"We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush" -- Fox News Insider | | AlterNet

Asked what most viewers anservers of Fox News would be surprised to learn about the controversial cable channel, a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch was quick with a response: “I don’t think people would believe it’s as concocted as it is; that stuff is just made up.”Indeed, a former Fox News employee who recently agreed to talk with Media Matters confirmed what critics have been saying for years about Murdoch’s cable channel. Namely, that Fox News is run as a purely partisan operation, virtually every news story is actively spun by the staff, its primary goal is to prop up Republicans and knock down Democrats, and that staffers at Fox News routinely operate without the slightest regard for fairness or fact checking.

We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush" -- Fox News Insider "They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news,' says a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch.

We Were a Stalin-esque Mouthpiece for Bush" -- Fox News Insider

"They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news," says a former insider from the world of Rupert Murdoch.
“It is their M.O. to undermine the administration and to undermine Democrats,” says the source. “They’re a propaganda outfit but they call themselves news.”
And that’s the word from inside Fox News.
Note the story here isn’t that Fox News leans right. Everyone knows the channel pushes a conservative-friendly version of the news. Everyone who’s been paying attention has known that since the channel’s inception more than a decade ago. The real story, and the real danger posed by the cable outlet, is that over time Fox News stopped simply leaning to the right and instead became an open and active political player, sort of one-part character assassin and one-part propagandist, depending on which party was in power. And that the operation thrives on fabrications and falsehoods.
“They say one thing and do another. They insist on maintaining this charade, this façade, that they’re balanced or that they’re not right-wing extreme propagandist,” says the source. But it’s all a well-orchestrated lie, according this former insider. It’s a lie that permeates the entire Fox News culture and one that staffers and producers have to learn quickly in order to survive professionally.
“You have to work there for a while to understand the nods and the winks,” says the source. “And God help you if you don’t because sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”
The source explains:
“Like any news channel there’s lot of room for non-news content. The content that wasn’t ‘news,’ they didn’t care what we did with as long as it was amusing or quirky or entertaining; as along as it brought in eyeballs. But anything—anything--that was a news story you had to understand what the spin should be on it. If it was a big enough story it was explained to you in the morning [editorial] meeting. If it wasn’t explained, it was up to you to know the conservative take on it. There’s a conservative take on every story no matter what it is. So you either get told what it is or you better intuitively know what it is.”
What if Fox News staffers aren’t instinctively conservative or don’t have an intuitive feeling for what the spin on a story should be? “My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead,” the source explains. “You could never error on the side of not being intolerant enough.”
The source recalls how Fox News changed over time:
“When I first got there back in the day, and I don’t know how they indoctrinate people now, but back in the day when they were “training” you, as it were, they would say, ‘Here’s how we’re different.’ They’d say if there is an execution of a condemned man at midnight and there are all the live truck outside the prison and all the lives shots. CNN would go, ‘Yes, tonight John Jackson, 25 of Mississippi, is going to die by lethal injection for the murder of two girls.’ MSNBC would say the same thing.
“We would come out and say, ‘Tonight, John Jackson who kidnapped an innocent two year old, raped her, sawed her head off and threw it in the school yard, is going to get the punishment that a jury of his peers thought he should get.’ And they say that’s the way we do it here. And you’re going , alright, it’s a bit of an extreme example but it’s something to think about. It’s not unreasonable.
"When you first get in they tell you we’re a bit of a counterpart to the screaming left wing lib media. So automatically you have to buy into the idea that the other media is howling left-wing. Don’t even start arguing that or you won’t even last your first day.
“For the first few years it was let’s take the conservative take on things. And then after a few years it evolved into, well it’s not just the conservative take on things, we’re going to take the Republican take on things which is not necessarily in lock step with the conservative point of view.
“And then two, three, five years into that it was, we’re taking the Bush line on things, which was different than the GOP. We were a Stalin-esque mouthpiece. It was just what Bush says goes on our channel. And by that point it was just totally dangerous. Hopefully most people understand how dangerous it is for a media outfit to be a straight, unfiltered mouthpiece for an unchecked president.”
It’s worth noting that Fox News employees, either current or former, rarely speak to the press, even anonymously. And it’s even rarer for Fox News sources to bad mouth Murdoch’s channel. That’s partly because of strict non-disclosure agreements that most exiting employees sign and which forbid them from discussing their former employer. But it also stems from a pervasive us-vs.-them attitude that permeates Fox News. It’s a siege mentality that network boss Roger Ailes encourages, and one that colors the coverage his team produces.
“It was a kick ass mentality too,” says the former Fox News insider. “It was relentless and it never went away. If one controversy faded, goddamn it they would find another one. They were in search of these points of friction real or imagined. And most of them were imagined or fabricated. You always have to seem to be under siege. You always have to seem like your values are under attack. The brain trust just knew instinctively which stories to do, like the War on Christmas.”
According to the insider, Ailes is obsessed with presenting a unified Fox News front to the outside world; an obsession that may explain Ailes’ refusal to publically criticize or even critique his own team regardless of how outlandish their on-air behavior. “There may be internal squabbles. But what [Ailes] continually preaches is never piss outside the tent,” says the source. “When he gets really crazy is when stuff leaks out the door. He goes mental on that. He can’t stand that. He says in a dynamic enterprise like a network newsroom there’s going to be in fighting and ego, but he says keep it in the house.”
It’s clear that Fox News has become a misleading, partisan outlet. But here’s what the source stresses: Fox News is designed to mislead its viewers and designed to engage in a purely political enterprise.
In 2010, all sorts of evidence tumbled out to confirm that fact, like the recently leaked emails from inside Fox News, in which a top editor instructed his newsroom staffers (not just the opinion show hosts) to slant the news when reporting on key stories such as climate change and health care reform.
Meanwhile, Media Matters revealed that during the 2009-2010 election cycle, dozens of Fox News personalities endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or organizations in more than 600 instances. And in terms of free TV airtime that Fox News handed over to GOP hopefuls, Media Matters calculated the channel essentially donated $55 million worth of airtime to Republican presidential hopefuls last year who also collect Fox News paychecks.
And of course, that’s when Murdoch wasn’t writing $1 million checks in the hopes of electing more Republican politicians.
So, Fox News as a legitimate news outlet? The source laughs at the suggestion, and thinks much of the public, along with the Beltway press corps, has been duped by Murdoch’s marketing campaign over the years. “People assume you need a license to call yourself a news channel. You don’t. So because they call themselves Fox News, people probably give them a pass on a lot of things,” says the source.
The source continues: “I don’t think people understand that it’s an organization that’s built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend think that stuff that’s on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You’d think that people would wise up, but they don’t.”
As for the press, the former Fox News employee gives reporters and pundits low grades for refusing, over the years, to call out Fox News for being the propaganda outlet that it so clearly is. The source suggests there are a variety of reasons for the newsroom timidity.
“They don’t have enough staff or enough balls or don’t have enough money or don’t have enough interest to spend the time it takes to expose Fox News. Or it’s not worth the trouble. If you take on Fox, they’ll kick you in the ass,” says the source. “I’m sure most [journalists] know that. It’s not worth being Swift Boated for your effort,” a reference to how Fox News traditionally attacks journalists who write, or are perceived to have written, anything negative things about the channel.
The former insider admits to being perplexed in late 2009 when the Obama White House called out Murdoch’s operation as not being a legitimate new source, only to have major Beltway media players rush to the aid of Fox News and admonish the White House for daring to criticize the cable channel.
“That blew me away,” says the source, who stresses the White House’s critique of Fox News “happens to be true.”

Eric Boehlert is is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America. He's the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press, 2006) and Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press (Free Press, 2009). He worked for five years as a senior writer for Salon.com, where he wrote extensively about media and politics.

Sitting Long Is Dangerous To Heart Health -- Jon Barron Blog

Sitting Negates Workout Benefits

When Jon first wrote Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, he titled the chapter on exercise "Move or Die." Recent studies now show that's even more true than Jon thought at the time. It turns out that getting up from your desk even for a moment or two goes a long way toward preventing diabetes and heart disease. In fact, if you don't get up frequently, you raise your risk of disease even if you go to the gym for vigorous workouts.

A study of 4,757 adults just published in the European Health Journal found that those sedentary employees who barely moved from their desks during working hours imperiled their health. In general, the subjects who moved the least during working hours had the most risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, while those who both moved frequently during the day and engaged in regular exercise had the least.

The participants in the study wore devices called accelerometers attached to their hips. These devices measure walking, running, and standing activity. They also had regular testing of waist circumference, cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood protein concentrations over a three-year period, from 2003 to 2006. The most sedentary participants were inactive for over 21 hours per day according to the report, while at the other end of the scale, the most active participants sat only two hours a day. But it was the number of breaks that subjects took rather than the number of hours they sat that made the biggest health difference -- even when the breaks lasted only a minute.

Lead researcher Genevieve Healy of the University of Queensland, Australia, says it isn't clear why breaking up long sedentary periods with frequent movement is so helpful, but she postulates that by regularly contracting large posture muscles, we "flush out the bad stuff." In fact, in her study, those who took the most breaks had the lowest levels of "bad stuff"-- lower levels of blood fats, higher levels of good cholesterol, less insulin resistance, and fewer protein inflammation markers. In other words, they have a decreased risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Those who took the most breaks also had waist circumference measurements an average of 4.1 centimeters (1.6 inches) smaller than those who stayed glued to their desks the most.

Dr. Healy says, "Even if you exercise for 30 to 60 minutes a day, what you do for the rest of the day may also be important for your cardiovascular health. This research suggests that even small changes to a person's activity levels [as little as standing up regularly] might help to lower cardiovascular risk."

And Dr. JoAnn Manson of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, adds, "This is perhaps the most convincing evidence yet that prolonged sitting is dangerous to our health. It may be an independent risk factor for heart disease, even after accounting for structured exercise." (Think DVT on a long plane flight.)

How many breaks does it take to protect your health? The data showed that the most active subjects took up to 1,300 breaks per week, compared to only around 100 for the most sedentary. Consider that three breaks an hour in a 40-hour week only comes to 120 breaks -- and that's the lowest end of the scale. Also remember that the data showed that you can't make up for prolonged periods of inactivity by cramming it in on the weekend. Again, it's sitting for long periods of time without breaks that creates the problems, and exercise later on in the day doesn't compensate adequately.

On the other hand, the data does NOT suggest that you should run out to Starbucks for a Grande concoction every 15 minutes, nor that you should give up your afternoon jog because you stood up and stretched 40 times on Tuesday. The bottom line here is that activity leads to good health, and that means activity spread throughout the day and throughout all endeavors. If you have a sedentary desk job, you need to figure out how to keep yourself moving without going so kinetic that the boss calls in the EAP folks to administer valium. And surprise, it's not as hard as you think. There are countless opportunities throughout the day.

The experts suggest standing while talking on the phone, walking over to colleagues rather than emailing them, taking the stairs and strolling the corridors. All obvious stuff, but as the chair of the American Council for Fitness & Nutrition, Susan Finn, points out, "Setting up huge goals for people to get them to devote huge blocks of time during the day to exercise just doesn't work. People won't do it. Instead, getting people to engage in purposeful activity, trying to motivate small changes, is the way to go. It's all about making this stuff, these small changes, doable for people, and the workplace is a very good example, a very good place to start."

Now, if Jon can only figure out how to write his next book while standing up.

Hiyaguha Cohen
www.jonbarron.org

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?:
By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011

• Straight to the Source
  
  

"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must." - Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and "seed purity," gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory euphemism of "conditional deregulation," this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.

In exchange for allowing Monsanto's premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants "compensation." In exchange for a new assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers' and rural residents' risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil's crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay "compensation" (i.e. hush money) to farmers "for any losses related to the contamination of his crop."

In its email of Jan. 21, 2011 WFM calls for "public oversight by the USDA rather than reliance on the biotechnology industry," even though WFM knows full well that federal regulations on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require pre-market safety testing, nor labeling; and that even federal judges have repeatedly ruled that so-called government "oversight" of Frankencrops such as Monsanto's sugar beets and alfalfa is basically a farce. At the end of its email, WFM admits that its surrender to Monsanto is permanent: "The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well True coexistence is a must."

Why Is Organic Inc. Surrendering?

According to informed sources, the CEOs of WFM and Stonyfield are personal friends of former Iowa governor, now USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, and in fact made financial contributions to Vilsack's previous electoral campaigns. Vilsack was hailed as "Governor of the Year" in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and traveled in a Monsanto corporate jet on the campaign trail. Perhaps even more fundamental to Organic Inc.'s abject surrender is the fact that the organic elite has become more and more isolated from the concerns and passions of organic consumers and locavores. The Organic Inc. CEOs are tired of activist pressure, boycotts, and petitions. Several of them have told me this to my face. They apparently believe that the battle against GMOs has been lost, and that it's time to reach for the consolation prize. The consolation prize they seek is a so-called "coexistence" between the biotech Behemoth and the organic community that will lull the public to sleep and greenwash the unpleasant fact that Monsanto's unlabeled and unregulated genetically engineered crops are now spreading their toxic genes on 1/3 of U.S. (and 1/10 of global) crop land.

WFM and most of the largest organic companies have deliberately separated themselves from anti-GMO efforts and cut off all funding to campaigns working to label or ban GMOs. The so-called Non-GMO Project, funded by Whole Foods and giant wholesaler United Natural Foods (UNFI) is basically a greenwashing effort (although the 100% organic companies involved in this project seem to be operating in good faith) to show that certified organic foods are basically free from GMOs (we already know this since GMOs are banned in organic production), while failing to focus on so-called "natural" foods, which constitute most of WFM and UNFI's sales and are routinely contaminated with GMOs.

From their "business as usual" perspective, successful lawsuits against GMOs filed by public interest groups such as the Center for Food Safety; or noisy attacks on Monsanto by groups like the Organic Consumers Association, create bad publicity, rattle their big customers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix and Safeway; and remind consumers that organic crops and foods such as corn, soybeans, and canola are slowly but surely becoming contaminated by Monsanto's GMOs.

Whole Food's Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called "Natural" Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs

The main reason, however, why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because they know, just as we do, that 2/3 of WFM's $9 billion annual sales is derived from so-called "natural" processed foods and animal products that are contaminated with GMOs. We and our allies have tested their so-called "natural" products (no doubt WFM's lab has too) containing non-organic corn and soy, and guess what: they're all contaminated with GMOs, in contrast to their certified organic products, which are basically free of GMOs, or else contain barely detectable trace amounts.

Approximately 2/3 of the products sold by Whole Foods Market and their main distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI) are not certified organic, but rather are conventional (chemical-intensive and GMO-tainted) foods and products disguised as "natural."

Unprecedented wholesale and retail control of the organic marketplace by UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model of selling twice as much so-called "natural" food as certified organic food, coupled with the takeover of many organic companies by multinational food corporations such as Dean Foods, threatens the growth of the organic movement.

Covering Up GMO Contamination: Perpetrating "Natural" Fraud

Many well-meaning consumers are confused about the difference between conventional products marketed as "natural," and those nutritionally/environmentally superior and climate-friendly products that are "certified organic."

Retail stores like WFM and wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed "natural" foods and products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a "natural" supply chain where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

A troubling trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called "natural" ingredients. With the exception of the "grass-fed and grass-finished" meat sector, most "natural" meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in CAFOs.

Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to "natural" imposters. It's no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and "natural" purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.

The Solution: Truth-in-Labeling Will Enable Consumers to Drive So-Called "Natural" GMO and CAFO-Tainted Foods Off the Market

There can be no such thing as "coexistence" with a reckless industry that undermines public health, destroys biodiversity, damages the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically devastates the world's 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers. There is no such thing as coexistence between GMOs and organics in the European Union. Why? Because in the EU there are almost no GMO crops under cultivation, nor GM consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Because under EU law, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GMOs; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are safety-tested and labeled. Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to purchase or consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald's and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by a Monsanto executive when GMOs first came on the market: "If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it."

The biotech industry and Organic Inc. are supremely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don't want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont - the same people who brought you toxic pesticides, Agent Orange, PCBs, and now global warming. Industry leaders are acutely aware of the fact that every single industry or government poll over the last 16 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods. Why? So that we can avoid buying them. GMO foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their friends in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from getting a public discussion in Congress.

Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don't hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers' right to know what's in their food. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called "Citizens United" case gave big corporations and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent. Perfectly dramatizing the "Revolving Door" between Monsanto and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.

With big money controlling Congress and the media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and go local. We've got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels.

The Organic Consumers Association, joined by our consumer, farmer, environmental, and labor allies, has just launched a nationwide Truth-in-Labeling campaign to stop Monsanto and the Biotech Bullies from force-feeding unlabeled GMOs to animals and humans.

Utilizing scientific data, legal precedent, and consumer power the OCA and our local coalitions will educate and mobilize at the grassroots level to pressure giant supermarket chains (Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Safeway, Supervalu, and Publix) and natural food retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe's to voluntarily implement "truth-in-labeling" practices for GMOs and CAFO products; while simultaneously organizing a critical mass to pass mandatory local and state truth-in-labeling ordinances - similar to labeling laws already in effect for country of origin, irradiated food, allergens, and carcinogens. If local and state government bodies refuse to take action, wherever possible we must attempt to gather sufficient petition signatures and place these truth-in-labeling initiatives directly on the ballot in 2011 or 2012. If you're interesting in helping organize or coordinate a Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling campaign in your local community, sign up here: http://organicconsumers.org/oca-volunteer/

To pressure Whole Foods Market and the nation's largest supermarket chains to voluntarily adopt truth-in-labeling practices sign here, and circulate this petition widely: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22309.cfm

And please stay tuned to Organic Bytes for the latest developments in our campaigns.

Power to the People! Not the Corporations!

Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Monsanto/ten-things-monsanto.pdf

More troops lost to suicide than deaths in battle.

Congress.org - News : More troops lost to suicide: "More troops lost to suicide
By John Donnelly

For the second year in a row, the U.S. military has lost more troops to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reasons are complicated and the accounting uncertain — for instance, should returning soldiers who take their own lives after being mustered out be included?

But the suicide rate is a further indication of the stress that military personnel live under after nearly a decade of war.

Figures released by the armed services last week showed an alarming increase in suicides in 2010, but those figures leave out some categories.

Overall, the services reported 434 suicides by personnel on active duty, significantly more than the 381 suicides by active-duty personnel reported in 2009. The 2010 total is below the 462 deaths in combat, excluding accidents and illness. In 2009, active-duty suicides exceeded deaths in battle.

Last week’s figures, though, understate the problem of military suicides because the services do not report the statistics uniformly. Several do so only reluctantly.

Figures reported by each of the services last week, for instance, include suicides by members of the Guard and Reserve who were on active duty at the time. The Army and the Navy also add up statistics for certain reservists who kill themselves when they are not on active duty.

But the Air Force and Marine Corps do not include any non-mobilized reservists in their posted numbers. What’s more, none of the services count suicides that occur among a class of reservists known as the Individual Ready Reserve, the more than 123,000 people who are not assigned to particular units.

Suicides by veterans who have left the service entirely after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan also are not counted by the Defense Department. The Department of Veterans Affairs keeps track of such suicides only if the person was enrolled in the VA health care system — which three-quarters of veterans are not.

But even if such veterans and members of the Individual Ready Reserve are excluded from the suicide statistics, just taking into account the deaths of reservists who were not included in last week’s figures pushes the number of suicides last year to at least 468.

That total includes some Air Force and Marine Corps reservists who took their own lives while not on active duty, and it exceeds the 462 military personnel killed in battle.

The problem of reservists’ suicides, in particular, has been a major concern to some lawmakers. A Pentagon study this year confirmed that reservists lack the support structure that active-duty troops have.

Some types of reservists are more cut off than others. Rep. Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, says that members of the Individual Ready Reserve and other categories of citizen-soldiers do not receive a thorough screening for mental health issues when they return from deployments.

One of those soldiers, a constituent of Holt’s named Coleman S. Bean, was an Army sergeant and Iraq War veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder but could not find treatment. He took his own life in 2008.

Moved by Bean’s story, Holt wrote a bill requiring phone contacts with these reservists every 90 days after they come home from war. The House adopted Holt’s provision as part of its defense authorization bills for both fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011. But conferees writing the final version of the bills took it out both years.

Holt said in December that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was responsible for that decision in the most recent bill. A spokeswoman for McCain, Brooke Buchanan, would not state his position on the provision. Instead, she said House members had removed it.

A House Armed Services Committee spokeswoman, Jennifer Kohl, said the House reluctantly pulled the provision from the bill because of the opposition of senators, whom she did not name.

Holt said a fuller reckoning of the number of suicides among military personnel and veterans is needed not so much to tell lawmakers and the public that there is a problem — that, he says, they know. Rather, it is needed to more accurately gauge the extent to which programs to help troubled troops are having an effect.

"In order to know whether the steps we’ve taken work," Holt said, "we’re going to have to have more detailed knowledge of who’s out there."

the-eight-states-running-out-of-homebuyers: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

the-eight-states-running-out-of-homebuyers: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance:

The Eight States Running Out of Homebuyers

by Douglas A. McIntyre, Michael B. Sauter and Charles B. Stockdale
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

provided by

The single biggest problem in the U.S. real estate market is simple: There are very few homebuyers.

That seems obvious, but the "buyers' strike" has caused house prices to drop, along with an epidemic of foreclosures. What's worse, the long depression in real estate is probably not over. S&P has forecast that home prices will drop by 7% to 10% this year. The S&P Case-Shiller Index has dropped for most of the 20 largest real estate markets over the last several months. RealtyTrac recently reported that more than 1 million homes were foreclosed upon in 2010.

Many economists argue that the housing market may take four or five years to recover. Even if that's proven to be true, the all-time highs of 2006 may never be reached again.

More from 24/7 Wall St.: • Companies That Rely on Aging Products • OPEC's Funny Math for Oil Demand • Americans Expect Home Prices to Fall

The devastation in some regions will never be repaired. Parts of Oregon, Georgia and Arizona have become progressively more deserted. Since jobless rates may never recover, there is little reason to hope that the populations in these areas will ever rebound. Some homes will be torn down in these pockets of high foreclosures in the hopes that reducing supplies will boost prices. Whether that idea will work in hard-hit areas such as Flint, Mich., and Yuma, Ariz., remains to be seen.

[Click here to check home loan rates in your area.]

24/7 Wall St. looked at a number of the standard measures to find the housing markets facing the biggest problems attracting buyers. After a detailed examination, six metrics were chosen: (1) vacancy rates for 2010; (2) foreclosure rates for 2010; (3) November 2010 unemployment rates; (4) change in building permits from 2006 to 2010; (5) change in population from 2005 to 2010; and (6) price reduction by major cities for 2010. Taken together, they create a strong statistical base to describe markets which buyers have largely abandoned.

Several states nearly made it onto the list, such as Colorado and South Carolina, but did not get poor enough marks across all of our measurements. Each was among the 10 worst for declines in building permits. Colorado had one of the worst foreclosure rates, and South Carolina one of the worst vacancy rates. However, the populations in both states have rebounded enough to make a strong case that their housing markets may recover moderately over time.

The review of the data raises several public policy issues. The most important of these is whether the federal focus on reviving the housing market should be concentrated in the hardest hit regions. The counter to that point of view is that some cities, such as Flint, or states like Nevada are in such bad shape that they are beyond assistance. Unemployment rates are too high in these areas, and perhaps the number of homes on the market is too large.

One thing is certain. The housing recovery will be wildly uneven. A city like New York, which has a dense population and large numbers of middle class and upper class buyers who will wait until they believe prices hit bottom, will have a rapid recovery soon. Building permits granted in New York City over the last four years have been very low. The supply of apartments is also low. Those forces taken together with an even modest economic recovery will help push real estate prices higher in New York and regions with similar characteristics.

The real estate crisis has gone on for four years. In the states 24/7 Wall St. has chosen here, the crisis will go on much longer.

1. Michigan

Vacancy Rate: 15.98% (9th Worst)
Unemployment: 12.4% (Tied for 2nd Worst)
Population Change 2005-2010: -2.05% (Worst)

Michigan is one of only two states whose population has decreased in the last five years. The state has lost more than 2% of its population since 2005. Most of this population loss was undoubtedly due to the depression in the car industry that led to the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler. Flint, once one of the largest car manufacturing cities in America, has lost more than 10% of its population in the past 10 years. The state has the second-worst unemployment rate in the country at 12.4%. Michigan has a home vacancy rate of 15.98%, the ninth-worst in the U.S. There are large neighborhoods in Detroit that are vacant.

2. Nevada

2010 Foreclosures: 9.42% (Worst)
Unemployment: 14.3% (Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -84.39% (Worst)

In 2010, an incredible 9.42% of all housing units in Nevada were foreclosed upon. This is by far the highest foreclosure rate in the U.S., and is nearly twice that of the next-worst state. Nevada also has the highest unemployment rate in the United States, at 14.3%.The recession undermined profits in the gaming industry. Between 2006 and 2010, the state had an 84.3% decrease in building permit requests, the largest drop in the country. This has resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of construction jobs.

3. Arizona

Vacancy Rate: 17.3% (5th Worst)
2010 Foreclosures: 5.73% (2nd Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -81.36% (4th Worst)

Arizona is among a handful of states most deeply wounded by the real estate collapse. Some 5.73% of properties in the state have been foreclosed upon, the second highest rate in the country, and 17.3% of homes are vacant, the fifth greatest rate in the country. Also, Mesa, Phoenix and Tucson, the state's three largest cities, are all among the top five American cities with the greatest percentage of price reductions for homes in 2010, along with Minneapolis and Baltimore. As of December 2010, these cities had 43%, 42% and 38% of their listings with price reductions, respectively.

4. California

2010 Foreclosures: 4.08% (4th Worst)
Unemployment: 12.4% (Tied for 2nd Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -74.7% (6th Worst)

California's impact on the housing market is huge. The state is the largest among the 50 in total GDP and housing units. California's unemployment rate of 12.4% is now tied for second place with Michigan, once the jobless capital of the nation. In 2010, the state had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, at just over 4%. New construction has dropped off dramatically as well, with a 74 % decrease in new building permits between 2006 and 2010.

5. Illinois

2010 Foreclosures: 2.87% (9th Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -81.32% (5th Worst)
Population Change 2005-2010: 1.23% (8th Worst)

Although Illinois has a relatively low residential vacancy rate, finding people to buy homes can be difficult. The state's population only grew 1.23% between 2005 and 2010. This is the eighth worst growth rate in the country. Furthermore, the number of building permits issued since 2006 decreased 81.32%, the fifth greatest drop in the nation. The collapse of the state's industrial base has been so great that its economy will not recover anytime soon.

6. Georgia

2010 Foreclosures: 3.25% (6th Worst)
Unemployment: 10% (9th Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -82.29% (2nd Worst)

The number of building permits issued in 2006 in Georgia was 92,541. In 2010 that number dropped to 16,391. This is the second greatest decrease in the nation during that time. The state's unemployment rate, at 10%, is above the national average of 9.4%. Also in 2010, there were 130,966 foreclosures in Georgia, 3.25% of the state's properties. This is an increase of 53.62% since 2008.

7. Oregon

Unemployment: 10.6% (Tied for 5th Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -74.08% (7th Worst)
Number of Listings With Price Reductions (Portland): 35% (Tied for 8th Worst Among 50 Largest U.S. Cities)

Oregon's real estate market has suffered the double blow of a sharp drop in both building permits and price reductions on existing homes. Unemployment is 10.6%, the fifth worst rate in the country. The number of new building permits decreased by 74% from 2006 to 2010. In December 2010, 35% of listings in Portland, the state's largest city, had price reductions.

8. Florida

Vacancy Rate: 21.03% (2nd Worst)
2010 Foreclosures: 5.51% (3rd Worst)
Decrease in Building Permits 2006-2010: -81.37% (3rd Worst)

Unemployment in Florida is 12%, the fourth worst in the country. Approximately 1.1 million residents are out of work. Statistics show that 21.03% of the state's housing units are vacant. Furthermore, 5.51% of homes have been foreclosed upon. Florida was among five states that had the largest real estate booms from 2000 to 2006. Residential prices in some waterfront areas like Miami and Palm Beach rose by much more than double during that period. New home and condominium construction soared. Many of those residences have never been occupied and are still part of the inventory of homes for sale.

Sources:

1) Vacancy rates for 2010 -- American Community Survey (Census Bureau)
2) Foreclosure rates for 2010 -- RealtyTrac
3) November 2010 unemployment rates -- Bureau of Labor Statistics
4) Change in building permits from 2006 to 2010 -- Census Bureau
5) Change in population from 2005 to 2010 -- Census Bureau
6) Price reduction by cities for 2010 -- Trulia

What Are the U.S.'s Real Motives for Launching a Drug War in Mexico? | | AlterNet

What Are the U.S.'s Real Motives for Launching a Drug War in Mexico? | | AlterNet: "They enrich (mainly U.S.) bankers through secret arrangements to launder drug money, while recycling phenomenal amounts of dirty money into many sectors of the legitimate economy. They also keep up huge profits in the international drug market for the exporting countries and their governments, a large part of which is recycled into the international arms market for the benefit of arms manufacturers. The United States sells more weapons than all the other arms-producing countries put together. It is the world’s arsenal of death.

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USDA Certified Organic's Dirty Little Secret: Neotame | Farm Wars

USDA Certified Organic's Dirty Little Secret: Neotame | Farm Wars: "USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame


By Barbara H. Peterson
Farm Wars
Just when we thought that buying “Organic” was safe, we run headlong into the deliberate poisoning of our organic food supply by the FDA in collusion with none other than the folks who brought us Aspartame. NutraSweet, a former Monsanto asset, has developed a new and improved version of this neurotoxin called Neotame.

Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. (Holisticmed.com)

But surely, this product would be labeled! NOT SO!!! For this little gem, no labeling required. And it is even included in USDA Certified Organic food.

The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:

• USDA Certified Organic food items.
• Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels. (Janet Hull)

Let me make this perfectly clear. Neotame does not have to be included in ANY list of ingredients! So, if you buy processed food, whether USDA Certified Organic or not, that food most likely will contain Neotame because it is cost-effective, and since no one knows it is there, there is no public backlash similar to what is happening with Aspartame. A win/win situation!
But that’s not all. Just love chowing down on that delicious steak? Well, that cow most likely will have been fed with feed containing…..you guessed it…..Neotame! A product called “Sweetos,” which is actually composed of Neotame, is being substituted for molasses in animal feed.

“Sweetos is an economical substitute for molasses. Sweetos guarantees the masking of unpleasant tastes and odor and improves the palatability of feed. This product will be economical for farmers and manufacturers of cattle feed. It can also be used in mineral mixture,” said Craig Petray, CEO, The NutraSweet Company, a division of Searle, which is a part of Monsanto. (Bungalow Bill)

Why would we feed animals food that is so distasteful that we would have to mask the unpleasantness with an artificial sweetener? Most animals will not eat spoiled, rancid feed. They know by the smell that it is not good. Enter Sweetos (Neotame). Just cover up the unpleasant tastes and odors, and you can feed them anything you want to, courtesy of the oh, so considerate folks at Monsanto and company.
But of course, Monsanto is no longer associated with NutraSweet. In the time-honored tradition of covering its assets, Monsanto has a proven track record of spinning off controversial portions of its company that generate too much scrutiny, such as it did with the Solutia solution.

Says the Farm Industry News, “Monsanto, which has long resided in the crosshairs of public scorn and scrutiny, appears to have dodged at least one bullet by spinning off its industrial chemical business into a separate entity called Solutia a couple of years ago. Solutia has since been hammered by lawsuits regarding PCB contamination from what were once called Monsanto chemical plants in Alabama and other states” (Source Watch)

So what is the solution to this problem? Buy local organic food, know your local farmer, and don’t buy processed foods whether they are labeled “Organic” or not. This requires a drastic change in lifestyle that most will not want to make. For those who choose to ride the wheel of chance by succumbing to this genocidal adulteration of our food supply by those who stand to profit from our sickness and early demise, my only comment is….it is your choice. But for those of us who have decided to fight this battle one bite at a time by hitting these sociopaths in the pocketbook where it hurts……viva la revolucion!
(C) 2010 Barbara H. Peterson
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