only confirmed the findings of the Task Force but questioned whether mammograms actually benefit woman of any age. In other words, a direct contradiction to the Swedish study that also, remarkably, questioned the screening value of mammograms for anyone and received no media attention at all.

By far the worst of the cheerleaders for the Swedish study was Dr Richard Besser, formerly director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now an expert talking head on all things medical for ABC.

On air, his opinion was that mammograms should continue for women in their 40s because of this apparently “well done study” which he had clearly neither read nor had vetted for him. He said that there was no reason to question the findings of the Swedish article and that women should ask “Why not? Why shouldn’t I have a mammogram?”

OK, Dr. Besser. Let’s talk about why not.

1. Overdiagnosis. Because screening tests are often based on imprecise measurements and are subject to human error, like the mammogram and the PSa test for prostrate cancer, a great many people are misdiagnosed as having a life threatening condition when they don’t. Once a diagnosis of breast cancer is made, the next steps are preordained. What follows is enormous anxiety on the part of the patient, discussions with radiologists, oncologists, surgeons and other doctors about how to treat, the order of treatment and the side effects at each step. There is enormous expense involved at each level of discussion.

And consider this: approximately 1300 women over age 50 must be screened for years to avert one death. In the 40s that figure is 1900 screened. That’s thousands of mammograms, hundreds of biopsies, and many cancers treated as if they were life-threatening when they are not.

What no one is likely to tell the patient is that some cancers are slow growing, or will not expand, or might clear up by themselves as the woman’s immune system comes to the rescue. These cancers need to be just watched; no immediate action necessary.

It has been estimated that 25%-30% of breast cancer found on mammograms is the result of overdiagnosis. Further, an estimated 6% of the time the finding of breast cancer from a mammogram is a false positive. Translated, that means that more than one patient in 20 is told she has breast cancer when she does not.

There is a huge emotional and financial cost associated with overdiagnosis and mis-diagnosis, part of the reasoning of the 2009 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. The down side hazards of mammograms make them unsuitable for women in their 40s who are at low risk for breast cancer, anyway.

2. Radiation: Every dose of radiation from chest xrays, dental xrays, mammograms and other sources is cumulative. When it comes to radiation, nothing is for free. Radiation damages DNA and has been a known to cause serious disease since the scientist who discovered it, Madame Curie, died of aplastic anemia, a rare and quickly fatal blood disorder.

Changes to the DNA resulting from xrays may later cause cancer. That is a major reason for the deep concern and criticism among many scientists regarding mammograms. It’s a reason to avoid unnecessary xray exposure (and to reject dental xrays for routine visits.)

One study showed a much higher incidence of invasive breast cancer in women who had been subject to routine mammograms than those who had not. The suspicion among some scientists is that the mammograms themselves are responsible.

What the experts have said:

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

We don’t want people to panic, but I’m admitting that American medicine has over-promised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated.

Dr Brawley, under pressure from his employer, immediately withdrew his comment but could not remove it from the record.

From Drs. Epstein (UCLA) and Bertell (International Physicians for Humanitarian Medicine): Mammography facts are in stark contrast with what is most publicized about the screening, namely that “mammography saves lives.”

Routine mammography delivers an unrecognized high dose of radiation. If a woman follows the current guidelines for premenopausal screening, over a 10 year period she would receive a total dosage of about 5 rads. This approximates the level of exposure to radiation of a Japanese woman one mile from the epicenter of atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Why the one-sided emphasis on a screening tool of such dubious value? Because screening is big business.

Outpatient mammogram suites, both free standing and in hospitals, generate billions of dollars each year for their owners. Some of these clinics scan hundreds of thousands of women a year. Advocacy groups like the American Cancer Society (ACS) receive major funding from the makers of xray and mammography equipment and are intensely resistant to changing the screening recommendations for mammograms.

Drs. Epstein and Bertell, again:

The mammography industry conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on its advisory boards, and donates considerable funds. DuPont also is a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program; sponsors television shows and other media productions touting ACS literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organization, and doctors; produces educational films; and aggressively lobbies Congress for legislation promoting the nationwide availability of mammography services.”

The incidence of breast cancer diagnosis and death has been dropping like a rock since 1999, about 2% every year. Between 2000 and 2006, the last year for which I could find data, the death rate dropped by almost 13%. Between 1990 and 2006, the rate dropped by almost 30%.

There were several things happening during those years which may have contributed to the decline. Although advocacy groups would like to credit mammography for these trends, the fact is that the number of women having mammograms declined in tandem with the change in the diagnosis and death rate. So it is not possible that screening is the cause of the decline. In fact, the opposite may be true, as some scientists believe. Maybe the decline in screening means less breast cancer.

In 2002 a major study was published connecting the use of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to breast cancer after which the use of HRT by menopausal women dropped precipitously. At the moment, no one knows exactly what the statistical effect of this change had on breast cancer deaths, but it has no doubt contributed to the decline.

There is another important hazard and that is the polycarbonate plastics found in water bottles, canned food, and everywhere else. Some of these plastics are carcinogens and others are endocrine disrupters, causing such things as early puberty in our 7 year old daughters, as well as breast cancer, and quite possibly fertility problems and the serious drop in the sperm count among men, especially in the U.S.

The way to defeat breast cancer, it seems to me, is to eliminate as many cancer causing agents as possible from our lives, and that includes drugs, environmental chemicals like the plastics we live with and inadvertently ingest, as well as xrays from all sources

see also: Arthritis-Alternatives.com

Wouldn’t you know it. Just when we thought that we had made choices that made the adulterated American food supply manageable, Corporate Agriculture finds new ways to quietly and unobtrusively pollute our lunch. We figured a way around the colors, texturizers, hidden gluten, preservatives and taste enhancers with unpronounceable names, and thought we were home free at dinner time.

That’s the way it used to be. As the twenty-first century arrived the dark clouds that had been gathering for several decades finally turned American food production into a torrent of bad news for consumers and a bonanza for agribusiness.

The new food productions and preservation techniques, like genetically modified seeds, irradiation of everything that doesn’t move, and gasses that create the appearance of freshness no matter how old the meat, were originally introduced for commercial use in the latter years of the 20th century. None of these changes to the food supply were designed to benefit the health of the consumer. In fact, our regulatory watchdogs, the FDA and USDA have allowed their wholesale introduction into our food supply without serious testing or monitoring.

To keep the consumer in the dark, the USDA and FDA deliberately colluded with Corporate Agriculture by allowing them to introduce their spiffy new methods of polluting the food supply and enhancing their bottom line without the labeling that would have allowed the consumers to make their own decisions. The consumer no longer has even the illusion of protection.

We are on our own.

There has never been more than one purpose to the unending adulteration of the food supply in the U.S., and it certainly was not to benefit us. All of the new pollution methods have been to extend shelf life into infinity and beyond, to sell more and cost Monsanto and ArcherDanielsMidland as little as possible to do it. They have the full collusion of the major grocery chains.

Some of the changes to the food supply, like irradiation, indiscriminately kills organisms, the good and the bad alike, and eliminates the need for growers and processor to maintain sanitary conditions on the farm and at the factory. You may be buying and eating filth but at least it has been sterilized.

Treatment with radiation also inhibits sprouting in potatoes and delays fruit ripening. In other words, it allows food to be transported long distances and extends shelf life far into the future with no change in appearance.

Public Citizen, the Center for Food Safety, and Food and Water Watch have declared the use of radiation on the food supply to be an experiment on the American consumer without informed consent.

Radiation-induced changes in human DNA can produce cancer. Do DNA changes to veggies create synthetic eats without the usual life supporting properties? No one knows what food irradiation kills besides pests, or if the food is functionally the same after.

And then there are the production problems with the radiation itself: there has already been radioactive leakage from a processing plant into the water supply in a suburb of Atlanta.

Thus far, despite continuing industry pressure, the FDA has maintained that irradiated food must contain a radiation symbol, which has limited its use since food processors fear that making consumers aware will hurt their profits. Lobbyists for Corporate Agriculture are working relentlessly to get the requirement for disclosure rescinded.

On the flip side of the disclosure issue are the growing and processing methods for which consumers may legally be kept in the dark. Almost all U.S. produced corn, soybean, cotton and beet sugar are now GM. But, have you ever seen a label in the grocery store that would alert you to the presence of something in your veggies, meat, or corn flakes that you might not want to eat or feed your family? No? Unlike European countries where an informed public has ferociously fought the introduction of GM food, it is probable that every pantry and frig in the clueless U.S. contains it.

And then there are the gasses, one of the newest unstudied innovations for contaminating food that is also legally allowed to remain undisclosed to the buyer. Most consumers are not aware that virtually all meat, fish and poultry sold at retail has been treated with a gas to extend the surface appearance of freshness.

In the old days, say, a year or so ago, only packaged ground meats were treated with gas. Since the gas created a tight, balloon-like appearance to the packaging, they were easy to spot and avoid.

These days, processors, with the collusion of large grocery stores, are in the habit of gassing everything possible. Even the fresh fish in the deli has almost always been gassed on its way to you, with the butcher often none the wiser. Packaged fruits and vegetables are also increasingly treated with gas.

Food processors were able to convince the FDA and USDA that the gasses they use, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, occur naturally in the atmosphere and therefore qualify as GRAS – Generally Regarded As Safe – and in no need of labeling disclosure.

Apparently none of the regulators thought to ask if gasses that enter the airways are metabolized the same as the identical gas that enters the digestive system by way of food.

As the millions of people with an impaired immune system already know, they are not.
It will probably take many years, as consumers gradually become aware of the impact of contaminated food on their bodies, to undo these regulations.

Even without counting the endless list of preservatives, artificial colors and texturizing agents, quietly and invisibly the food supply of the United States has become the most legally polluted on earth.

The US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, federal agencies created to protect the public from polluted food and unsafe medications, have been undermined by the corporate, capitalism-at-any-cost, mindset of one presidential administration after another. As mind-numbing as it seems, the activities of these federal regulators are often subsidized and compromised by their corporate regulatees. Scientists who object to the latest toxin proposed for grocery store aisles often have their careers threatened by the regulated, the ones actually calling the shots.

In the meantime, U.S. life expectancy and average height, major indicators of the health of a population, today fall far behind other nations.

Food allergies and asthma are an increasingly prominent causes of illness, death and disability.

When you get a chance, tune in to this video:

It’s happened again.  Another well meaning soul insisting that EveryOne is to blame for the mess that engulfs the U.S. politically, militarily and economically because in our political system, the country gets what it votes for.  Therefore, ‘we are all responsible.’

Some may get their kicks from an existential guilt trip, but please count me out.

First, we almost never get what we think we voted for.  Just a few examples: Remember George W. saying he’d be a ‘uniter, not a divider’?  Before the vote he also said yes to more social programs, lower taxes and a balanced budget.  Franklin Roosevelt said he’d keep the U.S. out of foreign wars and Richard Nixon said he’d end the war in Viet Nam.

Before election day, voters are bombarded with ads, negative and positive, and promises, some vague, some not.  Complicating the process is the media which prefers sound bites to substance.  Voters negotiate the mine field and cast their ballots for the person who does the best job of convincing them that he or she will fulfill their fantasy.

Every few years we go to the polls and pin our hopes on a Rorschach ink blot shaped like a person.

Don’t blame me for this.

Tens of millions of us had a lot to say, and we said it over and over, both in print and in phone calls to Congress, before our representatives opted to ignore our furious dissension and approved the Wall Street bailout. That act alone has been regarded by some as prima fascia evidence that American citizens are voiceless shadows in a mythical democracy.

Personally, I don’t think I contributed to the problem.

We the people voted in record numbers for someone different, a self-proclaimed agent of change, and Barack Obama became president.  Who is responsible for the disappointment that he has been to many?  We elected him to change the way Washington behaves and he showed every indication that he believed he could.  I’m not sure that he is responsible, either.

And I’m certainly not.

In the name of the U.S., atrocities have been and are being committed in Iraq and Afghanistan by the military and by an increasing number of heavily armed delinquents known as contractors who are accountable to no one. Congress has attempted to reign in the cowboys with what appears to be only marginal success.

The atrocities are both passive, as when sanctions result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, and active, as when Iraqi wedding parties are incinerated by drones.  Obama is unable – though, I’m convinced, not unwilling – to reduce the out-of-control military and its over-the-top budget.  The armed forces are a nation unto themselves and they usurp nearly 50 cents of every one of our tax dollars.

Should you and I shoulder the blame?  If you believe that you are morally responsible,   aren’t you are morally obligated to stop paying taxes?  Let’s see a show of hands for everyone willing to do this.

We have a Supreme Court that says it’s just fine for corporations anywhere in the world to buy a U.S. election.  We have lobbying groups that keep us embroiled in Middle East politics, that fight health care reform tooth and nail, that keep the financial sector fat and happy while tens of thousands lose their jobs and line up at food banks.  We have a cadre of powerful, unelected advisors built into the system, people like Karl Rove, Rahm Emanuel and all of K Street.

I didn’t cause any of this.  Did you?

Many people have responded to the dysfunction in Washington by joining groups like the Tea Party and openly oppose the influential, often appointed, government personnel that citizens have been stuck with. Since most such groups are ignored by the thumb-sucking media, their influence spreads wirelessly. At least for now. Corporations are doing their level best to wrangle control of communication space, too.

OK.  ‘Fess up, you who are accountable.  Is this your fault?  If yes, then fix it.

The ‘We’re all responsible’ group never fails to bring up Nazi Germany.

To which I reply:  What is your point?

Stories still surface, over 60 years later, of German civilians with the power to assist the persecuted who did just that.  There is no way of knowing how many sympathizers had no power to intervene.  But we do know that Germany in the latter 1930s and 1940s was run by thugs who had a heavily armed state at their disposal.  Dissent became a capital offense. During the war, the allies bombed much of Germany into rubble, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The German population paid dearly for the actions of their leaders.

Were they all responsible?

Although most United States citizens were far distant from the corporate-lobbyist coup, we are held accountable for Washington’s actions.  To the 9/11 terrorists, the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans were in no way responsible for U.S. policy in the Middle East was strictly a footnote.  They seemed to have entirely missed the fine print that explained the distinction between wealthy lobbying groups that promote war in the Middle East and the majority who don’t want it.  Or maybe the murderously alienated just don’t care.

Similarly, Amanda Knox is in jail in Italy, one of the most unlikely convicts in history, most probably in retaliation for homicidal actions committed in Italy by an unrepentant American military.

The fact that we will be held to account for actions committed by others is incentive enough to take action.  But we can’t do it by letting the perps off the hook and claiming responsibility ourselves.

What should we do?  Here are some ideas.

–Washington, D.C., should be closed down and its functions decentralized.  All legislators should be required to stay in the districts that elected them and use modern communications to interface with others.  This would remind the elected on a daily basis that their neighbors hired them.  It would have the added benefit of making the lives of lobbyists significantly more difficult.  Tell Michael Moore to investigate the possibility.

– Blame the right people.  Call a war criminal a war criminal and insist on prosecution or extradition for one and all.  Pretend like the Nuremburg trials really mattered.   Support Cindy Sheehan.

– Recognize the class warfare happening in America right now and insist that the casualties be treated like those in any other war, with limitless subsidies for those in the trenches: the unemployed, the undereducated, the uninsured, the debt vassals, the single parents.

–Support open media.  Contribute to the Real News Network and PBS as well as to web sites like this one.

–Join protests against the military and the excesses of the police state, like brutality and tasers, while we still can.

And most of all:  Stop claiming responsibility for criminal acts over which we had no control and put the blame where it belongs.  Stop giving the perps a free ride on our conscience.  They should be driven out of town and into jail by our outrage, not coddled by our narcissism.

We should not be willing to shoulder blame for criminal activity committed, domestically and abroad, without our consent. The fact that we live in the U.S. is not evidence of guilt.

If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.