The Healthiest Foods On Earth

Posted: 25 Jul 2009 05:30 AM PDT

For weeks now, 2-year-old Ashley Soto's hair has been falling out in clumps and bunches.

Doctors at the Maple City Health Care Center, a neighborhood clinic where the toddler's family receives most care, couldn’t diagnose the problem. The child needed to see a specialist, but no local dermatologist would agree to accept Medicaid, the government’s safety net plan. Instead, Antonia Mejorado, 33, has to drive nearly two hours to see a dermatologist willing to treat her daughter's potentially serious illness.

“There is not a doctor around here that takes Medicaid,” said Mejorado, whose husband, Osvaldo Soto, 33, has recently seen his hours cut to almost nothing at a local mechanic shop.

When workers get laid off and lose their health insurance, the medical insurance plan that covers some 60 million poor, elderly and disabled people, is a critical safety net. At no time is Medicaid more needed than during an economic downturn. Yet it’s also precisely during a recession that Medicaid’s shortcomings are clearest.

Medicaid, the second-largest item in most state budgets, after education, is funded jointly by the states and the federal government, with the federal government matching state dollars by as much as 76 cents to every 24 cents of state money. Wealthier states bear a bigger share of their Medicaid costs than poorer states do.

But in a recession, state revenues sink at the very time that more unemployed people sign up for Medicaid.

MORE HERE >   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32127373/ns/us_news-the_elkhart_project/

$560 BILLION Solar Project — Biggest Ever

Posted: 24 Jul 2009 02:20 AM PDT

Transformational Transportation Bill is ‘in Traffic’

Posted: 25 Jul 2009 09:51 AM PDT

Alert of the Week

Don't Let Obama Put Monsanto Cheerleaders in Charge of Food Safety

The Obama Administration is putting two notorious biotech bullies in charge of food safety. Former Monsanto lobbyist Michael Taylor has been appointed as a senior advisor to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner on food safety. And, rBGH-using dairy farmer and Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, is rumored to be President Obama's choice for Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety. Wolfe spearheaded anti-consumer legislation in Pennsylvania that would have taken away the rights of consumers to know whether their milk and dairy products were contaminated with Monsanto's (now Eli Lilly's) genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).

Learn more and take action

Alert Update of the Week

Why OCA and Fair Trade Advocates Are Pressuring Whole Foods and UNFI

In response to OCA's recent alerts on Whole Foods Market (WFM) and United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI), WFM posted out a form letter to many of our readers. Below is a summary of OCA's response, which you can read in greater detail here http://organicconsumers.org/unfi.cfm

OCA Finds WFM and UNFI Guilty of the Following:

* Corporate takeovers and monopolistic practices undermining organics.
* Pushing so-called "natural" foods at the expense of organic.
* Excluding small and family-scale organic farms.
* Marginalizing local and regional producers and brands.
* Organic monopolies and the "Whole Paycheck" phenomena.
* Selling personal care products misleadingly labeled as "organic."
* Selling vitamins and supplements spiked with synthetic chemicals as "natural," "all natural" or "Whole Foods."
* Violating labor rights and Domestic Fair Trade principles.

Learn more about each of these points here

A victory for single payer! Another important vote this week

Posted: 20 Jul 2009 04:12 PM PDT

By Delia Lloyd | Politics Daily

It would appear that we're in for a major legislative battle over the future of American health care. And while it's still not exactly clear what the administration's plan will look like, it does seem that -- Rahm Emanuel notwithstanding -- the president is committed to having a public option as part of the package.

The specter of "socialized medicine" looms large in some corners of the American public, inspiring an almost Orwellian fear. In practical terms, however, most Americans have little familiarity with universal health care. As an American who's lived in the U.K. for the past three years, I've relied exclusively on the National Health Service (NHS) for all of my family's medical needs. In what follows, I enumerate some of the differences, large and small, that I've encountered across the two systems. My purpose is not to advocate for one form of insurance over another, although our experience with the NHS has been largely positive. Rather, I hope to shed light on the kinds of things Americans could expect on a day-to-day basis were our country to move toward a more British-style system:

1. You don't pay to see a doctor. Whether you're treating a migraine or replacing a heart valve, you don't pay a dime. Ever. This may sound great -- and it is -- but it's also very disorienting if you're used to pulling out your insurance card or haggling with your insurance company over exactly what percentage of your bill it will cover for a given procedure. I remember the elaborate accounting gymnastics my husband and I went through at our last jobs over precisely how much to allocate to our Flexible Spending Account each year so we could avoid being taxed on things like eyeglasses, dental visits and the like. No more. And in that sense -- and contrary to many of the criticisms about socialized medicine -- it's a much less bureaucratic system simply because there's less paperwork.

MUCH MORE HERE:  http://www.prosperityagenda.us/node/910

The children were harmed by influenza vaccines......

MORE HERE:  http://www.naturalnews.com/026612_asthma_the_flu_flu_shots.html

for more information :
http://www.thoracic.org/sections/pu...
http://www.naturalnews.com/026271.html

The Sick Get Sicker as Legal Drug Pushing Puts Profits Before the Health of Patients

by Helke Ferrie

“No doubt, one day our children’s children will learn in school that in the early part of the 21st century tens of thousands of people died every year after taking unnecessary drugs … They will learn that there were no effective laws to protect people from risky drugs … When will we stop killing the innocent with blockbuster drugs?”

- Terence H. Young, MP (Conservative) for Oakville, Ontario: www.drugsafety.com

(from Death by Prescription – A Father Takes on his Daughter’s Killer – The Multi-Billion-Dollar Pharmaceutical Industry, Key Porter, 2009)

On April 1st, the internet was buzzing with the “news” that the U.S. FDA approved a drug called Despondex, the first depressant developed to treat those estimated “20 million Americans who are insufferably cheery.” The drug industry is becoming absurd. Economic and scientific ups and downs now are full-blown, uncontrollable turbulence.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in March against the drug industry’s demand that they be granted full immunity against all liability for the damage their drugs cause (Wyeth vs. Levine) – a last-ditch effort to escape the consequences of dealing in harmful products. The following blockbuster drugs are about to suffer the consequences of that ruling as hundreds of legal actions involving tens of thousands of plaintiffs are already in progress: Baycol, Vytorin, Ketek, Avandia, Bextra, Celebrex, Prempro, Premarin, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Seroquel, Lexapro, Celexa, Cymbalta, Fosomax, Boniva, Effexor, Lyrica, Geodon, Ablify, Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Chantix, Singulair, Ambien, and Trovan. The era of blockbuster drugs is coming to an end – not because of patents running out but because patients, the court system, and the medical profession have declared a war on drugs, and Big Pharma is losing.

All blockbuster drugs follow a clear pattern: they can cause or promote the very conditions they are intended to prevent, or they may have deadly “side” effects like chronic diseases, cancer, or deregulation of the central nervous and hormonal systems.

The top blockbusters, cholesterol-lowering statins (annual sales $34 billion), interfere with the liver’s production of cholesterol. The liver is the resident omnipotent and benevolent god. Interfering with God is never advisable. Cholesterol is not a pathogen – it’s a fat we need to manufacture all neurotransmitters. The most common statin side effect is a greater likelihood of heart attacks.

The 2007 Lancet review of statins (vol. 369) by Harvard’s John Abramson found no health benefits and no reduction in mortality rates. The Heart Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, published supporting evidence in the New England Journal of Medicine (May 2008), showing that people who took statin drugs had 58% higher mortality rates than people with supposedly dangerously high cholesterol levels who took no statins – and lived happily ever after. This lack of efficacy has been known for a long time, prompting Merck and Schering-Plough to attempt suppressing such evidence from their recent Ezetrol trial (Times, March 31, 2008).

As for antidepressants, they all can promote or cause Type 2 diabetes and/or cancer (most research by University of Alberta). When studies of such mental health drugs are properly designed, they deliver a punch. Case in point – placebos beat both Eli Lilly’s antidepressant Zyprexa and its ts second-generation version: the sugar pill made far more people happy than the antidepressant (veracare@ahrp.org April 14, 2009). This is not totally surprising because, since 2005, it is known that the serotonin hypothesis of depression underpinning this class of drugs is bogus (PLoS Medicine, November 8, 2005).

The Journal of the American Dental Association reported on January 1, 2009, that the famous osteoporosis drug Fosomax, taken by 10 million Americans, has been shown to cause osteonecrosis of the jaw (irreversible disintegration) in 4% of patients from just short-term use.

STARTLING STATISTICS:

GO HERE:   http://www.encognitive.com/node/7493

You can join the movement to indict Bush Administration officials who committed war crimes, "legalized" torture, and engaged in massive illegal spying and wiretapping against the American people.

The rule of law, justice, and basic integrity require the indictment for criminal wrongdoing of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and other high officials of the former Bush Administration.

The media establishment is surprised by the ground swell of support from the grassroots for the pursuit of individuals who committed grievous crimes during the Bush era.

We are not surprised that the people are demanding accountability for those who committed wars of aggression, torture, and subverted the Constitution and thus violated not only their oaths of office but domestic and international law.

"Whites only" pool in 2009?

Condemn discrimination at the Valley Swim Club and ask the DOJ to investigate

Sixty-five children from a largely Black summer camp in Philadelphia were turned away from a swimming club in the suburbs because of their race. The camp had a contract to use the Valley Swim Club's pool for the summer. Once the club realized the kids were Black, it canceled their membership.

A "Whites only" pool in 2009 should not be tolerated. Please join us in publicly condemning the Valley Swim Club's discrimination, and calling on the Justice Department to investigate whether the club violated federal civil rights laws.

GO HERE:  http://www.colorofchange.org/swim/

About ten days ago we published two stories from Wayne Madsen claiming this swine flu pandemic is an engineered pandemic and the vaccine about to be foisted upon the world is the trigger which will weaponize it.

Recently Jane Burgermeister a filed suit against a large portion of parties seeking an injunction to stop the forced vaccination for Swine Flu. In the court documents, she puts forward (among other things) evidence this virus could only have been engineered in a laboratory.

Today, I found a copy of the court filings. It is long (115 pages), tedious, and of great concern. I am excerpting the following portion so you can see for yourself her reasoning as to why this is an engineered virus. I will post the filing in its entirety when I am finished, but this is too important to wait.

Jane Burgermeister is a dual Irish/Austrian who has written for Nature, the British Medical Journal, and American Prospect. She is the European Correspondent of the Renewable Energy World website. She has written extensively about climate change, biotechnology, and the ecology. She was recently fired from her position with Renewable Energy World.

MORE HERE:  http://blogs.healthfreedomalliance.org/blog/2009/07/06/additional-evidence-the-swine-flu-virus-may-be-artificial-genetic-virus/

Natural Food Inc. Responds to OCA's Criticisms

In last week's Organic Bytes, OCA criticized Whole Foods Market (WFM) and United Natural Foods for undermining organics by promoting and selling mostly conventional products (greenwashed as "Natural"), instead of certified organic products. OCA and thousands of organic consumers asked WFM & UNFI to begin to put pressure on their so-called "Natural" product suppliers to sign contracts with accredited certifiers and make the transition to organic.

Unfortunately, instead of pressuring these "bottom line" companies to rethink dropping organic ingredients in favor of conventional ingredients, and to stop marketing conventional foods as if they were "as good as" or "nearly organic," WFM and UNFI have "put the squeeze" on a number of OCA's advertisers--costing our organization thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In spite of this blatant intimidation, OCA will not be silent. We will continue to expose the myth of so-called "Natural" foods and farming. We will continue educating ethical consumers, retailers, wholesalers, farmers, and food processors to put their money and their practices where their supposed values lie. To learn more, read the new essay by OCA Director Ronnie Cummins: The Organic Monopoly and the Myth of "Natural" Foods: How Industry Giants Are Undermining the Organic Movement.

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Web Video: Living a Nightmare - 24 Minute Film on Horrors of Factory Farming