Clarke On Iraq War Architects: ‘We Shouldn’t Let These People Back Into Polite Society’

Unfortunately, these criminals will definitely always be part of “polite” society. That’s why they need to be in jail! Thanks for letting them get off scott-free, dumocrats!

Source: Think Progress.

Noting that “prominent Democrats” had ruled out impeachment, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann asked former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke on his show last night, what “remedy” there could be for the lies and misinformation highlighted in the new Senate Intelligence Committee reports on the Bush administration’s misuse of pre-war Iraq intelligence.

“Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people,” said Clarke. He suggested that “some sort of truth and reconciliation commission” might be appropriate because, he said, we can’t “let these people back into polite society”:

CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way.

Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives.

Watch it:
Unfortunately, as Clarke hints, most of the architects of the Iraq war are still fully embraced by “polite society.”

Some, like President Bush and Vice President Cheney, are still working in the White House. But for many of those who left, “the neocon welfare system” has been generous:

- Last fall, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was named a “distinguished visiting fellow” at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he focuses on “issues pertaining to ideology and terror.”

- After a controversial tenure as the president of the World Bank, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

- Richard Perle, the chairman of Defense Policy Board during the run up to the Iraq war, also landed on the payroll of the American Enterprise Institute, where he is a resident fellow.

Despite their re-emergence into “polite society,” these war architects have largely refused to admit that they lied. In fact, some, like former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, insist that the American people only feel misled about Iraq because “they misremember a lot.”

Transcript:

OLBERMANN: Democrats, prominent Democrats said today that impeachment was not a remedy to this, but can anyone argue with a straight face, post-Lewinsky that these lies, the blood and treasure that they cost us, don’t deserve some kind of remedy. And is there some other kind of remedy?CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way. Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives. Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people.

OLBERMANN: Speaking of coming forward, I was wondering if there would be an opportunity to raise this issue with you because he’s so, he was so connected to you in a different context when your first criticisms became known around 2004 before the election, what — in a weird way, is Scott McClellan’s book kind of the passage way from this being a theoretical discussion to almost a text book saying how they managed to sell us this garbage?

CLARKE: Well, Scott McClellan’s book is further proof. It sort of the other end of this big Senate Intelligence report. But Scott, also, is asking for forgiveness. You know, he asked me, after he left your program and I bumped into him, literally coming through the revolving door in a hotel. Metaphorically, no really, he was coming through a revolving door and he asked me to forgive him and I think we do have to forgive people who ask for forgiveness. You know, the 9/11 families forgave me my inadequacies in dealing with al Qaeda and I greatly appreciated that. We do need to forgive people, but first they have to admit they lied.

The truth about statin drugs

“Lipitor^® Thief of Memory” is a scary account of how  Dr. Duane Graveline, former astronaut, aerospace medical research scientist, flight surgeon, and family doctor, loses his memory taking the popular drug. Ultimately he was diagnosed with transient global amnesia (TGA).

Source: The Healthy Skeptic.

Statins have been almost universally hailed as “wonder drugs” by medical authorities around the world. The market for statins was $26 billion in 2005, and sales for Lipitor alone reached $14 billion in 2006. Merck and Bristol Myers-Squib are actively seeking “over-the-counter” (OTC) status for their statin drugs. Statins are prescribed to men and women, children and the elderly, people with heart disease and people without heart disease.

In fact, these drugs have a reputation for being so safe and effective that one UK physician, John Reckless (I’m not kidding – that’s actually his name!) has suggested that we put statins in the water supply.

That’s a bold suggestion, of course, and it begs the question: are statins really as safe and cost effective as mainstream medical authorities claim? The unequivocal answer is no.

Statins don’t increase survival in healthy people

Statins have never been shown to be effective in reducing the risk of death in people with no history of heart disease. No study of statins on this “primary prevention population” has ever shown reduced mortality in healthy men and women with only an elevated serum cholesterol level and no known coronary heart disease. (CMAJ. 2005 Nov 8;173(10):1207; author reply 1210.) In fact, an analysis of large, controlled trials prior to 2000 found that long-term use of statins for primary prevention of CHD produced a 1% greater risk of death over 10 years compared to placebo

Statins don’t increase survival in women

Despite the fact that around half of the millions of statin prescriptions written each year are handed to female patients, these drugs show no overall mortality benefit regardless of whether they are used for primary prevention (women with no history of heart disease) or secondary prevention (women with pre-existing heart disease). In women without coronary heart disease (CHD), statins fail to lower both CHD and overall mortality, while in women with CHD, statins do lower CHD mortality but increase the risk of death from other causes, leaving overall mortality unchanged. (JAMA study)

Statins don’t increase survival in the elderly

The only statin study dealing exclusively with seniors, the PROSPER trial, found that pravastatin did reduce the incidence of coronary mortality (death from heart disease). However, this decrease was almost entirely negated by a corresponding increase in cancer deaths. As a result, overall mortality between the pravastatin and placebo groups after 3.2 years was nearly identical.

This is a highly significant finding since the rate of heart disease in 65-year old men is ten times higher than it is in 45-year old men. The vast majority of people who die from heart disease are over 65, and there is no evidence that statins are effective in this population.

Do statins work for anyone?

Among people with CHD or considered to be at high risk for CHD, the effect of statins on the incidence of CHD mortality ranges from virtually none (in the ALLHAT trial) to forty-six percent (the LIPS trial). The reduction in total mortality from all causes ranges from none (the ALLHAT trial) to twenty-nine percent (the 4S trial).

However, the use of statins in this population is not without considerable risk. Statins frequently produce muscle weakness, lethargy, liver dysfunction and cognitive disturbances ranging from confusion to transient amnesia. They have produced severe rhabdomyolysis that can lead to life-threatening kidney failure.

Aspirin just as effective as statins (and 20x cheaper!)

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for statins is that a recent study in the British Medical Journal showed that aspirin is just as effective as statins for treating heart disease in secondary prevention populations – and 20 times more cost effective! Aspirin is also far safer than statins are, with fewer adverse effects, risks and complications.

The bottom line

1. Statin drugs do not reduce the risk of death in 95% of the population, including healthy men with no pre-existing heart disease, women of any age, and the elderly.
2. Statin drugs do reduce mortality for young and middle-aged men with pre-existing heart disease, but the benefit is small and not without significant adverse effects, risks and costs.
3. Aspirin works just as well as statins do for preventing heart disease, and is 20 times more cost effective.

So what if you are at risk for heart disease and you’d prefer not to take a statin? Other than aspirin, there are many clinically proven ways to prevent heart disease involving simple adjustments to diet and lifestyle. In fact, the recent INTERHEART study which looked at the incidence of heart disease in 52 countries revealed that over 90% of heart disease is preventable by diet and lifestyle modifications.

I’ll discuss these natural methods of preventing heart disease in my next post. Stay tuned!

Recommended links

• Dangers of statin drugs: what you haven’t been told about cholesterol-lowering drugs
• The effect of statins is not due to cholesterol lowering

What’s New at Bilderberg 2008?

Interesting; I don’t know if the Bilderberg meetings violate the Logan Act.

Source: Tyler, nolanchart.

The Bilderberg “elite” of the world are meeting once again, this time in Chantilly, Virginia right outside Washington, D.C. What is different about this year’s meeting?

2008 Bilderberg Conference

Location/date:
Westfields Marriott Hotel
Chantilly, Virginia, USA, June 5-8, 2008

The Bilderberg group is meeting again this weekend apparently to discuss cyber terrorism, the Middle East, a nuke-free world, Africa, and Russia among other things according to a press release issued by the group.

To my knowledge, this is the first time the Bilderbergers have issued a press release. Apparently you can get a list of the attendees yourself by a calling their number at the bottom of the press release (how kind of them, sure beats people having to get someone from the inside to send it, and then the people on the list still deny they were there, sheesh).

So what’s new with Bilderberg?

Well besides the out-of-character press release, there have been rumors circulating that Obama and Hillary Clinton may have attended the conference Thursday night. News outlets say they were meeting somewhere in Virginia in that area under closed doors (including the private meeting announced by the mainstream). Chantilly is only a few miles from Dulles International Airport where Obama’s press was duped. Obama’s/Hillary’s campaign office would not confirm/deny they visited Bilderberg.

Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina is attending the Bilderberg meeting for the first time. His name was on the attendee list received. I had someone call the Governor’s office to ask of his whereabouts, and they were told he was attending a “private function in Virginia.” This is a surprise to many since Sanford has been a stark opponent of the Real ID Act and has still not signed it into law in the state of South Carolina. Maybe he’s an insider? If I was asked to attend the conference, I would happily attend. Where else are you going to obtain all the secrets of Bilderberg? I hope to have a follow-up story later in the year about Sanford’s visit.

Condeleeza Rice (US) and Minister Babacan (TUR) are also attending. Apparently Babacan didn’t get the memo to keep quiet. It is his fifth time attending the conference.

What is Bilderberg? Why should I care?

Bilderberg is a secretive group of powerful and well-known politicians, businessman, and people who are involved with international affairs. They have been meeting since 1954 in almost absolute secrecy until recent years. No one would admit they attended back in those days even if someone had pictures of them going in and their name on the attendee list. The conference is supposed to be an outlet for these big-namers to freely discuss their opinions on policy and world events. The meetings are extremely well guarded and kept under tight wraps. At this year’s conference, private security, local/county police, Secret Service, FBI, foreign secret service were all spotted and identified. Even a couple of people dressed like US Marines were seen.

These actions from US officials are supposedly illegal since they violate the Logan Act which does not allow for US officials to meet secretly with persons from other governments to discuss/make policy. Though, charges are rarely filed against anyone. So the big question here is, why do these meetings have to be so secret? The attendees and press obviously pay no attention to the Logan Act. Is it so they can speak openly and freely as described in the press release? Or is there a more devious plot happening here? The thing that bothers people the most is not everything I’ve just listed, but the fact the media gives the Bilderbergers absolutely zero media coverage. But when a G8 or major UN conference is happening, the media is all over it. Everyone knows these high-ranking officials are meeting now especially with this press release. And the media still pays no attention?

In light of this year’s meeting, it is obvious that the meeting’s planners do not care anymore or are not worried about people finding out about their meeting. Even though reportedly this conference was moved from Greece to Chantilly, Virginia which is just outside Washington D.C. And it would seem Obama and Hillary felt it was safe enough to so obviously attend this major secret function during the first day of the Bilderberg meeting. If they did not meet, it would be a major coincidence since Chantilly is only three miles away from where Obama’s press was left behind, and there just happened to be a powerhouse, global meeting going on where anybody whose was anybody was at.

List of attendees:

Bilderberg Attendee List 2008
Chantilly, Virginia, USA
5-8 June 2008

CURRENT LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Honorary Chairman
BEL Davignon, Etienne Vice Chairman, Suez-Tractebel

DEU Ackermann, Josef Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank AG
CAN Adams, John Associate Deputy Minister of National Defence and Chief of the Communications Security Establishment Canada
USA Ajami, Fouad Director, Middle East Studies Program, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University
USA Alexander, Keith B. Director, National Security Agency
INT Almunia, Joaquín Commissioner, European Commission
GRC Alogoskoufis, George Minister of Economy and Finance
USA Altman, Roger C. Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.
TUR Babacan, Ali Minister of Foreign Affairs
NLD Balkenende, Jan Peter Prime Minister
PRT Balsemão, Francisco Pinto Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
FRA Baverez, Nicolas Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
ITA Bernabè, Franco CEO, Telecom Italia Spa
USA Bernanke, Ben S. Chairman, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System
SWE Bildt, Carl Minister of Foreign Affairs
FIN Blåfield, Antti Senior Editorial Writer, Helsingin Sanomat
DNK Bosse, Stine CEO, TrygVesta
CAN Brodie, Ian Chief of Staff, Prime Minister’s Office
AUT Bronner, Oscar Publisher and Editor, Der Standard
FRA Castries, Henri de Chairman of the Management Board and CEO, AXA
ESP Cebrián, Juan Luis CEO, PRISA
CAN Clark, Edmund President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
GBR Clarke, Kenneth Member of Parliament
NOR Clemet, Kristin Managing Director, Civita
USA Collins, Timothy C. Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
FRA Collomb, Bertrand Honorary Chairman, Lafarge
PRT Costa, António Mayor of Lisbon
USA Crocker, Chester A. James R. Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies
USA Daschle, Thomas A. Former US Senator and Senate Majority Leader
CAN Desmarais, Jr., Paul Chairman and co-CEO, Power Corporation of Canada
GRC Diamantopoulou, Anna Member of Parliament
USA Donilon, Thomas E. Partner, O’Melveny & Myers
ITA Draghi, Mario Governor, Banca d’Italia
AUT Ederer, Brigitte CEO, Siemens AG Österreich
CAN Edwards, N. Murray Vice Chairman, Candian Natural Resources Limited

DNK Eldrup, Anders President, DONG A/S
ITA Elkann, John Vice Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
USA Farah, Martha J. Director, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience;
Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
USA Feldstein, Martin S. President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research
DEU Fischer, Joschka Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Ford, Jr., Harold E. Vice Chairman, Merill Lynch & Co., Inc.
CHE Forstmoser, Peter Professor for Civil, Corporation and Capital Markets Law, University of Zürich
IRL Gallagher, Paul Attorney General
USA Geithner, Timothy F. President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
USA Gigot, Paul Editorial Page Editor, The Wall Street Journal
IRL Gleeson, Dermot Chairman, AIB Group
NLD Goddijn, Harold CEO, TomTom
TUR Gö?ü?, Zeynep Journalist; Founder, EurActiv.com.tr
USA Graham, Donald E. Chairman and CEO, The Washington Post Company
NLD Halberstadt, Victor Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
USA Holbrooke, Richard C. Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
FIN Honkapohja, Seppo Member of the Board, Bank of Finland
INT Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de Secretary General, NATO
USA Hubbard, Allan B. Chairman, E & A Industries, Inc.
BEL Huyghebaert, Jan Chairman of the Board of Directors, KBC Group
DEU Ischinger, Wolfgang Former Ambassador to the UK and US
USA Jacobs, Kenneth Deputy Chairman, Head of Lazard U.S., Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
USA Johnson, James A. Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
SWE Johnstone, Tom President and CEO, AB SKF
USA Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
FRA Jouyet, Jean-Pierre Minister of European Affairs
GBR Kerr, John Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc.
USA Kissinger, Henry A. Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
DEU Klaeden, Eckart von Foreign Policy Spokesman, CDU/CSU
USA Kleinfeld, Klaus President and COO, Alcoa
TUR Koç, Mustafa Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.
FRA Kodmani, Bassma Director, Arab Reform Initiative
USA Kravis, Henry R. Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
USA Kravis, Marie-Josée Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
INT Kroes, Neelie Commissioner, European Commission
POL Kwasniewski, Aleksander Former President
AUT Leitner, Wolfgang CEO, Andritz AG
ESP León Gross, Bernardino Secretary General, Office of the Prime Minister
INT Mandelson, Peter Commissioner, European Commission
FRA Margerie, Christophe de CEO, Total
CAN Martin, Roger Dean, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
HUN Martonyi, János Professor of International Trade Law; Partner, Baker & McKenzie; Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Mathews, Jessica T. President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

INT McCreevy, Charlie Commissioner, European Commission
USA McDonough, William J. Vice Chairman and Special Advisor to the Chairman, Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
CAN McKenna, Frank Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
GBR McKillop, Tom Chairman, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group
FRA Montbrial, Thierry de President, French Institute for International Relations
ITA Monti, Mario President, Universita Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
USA Mundie, Craig J. Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
NOR Myklebust, Egil Former Chairman of the Board of Directors SAS, Norsk Hydro ASA
DEU Nass, Matthias Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
NLD Netherlands, H.M. the Queen of the
FRA Ockrent, Christine CEO, French television and radio world service
FIN Ollila, Jorma Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell plc
SWE Olofsson, Maud Minister of Enterprise and Energy; Deputy Prime Minister
NLD Orange, H.R.H. the Prince of
GBR Osborne, George Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
TUR Öztrak, Faik Member of Parliament
ITA Padoa-Schioppa, Tommaso Former Minister of Finance; President of Notre Europe
GRC Papahelas, Alexis Journalist, Kathimerini
GRC Papalexopoulos, Dimitris CEO, Titan Cement Co. S.A.
USA Paulson, Jr., Henry M. Secretary of the Treasury
USA Pearl, Frank H. Chairman and CEO, Perseus, LLC
USA Perle, Richard N. Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
FRA Pérol, François Deputy General Secretary in charge of Economic Affairs
DEU Perthes, Volker Director, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik
BEL Philippe, H.R.H. Prince
CAN Prichard, J. Robert S. President and CEO, Torstar Corporation
CAN Reisman, Heather M. Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc.
USA Rice, Condoleezza Secretary of State
PRT Rio, Rui Mayor of Porto
USA Rockefeller, David Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
ESP Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias Executive Vice Chairman, Grupo Santander
USA Rose, Charlie Producer, Rose Communications
DNK Rose, Flemming Editor, Jyllands Posten
USA Ross, Dennis B. Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
USA Rubin, Barnett R. Director of Studies and Senior Fellow, Center for International Cooperation, New York University
TUR ?ahenk, Ferit Chairman, Do?u? Holding A.?.
USA Sanford, Mark Governor of South Carolina
USA Schmidt, Eric Chairman of the Executive Committee and CEO, Google
AUT Scholten, Rudolf Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
DNK Schur, Fritz H. Fritz Schur Gruppen
CZE Schwarzenberg, Karel Minister of Foreign Affairs
USA Sebelius, Kathleen Governor of Kansas
USA Shultz, George P. Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University

ESP Spain, H.M. the Queen of
CHE Spillmann, Markus Editor-in-Chief and Head Managing Board, Neue Zürcher Zeitung AG
USA Summers, Lawrence H. Charles W. Eliot Professor, Harvard University
GBR Taylor, J. Martin Chairman, Syngenta International AG
USA Thiel, Peter A. President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
NLD Timmermans, Frans Minister of European Affairs
RUS Trenin, Dmitri V. Deputy Director and Senior Associate, Carnegie Moscow Center
INT Trichet, Jean-Claude President, European Central Bank
USA Vakil, Sanam Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies, The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
FRA Valls, Manuel Member of Parliament
GRC Varvitsiotis, Thomas Co-Founder and President, V + O Communication
CHE Vasella, Daniel L. Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG
FIN Väyrynen, Raimo Director, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs
FRA Védrine, Hubert Hubert Védrine Conseil
NOR Vollebaek, Knut High Commissioner on National Minorities, OSCE
SWE Wallenberg, Jacob Chairman, Investor AB
USA Weber, J. Vin CEO, Clark & Weinstock
USA Wolfensohn, James D. Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC
USA Wolfowitz, Paul Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
INT Zoellick, Robert B. President, The World Bank Group

Rapporteurs
GBR Bredow, Vendeline von Business Correspondent, The Economist
GBR Wooldridge, Adrian D. Foreign Correspondent, The Economist

AUT Austria HUN Hungary
BEL Belgium INT International
CHE Switzerland IRL Ireland
CAN Canada ITA Italy
CZE Czech Republic NOR Norway
DEU Germany NLD Netherlands
DNK Denmark PRT Portugal
ESP Spain POL Poland
FRA France RUS Russia
FIN Finland SWE Sweden
GBR Great Britain TUR Turkey
GRC Greece
USA United States of America

Dinner? It was historic

Source: Giles Coren, Times Online.

From mulled sheep’s head to frozen faggots, it’s a gastronomic trip through the ages

You’d have thought, when BBC Two sent me back in time to live and eat for a week in six previous epochs and discover how it felt and what it did to me, that I would have returned each time to the 21st century desperate to resume my normal diet, slavering for modern delicacies and dreaming of familiar comforts. But it didn’t turn out that way.

You’d have thought that a diet drawn from the days of our nutritional innocence would make me feel terrible. Diets high in fat but low in fibre (such as the Regency); high in alcohol but low in water (such as Shakespearean and Restoration); or high in bread but low in everything else (Second World War), would surely constipate me, irritate me, give me headaches, make me terribly ill…but it wasn’t like that at all.

Six times over 12 weeks, with a week off between each to recover, I was dressed up in the costume of the period, sent first to the doctor for a check-up and then packed off with my fellow guinea-pig, the comedian Sue Perkins, to a period house, built, decorated and gastronomically set up in the era to which we were “travelling”. There was often some shock at the sudden immersion, but by the end of each week the doctors were getting some astonishing results.

Every single period I ate in made me healthier. Sure, these were always the diets of the relatively wealthy, and, yes, I would probably have been stricken down young with some sort of terrible disease long ago. But as long as I did live, and had money to feed myself, I think I would have been healthier and fitter at any time in the past than I am now. We all would. And we’d all be happier, too.

We can’t all escape backwards in time, as I did. We have to escape forwards, into a different future.

I do hope we still can.

The Age of Shakespeare

The earliest period into which we lunged, and the most immediately shocking. For a start, I was dressed in big, puffy knee-length trunk hose and tights with a giant codpiece, all attached to my doublet so that I couldn’t wee without getting totally naked: less of a problem than you might think, since I wasn’t drinking a single cup of tea or coffee, neither having yet arrived in England.

At first, it was terrible. Up at dawn to go hunting and not so much as a sniff of espresso. Irritability during the day quite terrible, not to mention the headaches. To offset these, a lot of ale and sack (sherry) is drunk, which gradually makes me much less irritable, and not in the least bit bothered about being sleepy all the time. By day five, I’m not even missing the coffee.

Dr Tom Van Den Bossche, a GP specialising in nutrition, has looked at the diet and predicted constipation and weight gain, but dishes such as calf’s foot jelly are too grey and sad to eat. Likewise, a dish containing 16 live frogs falls to bits when its contents go AWOL and an hour of frog-hunting burns off all the roast piglet and swan.

As for the rest of the diet, well, who’s actually going to finish a supper of sheep’s head mulled in cloves? Or even start it. Straight to bed with no eyeballs: minus 1,000 calories.

Then there is treacle tart filled with pickled mackerel and herring, so barf-inducing that once again Sue and I end up ingesting precious little of this newly fashionable “sugar” we have heard so much about.

There’s pumpkin pie, meat pottage, stewed mutton, boiled pigeon, calf’s lungs, meat custard, numble pie (made with deer’s testicles)…all sorts of delicious stuff. But in 1590, the fork has yet to be invented, and we find that eating with your hands, and feeling your digits grow stickier and smellier by the second, seriously reduces the amount you feel like shovelling in. Hey nonny, nonny.

At the end of a week in which we’ve consumed three times the recommended intake of protein, not to mention zero fibre and our own weight in ale and wine, Dr Van Den Bossche finds that I’ve lost three kilos and kicked my caffeine habit.

I have never felt better in my life. Might even write a play. Or maybe just a sonnet.

The Restoration

High protein again, and no water AT ALL to reflect people’s habits at this time of dangerous contamination of the Thames. Dirk Budka, an expert in nutrition and bacteriology at the Wellman Clinic, anticipates constipation (again – no wonder they didn’t invent the flushing toilet for another 200 years: chaps in the olden days clearly never pooed) and perhaps, with the dehydration and all the offal and booze, the beginnings of a kidney or bladder stone of the kind that nearly killed Samuel Pepys.

And so we sit down to such delights as neat’s tongue in a caul (the tongue of an ox in the amniotic sack of a calf) and a 10kg “coffin pie” with pastry an inch thick and a reusable lid, full of coxcombs, sweetbreads, sheep’s tongue, bone marrow, chicken, veal, pigeon breasts, oysters and nutmeg, which will last us a week – although by the end it is starting to go a bit green.

At first, it is awful not drinking water. Headaches and a general sluggishness ensue. But small beer (weak ale, basically) is a decent substitute, and eight pints a day of the stuff keep me in excellent spirits. After four or five days the headaches and sluggishness subside and I realise that they were just psychosomatic. The received wisdom that we should all drink two litres of water a day is just modern urban vanity, and complete rubbish: a big Puritan con designed to stop anyone having any fun that seems to have lasted 350 years.

By the end of the week, once again, I am feeling terrific. Is it the absence of fast food, and candied fruit instead of chocolate? Can it be that the 24-hour head sauna I am getting from my 5lb full-bottomed Samuel Pepys wig is keeping my brain light? Sure, my pee is like treacle and I have the breath of a necrophiliac on hunger strike, but my weight is down four or five pounds and my belly, empty of water, is hard as a rock. I am likely, apparently, to live to at least 80 – unless I get syphilis.

The Regency

Ah, the era of Jane Austen, of balls and dresses and, ah, balls and, um, dresses. They don’t really eat in the books, do they? That’s why they all look so good in frock coats and riding breeches. And I make a pretty awesome Mr Darcy, too. Sue can hardly keep her hands off.

I spend much of the time wearing a corset (as Beau Brummel often did, and no doubt Mr Darcy too, the old queen) and so cannot really force down much of the food – which in this period is a combination of patriotic roast beef eaten in defiance of the perfidious French and, conversely, poncy, heavily sauced French food, of the kind cooked for aristocrats by top chefs fleeing France as their noble patrons were beheaded.

I visit a Dr Petty in Harley Street, who predicts great digestive discomfort and an attack of gout from the purine in all the port I’ll be drinking: during the Napoleonic wars claret was not available, so we got stinko on the sticky stuff instead, imported from our old allies, Portugal.

But I have the time of my life. Determined to keep looking rakishly handsome in my fine clothes, I burn up thousands of calories stalking my estate with a blunderbuss, firing at poachers robbing my rabbits in defiance of the Enclosures Act.

Breakfast having just been invented, I make that my main meal. But it is so recently invented that it comprises only bread, so I don’t eat much of it.

Pineapples are newly available too but, you know, who gives?

As for lunch, that doesn’t seem to have been invented either. But they do have a thing called “nuncheon”, which is most often cheese served deliberately with the maggots who live in it. I dine only on the occasional sandwich at the casino tables

(invented by the Earl of Sandwich for that very purpose) and so go to bed reasonably hungry – a good way to stay slim.

At the end of this immersion I do, in fact, have dangerously high uric acid, indicating the imminence of an outbreak of gout. But I am in terrific shape on the surface.

The Victorian period

As a wealthy industrialist living in a big house in Barnes and wearing a stovepipe hat at all times, I live on brown Windsor soup, cold meat pie and mutton chops. The fear is obesity, heart attack and general moral calamity.

Darwin is big in this period, not just because he was a great student of animals, but because he was a big eater of them. He ate hawk, bittern and owl, puma (“tastes like veal”) and Giant Tortoise. Sue and I do our best, avoiding endangered species and chomping down squirrel, maggot, fox, donkey, Pomeranian and even lettuce (bleurghh!).

Then there were the first curries, the first fish and chips, the first restaurant boom, fast food stalls for The Great Exhibition and a megaton Christmas involving ten courses, several whole animals, mince pies full of actual mince, and a layered pie of 24 carcasses.

But by the end of the week I have, astonishingly, lost weight. This is probably down to a sort of Atkins’ effect from the meat-only diet. Furthermore, the total absence of additives or preservatives compared with a modern diet suggests that I could live for ever. This natural stuff, though leaden, is just so much easier to digest. Also I cycle everywhere on my penny-farthing, so I am fitter than ever.

Interestingly, all the protein has made me randy as hell, which is tedious, because in the Victorian era sex was, of course, illegal.

The Second World War

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler, if you think I’m eating that? Everything in the 1940s seems to have been the colour of a manila envelope: the food, the clothes, the women’s legs (Sue’s are stained with Bovril to look like she’s wearing stockings – and are about the meatiest thing I lick all week).

We live on “national loaf”, which is bread made from whatever you make bread from when there is no wheat – I’m guessing pea flour, brick dust and hair. We also eat a lot of “national sausage”. Known at the time as Hitler’s secret weapon, it was made from 3 per cent pig bits (sphincter, eyelid, sinus) and 97 per cent national loaf (see above, brick dust etc.). So you can just imagine how exciting a sausage sandwich is. Like eating loft insulation that might or might not have been slept on by a pig.

Then there’s ersatz coffee, powdered egg, mock duck, mock ham, mock chicken, mock chocolate and Spam, which, alas, was not mock. Spam is truly a horror. If you fattened a weasel on axle-grease, skinned it and then pressed it into a cube, you’d get something like it, but a little bit nicer.

Otherwise it’s just veg, veg, veg. Sue and I get an allotment and “dig for victory”, and with all that digging, and Home Guard drilling, and bayoneting ersatz Hun, the 100 per cent stodge diet converts into pure muscle.

We get heavier, yes, but when tested with callipers our fat mass is found to have gone down, and when put through our paces on a treadmill in a hypoxic chamber we seem to have developed the stamina of supermen. It was clearly the stodge wot won it.

The Seventies

Mark Hix, the chef who made the Ivy great, is our cook for the week, and lays before us on the first morning the food we will be eating at home. There isn’t a fresh or a green thing in sight. Everything is in plastic or tin: boil-in-the-bag cod mornay, Findus crispy pancakes, frozen faggots, Angel Delight.

With all this processed food my gastroenterologist at UCH predicts totally ungroovy traffic jam in colon. And what would happen to my weight? In the 1970s we ate, on average, 750 calories a day more than we do now, and yet obesity rates were a fifth of what they are today. I usually hover around 12st most of the time, and at 5’9” that means my BMI is at the top end of healthy. A few extra pounds and I tip into overweight – which leads to self-hatred, and running. And we don’t want that.

But down I chow, nonetheless. At home it is the unfeasible gunk described above, plus Mark’s fantastic flambéed steak Diane with crinkle-cut chips. And then there’s duck à l’orange, cheese fondue, chocolate fondue, coronation chicken, school dinners of liver and Smash followed by grey chocolate pudding with custard (skin on, of course). There’s a “swingers dinner” of Fanny Craddock recipes where everything is shaped like penises and vulvae…

And at the end of the week – guess what? I’m skinny as a pencil, and now look absolutely bang on period in my skin-tight tank-tops and flares. Far from slowing down, my digestion has gone into overdrive. My body, used to the lush life of the restaurant critic, just isn’t used to all this artificial and pre-fabricated stuff and simply doesn’t recognise it as food. It’s just passed right on through without being absorbed. Maybe that’s what happened in the 1970s.

Giles Coren stars with Sue Perkins in The Supersizers Go, starting on BBC Two at 9pm on Tuesday, May 20, and running for six weeks.

Senator Bernie Sanders: THE COLLAPSE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/qa/meetingqs.cfm

Dear Friend,

As gas and oil prices soared and as the nation slipped into recession, I made a request to Vermonters on my e-mail list. I asked them to tell me what was going on in their lives economically. That was it. Frankly, I expected a few dozen replies. I was amazed, therefore, when my office received over 600 responses from all across the state, as well as some from other states. This small booklet contains a few of those letters.

It is one thing to read dry economic statistics which describe the collapse of the American middle class. It is another thing to understand, in flesh and blood terms, what that means in the lives of ordinary Americans. Yes, since George W. Bush has been in office 5 million Americans have slipped into poverty, 8 million have lost their health insurance and 3 million have lost their pensions. Yes, in the last seven years median household income for working-age Americans has declined by $2,500. Yes, our country, for the first time since the Great Depression, now has a zero personal savings rate and, all across the nation, emergency food shelves are being flooded with working families whose inadequate wages prevent them from feeding their families.

Statistics are one thing, however, and real life is another. The responses that I received describe the decline of the American middle class from the perspective of those people who are living that decline. They speak about families who, not long ago, thought they were economically secure, but now find themselves sinking into desperation and hopelessness.

These e-mails tell the stories of working families unable to keep their homes warm in the winter; workers worried about whether they’ll be able to fill their gas tank to get to their jobs; and seniors, who spent their entire lives working, now wondering how they’ll survive in old age. They describe the pain and disappointments that parents feel as they are unable to save money for their kids’ college education, and the dread of people who live without health insurance.

In order to try and break through the complacency and isolation inside the Washington Beltway, I have read some of these stories on the floor of the Senate. It is imperative that Congress and the corporate media understand the painful reality facing the middle class today so that we can develop the appropriate public policy to address this crisis.

Let me conclude by thanking all of those people who have so kindly shared their lives with me through these letters. I know that for many of you this was not an easy thing to do.

Letters from Vermont and America:
For a downloadable booklet of complete letters click here.

“We have at times had to choose between baby food and heating fuel.”

“By February we ran out of wood and I burned my mother’s dining room furniture.”

“Not spending those ten hours at home with my husband and son makes a big difference.”

“I want to drop everything I am doing and go visit him.”

“We also only eat two meals a day to conserve.”

“My husband and I are very nervous about what will happen to us when we are old.”

“The pennies have all but dried up….Today I am sad, broken, and very discouraged.”

“I don’t go to church many Sundays, because the gasoline is too expensive to drive there.”

“At the rate we are going we will be destitute in just a few years.”

“I am just tired….I work 12 to 14 hours daily and it just doesn’t help.”

“Now we find that instead of a feeling of comfort, we have a feeling of dread.”

“Some nights we eat cereal and toast for dinner because that’s all I have.”

“Insurance costs continue to rise causing some to forgo insurance to pay for groceries.”

“Dentistry is expensive and people are opting not to come to the dentist.”

“How devastating it has been for folks who travel great distances to get to their cancer treatment.”

“I feel as though I am between a rock and a hard place no matter how hard I try.”

“I have been forced to go back to work.”

“We would like to not have to worry about where our next meal will come from.”

“My husband and I followed all the rules…. Slowly, though, we have sunk back to the ‘poor’ days.”

“It costs me so much money in gas that my wife and I live on $6 per day to eat.”

“How much more of a hit can people take? The future looks extremely bleak to me.”

“I am now living out of my car.”

“Our life style has drastically changed in the past 12 months.”

“My mortgage is behind, we are at risk for foreclosure, and I can’t keep up with my car payments.”

“We are barely staying afloat.”

“I wonder some times if we should try to follow our dreams – decide to have children?”

“People say, ‘Cut back.’ “

“Does anybody have a solution? Does anybody in Washington care?”

For a downloadable booklet of complete letters click here.

Do you have a story you would like to share? If so click here.

Dogmatic Conclusions to Make Your Head Spin

Weston Price studied the Masai tribe in the 30s, and found them to be in excellent health as long as they consumed the traditional diet of raw blood, milk, and meat.

Source: Regina Wilshire, Weight of the Evidence.

One of the oft repeated concerns about a carbohydrate restricted, high-fat diet is long-term effects. With globalization and a wide-variety of foods available in even remote locations today, it’s increasingly difficult to find traditional populations whom may be ideally suited to assess the long-term effect of such a diet.

One such population does exist – the Masai of Africa – for whom meat, milk and blood are their daily dietary staples, a naturally low-carbohydrate diet that has been traditionally consumed for generations. They offer us a unique opportunity to assess how such a diet impacts the ‘health risk markers’ held dear in modern science and medicine.

Does their diet, high in fat, make them fat?

Does their diet, high in fat, make them hypertensive?

Does their diet, high in fat, lead to high cholesterol levels?

For decades many have assumed that a diet rich with dietary fat leads to obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which then is assumed to lead to heart disease and other chronic health problems.

In the June 3, 2008 issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine a study investigating the Masai and their dietary habits and comparing them with rural and urban Bantu consuming different dietary practices is quite enlightening and tells us a story about how consuming dietary fat per se is not the underlying cause of obesity, high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

In the study published, Daily Energy Expenditure and Cardiovascular Risk in Masai, Rural and Urban Bantu Tanzanians, we learn that researchers investigated the dietary habits of three distinct populations within the same country – Tanzania – thus limiting confounding variables due to vastly different cultural conditions.

In total, the researchers investigated the health and health risk markers of 985 Tanzanian men and women – 130 Masai, 371 rural Bantu and 484 urban Bantu – with each group reporting very different dietary habits.

The Masai reported a high-fat, low-carbohydrate dietary pattern.

The rural Bantu reported a low-fat, high-carbohydrate dietary pattern.

The urban Bantu reported a high-fat, high-carbohydate dietary pattern, similar to a Western diet.

Which group to do think fared best?

BMI (average)

Masai = 20.7
Rural Bantu = 23.2
Urban Bantu = 27.4 (as a whole, the group was, on average, overweight)

Incidence of Obesity (BMI at or higher than 30)

Masai = 3%
Rural Bantu = 12%
Urban Bantu = 34%

Waist-Hip Ratio (lower is better)

Masai = 0.87
Rural Bantu = 0.89
Urban Bantu = 0.93

Blood Pressure

Masai = 118/71
Rural Bantu = 134/80
Urban Bantu = 134/82

Prevalence of Hypertention

Masai = 4%
Rural Bantu = 16%
Urban Bantu = 21%

Total Cholesterol

Masai = 3.89mmol/L (152mg/dl)
Rural Bantu = 3.60mmol/L (140mg/dl)
Urban Bantu = 4.50mmol/L (176mg/dl)

HDL (higher is better)

Masai = 1.08mmol/L (42mg/dl)
Rural Bantu = 0.91mmol/L (36mg/dl)
Urban Bantu = 1.08mmol/L (42mg/dl)

LDL

Masai = 2.09mmol/L (82mg/dl)
Rural Bantu = 2.13mmol/L (83mg/dl)
Urban Bantu = 2.69mmol/L (105mg/dl)

Triglycerides

Masai = 1.36mmol/L (121mg/dl)
Rural Bantu = 1.45mmol/L (129mg/dl)
Urban Bantu = 1.61mmol/L (143mg/dl)

Total Cholesterol/HDL Ratio (less than 4 is ‘ideal’)

Masai = 3.72
Rural Bantu = 4.38
Urban Bantu = 4.53

LDL/HDL Ratio (the lower the better)

Masai = 2.21
Rural Bantu = 2.46
Urban Bantu = 2.69

ApoB/ApoA-1 Ratio (measure of LDL particle ratios, lower is better)

Masai = 0.74
Rural Bantu = 0.83
Urban Bantu = 0.81

So, there you have the major findings. What did the researchers conclude?

No! It couldn’t possibly be their dietary habits, it must be that the “potentially atherogenic diet among the Masai was not reflected in serum lipids and was offset probably by very high energy expenditure levels and low body weight.”

Now their level of physical activity certainly may be contributing to their overall health, but it’s certainly not independent of their dietary habits. In fact, I would contend that while it’s ideal to be active, that is not the driving force in ‘health’ or lack thereof - it’s dietary habits that dominate our health outcomes, our level of activity may be important too, but activity in and of itself is no solution to a piss-poor diet.

We need, before activity, a proper diet to enable us to perform phyisical activity, not the other way around! So while the researchers here could not bring themselves to even consider that the habitual diet of the Masai – high-fat and low-carbohydrate – was the driving force in their good health and enabled high levels of activity, I’ll say it!

Here we have evidence that a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, consumed habitually does not lead to obesity, high blood pressure and dyslipidemia, and it may, in fact, lead to beneficial long-term health and increased levels of activity in those habitually eating such a diet.

The US has no remaining grain reserves

Source: Tri State Observer.

Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), has raised concerns over the issue of U.S. grain reserves after it was announced that the sale of 18.37 million bushels of wheat from USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are o­nly 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be o­nly 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack. “Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The o­nly thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”

The CCC is a federal government-owned and operated entity that was created to stabilize, support, and protect farm income and prices. CCC is also supposed to maintain balanced and adequate supplies of agricultural commodities and aids in their orderly distribution.

“This lack of emergency preparedness is the fault of the 1996 farm bill which eliminated the government’s grain reserves as well as the Farmer Owned Reserve (FOR),” explained Matlack. “We had hoped to reinstate the FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve in the new farm bill, but the politics of food defeated our efforts. As farmers it is our calling and purpose in life to feed our families, our communities, our nation and a good part of the world, but we need better planning and coordination if we are to meet that purpose. AAM pledges to continue our work for better farm policy which includes an FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve.”

AAM’s support for the FOR program, which allows the grain to be stored o­n farms, is a key component to a safe grain reserve in that the supplies will be decentralized in the event of some unforeseen calamity which might befall the large grain storage terminals.

A Strategic Energy Grain Reserve is as crucial for the nation’s domestic energy needs as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. AAM also supports full funding for the replenishment and expansion of Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

The May 1, 2008 CCC Inventory report may be reviewed here.

HOW ‘HIGH’ DOES A “HIGH CRIME” NEED TO BE NOW? Time for Congress to Stand Up in Its Own Defense: Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!

America, do you care?

Source: Dave Lindorff, Baltimore Chronicle.

The nation is at a dangerous crossroad. Either Congress reasserts its authority now by impeachment or it forever surrenders that role, leaving us with what can only be called a dictatorship.

The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation—as if it were needed—even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.

The release of a confessional book by former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan and the subsequent release of a long blocked report by the Senate Intelligence Committee make it clear that Bush, Cheney & Company deliberately lied to Congress and the American public back in 2002 and early 2003 about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (there was none). McClellan also states that Bush and Cheney conspired to “out” CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson, as part of a compaign to prevent her husband from exposing a major part of that campaign of lies: the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

It would be hard to overstate the extent of or the damage caused by these crimes that are now exposed to the light of day.

Beginning in 2001, making the most cynical use of the tragic killing of nearly 3000 Americans in the 9-11 attacks, Bush and Cheney moved to aggrandize as much power as possible in the executive, and then, to consolidate that power grab, engineered a full-scale war against Iraq, enabling them to claim that any opponent of their dictatorial usurpation of power was a traitor to the nation.

It was all a lie.

Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda, and he had no nuclear program. He had no weapons of mass destruction. His country was broken, thanks to years of international sanctions and war.

As a result of these lies, we have a country that no longer even remotely resembles what the Founders had intended. The Congress has been shorn of its once exclusive authority to legislate, and even its Constitutional power to investigate the executive branch has been successfully defied. It is now an atrophied relic. The federal judiciary, right up to the Supreme Court, has been packed with administration sycophants and Federalist Society advocates of unfettered executive power.

We also have been saddled with an unwinnable war in the Middle East that has claimed the lives of 4500 Americans, destroyed the lives of another 30,000—or perhaps several hundred thousand, if we add in all those suffering psychological damage, or genetic damage from exposure to depleted uranium weapons. That war has also killed over 1 million innocent Iraqis, including countless chiildren, destroyed their country, bankrupted this nation, and made the US a pariah and a rogue state in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Most Americans long since came to the conclusion that the Bush administration was a gang of idiots. Just watching their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfold was enough to make that clear. But the new reports from McClellan and from the Senate Intelligence Committee should make it clear that this was not just stupidity. The disasters that have befallen this nation, or that it has brought on the rest of the world, over the past eight years have been the result of deliberate lying and deceit and of the conspiratorial policies of a cabal of leaders whose goal from day one was undoing the Constitution and establishing the presidency as a kind of dictatorship.

Most of the corporate media have been unable to bring themselves to state this clearly. They edge around the issue by talking about the White House having been “misleading” or “untruthful.” And little is said about the lasting damage that has been done to the Republic and the Constitution, or about what is to be done about a still bloody war that never should have been fought in the first place.

The answer is clear. Impeachment proceedings should be initiated against both Bush and Cheney. These two arch criminals must not be permitted to leave office with their titles intact. They need to be tossed out in disgrace, and then indicted for war crimes and for crimes like perjury, conspiracy and perhaps treason.

We are already seeing the long-term damage that has been wrought. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, is saying that the president’s use of the National Security Agency to spy, without any court order, on tens or hundreds of thousants, or perhaps millions of Americans, is legal, and would continue under a McCain administration. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said that he would continue Bush’s use of “signing statements” to ignore Congressional legislation that he felt impaired his Constitutional powers as president.

The nation is at a dangerous crossroad. Either Congress reasserts its authority now, via impeachment, drawing a Constitutional line in the stand in defense of Article I of the Constitution—the article that defines the power of Congress as absolute in terms of passing legisation—or it forever surrenders that role, leaving us with what can only be called a dictatorship.

We clearly cannot count on the next president, whoever that may be, to surrender powers usurped by the current one. What leader in history has willingly and voluntarily surrendered authority, after all?

Such power must be wrested back by Congress, and the only way for that to happen is impeachment—a course laid out clearly by the authors of the Constitution for just such a crisis.

________________

About the author: Philadelphia journalist Dave Lindorff is a 34-year veteran, an award-winning journalist, a former New York Times contributor, a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a two-time Journalism Fulbright Scholar, and the co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of a well-regarded book on impeachment, The Case for Impeachment. His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

The Panic Of ’08 – Oil, War And Denial

Source: Gerald Celente, Trends Alert.

06-07-2008

RHINEBECK, NY — The Panic is “On.” Each day brings more bad news and it just got much worse.

On Friday, oil super-spiked nearly $11 to close above $138 a barrel and the Dow dumped nearly 400 points. The dollar is back on its losing streak and gold is back above $900 an ounce. Job losses increased for the fifth month in a row and the unemployment rate had its biggest jump since 1986.

Chain stores are closing, credit keeps tightening and economic conditions are worsening. The government is going broke, the people are broke, the nation’s fighting two costly wars and losing both and the President warns there may be more.

Avoiding intelligent discussion of the dire implications of the oil shock, the next credit crisis and President Bush’s warnings that Iran is a potential military target, the nation’s news has been focused on the elimination rounds of The Presidential Reality Show.

And while rumors of an attack on Iran by the US are generally ignored or denied, the undercurrent of Middle East war is another speculative factor driving oil prices higher. Among them, Israel announced new construction of 900 homes in the occupied West Bank and threatened a major military offensive to put down the worsening Gaza uprisings.

Iran, who Israel accuses of supplying weapons to the Palestinians, has also become a military target. On Friday, Israeli deputy Prime Minister, Shaul Mofaz, said, “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.” And, according to reports, the US also has plans to launch a military strike against Iran. (“Limited US attack on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases in sight” (DEBKAfile, 3 June 2008); (“Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term,” The Jerusalem Post, 20 May 2008.) Note: Yielding to pressure from Washington, The Jerusalem Post pulled the May 20th headline story from its website.

Trend Analysis: With commodity speculators currently being blamed for the oil spike, the threat of war and how it relates to high oil prices, until just recently, was absent from national debate as are the devastating global implications that would result from a Persian/US/Israel war.

Unless oil prices swiftly and dramatically decline, the American people will suffer the worst socioeconomic conditions in living history. Utility bills won’t be paid, foreclosures will escalate, crime will dramatically increase tax revolts, gas riots, strikes and protests will ensue. Millions of elderly, those on fixed incomes and paycheck-to-paycheck people won’t be able to heat their homes, fuel their autos or cover their expenses.

It’s pure and simple. For the working majority, wages are falling, home equity is evaporating, investments are failing, pensions are lost, benefits are scarce and each day it costs more to live.

Forced to choose between filling the gas tank or feeding the family, trying to make ends meet is a losing game. In the real world, despite the government’s adjusted-for-manipulation core inflation index, which omits food and fuel from its calculations, the working class is going under as prices of life’s essentials keep going higher.

Without money to make up for rising costs, credit cards will be increasingly used as the finger in the bursting financial damn that will eventually drown debt burdened Americans who won’t be able to meet their monthly card payments.

But over the past weeks, the word from those who didn’t see the financial storm coming were now claiming that the worst of it was over. The US Treasury Secretary, the Federal Reserve Chairman and the presidents of the biggest banks and brokerages have declared that the credit crisis is closer to the end than the beginning.

Publisher’s Note: Throughout the millennia and regardless of country, economic hardship, not moral justification, has often been used as a political pretext to wage war and as the public rationale to support one.

For example, when asked why the US launched the First Gulf War against Iraq over their oil dispute with Kuwait in 1991, US Secretary of State James Baker said, “It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs” and the American people agreed.

Similarly, with high oil prices inflicting wide socioeconomic damage, an attack upon an oil rich country, such as Iran, under the guise of maintaining global stability, could be sold as an excuse for war by politicians and supported by an economically depressed public as a rationale to wage one.

Gerald Celente
Founder/Director
The Trends Research Institute ®
E-mail: gcelente@trendsresearch.com
Website: http://www.trendsresearch.com
Media Relations: 845.876.6700 Ext. 311
cheri@trendsresearch.com

US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

Source: Gareth Porter, IPS.

Washington: Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier “launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran”, citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make “a policy decision about how far the administration would go — what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks.”

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD “knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question”.

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. “It’s clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue,” he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran, according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post Jul. 20, 2007 in which he gave no hint of Cheney’s proposal, but referred to “options” for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran “smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers”.

Gerson cited two possibilities: “Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran.” But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has “escalation dominance” in its conflict with the United States.

That meant, according to Gerson that, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”

Carpenter’s account of the Pentagon’s position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran’s ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran.

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney’s proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by President Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in “the tank” at the Pentagon on Dec. 13, 2006 and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according a report by Time magazine’s Joe Klein last June. After he become head of the Central Command in March 2007, Adm. William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran’s nuclear programme and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney’s proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons — especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) — and training to Shiite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with Gen. David Petraeus.

As IPS reported earlier this week, Cheney had already used Gen. David Petraeus’ takeover as the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney’s proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shiites that would require U.S. forces beyond his control.

At that point, Adm. Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon’s forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become CENTCOM chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.