It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
— Frederic Bastiat, “The Law,” 1850
While men sleep . . .
History, one may presume to say, affords no example of any nation, country or people long free, who did not take some care of themselves; and endeavour to guard and secure their own liberties. Power is of a grasping, encroaching nature, in all beings, except in him, to whom it emphatically “belongeth”; and who is the only King that, in a religious or moral sense, “can do no wrong.”
Power aims at extending itself, and operating according to mere will, where-ever it meets with no ballance, check, controul or opposition of any kind. For which reason it will always be necessary, as was said before, for those who would preserve and perpetuate their liberties, to guard them with a wakeful attention; and in all righteous, just and prudent ways, to oppose the first encroachments on them. “Obsta principiis.”
After a while it will be too late.
For in the states and kingdoms of this world, it happens as it does in the field or church, according to the well-known parable, to this purpose; That while men sleep, then the enemy cometh and soweth tares, which cannot be rooted out again till the end of the world, without rooting out the wheat with them.
— Jonathan Mayhew, “The Snare Broken. A Thanksgiving Discourse Preached at the Desire of the West Church in Boston, N. E. Friday May 23, 1766. Occasioned by the Repeal of the Stamp-Act.” In Political Sermons of the American Founding Era 1730-1805, (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1990), p. 258
200 million pounds of milk products imported into North America from China. How much of it is tainted with melamine?
Tainting of Milk Is Open Secret in China:
Before melamine-laced milk killed and sickened Chinese babies and led to recalls around the world, the routine spiking of milk with illicit substances was an open secret in China’s dairy regions, according to the accounts of farmers and others with knowledge of the industry.
Melamine is deadly.
READ LABELS. These milk products may be listed as casein, milk powder, whey, lactic acid.
Oh, and thanks, FDA.
Once again our federal government demonstrates how stupid it is to entrust it with protecting us.
Iodine goes mainstream
Featured on the front cover of First magazine as the “food switch” that “revs metabolism by 250 percent.”
Like I’ve written before, for some reason I seem to stumble upon alt health trends ahead of the curve. Iodine is a perfect example. You will start seeing lots of articles about it in the very near future.
A good portion of them, of course, are going to be Scary Warnings about how Dangerous it is. Navigating these things is tricky.
Threshold Guardians abound.
Me and Camille
Paglia. We both lived, as children, in the same town. Not at the same time, but very nearly. My dad taught in the same school where her dad taught.
She mentions it in a Salon article [Update: link doesn’t work any more …]
Just so you know how unlikely a coincidence this is, the town numbered about 3000 when I was a kid.
Something else I have to wonder. Take a bright, observant, verbal post-WWII young girl with aspirations to be a writer and plunk her down in that setting and maybe some of what happens next is a bit inevitable. I mean, the passage where she mentions Oxford. This is exactly the kind of thing that I experienced as a kid, and I completely “get” how it shaped Paglia’s understanding of gender and feminism. I was shaped by the same sort of experiences.
Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was another version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.
Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”
I could Bideniarize that anecdote, use it in my own life story, and it wouldn’t even be a stretch.
Brilliant article, incidentally, a highly recommended read regardless of whether your initial impressions of Palin are from the right- or the left-hand side of the Proverbial Spectrum. Not that you’d expect less from Paglia. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my homey ;-)
Yum. Sludge.
Isn’t it nice to know that everything anyone pours down the drain — ya know, like Drane-O, and expired meds, and oh! don’t forget! Industrial waste! — can be captured, concentrated, BRANDED and sold as “fertilizer” to be spread on fields where our food is grown?
And who should we thank for this brilliant idea?
Why, our government, of course! Because forbidding meat packagers from testing for mad cow and saying “hell yeah!” to irradiating our food isn’t mischief enough!
Be sure to tell them how happy you are that they keep The Peoples’ best interests foremost in their pure little hearts. Here’s your chance:
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer, announced that EPW will have hearings on the disposal of sewage sludge on agricultural and other land. These hearings will be held on September 11, 2008, in Washington, D.C.
The September 11 hearing on sludge is currently scheduled for 10:30 AM.
The hearings are usually live streamed on the web. Check the EPW website the day of the hearing. Confirmation of the day and time are usually posted a few days beforehand on the EPW website.
That info comes courtesy of Sludge News. Because not everyone agrees it’s a good idea to eat our own waste. You go, Sludge News.
They say “NO” to testing meat for mad cow
Who would DO such a thing?
Why, our very own United States Department of Agriculture, that’s who!
The Agriculture Department is within bounds to bar meatpackers from testing slaughter cattle for mad cow disease, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel said in a 2-1 ruling on Friday.
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef LLC, a small Arkansas packer, filed suit on March 23, 2006, to gain access to mad-cow test kits. It said it wanted to test every animal at its plant to assure foreign buyers that the meat was safe to eat . . .
In a 25-page ruling, Appellate Judges Karen Henderson and Judith Rogers said USDA has authority under the 1913 Virus-Serum-Toxin Act to prevent sale of mad-cow test kits to meatpackers. USDA interprets the law to control products for “prevention, diagnosis, management or care of diseases of animals.”
David Sentelle, chief judge of the District of Columbia appeals circuit, dissented from the decision. He said USDA “exceeds the bounds of reasonableness” for a law enacted to prevent the sale of ineffective animal medicine.
Because, you know, if any ol’ meatpacker had the capability to test for mad cow, it might, um. Mess things up. They might — horrors! — use the results to “market” their product as mad cow-tested.
USDA . . . says the tests should not be used as a marketing tool and the cattle that comprise the bulk of the meat supply are too young to be tested reliably.
And we can’t have that. The USDA has to be in CONTROL.
USDA allows the mad-cow test kits to be sold only to laboratories that it approves.
This is where our tax dollars go. This is how a federal agency established to serve this country’s interest is spending our freaking money. To protect ITSELF and its hold on power and the status quo IT has established.
Rather like the Food and Drug Administration, which thinks we should be irrradiating spinach to kill E. coli. Who cares that we’re adding one more item to our lengthening list of biologically altered foodstuffs, as meanwhile we’re already dropping dead from the crap we eat? Who cares if irradiation destroys folate and Vitamin A and who knows what other phytonutrients and might have other, poorly-understood effects on our food?
Adventures in Iodine
I’ve hesitated posting about this subject because of all the alt-health things I’ve tried, this may be the one that is a true lightening rod. But I’m going public: since late spring of this year, I’ve been orthosupplementing with iodine.
I didn’t work up the courage to try this overnight. I first heard someone speculate that iodine deficiency might be ubiquitous about four years ago . . . that was from Ingeborg Eibl, a Rochester, New York chiropractor (and btw gifted healer).
Eibl mentioned iodine to me and gave me photocopies of some research papers to read. I looked them over but didn’t take it any further.
What’s changed since then is that the Internet now offers a wealth of information about iodine supplementation.
I started reading.
Most of the information is based on the work of a couple of medical researchers. Guy Abraham is one of them–he’s the driving force behind The Iodine Project, through which thousands of women have been supplementing with iodine to evaluate its ability to protect against breast disease.
Abraham and other pro-Iodiners share a couple of premises. First, that iodine is essential to a broad range of metabolic processes, and second that we’re not getting nearly enough from our diets (no, not even if we’re eating iodized salt).
How broad do I mean by “broad range?”
The commonly accepted medical opinion is that iodine’s only role in the body is to help make thyroid hormones. Although this is an extremely important function, Abraham demonstrates that the role of iodine in the body goes far beyond its function of making thyroid hormones. Other possible functions include: helping to regulate moods, preventing cancer (especially in breasts, ovaries, uterus, prostate and thyroid gland), preventing and treating fibrocystic breasts in women, helping to regulate blood pressure, helping to regulate blood sugar and prevent and treat diabetes, and helping to prevent abnormal cardiac rhythms.
Here’s another iodine supplementation website worth perusing. The page I’ve linked presents categories that themselves hyperlinked to pages with additional information, so you can read about Iodine and the breast, heart, immune system, gastrointestinal system, skin (I’ve read elsewhere that 20 percent of the body’s iodine is found in the skin), glandular system, lungs, eyes (“Iodine occurs in large quantities in the ciliary body and lachrymal glands of the eye. It has been related to cataract formation and glaucoma, and is seen as useful in treating eye infections. Iodide has been found to be protective against UVB radiation.”), mouth (“The salivary gland concentrate iodine 20 to 100 times serum levels.”), bones, and blood (“Iodine has been studied as an antioxidant in human blood and has been found to be as powerful as Vitamin C.”).
Unfortunately, although iodine was once touted as a highly beneficial nutrient, its reputation was tarnished in the mid-20th century. Abraham recounts what happened here. A couple of researchers injected rats with iodine, misinterpreted the experiment results, and extrapolated the misinterpretation to humans. Our government, which has never seen a cow pie too small to miss, went right for it, splat: it used the so-called Wolff-Chaikoff effect to help set the official RDA for iodine at a miniscule 150 mcg/day.
To make a bad decision even worse, most of us are probably getting even less Iodine than the RDA. Iodine was once commonly added to bread — it acts as a flour conditioner — but that has declined since the early 1980s (bread makers today often use bromide instead, which is molecularly similar but unfortunately not very good for us. Hell, why mince words, the s**t’s toxic, it’s poisoning us, and we’re exposed to it by far more than in the bread we eat — from pesticide residue to the fire retardants sprayed on our mattresses.)
There’s some iodine in some seafood, and in seaweed, and of course there’s iodized salt — but it’s debatable whether we eat enough iodized salt to maintain optimum iodine levels.
Mainland Japanese, meanwhile, consume considerably more iodine, because they eat quite a bit of seaweed. Abraham uses as his guideline 13 mg/day. Here’s a lower estimate, but at 1.2 mg/day it’s still nearly 10 times the US RDA.
Now. There’s a huge debate going on about all of this. I spent weeks reading arguments on both sides, including a series of articles published by Townsend Letter that pits Abraham and another M.D., David Brownstein, against Alan Gaby, M.D.
And maybe I’m being a damn fool. But in the end, it’s like the witticism that if you have two clocks you never know what time it is, while if you have only one clock you always know. I decided to trust the clock that says we should be eating more iodine than we are.
I also took it easy, especially at the beginning. Upping iodine can displace other molecules that one might have built up in the body, including the aforementioned bromide, as well as fluoride and mercury. I followed the advice published on this website, including taking the companion nutrients that have been identified as useful to help offset the “side effects” of bumping up iodine levels.
I did experience periods of what I believe to be detoxification. The worse came within a week of starting. The symptoms were uncomfortable (headache primarily, flu-like symptoms) but temporary. I took a break for a couple of days (pulsing, per Breast Cancer Choices) and never experienced those particular symptoms again. More recently I’ve hit a different set of (much milder) symptoms which I believe are caused by the displacement of fluoride and/or bromide in my body. As before, I pulse to give my body a chance to rest and “catch up” on eliminating the offending substances.
Other than these episodes, the experience has been amazing. I feel sooooooo good. It’s hard to describe. I was healthy already; I was a happy gal already. But I can tell there is something very different about how my body runs now. It’s akin to how you feel when you’ve been hungry, and finish a delicious meal. A kind of visceral sense of well-being. I should also report . . . sorry to be vague about this, can’t quite bring myself to discussing certain benefits explicitly . . . my experience bears out the promise of the research on breast health. It’s turned back the clock. How’s that for a benefit.
I would never go so far as to urge this onto other people. The plain fact is that many people should start this under the guidance of an iodine-savvy health care practitioner, particularly people who have existing thyroid conditions or who are sick or whose bodies are more compromised than mine with mercury or other toxins. (Here’s one place to start looking for a practitioner.)
But I would strongly, strongly urge everyone to take the time to look into it for themselves. I believe most of us are iodine deficient, and that one day in the not-too-distant future that will become a widely recognized fact. I believe that we’ll come to understand that a staggering range of systemic imbalances that are overtaking so many people, thinks like obesity and hormonal problems and osteoporosis, will be traced to lack of iodine.
You heard it here.
In the meantime, if this has grabbed your attention, do yourself a favor and start educating yourself. Don’t wait for mainstream medicine to catch up.
cape code vacation :-)
I fulfilled a promise to my daughter last week with a 5-day trip to Cape Cod.
She’d never been to the ocean before :-)
It was a wonderful trip — very beachy! My daughter learned how to use a boogy board to ride the waves and got to hold a star fish some other kids had caught.
One of the nice things about Cape Cod is how different the beaches are depending on where you go. We sampled three different areas, including the National Seashore on the upper cape — wonderful surf, but cooooold —
Leashed dogs allowed outside the lifeguard areas! Hooray! Because every dog needs to learn that if you eat a bunch of beach sand, it’s gonna come back up . . . a little at a time . . . for hours . . . and hours . . . and hours . . .
We also spent one day on the bay side, where the water was calmer & shallower.
We caught dozens of little hermit crabs :-) All of whom are named “Hermie” btw.
We stayed in South Yarmouth, on a beach that faces the south. The water there was warm enough there for lots of boogey board practice. And our hotel held beach parties at night, with live music . . .
. . . plus kid-friendly activities like night volleyball. Kept my daughter happy while I took pics of this sunset.
All told, an idyllic summer interlude — and the native Cape Codders, I have to say, are some of the nicest people you’d ever hope to meet. So many little kindnesses they showed us! Thank you guys!
Oh, and thank you Debi for letting us pit stop at your place on our way out — and inviting us to stop back again on our way back, don’t ask me how I managed to miss the exit :-)
be ye therefore wise as serpents . . .
