Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[Michael]

For those who are struggling to understand the implications of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, this is a vary insightful article.

I am fascinated that, from all I hear, Julian Assange is dislike across the US. On the face of it, you may think it's because he has 'appeared' to attack the US, although that is a very flimsy argument. I feel what is really behind the disdain from Americans, is what Mark LeVine is talking about in this article. Meaning that American public opinion has for some time now become completely under the domination and purposes of Capital. Autonomous thought in the US and many other countries (increasingly and alarmingly also in Australia) has so seriously eroded, I can see little chance of change, except by the famous "inevitable march of circumstance". (Which will be very nasty all round.)

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2010/12/2010122971637433801.html

[Builder]

Independent thought...what a rare and precious commodity! We all ought to cry, laugh and live according to scripts of Hollywood blockbusters and think in line with what the mass media tells us.

However, there are news channels that are increasingly beyond control of the West and they make people restless. Al-Jazeera is a notable example. Although there are doubts that it is manipulated from 'the other side'
'the other side', it remains pain in the butt for a western consumer. It has turned out that Al-Jazeera has so far provided the most balanced media coverage of events in Afghanistan.

This story is a good insight into workings of the modern world. Industrial world relies on producing hardware and its use - they do not give a damn about the rules (brute power does the trick). Financial world relies on enforcement of the rules of the game (no rules - no trust - no profits). Assange has hit the soft spot. We'll see where it leads. West is hollowed out, indeed.

[Jahn]

This woman is onto something quite amazing and equally disturbing.

I'm neither interested nor attracted to the world of crime and terror, but I have always thought it was a powerful force and influence on our side of the fence. I didn't realise how powerful it was.

Loretta Napoleoni describes how the dark side of finance has been propping up the US, but since 9/11 and the war on terror, all this money now floods into the EU. She estimated it to be worth $1.5 trillion, before 9/11.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXl-mKZ7aSc

Very interesting.

[Builder]

Right. The people producing food cannot afford to produce food. They run for cities to find money. Who produces the food? Who can afford to produce food and who is it everyone depends on?

India's hidden climate change catastrophe
Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves

By Alex Renton

Naryamaswamy Naik went to the cupboard and took out a tin of pesticide. Then he stood before his wife and children and drank it. "I don't know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn't say," Sugali Nagamma said, her tiny grandson playing at her feet. "I'd tell him: don't worry, we can sell the salt from our table."

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/indias-hidden-climate-change-catastrophe-2173995.html

Ms Nagamma, 41, showed us a picture of her husband – good-looking with an Elvis-style hairdo – on the day they married a quarter of a century ago. "He'd been unhappy for a month, but that day he was in a heavy depression. I tried to take the tin away from him but I couldn't. He died in front of us. The head of the family died in front of his wife and children – can you imagine?"

The death of Mr Naik, a smallholder in the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, in July 2009, is just another mark on an astonishingly long roll. Nearly 200,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves in the past decade. Like Mr Naik, a third of them choose pesticide to do it: an agonising, drawn-out death with vomiting and convulsions.

The death toll is extrapolated from the Indian authorities' figures. But the journalist Palagummi Sainath is certain the scale of the epidemic of rural suicides is underestimated and that it is getting worse. "Wave upon wave," he says, from his investigative trips in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. "One farmer every 30 minutes in India now, and sometimes three in one family." Because standards of record-keeping vary across the nation, many suicides go unnoticed. In some Indian states, the significant numbers of women who kill themselves are not listed as "farmers", even if that is how they make their living.

Mr Sainath is an award-winning expert on rural poverty in India, a famous figure across India through his writing for The Hindu newspaper. I spoke to him at a screening of Nero's Guests, a documentary film about the suicide epidemic and some of the more eye-popping inequalities of modern India.

"Poverty has assaulted rural India," he said. "Farmers who used to be able to send their children to college now can't send them to school. For all that India has more dollar billionaires than the UK, we have 600 million poor. The wealth has not trickled down." Almost all the bereaved families report that debts and land loss because of unsuccessful crops were among their biggest problems.

The causes of that poverty are complex. Mr Sainath points to the long-term collapse of markets for farmers' produce. About half of all the suicides occur in the four states of India's cotton belt; the price of cotton in real terms, he says, is a twelfth of what it was 30 years ago. Vandana Shiva, a scientist-turned-campaigner, also links failures of cotton farming with the farmer suicides: she says the phenomenon was born in 1997 when the Indian government removed subsidies from cotton farming. This was also when genetically modified seed was widely introduced.

"Every suicide can be linked to Monsanto," says Ms Shiva, claiming that the biotech firm's modified Bt Cotton caused crop failure and poverty because it needed to be used with pesticide and fertilisers. The Prince of Wales has made the same accusation. Monsanto denies that its activities are to blame, saying that Indian rural poverty has many causes.

Beyond any argument – though no less politically charged – is the role of the weather in this story. India's climate, always complicated by the Himalayas on one side and turbulent oceans on the two others, has been particularly unreliable in recent years. In Rajasthan, in the north-west, a 10-year drought ended only this summer, while across much of India the annual monsoons have failed three times in the past decade.

India's 600 million farmers and the nation's poor are often the same people: a single failed crop tends to wipe out their savings and may lead to them losing their land. After that, there are few ways back. The drought, following a failed monsoon, that I saw in Andhra Pradesh in 2009 was the tipping point that drove Mr Naik to suicide.

Such tragedies and even the selling of children for marriage or as bonded labour – a common shock-horror news story in India – are the most dramatic results. But far more common is the story of rural families migrating, in tens of millions, to India's cities, swelling the ranks of the urban poor and leaving holes in the farming infrastructure that keeps India fed.

I visited an idyllic village, Surah na Kheda, last month in the limerick-worthy district of Tonk, Rajasthan. We arrived to find the rows of whitewashed mud-walled houses gleaming in the rising sun, while inside the courtyards women in bright saris were stirring milk to make yogurt and butter for the day's meals. Their daughters kneaded dough for the breakfast chapattis.

But there was an odd thing: a distinct lack of people. There were the old and the very young – but virtually no one of working age. Half the village, some 60 adults and many children, had gone to Jaipur, the state capital, to look for work. Even though the Diwali holiday fell the following week, no one expected their neighbours and relatives back. Times were too hard.

Prabhati Devi, 50, said four of her seven children had joined the exodus. "They had to go," she said. "Twenty years ago, we could grow all we needed, and sell things too. Now we can't grow wheat, we can't grow pulses, we can't even grow carrots, because there is not enough rain. So we go to the cities, looking for money."

She looked bereaved as she talked of the damage the 10-year drought had done. "It crushes people," she said. "Before, we were able to deal with drought. It would come every four years, and you could prepare. We would store grain and people could share it. In the past, when your buffalo wasn't giving milk, neighbours would share theirs. But now kindness is no longer possible."

I found the other end of Surah na Kheda's story under a flyover in Jaipur. Here, in the early morning, hundreds of men and boys, farmers from all over northern India, gather looking for work as labourers on the city's building sites. Many of them sleep under the flyover, and their clothes were stiff with dirt. The air was tense, and smelled of drugs and cheap alcohol.

Shankar Lal, one of the Surah na Kheda émigrés, was sipping tea at a stall under the flyover with half a dozen other young men from the village, waiting for a contractor to give them a lift. "If the rains came back we would be farmers again. But will they?" He did not think so: "In 10 years' time, there will be no village. Everyone will be here in the city. Or they will be dead."

The men were working for 150 rupees (£2.15) a day, decorating a house in one of Jaipur's posh suburbs. This is relatively good work, and they had all found a floor to sleep on. In another building site, we found a seven-strong rural family who slept in the cement store. The mother and grandmother were working for less than £1 a day, carrying cement and bricks on their heads up precarious bamboo scaffolding. In one half-built block of flats a baby slept in the dust next to the cement mixer. None of these people were happy to be in the city. "If we could survive at home we would go straight back," I was told.

Many of the labourers on the sites were children, some as young as 12: an interrupted education is another part of the social fallout of rural collapse. In Rajasthan, most older people in the villages told me they had not gone to school, but they were proud that their children had. However, the new poverty brought about by the "chaos in the weather" was keeping their grandchildren out of school.

According to the World Food Programme, 20 million more people joined the ranks of India's hungry in the past decade, and half of all the country's children are underweight. Some analyses say that fast-developing India is performing worse than some of the poorest countries, such as Liberia and Haiti, in addressing the basic issue of hunger. With so many farmers giving up, the question is how India will feed the entire country, not just its poor.

It is widely agreed that there have been radical shifts in the weather patterns in India in the past two decades; what is less certain are the causes. Is the change in the weather "climate change"? For many development workers, the question needs answering, because the collapse of India's rural economy – if it continues – will bring about a catastrophe that will affect people far beyond India's borders: even rumours of a poor monsoon or bad harvest in India tends to send food prices on the world commodity markets soaring, as they did again this spring.

Alka Awasthi, of Cecoedecon, a Rajasthani rural poverty organisation part-funded by Oxfam, asks: "When is the data going to catch up with the stories? Why don't the scientists come and listen to people who actually work with the rain? They don't know what a woman like Prabhati Devi is dealing with."

But at Rajasthan's Institute of Development Studies, Surjit Singh believes the calamitous weather shifts are as much to do with changing patterns of farming, growing population and failed government policies as any greater human-induced change to the climate. "The state has failed the rural poor, and so has the private sector. Economic liberalisation has clearly failed. How long can the boom go on? The economy may be growing at 9 per cent but food-price inflation is running at 16 to 18 per cent."

Dr Singh is in no doubt, though, that the changes in weather have increased poverty in rural India – and that there lies a huge injustice. "Climate change puts the onus on the poor to adapt – but that's wrong. Who is using the planes, the cars and the plastic bottles? Not the poor man with no drinking water."

For Mrs Devi and Sugali Nagamma, though, such debates are meaningless. I asked Mrs Devi if she had a question to ask me. "If these industries and factories stop burning petrol and sending poison into the atmosphere will it bring our rains back?" I had to tell her I did not know.

[Builder]

Things are never simple and even less easy. To think that money could substitute an effort...

Hi-tech industries in disarray as China rations vital minerals

By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

China has struck fear into Western governments and electronics giants by slashing exports of a highly sought-after array of metals which are crucial for electronics products ranging from iPads and X-ray systems, to low-energy lightbulbs and hybrid cars.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/hitech-industries-in-disarray-as-china-rations-vital-minerals-2171789.html

In a sign of its growing industrial and political clout, China has cut its export quotas for rare earth elements (REEs) by 35 per cent for the first six months of 2011, threatening to extend a global shortage of the minerals and intensifying a scramble to find alternative sources.

Mines in China supply 97 per cent of the world's rare earths, 17 obscure metals which possess various qualities, such as conductivity and magnetism, that make them an essential component in many modern applications such as smartphones, computers and lasers.

Instead of last year's 22,282 metric tons, China's Ministry of Commerce revealed the total for the first six months of next year would be 14,446 tons, split among 31 domestic and foreign-invested companies.

Commentators said the announcement was probably designed to limit the environmental damage caused by the mines while ensuring its manufacturers were able to meet growing domestic and international demand.

However the announcement caused dismay among Western governments, which have belatedly begun to appreciate that China's stranglehold on elements such as lanthanum, used for batteries in hybrid cars, and neodymium, for permanent magnets in wind turbines, give it immense economic and political power.

The US Trade Representative's office, which advises President Barack Obama, said it had raised concerns with China over the export restraints. Britain, which previously said it was monitoring whether China's stance on REEs broke World Trade Organisation rules, reiterated its commitment to "free, fair and open markets". A spokesman for the Department for Business said: "Competitive markets are essential to achieving long-term sustainable growth, which is why the UK supports the need to cut red tape and resist protectionism."

Electronics companies could be hard hit by rising prices caused by the export cut, which was predicted by The Independent in January. The consumer electronics giant Sony described the move as an obstacle to free trade. "At this point in time there is no direct impact on our company. But further restrictions could lead to a shortage of supply or rise in costs for related parts and materials. We will watch the situation carefully," a Sony spokesman said.

Other manufacturers, such as Apple, whose iPad uses rare earths, declined to comment.

REEs lie near the surface in only a few, usually inhospitable, areas. During the past 20 years, China has rapidly increased production from a single mine near the city of Baotou, in Inner Mongolia, leading to the closure of mines in the US and elsewhere unable to compete with the low prices.

However, a global shortfall now looms because worldwide demand for REEs has almost tripled from 40,000 tons to 110,000 tons in the past 10 years, while China – which accounts for about 75 per cent of usage with the remainder divided between Japan, the US and Europe – has begun to scale back exports, from 48,500 tons a year to 14,446 tons for the first half of 2011. The move has the potential to damage the industries reliant on rare earths, which are estimated to be worth £3 trillion, or 5 per cent of global GDP.

The US rare earth mining company Molycorp aims to reopen a mine in the Mojave Desert at the end of this year, which will produce 20,000 tons a year, or about 25 per cent of current Western imports from China, by mid-2012. Deposits are also found in Greenland, opening the prospect of its wilderness being scarred by environmentally damaging mining.

"Export quotas continue to be a tool for the Chinese government to limit the export of its strategic resource," said Nick Curtis, the chief executive of Lynas, which is opening a new mine in Australia and whose share price shot up by 10 per cent on news of China's move.

A global scramble for rare earths has now begun, according to Gareth Hatch, an analyst at Technology Metals Research, in Illinois. "We have a race against time: we've found the materials we know where they are, now we have to develop them," he said.

"There has been some discussion in some quarters that China has been using the quotas to control or manipulate what's going on in the West," he said in an interview with the BBC. "I don't share that view, but the fact is the environmental issues associated with some of the mines historically used by the Chinese to produce these materials have been in terrible shape, and there is a genuine concern that they need to get that sorted out and meet this demand internally in China which is growing. But... you don't really want to rely on a single geographic location for your material.

"It doesn't really make sense – and yet we find ourselves in that situation," he added.

[Builder]

When Pakistani Taliban attacked down the Swat valley in 2009, they came within a few miles of Tarbela military base where Pakistan stores its nuclear weapons.

The End of Jinnah's Pakistan

Governor Salmaan Taseer's murder raises questions about the future of Pakistan's Western-educated elites.

By SADANAND DHUME

Every time you think things can't possibly get worse in Pakistan, along comes something to prove you wrong. On Tuesday, in possibly the country's most consequential political shock since the 2007 murder of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Salmaan Taseer, the 65-year-old governor of Punjab province, was gunned down in an upscale Islamabad market by one of his police bodyguards. The reason: the governor's plain-spoken defense of Asia Bibi, an illiterate Christian woman sentenced to death under Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws. According to press reports, Taseer's killer pumped nine bullets into him for daring to call the blasphemy provision a "black law."

Needless to say, Taseer was right. Pakistan's blasphemy laws belong more in a chronicle of medieval horrors than in a modern society, let alone one that receives billions of dollars in Western largesse. Since the mid-1980s, blasphemy—including criticizing the prophet Mohammed—has carried a mandatory death sentence. Amnesty International calls the laws "vaguely formulated and arbitrarily enforced" and "typically employed to harass and persecute religious minorities." Over the past quarter century, at least 30 people have been lynched by mobs after being accused of blasphemy. Many others have been forced to flee the country. Though Christians make up less than 2% of Pakistan's population, they account for about half the country's blasphemy cases.

In a larger sense, however, the significance of Taseer's murder lies in what it says about the future of nuclear-armed Pakistan. Carved out of the Muslim-majority provinces of British India in 1947, the country has long struggled to reconcile two competing visions of its reason for being. Is Pakistan, as imagined by its founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah—a London-trained barrister with a fondness for pork sandwiches and two-toned spats—merely a homeland for the subcontinent's Muslims? Or was it created to echo the far more ambitious formulation of Abul Ala Maududi, the radical Islamist ideologue born roughly a generation after Jinnah: for the enforcement of Islamic Shariah law upon every aspect of society and the state?

Taseer broadly belonged to Jinnah's Pakistan. He was educated as a chartered accountant in England, founded a successful telecom company, and published the country's leading liberal newspaper in English. (Though, as the son of a famous Urdu poet, Taseer was perhaps more culturally authentic than his nation's founder.) By contrast, Taseer's killer, a 26-year-old named Mumtaz Qadri, symbolizes Maududi's vision. In photographs, he's bearded and moustache-less, in the manner prescribed by fundamentalist Islam. That Mr. Qadri could defy South Asia's usually rigid codes of hierarchy by murdering someone far above his station jibes with the contempt radical Islamists often feel for traditional elites. According to press reports, Mr. Qadri showed no remorse for the murder.

The murder highlights anew the way in which Pakistan's English-speaking classes resemble a small island of urbanity surrounded by a rising tide of fundamentalist zeal. They have only themselves to blame for their predicament. From independence onward, successive governments—military and civilian alike—have ridden the tiger of fundamentalism out of political expediency, misplaced piety or geopolitical ambition. A statistic from Zahid Hussain's "Frontline Pakistan" is telling: When Pakistan gained independence in 1947 it housed 137 madrassas. That number has since swelled to about 13,000, between 10% and 15% of which are linked to sectarian militancy (Sunni versus Shia) or terrorism.

For many analysts, Pakistan's slide began during the prime ministership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the debonair, Scotch-swilling feudal from Sindh first elected in 1970. Believing that he could co-opt the then small fundamentalist lobby, Bhutto banned alcohol and gambling and shuttered night clubs. He replaced the traditional Sunday holiday with Friday and declared the tiny heterodox Ahmadiyya sect to be non-Muslim. Bhutto promoted the pious and ultimately treacherous Zia ul-Haq to head the army.

After Zia seized power in a coup in 1977, the Islamization of Pakistan took off in earnest. The general set up Shariah courts, began government collection of zakat (an Islamic alms tax), denuded libraries of books deemed un-Islamic, and mandated compulsory prayer for civil servants and marks in their personnel files for piety. In the 1980s, army officers were instructed to read "The Quranic Concept of War," a book by a zealous officer, Brigadier General S.K. Malik, which argues that "terror struck in the hearts of the enemies is not only a means, it is the end in itself." Many of these officers subsequently rotated through the notorious Inter-Services Intelligence whose links to violent fundamentalist groups fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan and India in Kashmir are widely regarded as too deep to sever entirely.

Since the tefforist attacks of 9/11, the U.S. has worked hard to stem the rising tide of fundamentalism in Pakistan. First it backed the military strongman Gen. Pervez Musharraf. When he failed to deliver, policy makers in Washington held out hope that a democratically elected government, armed with greater legitimacy, would fight a better fight. But so far—despite co-operating with stepped-up U.S. drone strikes against militants in the country's remoter reaches—the regime of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani has hardly succeeded in stemming the tide of fundamentalist anger in either Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Perhaps Governor Taseer's murder will lead the country's squabbling politicians and scheming generals to come together in a renewed bid to save Jinnah's country from Maududi's vision. Perhaps Pakistani society will be outraged enough to act against the thousands of madrassas that poison the country daily. But if the past is any guide to the future, it may not be a good idea to hold your breath. Jinnah, it can safely be assumed, is spinning in his grave.

Mr. Dhume is a columnist for WSJ.com and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

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U.N. report: Eco-systems at 'tipping point'
By Matthew Knight for CNN

(CNN) -- The world's eco-systems are at risk of "rapid degradation and collapse" according to a new United Nations report.

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) published by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) warns that unless "swift, radical and creative action" is taken "massive further loss is increasingly likely."

Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the CBD said in a statement: "The news is not good. We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history."

The U.N. warns several eco-systems including the Amazon rainforest, freshwater lakes and rivers and coral reefs are approaching a "tipping point" which, if reached, may see them never recover.

The report says that no government has completely met biodiversity targets that were first set out in 2002 -- the year of the first GBO report.

Executive Director of the U.N. Environmental Program Achim Steiner said there were key economic reasons why governments had failed in this task.

"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other life-forms and their role in healthy and functioning eco-systems," Steiner said in a statement.

Although many countries are beginning to factor in "natural capital," Steiner said that this needs "rapid and sustained scaling-up."

Despite increases in the size of protected land and coastal areas, biodiversity trends reported in the GBO-3 are almost entirely negative.

Vertebrate species fell by nearly one third between 1970 and 2006, natural habitats are in decline, genetic diversity of crops is falling and sixty breeds of livestock have become extinct since 2000.

Nick Nuttall, a U.N. Environmental Program spokesman, said the cost of eco-systems degradation is huge.

"In terms of land-use change, it's thought that the annual financial loss of services eco-systems provide -- water, storing carbon and soil stabilization -- is about €50 billion ($64 billion) a year," Nuttall told CNN.

"If this continues we may well see by 2050 a cumulative loss of what you might call land-based natural capital of around €95 trillion ($121 trillion)," he said.

"If we start putting these figures on the table, then governments might actually wake up to this. We've had a financial crisis. We've also got a natural resource scarcity crisis looming fast."

The GBO-3 is a landmark study in what is the U.N.'s International Year of Biodiversity and will play a key role in guiding the negotiations between world governments at the U.N. Biodiversity Summit in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged governments to give biodiversity a "higher priority in all areas of decision making and in all economic sectors" and called for a "new vision for biological diversity."

The CBD -- an international treaty designed to sustain diversity of life on Earth -- was set up at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

[Michael]

Political assassination in the US and Pakistan.

Russia and China imprison their political and big business enemies, just like the US wants to do with Julian Assange.

Pakistan kills people for blasphemy, and India imprisons them for sedition.

China invades internet privacy, just like the US is doing with Wikileaks Twitter accounts.

Doesn't seem to matter what country or political system, those on top don't like being challenged, and will kill if they have to, or imprison for life, to maintain their position.

[Builder]

It is quite like what parasite does to individuals. It rather drives them to death and sucks out all the energy than lets them have even a little individual freedom.

It is weird how parasite does not care for the health of the cow it milks and that sustains it.
Do governments?

[daphne]

It is weird how parasite does not care for the health of the cow it milks and that sustains it.
Do governments?

Rhetorical question 
Nope. They don't care either for the hand that feeds it. It's all about "now" immediate. It's about 'what can I get out of this'? and if there's nothing left for the next one in line (read: the future) then so be it. It's about Me Me Me. Don't we know it? What does concern me is that I'm not surprised. Humanity is like a river of lemurs jumping of a cliff; notwithstanding the few that seem different but get carried away by the tide. Perhaps we have to go through this to get to the other side. (read: fewer of us). War has always been about power and resources (read: money) and when those are dwindling... well... catch 22.

We are having local elections midyear. There is a scramble amongst party members for a position on the list. Government position, be it national, provincial or local, is seen as the first step to enriching one's self. They are quite serious about it. A sort of replacement for war as in other parts of Africa, as here it involves the individual within the party and not the party against another party. The ruling party is still too strong to much too much opposition - although the Western Cape proved their downfall! The only place they are now unable to loot, so they are looking instead at ways to make the looting legal. Example... rearrange the provincial borders! 

[Builder]

War has always been about power and resources (read: money) and when those are dwindling... well... catch 22.

A classic Greek treatise on war from 5th Century BCE states that wars are about 'fear, interest and honor'. Not just power/interest. Add a bit of fear, a bit of pride - in other words, a bit of emotion - and you'll get the most powerful and mindblowing drug in the world.

Power and money wouldn't do the trick, one needs to be hooked up by emotions.

[daphne]

A classic Greek treatise on war from 5th Century BCE states that wars are about 'fear, interest and honor'. Not just power/interest. Add a bit of fear, a bit of pride - in other words, a bit of emotion - and you'll get the most powerful and mindblowing drug in the world.

Power and money wouldn't do the trick, one needs to be hooked up by emotions.

yes. I would go along with that - 'hooked up by emotion'. Indeed, a most powerful and mindblowing drug, emotion is.

[Jahn]

yes. I would go along with that - 'hooked up by emotion'. Indeed, a most powerful and mindblowing drug, emotion is.

How emotional can people get when I say that one government administration have killed their own citizens? Not only with pollution and poor health care, but with bombs.

The war on teffor is the war of fear. That war can never be won and it have to be encouraged, and the enemy is your neighbor.
The tefforist is a construct of a sick mind. Unfortunately the tefforist has become a reality because of the "we want to have a war going on agression" that saturate Western societies today, but in relation to obesity the tefforist is a rather harmless manifestation (i.e. counting victims of pre-mature death).

[Angela]

but in relation to obesity the tefforist is a rather harmless manifestation (i.e. counting victims of pre-mature death).

Yes ... we are a nation of fatties! Although a slow killer, I really think it's planned that way Obesity keeps many ppls pockets lined $$$, as do many other diseases. 

Our technology, imo, is too advanced that we're still having to run marathons to donate money to 'the cure'. I truly believe  we have 'the cure' and it would be just too financially devasting to the economy ... (like it's not already screwed up now ... ha!)

What would we do with all of the empty cancer hospitals? I've heard that some empty churches in the Eastern US have been turned into night clubs!

Sick people are Big Business.

[Jahn]

Yes ... we are a nation of fatties! Although a slow killer, I really think it's planned that way Obesity keeps many ppls pockets lined $$$, as do many other diseases. 

Our technology, imo, is too advanced that we're still having to run marathons to donate money to 'the cure'. I truly believe  we have 'the cure' and it would be just too financially devasting to the economy ... (like it's not already screwed up now ... ha!)

What would we do with all of the empty cancer hospitals? I've heard that some empty churches in the Eastern US have been turned into night clubs!

Sick people are Big Business.

It is right that the US has the most obese population in the world but many many western countries is not that far behind.

I have a book about Macrobiotics written by Michio Kushi from 1977 where the US nutrition health policy is stated. I have quoted part of that statement in one of our reports. It shows that as "early" as 1977 the US authorities recommended less sugar and fat, along with more specified recommendations, otherwise overweight and obesity would increase.

I myself belong to the 50% overweight 50+ middle age men in Sweden  (only a couple of kilos but nevertheless).