Under 18% of US adults smoke. Some of these will develop disease as a direct result. Some who become ill don't have insurance; however, each time the government increases the tax on cigarets, it is with the assurance that this money will be used to cover smoking-related health care costs. Cigaret taxes bring in some $26 billion per year.
My greatest concern is that while many agree that government must play a stronger role in our personal lives, enforcing good health habits, targeting cigarets is like concentrating on swatting at a mosquito while a bear is sneaking up behind you. While we can't determine whether a breathing-related disease is due to smoking, hereditary factors or pollution, we know that the most carcinogenic smoke is that which contains oil particles (from motor vehicles). Smoking restrictions are so stringent that few people have any exposure to cigaret smoke whatsoever, while very few can avoid exposure to motor vehicle smoke. Our excessive use of motor vehicles (in spite of high gas prices) is, unlike cigarets, a primary cause of global warming. This doesn't even touch on the impact of oil on America's militarism.
That said, it is clear that we need to begin using social pressure on those who drive, much as we do on those who smoke. We need to start focusing on the bear instead of worrying about the mosquito.
The Julius Baer bank has dropped its lawsuit against Wikileaks, reports [http://www.reuters.com/article/bankingFinancial/idUSN052610820080306 Reuters]:
The bank dismissed the lawsuit against the Web site, Wikileaks.org, and Dynadot LLC, the site's registrar, without explanation in a filing in U.S. district court in San Francisco. It left open the possibility of filing another lawsuit in the same or in a different court.
A Baer spokeswoman said the company had nothing to say beyond the court filing dismissing the case.
I believe that the following information is important for understanding the context within which the ‘Institute of Democracy and Cooperation’ was established. The initial impulse for creating this institute came from Vladimir Putin’s comments made at Russia – EU conference in Portugal in October 2007. In his comments, Mr Putin referred to EU-funded advocacy of democracy in Russia as to something that should be matched by Russia’s similar activities in Europe and elsewhere. When explaining these comments, Putin’s aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said that Mr Putin meant the European University at St. Petersburg that received a EU grant to implement a project on election monitoring in Russia. As a director of the mentioned project, the Inter-Regional Electoral Network of Assistance (IRENA), I would like to draw the attention of your readers to the following facts. Starting with June 2007, the IRENA project experienced continuous harassment from the Russian authorities. After a series of inspections that did not prove anything illegal in project-related activities, the Russian authorities attacked the recipient of the grant, the European University at St. Petersburg. In February 2008, the European University was closed by the authorities on a ridiculous pretext of ‘fire safety violations’. At about the same time, the ‘Institute of Democracy and Cooperation’ started to operate in Paris and New York.
Grigorii Golosov, Professor, European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, golosov@eu.spb.ru
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that fat people are the only people who have an interest in knowing how many calories are in the food being served at restaurants. This of course, is not the case. Everyone (fat or thin) has the right to know how many calories are in the food they eat, just as they have the right to know how much sodium it contains, how many carbohydrates, how much protein, fiber, saturated fat, sugar, etc. For some people, such as diabetics, this information can be vitally important to their health. To suggest that it should be kept off of restaurant menus so that fat people won't have to worry about what other people think of them is to argue that everyone's right to information should be held hostage to the sensitivities of one segment of the population. Moreover, most of the disapproval you describe comes, not from nutrition information (or lack of it) on restaurant menus, but rather from the fact that fat people LOOK fat, and society stigmatizes their appearance. (I agree that this is an often unfair prejudice, but it doesn't come from calorie counts.)
At one point you seem to agree with me on this point. You write that there are "social delusions that fat people are happily munching away on junk food, oblivious to the health warnings around them." If indeed this were a social delusion, you would have nothing to fear from the inclusion of nutritional information on restaurant menus, and in fact you should welcome this information, in the expectation that it would change "the judgments of their dining companions and wait staff." You are therefore contradicting yourself when you claim that this information is a source of stigma against fat people.
As for whether nutritional labels make a difference, they clearly do. They make a difference to me, for example. When I'm shopping in the grocery store, I find it valuable to know that one brand of yogurt contains 170 calories and 32 grams of carbohydrates, while another brand (which tastes just as good and makes me feel just as full) contains 80 calories and 14 grams of carbohydrates. I use this sort of information to make decisions when shopping at the grocery store, and I should have the same right to make informed choices when I'm at a restaurant.
This information is important, not because everyone should feel pressured to conform to some ideal standard of what their bodies should look like, but because obesity (which is caused in part by poor diet) carries real health risks including heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. Knowing what is in the foods we eat can help people who want to reduce those risks.
Finally, you are simply wrong when you suggest that the pharmaceutical industry has a "financial agenda" that benefits from restaurants providing better nutritional information. To the contrary, drug companies make quite a bit of money from selling drugs that treat diseases like diabetes or reduce cholesterol, which can also be controlled or prevented without the use of drugs (more safely, in many cases) through lifestyle changes involving diet and exercise. It's true that there is a market for drugs that target obesity specifically, such as appetite suppressants, but that market has actually [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12742801 declined during the past decade] due in part to the fen-phen disaster. And even at the peak of the craze, the number of Americans taking appetite suppressants was 2.5 million, a fraction of the numer who are taking drugs to treat diseases linked to obesity. Currently, for example, the U.S. has 20.8 million people suffering with diabetes (the sixth most common cause of death in the country), and more than 85 percent of people with diabetes are overweight. (And that's just diabetes. Throw in the drugs sold to treat other obesity-related health problems such as high cholesterol and heart disease, and we're talking about an absolute gold mine for big pharma.)
Of course medicine is controled by Pharma. Nothing counts but profit anymore. And government will not do a damned thing about it, because government is nothing but mechanism to protect and promote the agendas of the special interest most able to control it. Govenment is the new vehicle to drive the public into the poor house and politicians are the chaufeurs that make it possible.
And if that were not enough, the average sheeple never questions their doctor. And neither does anyone else. I picked up teaching a social psy class that talks about nurses blind deference to doctors. One doctor treated a patient for an ear infection. He wrote "put drops in R ear." But his writing was sloppy. Yet neither nurse or patient questioned why they were taking it up the *ss!!!!!
Under 18% of US adults smoke. Some of these will develop disease as a direct result. Some who become ill don't have insurance; however, each time the government increases the tax on cigarets, it is with the assurance that this money will be used to cover smoking-related health care costs. Cigaret taxes bring in some $26 billion per year.
My greatest concern is that while many agree that government must play a stronger role in our personal lives, enforcing good health habits, targeting cigarets is like concentrating on swatting at a mosquito while a bear is sneaking up behind you. While we can't determine whether a breathing-related disease is due to smoking, hereditary factors or pollution, we know that the most carcinogenic smoke is that which contains oil particles (from motor vehicles). Smoking restrictions are so stringent that few people have any exposure to cigaret smoke whatsoever, while very few can avoid exposure to motor vehicle smoke. Our excessive use of motor vehicles (in spite of high gas prices) is, unlike cigarets, a primary cause of global warming. This doesn't even touch on the impact of oil on America's militarism.
That said, it is clear that we need to begin using social pressure on those who drive, much as we do on those who smoke. We need to start focusing on the bear instead of worrying about the mosquito.
The Julius Baer bank has dropped its lawsuit against Wikileaks, reports [http://www.reuters.com/article/bankingFinancial/idUSN052610820080306 Reuters]:
I believe that the following information is important for understanding the context within which the ‘Institute of Democracy and Cooperation’ was established. The initial impulse for creating this institute came from Vladimir Putin’s comments made at Russia – EU conference in Portugal in October 2007. In his comments, Mr Putin referred to EU-funded advocacy of democracy in Russia as to something that should be matched by Russia’s similar activities in Europe and elsewhere. When explaining these comments, Putin’s aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky said that Mr Putin meant the European University at St. Petersburg that received a EU grant to implement a project on election monitoring in Russia. As a director of the mentioned project, the Inter-Regional Electoral Network of Assistance (IRENA), I would like to draw the attention of your readers to the following facts. Starting with June 2007, the IRENA project experienced continuous harassment from the Russian authorities. After a series of inspections that did not prove anything illegal in project-related activities, the Russian authorities attacked the recipient of the grant, the European University at St. Petersburg. In February 2008, the European University was closed by the authorities on a ridiculous pretext of ‘fire safety violations’. At about the same time, the ‘Institute of Democracy and Cooperation’ started to operate in Paris and New York.
Grigorii Golosov, Professor, European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, golosov@eu.spb.ru
First of all, you seem to be suggesting that fat people are the only people who have an interest in knowing how many calories are in the food being served at restaurants. This of course, is not the case. Everyone (fat or thin) has the right to know how many calories are in the food they eat, just as they have the right to know how much sodium it contains, how many carbohydrates, how much protein, fiber, saturated fat, sugar, etc. For some people, such as diabetics, this information can be vitally important to their health. To suggest that it should be kept off of restaurant menus so that fat people won't have to worry about what other people think of them is to argue that everyone's right to information should be held hostage to the sensitivities of one segment of the population. Moreover, most of the disapproval you describe comes, not from nutrition information (or lack of it) on restaurant menus, but rather from the fact that fat people LOOK fat, and society stigmatizes their appearance. (I agree that this is an often unfair prejudice, but it doesn't come from calorie counts.)
At one point you seem to agree with me on this point. You write that there are "social delusions that fat people are happily munching away on junk food, oblivious to the health warnings around them." If indeed this were a social delusion, you would have nothing to fear from the inclusion of nutritional information on restaurant menus, and in fact you should welcome this information, in the expectation that it would change "the judgments of their dining companions and wait staff." You are therefore contradicting yourself when you claim that this information is a source of stigma against fat people.
As for whether nutritional labels make a difference, they clearly do. They make a difference to me, for example. When I'm shopping in the grocery store, I find it valuable to know that one brand of yogurt contains 170 calories and 32 grams of carbohydrates, while another brand (which tastes just as good and makes me feel just as full) contains 80 calories and 14 grams of carbohydrates. I use this sort of information to make decisions when shopping at the grocery store, and I should have the same right to make informed choices when I'm at a restaurant.
This information is important, not because everyone should feel pressured to conform to some ideal standard of what their bodies should look like, but because obesity (which is caused in part by poor diet) carries real health risks including heart disease, diabetes and arthritis. Knowing what is in the foods we eat can help people who want to reduce those risks.
Finally, you are simply wrong when you suggest that the pharmaceutical industry has a "financial agenda" that benefits from restaurants providing better nutritional information. To the contrary, drug companies make quite a bit of money from selling drugs that treat diseases like diabetes or reduce cholesterol, which can also be controlled or prevented without the use of drugs (more safely, in many cases) through lifestyle changes involving diet and exercise. It's true that there is a market for drugs that target obesity specifically, such as appetite suppressants, but that market has actually [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12742801 declined during the past decade] due in part to the fen-phen disaster. And even at the peak of the craze, the number of Americans taking appetite suppressants was 2.5 million, a fraction of the numer who are taking drugs to treat diseases linked to obesity. Currently, for example, the U.S. has 20.8 million people suffering with diabetes (the sixth most common cause of death in the country), and more than 85 percent of people with diabetes are overweight. (And that's just diabetes. Throw in the drugs sold to treat other obesity-related health problems such as high cholesterol and heart disease, and we're talking about an absolute gold mine for big pharma.)
Of course medicine is controled by Pharma. Nothing counts but profit anymore. And government will not do a damned thing about it, because government is nothing but mechanism to protect and promote the agendas of the special interest most able to control it. Govenment is the new vehicle to drive the public into the poor house and politicians are the chaufeurs that make it possible.
And if that were not enough, the average sheeple never questions their doctor. And neither does anyone else. I picked up teaching a social psy class that talks about nurses blind deference to doctors. One doctor treated a patient for an ear infection. He wrote "put drops in R ear." But his writing was sloppy. Yet neither nurse or patient questioned why they were taking it up the *ss!!!!!
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