What the Fall of the Wall Did Not Change with George Freidman

 

 

 

This is an excellent article that throws seventy years of global confrontation into perspective. What a waste of human lifetimes! In the end, it also took global economic expansion to prove the poverty of the ideas themselves. That is what took two full generations after the European Wars had reduced the old dispensation.




What has not changed is that Europe has a geographically natural center of gravity in Germany. It was the efforts of other nation states to contain this that produced the huge wars. Now all have created a communion of states called the EU that is slowly quieting the nationalistic enthusiasms. Since then we have seen a scramble of the central European States to join this communion.



That leaves the remaining center of gravity of Mother Russia. It's empire has evaporated completely barring small fixes and corrections. This includes land adjustments and possibly the rejoining of Belorussia to Russia. It should be at least be thought through. There are also serious readjustments needed in the Caucasus as well.



We need to lose the lens of tribal and national destinies once and for all. Those capable of making this leap can be welcomed into the future.

What the Fall of the Wall Did Not Change


Tuesday, November 11, 2014 By George Friedman

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/what-fall-wall-did-not-change#axzz3IhjU4BZD


Twenty-five years ago, a crowd filled with an uneasy mixture of joy and rage tore down the Berlin Wall. There was joy for the end of Germany's partition and the end of tyranny. There was rage against generations of fear. One fear was of communist oppression. The other fear was of the threat of a war, which had loomed over Europe and Germany since 1945. One fear was moral and ideological, while the other was prudential and geopolitical. As in all defining political moments, fear and rage, ideology and geopolitics, blended together in an intoxicating mix.

Marxism's Sway


Twenty-five years later, we take for granted the moral bankruptcy of Soviet communism, along with its geopolitical weakness. It is difficult for us to remember how seductive Marxism was, and how frightening Soviet power was. For my generation, at the better universities, Marxism was not an exotic form of oriental despotism but a persuasive explanation of the world and how it worked, as well as a moral imperative that a stunning number of students and faculty were committed to. The vast majority of Marxists in what was called the New Left adopted it as fashion more than passion. A small segment of the New Left, particularly in Europe and supported by Soviet intelligence, took direct action and took risks, killing, wounding, kidnapping and blowing things up in the pursuit of political aims. The latter had courage; the former were shallow and cynical. There is no doubt that the shallow and cynical were more praiseworthy.




Still, ideologically, Marxism in its several varieties had a persuasive power that is difficult for even those of us who lived through it to recall. Its pull had little to do with industrial democracy, although songs from the labor movement were sung regularly. It was far less about the proletariat and more a revolt against what was seen as the shallow one-dimensionality of affluence. It was never clear to me what Marxists had against affluence, as I was relatively poor, but the venom against the previous generation's capitulation to ordinary life was intense.


Marxism had become the ideology of the young, who celebrated its moral superiority. This should not be dismissed. The young have driven European revolutions since 1789, and they have always been driven by a deep sense of moral superiority. The passion of the young Karl Marx, writing amid the risings of 1848, led directly to Lenin and then Stalin. The self-righteous young have consequence, something no one attending a major Euro-American university in the decades before the collapse of the Soviet empire could ignore. Bitterness against those over 30 (then considered old) was a greater driver than class struggle. That the young feel superior to the old is built into the Enlightenment. We believe in progress, and the young have more of a future than the old.


In looking at pictures of the celebrants at the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it was the young who had risen up. I was not in Berlin in those days, but I had been to Berlin before, and Berlin was a dynamo of Marxism. I am morally and statistically certain that many of those celebrating the collapse of the wall were Marxists.


When the wall came down, it for the most part destroyed Marxism. The so-called New Left believed Soviet Communism was a betrayal of communism. Since Marxism argued that history was in some sense deterministic, how Marxism could have failed from a Marxist point of view was never clear to me. But in the end, the Marxism of my generation had more to do with the fact that their parents, shaped in the Great Depression and World War II, were content with a house and a car, a spouse and some savings. The young always have greater aspirations than to simply live, but they grow out of it.


The fate of Marxism in Europe and the United States differed greatly from its fate in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Marxism died in the Soviet Union with Stalin. With Mao, Stalin was the last great Communist. It was not just that he believed, but that he acted on that belief. At the heart of communism was the class struggle, and that didn't end when the Communist Party had won. The Party and the people had to be purged, shaped and forged into something unprecedented. It was to be an agonizing process, and Stalin was prepared to impose the agony. Stalin is the finest argument there is against sincerity. He sincerely believed not only in the possibility of creating a new society, but in the brutal actions needed to achieve it.


Stalin killed communism. He was right that creating a new society required agony. He didn't realize, or perhaps in the end didn't care, that the agony required made the new society pointless, corrupt before it was born. Nikita Khrushchev tried to build a communist state without Stalinism. But when Leonid Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny overthrew Khrushchev in 1964, it was the revolution of the exhausted. Their lives were built on a single triumph: They had survived Stalin. Their goal was to continue surviving. Brezhnev destroyed communism by trying to hold absolute power and do as little with it as possible. He sank into corruption and weakness, as did his regime. The empire didn't revolt. It simply took advantage of the fact that the Soviet Union was too corrupt and self-indulgent to hold onto them. It was less a revolution than the fact that the jailhouse door had been left unlocked.

Marxism's Failure


Marxism destroyed itself because it took power, and putting Marxism on display in power ultimately cost it its credibility. Had it never been in power, more than the tiny handful who are still Marxists might take it seriously.


Marxism was repudiated as an ideology, even as it had repudiated ideology in general. It was the culmination of the Enlightenment, not only because Marxism had the most extreme notion of equality imaginable but also because it was ruthlessly consistent. It had views not only on politics and economics, but also on art, the proper raising of children, proper methods of plowing and the role of sports in society. It had views on everything, and with the power of the state at its disposal, nothing was outside its purview. In the end, Marxism discredited the Enlightenment. It was the reductio ad absurdum of systematic reason. Marxism shattered the Enlightenment into an infinite number of prisms, each free to live the one life Marxism could not tolerate: a life of contradictions. We are heir to the incoherence it left.


But the truth was that Marxism not only failed to create the society it wished, it also did not effectively motivate the New Left. Marxism never succeeded in escaping the primordial reality of the human condition. I don't mean this as not escaping self-interest or corruption. What it failed to do was escape the reality of community as the foundation of human existence, more important than the individual, and certainly more important than class.


From the beginning to the end, the Soviet Union was an empire. It had a center in Moscow and an apparatus that controlled other, lesser vassal states. It could claim that the Soviet Man was being created, but the truth was that the Russian was a Russian, the Kazakh a Kazakh, and the Armenian an Armenian. Stalin never crushed this reality as much as he tried. And when he died, and as the Soviet state grew weaker and more corrupt, these national differences became even more important.


But even more than this, the Soviet Union acted in the world as an empire. On taking power, Lenin made a deal with Germany, exchanging land for peace. Indeed, Lenin came to power essentially as a German operative, delivered to St. Petersburg in a sealed train and funded to overthrow the government and make peace with Germany on Berlin's terms. Lenin made this deal in order to take power. When Germany was defeated, he regained the lost lands and the rest of the empire in a civil war that reclaimed Peter the Great's empire for himself. When we look back, the class struggle was merely the preface. The reality was what Marx called Oriental Despotism, coupled with a capitulation to geopolitical reality.


Stalin later spent the 1930s preparing for war with Germany, purging the military, starving peasants in order to buy steel factories, and building weapons. That he miscalculated the beginning does not change the end. Stalin waged a ruthless war for the motherland and pushed the Soviet empire west to the center of Germany and into the Carpathians. The Soviet Union anchored itself in the center of Europe waging a war with the United States for the former European empires cast free by the collapse of European power. It is one of the great ironies of history that the greatest imperial conflict was waged by the two great anti-imperial powers, the United States and the Soviet Union.


We all now know that the Soviet Union was doomed. It was not nearly so clear to the United States as it fought to a stalemate in Korea and lost in Vietnam. It was not clear during the Cuban Missile Crisis or during the Berlin blockade. Above all, it was not clear in 1980, when the United States had lost in Vietnam and was reeling economically. Iran had expelled American power, and the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. Tito was dead in Yugoslavia, and the Soviets were fishing in muddy waters. Greek society was torn apart, and the Soviets were funding all sides of an incipient civil war in Turkey. The American strategy of containment was solid in Europe and had added China to the frontier, but it appeared to be rupturing on a line from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan.


In retrospect, we can see that the Soviet Union had long since lost its will to power. It could not have taken risks even if it wanted to. By 1980, it could poke at the United States and its allies, but a full-blooded thrust was something that haunted only American minds. Still, the Soviets played the geopolitical game. Surrounded, they sought openings, and failing to find those, they tried to drive the Americans off-balance throughout the world. They were everywhere. But in the end, their economy was weak, their satrapies were restless and the leaders wanted to enjoy their dachas and their pleasures. It was partly that they had lost all belief, but it was also, in retrospect, that they knew they were weak.


Marx argued that the revolution would come in an advanced industrial country, like Germany. Instead, it came in a place that violated his theory and where building communism was impossible. It arrived in the vast European Mainland, not on the European Peninsula. It came in an impoverished, landlocked country with terrible transportation and a dispersed population, not on the maritime peninsula, with excellent transportation and a concentrated population. This meant that their thrust in Germany and Eastern Europe left them with a region that now shared Russian poverty, and which had to be occupied and defended. The American solution was simple: to wait. There was really no other solution, as an invasion of the mainland had destroyed Napoleon and Hitler. Geopolitics imposed a strategy of waiting on both sides, and the Soviets had less time than the Americans and their allies.


And so the wall came down. The most fantastic dreams of the Enlightenment were shattered. The young Marxists of Berlin, confused by a history that could not conform to their contradictory dreams, got jobs at Siemens or Deutsche Bank or perhaps in Brussels. The Americans claimed a victory that is somewhat reasonable, if the strategy of doing nothing is allowed into the rules of geopolitics. And the empire shattered into small pieces that cannot be rebuilt, in spite of a leader who would like to think of himself as Stalin, but is really a better-dressed Brezhnev.


The most important thing that happened on that day, and which must not be forgotten, is that Germany became once more reunited. From 1871 onward, a united Germany has posed a problem for Europe. It is too productive to compete with and too insecure to live with. This is not a matter of ideology; it is a matter of geography and culture. The young men and women at the wall now emphatically support austerity in Europe, not accepting responsibility for the rest of Europe's fecklessness. Why should they?


The fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago served as an exclamation point in history ending an ideology and an empire. It did not end history, but rather it renewed the puzzle that has dogged Europe since 1871. What will Germany do next and what will the outside world do with Germany? This once slightly unsettling question has become a moderately unsettling one. In Europe, history sometimes throws a party and then presents an unpleasant surprise. But then, Europe is always a surprise, or at least pretends to be.

China Changes Narrative on Organ Harvesting

The sad truth is that the weight of evidence is overwhelming in terms of numbers alone. This was the only way in which demand could have been met and yes it was met. Those who benefited are apparently been punished while the innocent are left to pick up the loose ends. That includes those in charge now and they are trying to sweep it all under the carpet.




This identifies a shift in general intensity driven by constant foreign coverage. This has finally put the government itself on the defensive. Add in the production of military provocations and we see a pretty clear linkage back to the key motive. They really want to change the subject.




So far the global media is not quite letting them get away with it. sooner or later though i suspect that someone inside will use this hammer to truly clean house. This could be messy then.

.

From Attack to Defense, China Changes Narrative on Organ Harvesting

By Matthew Robertson, Epoch Times | November 24, 2014

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1099775-from-attack-to-defense-china-changes-narrative-on-organ-harvesting/

Deny, deny, deny—it’s the standard playbook in politics for fending off unwelcome accusations and has been used expertly by the Communist Party of China (CCP) on a wide range of issues for as long as anyone has been keeping count.

But for one set of truly damning allegations—that the regime and its subordinates have harvested tens of thousands of organs from prisoners of conscience, who are guilty of no crime, for vast profit—even denial was seen as giving too much credence. 

In that case, the strategy since 2006 was either to outright ignore the claims and mounting piles of evidence or to spread propaganda about the individuals making the arguments. 

But recently, for the first time, there seems to be a slight modulation of that strategy: from silence to actual denial.

This new propaganda strategy seemed to creep out in a recent article published in China Medical Tribune, a semi-official publication for China’s medical community. Titled “China Organ Transplant Assembly Officially Responds to Foreign Media Suspicions,” the article makes prominent reference—including with a large screenshot—to a report published by Minghui, a well-known website associated with Falun Gong adherents.

Minghui is most notable for its extensive first-hand reports by Falun Gong practitioners about the persecution of the discipline in China. Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual practice that has been persecuted in China since 1999.  

The Chinese publication refers to a detailed report by Minghui in 2009 that concluded that Falun Gong prisoners of conscience must have been a major source for Chinese organ transplants, given that death-row prisoners were far too few. It even includes the link, still active, to the report.  

A screen shot referring to a report about organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China was featured in a report by China Medical Tribune. The official Chinese propaganda stance may be shifting, experts say. (Screenshot/ifjc.org)

In 2006, allegations first emerged that Chinese military hospitals were using Falun Gong practitioners as a live organ bank: taking blood samples and killing victims for organs on order. 

These allegations were first made in 2006 by two Canadian researchers in a report titled Bloody Harvest, which pointed to the ultra-short wait times (just weeks) for organs—something that takes years in countries with volunteer-based donation systems. 

Among other pieces of evidence, Chinese doctors and nurses were also found to have admitted, in surreptitiously recorded phone calls, to using the organs from Falun Gong prisoners.

Evidence has continued to mount, and the United Nations, European Union, U.S. Congress, and medical organizations and human rights groups have called on Chinese authorities to explain themselves.

All along, Chinese authorities have only dared to attack the investigators or claim that the allegations are part of an unexplained Falun Gong plot to undermine the reputation of the Communist Party. “Reactionary propaganda” was the term of art used by Party propagandists to dismiss the detailed allegations, which were often based on simple analyses of Chinese publications.

Never before has an officially linked publication made prominent reference to the allegations—if even to deny them. 

“My view of this is that the concern about the abuse has been coming from too many directions for the Chinese Communist Party to ignore,” wrote David Matas, a co-author of the seminal report on organ harvesting from Falun Gong, in an email. “So, instead of pretending that the concern about the abuse does not exist, they have shifted to denying the abuse.

“Denying, rather than ignoring, criticism does have the downside of giving publicity to the criticism, which is what we are now seeing. If the criticism is little known, silence is often the best strategy,” Matas continued. “However, if the criticism is already widely known, then silence serves no purpose.

“The Chinese communist authorities must have come to the conclusion that the knowledge of the killing of Falun Gong for their organs has become so widespread that they have less to lose by denying it than by ignoring it,” he wrote.

Negative attention by the international transplant community may have helped to force the CCP’s hand. 

Although it did not refer to harvesting from prisoners of conscience, The Transplantation Society, the pre-eminent medical group representing transplant professionals globally, wrote a letter directly to Communist Party leader Xi Jinping earlier this year saying in effect that the Chinese authorities had broken their promises on organ transplant reform because they were still harvesting organs from death-row prisoners.  

As a result of the broken pledge, international medical organizations did not attend the Chinese National Transplant Conference at the end of October. The same report on the website of the China Medical Tribune made an artful reference to the slight, saying, “Compared to before, many foreign transplant experts were unable to attend.”

Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting (DAFOH), a medical advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., had previously cautioned Western surgeons from participating in Chinese transplant events and therefore conveying legitimacy upon them. 

“We would consider it unethical for any foreign transplant professional to attend this transplant congress in Hangzhou given the rampant and unrepentant transplant abuse in China, unless the person is going with the express and sole purpose of speaking out against it,” DAFOH wrote in a statement on its website.  

Dr. Torsten Trey, DAFOH’s executive director, said in a telephone interview that the recent report was suggestive. He referred in particular to a cryptic remark by Huang Jiefu, who said it was “not yet the time” for international inspections of Chinese organ harvesting practices. Huang is China’s former vice minister of health and the point person for dealing with the international community on China’s organ transplantation system.

“Why is it not yet the time? It suggests that inspections would find something if they take place now,” Trey said.

“The Transplantation Society tried to engage China, but Huang Jiefu’s comment suggests that he knows more than he has shared with them.”

Cryptid Encounter - State Game Lands 331 - Clearfield Co., PA

 

Once again we have a clear eyeballed to consider.  Importantly we do have the snout and this eliminates any confusion regarding the possibility of a Bigfoot.


Again this does fit the developing pattern of the Giant Sloth.  The problem there is that the female is most human like but should also sport a tail.  None is noted here at all.  The hair is also short and it been November, it should be growing out.  All this makes it likely that it is a completely different creature or an outright hoax.  The hoax conjecture cannot hold up if the height and foot prints are correct.  Then again the witness may well be buncoing  the reporter and simply making it up as he goes along using scraps of knowledge but not knowing when he is outside the envelope.


We obviously need more eyeballs to take this one seriously for the time been.


Cryptid Encounter - State Game Lands 331 - Clearfield Co., PA

Monday, November 10, 2014

On Friday November 7th, I received information from Butch Witkowski of the UFO Research Center of Pennsylvania in reference to a cryptid sighting report he had just obtained.

http://uforesearchcenterofpennsylvania.blogspot.ca/2014/11/strange-creature-report-clearfield.html

The witness (wishes to remain anonymous presently) stated that he was in the north edge of the State Game Lands 331 (Clearfield Co., PA just south of Penfield) between 10-11 AM on 11/7/2014. He was walking his two Weimaraner dogs when an unknown bi-pedal creature stepped out of the brush.

Description: 8 foot to 10 foot tall. Weight unknown. Large stride. Short hair. Dark colored most likely brown but very dark. Thought that it may be a Bigfoot but had a prominent 'snout' like a canine.

The witness said it took all his strength to hold on to the dogs. The creature never reacted to the dogs barking...stared straight ahead and continued to quickly walk away into the forest.


One of the UFOrwarded out to the team:


...did some research on the Dogman. I was unaware that they do walk upright. But a did find something that doesn't match our description. They are usually German Shepard-like in color. Meaning they are two or three tones of fur color. Most descriptions are that they are 7ft. tall and very aggressive. So that leaves out Dogman in my mind. Here is an interesting thought, Ottawa and Chippewa natives believe they are Skinwalkers stuck between two worlds. That would make more sense being it wasn't aggressive. Maybe a shapeshifter if you believe in such things. I know the natives do.

e didn't have a Skinwalker, but some tribes had an Witiko...similar to the Windigo. Seneca Indians, whom also would have been in that area, believed in the Windigo as well. Legend has it if a Windigo was spotted by someone it is a death omen.



Most accounts of the Windigo has it at 15 ft tall. The Lenape also talk of a evil spirit called the Misinghalikun...meaning Living Solid Face. Had skin of a bear, a large face. He was the guardian of all animals of the forest.



The witness and others returned to the location the next day (Saturday November 8th). They found the exact area where the dogs had dug into the ground attempting to chase the creature. The group had a very uneasy feeling and quickly left.



NOTE: I found that the Misinghalikunwas a sacred mask being of the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware, people whose origin and practice varied among the different tribal divisions. The Unami defined Misinghalikun as "living mask" or "living solid face" For them, its spiritual purpose included serving as guardian of the animals, a role it received from the Creator. Misinghalikun was embodied in a wooden mask, half red and half black which was ritually cared for by a keeper. He appeared in bearskin clothing and could sometimes be seen riding on a buck, herding deer. Among the Unami, Misinghalikun had a spring ceremony and also participated in the Big House Ceremony. Some people believed that the Jersey Devil of the Pine Barrens in New Jersey may have been a Misinghalikun. I plan to continue researching this sighting along with other groups in Pennsylvania...Lon

The Viral Infection that makes nearly HALF of us more Stupid (and it lasts for YEARS)

 

 

 

 Obviously this is not good news.  We have discovered a problem that appears to have been with us a long time and it affect brain function significantly.  We really do not know what the vector happens to be but it will be there.  The fact that it affects almost half of the population is suggestive of an occasional contact that is not actually pervasive. This will make it hard to define.

 

 

We do want to reverse this problem.  At least we have identified the virus and its biological pathway.   Now we have to solve the problem.  This cannot be easy but at least we know it is real and the problem is important.

 

 

We should start with universal screening to determine who has the problem.

 

.

 

Found: The viral infection that makes nearly HALF of us more stupid (and it lasts for YEARS)

The virus - called chlorovirus ATCV-1 - was only known to appear in algae
Researchers in U.S. have not established how it comes to infect humans
It hasn't infected just swimmers, which rules out direct link to algae itself
Instead humans could've been carrying virus but was not known to doctors
Research suggests it alters genes in brain including memory and emotion
Scientists found 44 per cent of patients tested had virus in their throats

By BEN SPENCER, SCIENCE REPORTER FOR THE DAILY MAIL


PUBLISHED: 16:05 GMT, 9 November 2014 | UPDATED: 11:57 GMT, 10 November 2014


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2827518/Found-viral-infection-makes-nearly-HALF-stupid-lasts-YEARS.html#ixzz3IoHWrLhW

Nearly half of us could be infected with a virus which makes us more stupid, scientists have found.


The startling discovery suggests that millions may be carrying a long-lasting infection which dulls the brain.


Scientists found the virus living in the throats of 44 per cent of patients tested in a small US study.


A viral infection that could make more than half of us stupid has been discovered by scientists in America


Those who were carrying the infection performed worse in intelligence tests, even when education and age were taken into account.


The virus - called chlorovirus ATCV-1 - was previously only known to appear in green algae in freshwater lakes.


The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Nebraska, have not established how the virus comes to infect humans.



Instead it could be that humans have long carried the virus, but it had not previously been looked for by doctors.


Study author Professor Robert Yolken, of Johns Hopkins medical school, said the millions of viruses living in the human body are being investigated by experts for the first time.


‘We’re really just starting to find out what some of these agents that we’re carrying around might actually do,’ he told the Healthline website.


‘It’s the beginning, I think, of another way of looking at infectious agents — not agents that come in and do a lot of damage and then leave, like Ebola virus or influenza virus.


‘This is kind of the other end of the spectrum. These are agents that we carry around for a long time and that may have subtle effects on our cognition and behaviour.’


The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the ATCV-1 virus alters the genes in the brain.


The team found the virus in throat swabs from 40 out of 92 volunteers, and discovered those with the virus performed measurably worse in cognitive testing.


They then confirmed their findings in tests on mice. Giving the virus to mice resulted in a decrease in recognition memory and other brain functions, they found.


Tests showed the virus had broken through the barrier between blood and tissue, altering the activity of genes in the brains of the mice.


The genes affected including those producing dopamine - a vital hormone which influences memory, spatial awareness, emotion and pleasure.



But the virus does not seem to have infected just swimmers or watersports fans, ruling out a link to algae itself


The virus - called chlorovirus ATCV-1 - was previously only known to appear in green algae in freshwater lakes


Professor James Van Etten, a biologist from the University of Nebraska who first identified the virus in algae 30 years ago, said: ‘There’s more and more studies showing that microorganisms in your body have a bigger influence than anything anyone would have predicted, and this could be something along those lines.’


Professor Yolken added: ‘The thing that’s different about what we found is that chlorovirus ATCV-1 is something that we wouldn’t have suspected would actually have any effect on humans or animals.


‘It points us in a direction of looking to see if we can improve people’s cognition, their behaviour, by changing the composition of their microbiome [the balance of bacteria and viruses in the body].’

Has Sugar Lost its Sweet Spot?

 

 Stevia is the clearest and best answer to the sweetening problem.   I have been posting on it since 2007 when i started this blog.  Better than that it has a century of industrial usage in Japan and Europe.  Thus using it is no serious trick at all. 

Yet in its most mature market which is Japan it only takes a respectable five percent pf the market.  The reason for this is that there is sometimes a modest aftertaste that is not pleasing.  I am told however that a small amount of sugar will nicely offset this problem and that is why we see blends.

The global health problem is that we are consuming a massive amount of sugar.   This can provide a satisfactory replacement and that pesky aftertaste may just discourage over consumption as well.  Thus it has become plausible for regulatory action to alter our whole processed food supply decisively.

Has sugar lost its sweet spot? Paraguayan plant upends market

By Chris Prentice and Marcy Nicholson

 https://ca.news.yahoo.com/sugar-lost-sweet-spot-paraguayan-plant-upends-market-051346716--finance.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The maker of America's top sugar brand Domino Sugar is launching its first no-calorie "natural" sweetener extracted from the stevia plant in Paraguay, the strongest sign yet that the upstart product is threatening to eat into raw-sugar demand.

In less than a decade, the sweet-tasting stevia powder has stolen a big chunk of the $1.3-billion global market for artificial sweeteners as more health-conscious consumers use it in what they eat and drink.

Consumers' appetite for artificial sweeteners like Cumberland Packing Co.'s Sweet'N Low and corn syrup has waned amid rising interest in foods perceived as natural.

The powerful corporations that dominate the global sugar market are also facing slowing demand, especially in the United States, for refined sugar that is used in everything from coffee to cakes. The U.S. slowdown is due in part to concerns about extremely high rates of obesity and diabetes.

Big Sugar's response? To offer new non-sugar products that are not calorific, are suitable for diabetes sufferers and, more importantly, are seen as a more attractive alternative for health-conscious consumers than artificial sweeteners.

"If you look down the sweeteners aisle at any supermarket, there are stevia products there. Whatever consumers are looking for, we want to provide," Domino President and Chief Executive Officer Brian O'Malley told Reuters. 

ASR Group, which sells Domino Sugar and is the world's largest refiner of cane sugar, will launch its new product by the end of the year - its first to be made solely from the plant extract rather than a blend of sugar and stevia.

For ASR Group, which also owns the Tate & Lyle brand, it's a bold move: sugar represents 98 percent of its business.

But stevia's low production costs and relatively high retail sales prices are a sweet spot for food companies.

After spying growing interest four years ago, Louis Dreyfus Corp.'s Imperial Sugar has its own blends of sugar and stevia, and agri business Cargill Inc.'s Truvia brand is the U.S. market leader after entering the fray in 2008.

Archer Daniels Midland Co, a major player in the U.S. corn syrup market and global commodities trade, this month completed a $3-billion acquisition of Wild Flavors, looking to expand in the fast-growing "natural" markets.

To be sure, demand is still tiny compared with global sugar consumption of more than 170 million tonnes. It is also still a rare ingredient in U.S. foods - only 1.5 percent of new food products launched in the first nine months of 2014 contained stevia, Datamonitor Consumer's database shows.

Some health experts caution the sweetener contains additives as well as the plant extract. Questions also remain whether its taste can really match the flavor of sugar. 

Still, U.S. consumers will eat and drink about 597 tonnes of stevia in manufactured food and drinks by 2018, with demand soaring from a meager 14.5 tonnes in 2008, according to estimates from market research group Euromonitor International.

Over the same period, the country's demand for artificial sweetener aspartame is expected to drop by a third to 3,243 tonnes, Euromonitor's forecasts show. U.S. sugar consumption has stagnated - the average American consumed about 68 pounds of refined sugar last year, down from a 1972 peak of over 102 pounds, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA).

Natural no-calorie sweeteners "have definitely eroded some volume of traditional sugar sources," Steve French, managing partner of market research firm Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) in Harleysville, Pennsylvania.

"It's not that we're using more sweeteners as a population, we're just shifting usage across different types of sweeteners."

ROOTS IN PARAGUAY

Stevia's roots go back to Paraguay and Brazil, where people have used leaves from the plant to sweeten food for centuries.

It became big business in the United States through a medical products salesman in Arizona called James May who got his first taste of stevia in 1982 when a Peace Corps volunteer returning from a stint in Paraguay gave him some leaves to try.

"After tasting them, I gave him my life savings to go back to Paraguay and send me some stevia leaves," he told Reuters.

He now runs Wisdom Natural Brands in Gilbert, Arizona, whose SweetLeaf sweetener is used in salad dressings, tortilla chips and ice creams. 

His big breakthrough came in 2008 when U.S. regulators approved stevia as a sweetener after more than two decades of lobbying. Until then, it had been used in foods, but not as a sweetener.

Some 17 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed in 2013 by the Natural Marketing Institute said they use stevia, up from just 4 percent in 2008. Just under half of consumers used table sugar, down from 57 percent in 2008, the survey showed.

HOW NATURAL IS 'NATURAL'?

While much of stevia's appeal is that it's natural, some critics note that most products include more corn sugar and bulking agents than the stevia plant itself and that the term "natural" is tricky territory for food companies.

In 2013, Cargill agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in a Minnesota state court that claimed its Truvia brand should not be marketed as "natural" because it is highly processed and uses genetically modified ingredients. 

Truvia spokeswoman Katie Woolery said it is made from natural ingredients and meets all legal guidelines.

Even so, recent entrants are betting on stevia being more than just a U.S. fad. In Japan, where it has been used since the 1970s, it has established a stronghold in products like sports drinks. 

"Sugar could be in danger. If there's a product out there that can taste enough like sugar, there's potential for that product to take share," said Jeff Stafford, a Morningstar analyst in Chicago.

Some household food and drinks manufacturers have already spotted the opportunity to sweeten products naturally without adding calories: Greek yogurt maker Chobani has put stevia in its first light yogurt brand, Simply 100, and PepsiCo. is launching a new soda this month that uses stevia.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice and Marcy Nicholson, editing by Josephine Mason and Ross Colvin)

Use of Cholesterol Drug in Middle Age Lowers Heart Risks for Decades Later

This is extremely important news.  Statins are often poorly tolerated and there comes a time when the patient really needs to reduce their dosage.  I personally have observed this although i have used them for a decade.  Other recent information informs us that Coenzyme will ameliorate this problem.  Thus we do have options.

The real argument here is that a five year program of Statins will work to seriously lower the risk thereafter.  That is sufficient to make it a key tool in any persons anti heart attack regimen.  Lowering the risk matters.

Statins are continuing to find additional uses and will likely turn out to be used in everyone's toolkit.

Use of cholesterol drug in middle age lowers heart risks for decades later, study finds

By Marilynn Marchione

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/cholesterol-drug-middle-age-lowers-heart-risks-decades-195025196.html

CHICAGO - Taking a cholesterol-lowering drug for five years in middle age can lower heart and death risks for decades afterward, and the benefits seem to grow over time, a landmark study finds. Doctors say it's the first evidence that early use of a statin can have a legacy effect, perhaps changing someone's odds of disease for good.

"It might be a lifetime effect," said one study leader, Dr. Chris Packard of the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Not only did original benefits of statins continue into late life, but researchers were surprised to see new ones become evident over time, he said.

The results are from the West of Scotland Coronary Prevention Trial, the first study ever to show that statins could prevent heart problems in people who had not yet developed clogged arteries but had high LDL, the bad type of cholesterol.

The watershed trial led to these drugs — sold as Lipitor, Crestor, Zocor and now in generic form — becoming a mainstay of treatment and one of the most prescribed medicines around the world.

The long-term results were discussed at an American Heart Association conference that ends Wednesday in Chicago.

The study, which started in 1989, involved about 6,600 Scottish men, ages 45 to 64, with high LDL — around 190, on average. Half were given the statin Pravachol and the rest, dummy pills. Five years later, there were 35 per cent fewer heart-related deaths and also fewer heart attacks in the statin group.

Once the study ended, the men went back to their regular doctors, and about one-third of both groups kept or started taking a statin. This means any differences seen years later probably is due to whether they took statins during the five-year study, Packard explained.

Scotland has national health care and good electronic medical records, so researchers were able to document what happened to more than 90 per cent of the men.

Twenty year after the study began, the risk of heart-related deaths was 27 per cent lower among the men who took Pravachol for those first five years rather than dummy pills.

The chance of dying from any cause was 13 per cent lower in the statin group at the 20-year mark, a benefit not seen earlier on.

"The big surprise" was a 31 per cent lower risk of heart failure in the group initially assigned to take the statin, Packard said. Heart failure occurs when a heart damaged from a heart attack or other cause gradually weakens over time and can't pump blood effectively.

Doctors have long suspected that the way statins work gives benefits beyond lowering cholesterol, and the heart failure result supports that theory, Packard said.

"This is another stone in the foundation supporting the value of preventive cardiology," said Dr. Sidney C. Smith Jr., a former Heart Association president from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Other factors might have played some role in how these men fared, but "nevertheless, a moderate-dose statin taken for primary prevention shows long-term benefit."

Woman ‘Spontaneously’ Revives After 45 Minutes Without a Pulse

What is very good news is that the medical staff thought nothing of continuing CPR for 45 minutes. When i had my major Heart Attack in 2005, i recieved immediate CPR that was sustained for twenty minutes.  This was already considered exceptional then and even then the whole medical team was working on the assumption that my brain had not survived the process.  It took the stubborn determination of my wife to make them stay the course and bring me back.


It is clear that we have a sea change in understanding the possibility of resurrection provided CPR is sustained.  In this case we have made 45 minutes look easy as my event made 20 minutes look possible.  The record is more like two hours, but a lot of things have to also be done right.  It is noteworthy that in this case no special steps were noted such as body chilling.



The take home is that what matters first is vigorous CPR with the focus on getting quality compressions.  Make sure help is on the way and go to work and ask other bystanders to spell you because you will tire quickly.


Woman ‘spontaneously’ revives after 45 minutes without a pulse

By Abby Phillip November 10 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/11/10/woman-spontaneously-revives-after-45-minutes-without-a-pulse/

For 45 minutes, 40-year old Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro had no pulse. Now she is alive and healthy with no brain damage. (Photodisc)

They are calling it "a miracle."

Doctors at Boca Raton Regional Hospital in Florida have no way to explain how 40-year-old Ruby Graupera-Cassimiro survived after spending 45 minutes without a pulse and enduring three hours of attempts to bring her back from near-death on Sept. 23.

Graupera-Cassimiro, now a mother of two, had just come out of a cesarean section procedure to deliver her new daughter. Then suddenly, she went from chattering with her family to struggling for her life, according to the Sun Sentinel. 

She was suffering from a rare complication called an amniotic fluid embolism, in which the fluid that surrounds the baby in the womb enters the mother's blood stream. The condition can cause life-threatening blood clots. 

As Graupera-Cassimiro slipped into unconsciousness, doctors and nurses rushed back to her room in a desperate effort to save her life.

After more than two hours later, her heart stopped.

Doctors and nurses began chest compression that would continue for 45 minutes. They took turns to avoid exhaustion and used electric shock paddles. But nothing worked.

Finally, they decided to call her family into the room to say their goodbyes.

"Once we say that's it, that's it," said anesthesiologist Dr. Anthony Salvadore, according to the Sun Sentinel.

Her family left the room to pray. And doctors were on the verge of declaring her dead when suddenly there was a blip her heart monitor. That was followed by another and another.

Nurse Claire Hansen came out of the operating room with a shocking message, the Sun Sentinel reported.

"Keep praying," she told Graupera-Cassimiro's assembled family, "because her heart just started."

"She essentially spontaneously resuscitated when we were about to call the time of death," said Thomas Chakurda, the hospital spokesman told the Associated Press. 

A day later, Graupera-Cassimiro was taken off of life support. And today she is "the picture of health," Chakurda said.

On Tuesday, she and her newborn baby returned to the hospital to thank nurses and doctors for their life-saving efforts.

"Had you guys maybe stopped before the 45 minutes of compressions -- I mean, I don't know. All I know is that I'm grateful to be here," Graupera-Cassimiro she told them, according to the Sun Sentinel. "I don't know why I was given this opportunity, but I'm very grateful for it."

Childbirth complications like Graupera-Cassimiro's are rare -- it is estimated that between 1 and 12 cases of amniotic embolism occur with every 100,000 births, according to the Mayo Clinic. Scientists don't fully understand why complications occur for some mothers but not for others, but pregnancy at an older age, c-sections, and medically induced labor may increase the risk to some women.

But not only did Graupera-Cassimiro survive, but she suffered no brain damage or physical injuries from efforts to revive her.

"There's very few things in medicine that I've seen, working in the trauma center myself and doing all the things that I do, that really were either unexplainable or miraculous," said the president of the hospital's medical staff, Dr. Anthony Dardano, according to the Sun Sentinel. "And when I heard this story, that was the first thing that came to my mind."