Is a government agency in cahoots with the meat and dairy industries? Are corporate- financed propagandists churning out bogus assurances? Yes, warns our Science Editor-at-Large.

by Debbie Epstein
for HUSTLER Magazine – September 2009

Profits are the unifying force behind our country’s hazardous food. The famous food pyramid, devised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), is one example of an outrageous conflict of interest. The pyramid affects school lunch programs, guidelines used by nutritionists and dietitians and recommendations for consumers. Yet even this all-American symbol of a healthy diet is rigged.

Selling the Public on an Unhealthy Diet: The USDA’s food pyramid has six groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, oils, milk and meat/beans. Says one Harvard nutritionist, “Milk should not even have its own category, since there are many other sources of calcium.”

Nonetheless, the agency’s Food Pyramid Committee emphasizes a diet loaded with meat and dairy products. The reason? “The organizations in the government that set policy on the food pyramid and school lunches are loaded with people from the dairy and meat industry,” says Robert Cohen, founder of the Dairy Education Board. For example, Eileen Kennedy sat on the Board of Directors at Dannon Yogurt and the USDA Food Pyramid Committee when Cohen testified before the government panel. Nearly every other member of the committee had a similar résumé.

Diet for a Small Planet: The pyramid people clearly endorse an animal-based, highprotein diet because of the powerful livestock lobby even though the ecologic and health benefits of a lower-protein diet are wellproven. Studies show that vegetarians are healthier and have lower risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia and many cancers. Adds Cohen: “We’ve blamed cholesterol; we’ve blamed polyunsaturated fats. The fact is it’s the protein, not the fat, that causes arterial damage and heart disease.”

When it comes to boosting profits, the food pyramid spells a golden opportunity for the mega-ag r i c u l t u r a l corporations. “School lunch programs are simply a disposal scheme for excess food by large agriculture,” says food guru Michael Pollan. He urges getting the Department of Agriculture out of the school lunch business altogether.”We could offer kids healthy food and revive local agriculture by giving local suppliers $1 per child to supply school lunches,” he suggests. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. “Remember, a $ 2 0 – b i l l i o n organic food industry developed in the U.S. with no help at all from the government.”

In addition to the health benefits of lowerprotein diets, they also make excellent ecologic sense. With starvation a fact of life in so many parts of the world, better food policies are critical. One pound of steak has about 600 calories; one pound of whole oats has about 21,000 calories. Also, it takes 11 times more calories of fossil fuels to produce meat versus that used to produce grain. Meat production requires more energy but yields fewer calories.
In addition, according to the USDA, livestock takes up 80% of all our farmland and consumes 90% of all soy crops, 80% of corn and 70% of grain. Livestock also drenches our environment in a sea of animal waste and waste products, generating huge amounts of methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases. Finally, transporting food to livestock also requires vast amounts of resources. Once the oil runs out and food supplies can no longer be hauled far distances, Pollan says ruefully, food will only be available locally.

BS.com: The foods we consume every day are loaded with additives and ingredients that have never even been sufficiently tested. This includes MSG, genetically modified foods and trans fatty acids. In its quest to keep us in the dark about food quality, the mega-corps have inevitably enlisted the Internet: For every toxic product on the market, there’s a Web site with an official-sounding name assuring you that it’s safe.

You don’t have to dig deep to find these BS.coms. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org) is an industry-funded group that exists solely to discredit unfavorable studies. Products it defended in 2008 include phthalates, found in children’s toys and completely banned in California and elsewhere; bisphenol-A in baby bottles, linked to heart disease and diabetes by the Journal of the American Medical Association ; pharmaceuticals in drinking water (see the June ‘09 HUSTLER); and lethal dioxins in meat. The organization offers no data to debunk these “scams.”

The frontman for ACSH is Dr. Gilbert Ross, who in 1995 was sentenced to a 46-month prison term for defrauding New York State of $8 million in a Medicaid scheme. Although Gilbert continues to use the title of “doctor,” he is no longer allowed to practice medicine. After his release, Ross signed on with ACSH, where he remains today. According to a Mother Jones article written by Bill Hogan in 2005, Ross enthusiastically attacks “noncorporate- sponsored work as junk science of questionable motives.”

Rent-a-scam: ACSH is not unique. The Aspartame Information Service (Aspartame.info) will inform you that the artificial sweetener has been proven safe. The fine print at the bottom states that the site belongs to Ajinomoto, the world’s leading supplier of aspartame ingredients.

The Council for Biotechnology Information’s Web site (WhyBiotech.com) provides reams of soothing generalities on the safety and promise of genetically engineered food and products. If you search the site, you find it belongs to the biotech companies. Other similar Web sites include the Agribusiness Freedom Foundation (AgribusinessFreedomFoundation. org), Alliance for Better Food (BetterFoods.org), American Beverage Association (AmeriBev.org), Canned Food Alliance (Mealtime.org), Food Security Network (FoodSecurityNetwork.org) and the Center for Consumer Freedom (ConsumerFreedom.com), to name a few.

The Center for Consumer Freedom claims, among other things, that there is no mercury in fish. Run by Rick Berman, the group “exposes” vegetarians, animal rights activists and Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. Berman is the winner of a lifetime achievement Falsies award from SourceWatch.org, an invaluable site that identifies corporate and industry fronts. Berman also runs AnimalScam.com, ObesityMyths.com, PETAkillsAnimals.com and CSPIscam.com. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is a favorite target of Berman’s front groups because CSPI is a successful consumer advocacy group.

According to SourceWatch, the Center for Consumer Freedom does far more than just launch Web sites for its clients. For the right price it also lobbies, sends out press releases and advertises for corporate causes. When damning studies appear, Berman slips his rebuttals into mainstream newspapers. For instance, when the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that drinking soda increases the risk of diabetes, Berman could be found in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution demonizing the study’s scientists.

CCF’s first client was Philip Morris. Under its original name of Guest Choice Network, the group launched a smokers’ rights blitz for PM. According to SourceWatch, CCF has no membership or salaried employees, yet receives revenues in excess of $3.5 million. More than 40% of the group’s expenditures reportedly go into Rick Berman’s pockets.

So before you check on drug-laced drinking water, mercury-tainted fish and food additives that can kill you, put your source through the BS detector. Besides SourceWatch.com (which offers more than 41,000 antipropaganda articles), check with FactCheck.org and MediaMatters.org for independent information. If few or no details on membership or sponsorship are posted on a site, there’s probably a reason for the shyness. 

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You may purchase the September 2009 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) from HustlerMagazine.com.

Debbie Epstein is an award-winning healthcare and science author who lives in Ringwood, New Jersey, with husband David, Wilbur the cat and Joe the Yorkie.

Genetically engineered foods, toxic additives, self-serving research and the monopolization of suppliers all spell disaster as consumers become test subjects in a vast (and incredibly profitable) mad-science project.

Report by Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein
for HUSTLER Magazine – August 2009

Blinding Us With Science: When President Ronald Reagan allowed genes to be patented, and thus profitable, he opened a Pandora’s test tube. Our food is now part of a mad-science experiment, and we’re the guinea pigs. The biotech company Senomyx genetically engineers compounds that stimulate different areas of the brain to create the illusion of taste. This sci-fi additive, labeled simply “artificial flavor,” is already in Nestlé products and will soon be used by Campbell’s Soup and Coca-Cola. Other wonders of modern science include genetically modified corn that makes its own pesticide, and plant life that produces plastics, chemicals or pharmaceuticals. Corporations are also experimenting with genetically altered fish, poultry and fruit trees, creating Frankenfood that could easily contaminate or wipe out natural plants if they invade the environment.

According to a report by investigative writer Philip Mattera, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is turning consumers into a vast pool of unwitting test subjects for the biotech industry’s questionable agenda of transforming agriculture. Indeed, Japan has made the wise decision to watch American children for the next ten years before deciding whether to produce or eat the yields of our science projects.

Sci-fi food isn’t new, of course. Already 6,000 synthetic chemicals are currently condoned for use in processed foods. Many are carcinogenic or otherwise poisonous. According to a recent New York Times article, the way America’s food is produced clearly contributes to diabetes, stroke, heart disease and obesity.

“We are basically eating oil,” says food guru Michael Pollan. Corn oil and soy oil are the building blocks of cheap, unhealthy foods that contain lethal trans fats. Fertilizers and pesticides are produced from fossil fuels, and oil derivatives are used in processing, he says. This is not only bad for our bodies but for food production as well. “It takes ten calories of fossil fuel energy to make one calorie of food,” Pollan stated on Bill Moyers Journal in November 2008. When the fuel runs out, so will the food.

Eating a diet of oil isn’t our only problem. About 60% of all processed food is genetically modified, with no labeling required. Since these new life-forms are untested, no one knows the exact risks, but early evidence isn’t good. The genetically modified corn StarLink made its way into taco shells, and thousands who ate them experienced rashes, breathing difficulty and other allergic reactions. Caterpillars fed modified corn die off, and immune systems become depressed in rats fed genetically altered potatoes.

Poisons in Your Pantry: Virtually all American foods are suspect. South Korea recently returned shipments of U.S. beef because they contained bone fragments. Further tests showed the meat also had dangerous levels of dioxin. One of the most toxic chemicals in existence, dioxin can cause cancer, impaired development and damaged reproductive, neurologic and immune systems.

Almost as alarming as unintentional dioxon contamination is the purposeful dosing of food. Cows, chickens and pigs are pumped with antibiotics to increase their size and inflate corporate profits. Forty percent of all drugs in the U.S. are bought not to treat sick people but to fatten livestock. This use of antibiotics promotes superbugs that are more likely to be antibiotic-resistant. The government also allows processors to use poisonous carbon monoxide gas during packaging to prevent discoloration and conceal spoilage. Meat may also be irradiated to kill microorganisms and increase shelf life, but the long-term effects of this new process are unknown.

Got a sweet tooth? According to a recent Princeton study, sugar delivers rat brains a dopamine surge similar to that of heroin and cocaine. On the other hand, diet products may be sweetened with aspartame, a dangerous artificial additive (also called NutraSweet) found in cereals, jams, fruit juices, tea beverages, breath mints, children’s vitamins and medicines, candy, cake mixes and frostings. [For more on aspartame, see Part 1 of this series in our July '09 issue.] The most widely used sweetener is high-fructose corn syrup, which was developed in the 1970s and is generally regarded as safe (GRAS) by the Food and Drug Administration—meaning it doesn’t have to pass safety testing.

High-fructose corn syrup is used in jams, condiments, fruit juices and soft drinks and is a favorite ingredient in “health food” store products. Fructose has been shown to delay testicular development and produce anemia, high cholesterol and enlarged hearts in rats. Female rats given the substance are unable to produce live offspring. “Every cell in the body can metabolize glucose,” says Dr. Meira Field, who studied the high-tech ingredient for the USDA. “However, fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the [laboratory] rats on the high-fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics—fatty and cirrhotic.”

Milk, cheeses, ice cream and butter are no healthier: Many are produced with milk from cows injected with an artificial growth hormone, increasing the risk of cancer. The genetically engineered hormone, approved by the FDA in 1993, was one of the first to be used in food production. (Milk labeled “organic” is not allowed to contain artificial growth hormones, but cheese, ice cream and other dairy products do not require disclosure.)

Nonorganic milk also contains antibiotics. In one Consumer Reports study, 38% of the milk tested contained illegal antibiotics. Breads and cakes can be a risky proposition as well, since many contain potassium bromate, a cancer-causing agent that has been banned everywhere except Japan and the U.S.And those soy products that are considered so heart-healthy are 80% genetically engineered. Factory foods also often contain trans fats and saturated fats, which raise cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease.

Who’s Watching the Food Store? Found in virtually every processed food, artificial flavorings could be derived from almost anything. Most are granted GRAS status by the FDA and don’t require specific labeling. “Companies have a right to protected trade formulas,” says Robert Cohen, founder of the Dairy Education Board. “But if it’s factorymade [processed], I don’t eat it.”

The U.S. isn’t the only source of fatal food. Melamine-contaminated powdered milk from China led to the infamous pet food poisonings. Thanks to the FDA’s weak response to the crisis, the tainted powdered milk made its way into baby formula in America. The ensuing scare led to the discovery of 17 other illegal food additives, including boric acid, in Chinese imports. Because denoting the country of origin in labeling isn’t mandatory, consumers take their chances when choosing food products. And in a world drenched in poisons, we can be sure the worst is yet to come.

Consumers can’t possibly expect to know which foods are bad. To deceive us, manufacturers use what they call “clean labels.” For example, products are allowed to state they contain no MSG (monosodium glutamate) even though it is hidden in 40 or so other ingredients, and studies have linked the additive to brain lesions and obesity. “About 30% of the population is sensitive to MSG and reacts with headache, seizure, asthma, depression or tightness in the chest,” says Jack Samuels, president of Truth in Labeling.

MSG is always found in any hydrolyzed protein, such as soy, as well as in calcium caseinate, gelatin, glutamate, glutamic acid, monopotassium glutamate, sodium caseinate, yeast extract, yeast food and yeast nutrient. It may also be found in “natural” flavorings and soy protein. Campbell’s soups and Newman’s Own ranch dressing have disguised MSG ingredients.

Famine on the Horizon: In one frightening scenario, Frankenfood invades the environment, taking over organic plant life. In other words, natural, nonscientifically modified fruits and vegetables would disappear.

Another disaster already underway is the extreme consolidation of food supplies and suppliers, making them extremely vulnerable. Large corporations have driven off small producers, concentrating our food supplies into a handful of mega-corporations. The risks, warns Michael Pollan, are that millions of people could become ill from accidental contamination or from intentional poisoning of supplies by terrorists. These megacorps have also bought up all unpatented seeds, often destroying them to promote their own biotech varieties.

Loss of food diversity is just as threatening as the concentration of production. For example, according to the disturbing film The Future of Food, 97% of the vegetable species available at the beginning of the 20th century are now extinct. While there were 5,000 varieties of potatoes in 1900, now only four are grown. As with the Irish potato famine, one insect or blight can wipe out an entire nation’s crop. The same loss of diversity is seen with wheat, corn, apples and virtually all other crops. Today 80% of all our beef comes from only four companies. And food distribution in the U.S. is heavily controlled by one company—Wal-Mart.

 Science for Sale: Large corporations also bankroll much of the scientific community—namely the researchers, doctors, universities and hospitals that conduct studies to be submitted to the FDA. Pennsylvania State University was funded by Upjohn and a division of Eli Lilly to study genetically modified growth hormones. Monsanto and American Cyanamid paid thousands to the University of Minnesota to study its products. Almost half a million dollars was given to the University of Vermont and millions to the University of Florida to conduct corporate food studies.

The problem with these cozy relationships is the pressure on researchers to give the customer what it wants—pro-corporate results. The public’s best interests aren’t always served. A University of Toronto professor of medicine secured funding to conduct trials on a promising drug, then was sued by the sponsoring manufacturer after she revealed toxic side effects to her patients.

Finally, Big Pharma and food congloms give the FDA millions of dollars in fees, ostensibly to fast-track drug approvals. This gives them powerful influence over the agency that is supposed to regulate the companies.

Ban the FDA? Just before Election Day 2008 a group of FDA scientists wrote to Barack Obama, begging him to restructure the agency. They claimed that upper-level managers committed the most outrageous misconduct by ordering, coercing and intimidating FDA physicians and scientists to recommend approval, then retaliating if they refused to go along. “Currently there is an atmosphere at FDA in which the honest employee fears the dishonest employee, and not the other way around,” the letter went on to state.

In 2007 a commissioner of China’s State Food and Drug Administration was executed for taking bribes from pharmaceutical companies to greenlight substandard medications. In America he would have been promoted. For that reason, this is one battle we simply can’t win, says the Dairy Education Board’s Robert Cohen. “The Monsantos, DuPonts and Dows have stacked the deck against us.” 

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You may purchase the August 2009 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) from HustlerMagazine.com.

Debbie Epstein is an award-winning healthcare and science author who lives in Ringwood, New Jersey, with husband David, Wilbur the cat and Joe the Yorkie.

 In the first installment of a special exposé, HUSTLER’s Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein explains the stomach-turning truth about our food: Chemical companies are adding deadly toxins approved by the government’s supposed safety net.

Article by Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein
for HUSTLER Magazine – July 2009

In the first installment of a special exposé, HUSTLER’s Science Editor-at-Large Debbie Epstein explains the stomach-turning truth about our food: Chemical companies are adding deadly toxins approved by the government’s supposed safety net. 

Our foods are killing us. We all know the Food and Drug Administration is supposed to be responsible for the safety and purity of what we consume. So why does the FDA allow poisons in almost e v e r y f o o d i n America? The short answer is corruption and greed. Pharmaceutical companies, food processors and the FDA are so intertwined, they’ve become a three-headed monster.

Big Pharma, as the drug industry is often called, profits from supplying food additives— sweeteners, hormones, antibiotics, etc. When these substances make us all sick, more profits are derived from the drugs we’re given to treat the sickness. It’s a win-win situation for the pharmaceutical companies; it’s a loselose for the public.

“Big Pharma is evil and runs America,” says Betty Martini, founder of Georgiabased Mission Possible World Health International. Since 1993 she and her watchdog organization have been sounding alarms in 39 countries about chemical poisons. Although Martini has taken heavy criticism for her dramatic pronouncements, most of her research has been substantiated. “The FDA is just Pharma’s branch office in Washington, D.C.,” she scoffs.

Many foods not only cause disease, some, including sugar and sugar substitutes, are addictive. A recent Princeton University study shows that sugar is as habit-forming as hard drugs—an effective way to boost sales. Other additives interact with prescription drugs, such as Parkinson’s medications, even though food additives are by law supposed to be inert. “It takes millions of dollars to fight these people in court when you’re made sick by poisons in food,” Martini says. These cases almost always settle out of court for lack of funds.

Freak Genes and Revolving Doors: Consider how cattle have been genetically altered by being injected with Posilac (a recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH) intended to increase milk production by a gallon a day per cow. This has also benefited the bottom line for Monsanto Company, which developed and originally marketed Posilac. (Monsanto, which racked up $2 billion in profits in 2008, is one of the top polluters in the U.S.)

Posilac—banned in Europe, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Australia—lists 20 possible toxic effects on its label. “It also originally contained a freak gene that produced an unusual and very unstable protein,” says Robert Cohen, founder of the Dairy Education Board. Monsanto fixed that problem, but the toxic effects remained. Milk from cows injected with Posilac has greatly increased levels of the known cancer-causing agent IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1). Milk from dosed cows also contains pus and antibiotics, which explains its “off” taste and shortened shelf life. FDA approval of Posilac in 1993 shows that when it comes to public safety, the behemoth pharmaceutical companies do indeed run the country.

There is a well-oiled revolving door between Big Pharma and the FDA. To illustrate: Monsanto scientist Margaret Miller wrote the report on Posilac. After she left Monsanto to join the FDA, she ended up actually evaluating her own positive report. Not surprisingly, the hormone was approved, freaky gene and all.

Michael Taylor, a second cousin of Tipper Gore, could be the poster boy for revolvingdoor syndrome. He has repeatedly gone back and forth from the FDA (while Monsanto was seeking approval for Posilac) to law firms fighting for the growth hormone’s approval. If President Barack Obama is really on the side of Main Street, why is Michael Taylor involved with the new administration?

Pus on Your Cereal: Many farmers have reported horrible symptoms from Posilac in their cows, particularly mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. To treat the infection, which decreases milk production and creates pus that ends up in the milk, farmers must then purchase and inject more antibiotics. This not only increases antibiotics in the milk, it also helps create drug-resistant organisms.

Monsanto actually sued milk companies that refused to use Posilac in their products and stated so on their labels. Michael Taylor (then at the FDA) signed a federal notice warning grocery stores that they could not label milk as free of genetically altered hormones, squelching the public’s right to know. Taylor’s reasoning: There is “virtually” no difference between dairy products containing Posilac and those without it.

Testifying before an FDA panel in 1999, Robert Cohen pointed out that Congress introduced a bill in 1994 to require mandatory labeling to indicate products with synthetic hormones. But the House Dairy, Livestock and Poultry Subcommittee stalled it. “I investigated the 12 committee members who stopped the bill,” Cohen recalls, “and I found that they collectively took $711,000 in PAC money from Monsanto and other companies.”

Pennsylvania banned mandatory labeling, but rescinded the ban after consumer backlash. Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana and Michigan all have existing or pending laws limiting what labels may say about hormones in milk. “Monsanto is trying to get states to thwart the market from working,” stated Michael Hansen, senior scientist for Consumers Union. “If the market wants blue corn and not yellow, and people want blue, that’s the way the market works.”

In 2008, amid mounting pressure from the public and consumer groups, Monsanto sold Posilac to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. Today 58% of the herds in the U.S. are injected with the genetically altered hormone.

Biochemical Weapons on Every Dinner Table: Just as telling is how the sweetener aspartame, developed by G.D. Searle & Company, got its stamp of approval.

Aspartame—found in NutraSweet, Equal, children’s vitamins and about 6,000 foods and beverages—was classified a potential biochemical warfare weapon by the Pentagon, according to info that reportedly emerged during a U.S. Senate committee hearing on November 3, 1987. Because aspartame tastes sweet and has no calories, it’s used in many diet drinks and foods. But since the artificial sweetener is cheaper than sugar, it’s often used in nondiet foods as well.

Aspartame has been linked to brain cancer, sudden cardiac death, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, bipolar disorder and a menu of behavioral and health conditions. When ingested, the additive breaks down into its three main components, all of which may act as neurotoxins that destroy human cells and organs.

Physician John Olney warned Searle early that aspartic acid, the key component of aspartame, actually caused holes in the brains of mice. Even Searle researcher Ann Reynolds admitted to neurotoxicity in her study. Searle ignored the warning and omitted several negative studies when the company submitted data to the FDA. For several years the FDA did its job, refusing to approve aspartame. At one point the agency’s task force on aspartame safety damned Searle’s official studies as “incredibly sloppy.”

Although it’s been removed from the market in Romania, and the European Food Safety Authority is currently considering a total ban, aspartame continues to poison the rest of the world’s population. The story of how aspartame was pushed through the approval process is a classic case of money over morality.

Rumsfeld’s Plague: “Big Pharma has no scruples,” says Betty Martini. She calls aspartame’s approval and marketing “the worst case of corruption in the history of the world. It has led to mass poisoning of Americans and people in 100 other countries.” A long line of corrupt judges, politicians and FDA officials is the reason you can put Equal in your morning coffee. UPI reported that ten federal officials involved in approving aspartame ended up in jobs at or connected to the manufacturer.

“Searle paid off everybody, and everyone in the company knew it was harmful,” Martini says. “I even interviewed Jan Kinnard, the temp hired by Searle to shred studies that would have kept it off the market.”

In 2008 Kinnard stated, “The results were outrageous. This stuff killed everything it touched.” Presented with evidence of aspartame toxicity, the FDA at first denied approval of the chemical. In desperation, Searle hired Donald Rumsfeld as its CEO in 1977. Rumsfeld had been President Gerald Ford’s secretary of defense and would later hold the same post under George W. Bush. He also worked for Richard Nixon in various capacities. In 1971 the famous White House tapes recorded Nixon saying, “He’s a ruthless little bastard. You can be sure of that.”

According to The Ecologist, an independent environmental affairs magazine published in England, when Rumsfeld was CEO of Searle, he vowed at a sales meeting to “call in his markers” to get aspartame approved. One day after President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, Searle reapplied to the FDA for aspartame approval.

Reagan fired the FDA Commissioner and appointed Arthur Hull Hayes Jr., who was later forced to resign for taking free rides on private jets belonging to General Foods, a major buyer of aspartame. Hayes returned to private life and eventually ended up doing PR work for Searle and Monsanto. But before heading to the private sector, he approved aspartame over the objections of the FDA’s Public Board of Inquiry. Rumsfeld himself made a reported $12 million when Monsanto purchased Searle in 1985.

Aspartame would never have been approved without Rumsfeld’s influence-peddling, says Martini. “That’s why we call it Rumsfeld’s Plague.”

“Who Put Pubic Hair on My Diet Coke?” An avalanche of complaints about aspartame soon hit the FDA. Leading the move- ment to ban it were Dr. John Olney and former “Nader Raider” James Turner, an attorney and consumer advocate with D.C.-based Swankin & Turner. Because the FDA simply ignored the complaints (even those of its own scientists), Olney and Turner took their case to the justice system.

The courts have proven to be as crooked as the FDA and Searle, however. “Complain about aspartame and you might just as well report a mugging to the Mafia,” says Martini.

Clarence Thomas had risen to associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court when it refused to consider arguments about aspartame safety in a case filed by the Community Nutrition Institute and other consumer groups. Thomas had once been an attorney at—guess where?—Monsanto.

Meanwhile, the data continue to pile up against the additive. Aspartame’s catastrophic effects are detailed in respected physician Russell Blaylock’s Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills. His book sheds light on various chemicals that stimulate the death of nerve cells and cause DNA damage. Brain cancer, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease, autism, attention disorders and Alzheimer’s are just some of the afflictions that have escalated since aspartame appeared on the market. Dr. Blaylock also reports that drinking just one diet soda a day can lead to aspartame poisoning because the excitotoxin accumulates in the body.

In Deadly Deception: The Story of Aspartame, Mary Nash Stoddard (of the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network) includes an entire chapter just on the dangers to pilots who drink beverages laced with the additive. They have been reported to lose consciousness from aspartame poisoning.

FDA—the Food and Death Administration: “This particularly nasty substance should never have been approved for human use,” Dr. Blaylock has written. “In fact, had it not been for some fancy footwork by those in power in the FDA, it never would have.”

In 1987 FDA toxicologist Dr. Jacqueline Verrett testified before a U.S. Senate committee, disclosing that aspartame’s safety was never proven at the FDA. Verrett said she and other regulators were pressured to approve data that were “a disaster.” Dr. Verrett, who wrote Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health: The Case Against Food Additives, called for terminating the FDA. She stated, “When science and the public interest win out, it is invariably only after the government has been pushed to the wall.” 

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You may purchase the July 2009 Issue of HUSTLER Magazine (with free shipping) from HustlerMagazine.com.

Debbie Epstein is an award-winning journalist who has written extensively for medical and consumer publications. She and her husband reside in Ringwood, New Jersey.

Reprinted from truthdig.com

THE WEEK OF JUNE 15, 2009, marked the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marked the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States, and it signaled the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. What is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama and the criminal class on Wall Street—aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history— may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, that fund America’s imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

On June 15 and 16, meetings were held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. The gathering was, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, “the most important meeting of the 21st century so far.”

The summit was the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports—including oil— will skyrocket, interest rates will climb, and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the past few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe.

Endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, Obama will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the recent rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. These people will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists—from the Christian Right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News—will assure the country they will impose.

I called Hudson, whose article “The Yekaterinburg Turning Point: De-Dollarization and the Ending of America’s Financial-Military Hegemony,” ran in the June 15, 2009, Financial Times. “Yekaterinburg may become known not only as the death place of the czars but of the American empire as well,” Hudson wrote. His article is worth reading, along with John Lanchester’s disturbing exposé of the world’s banking system, “It’s Finished,” which appeared in the May 28, 2009, issue of the London Review of Books.

“This means the end of the dollar,” Hudson told me. “It means China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran are forming an official financial and military area to get America out of Eurasia. The balance-of-payments deficit is mainly military in nature. Half of America’s discretionary spending is military. The deficit ends up in the hands of foreign banks, central banks. They don’t have any choice but to recycle the money to buy U.S. government debt. The Asian countries have been financing their own military encirclement. They have been forced to accept dollars that have no chance of being repaid. They are paying for America’s military aggression against them. They want to get rid of this.”

China, as Hudson pointed out, has already struck bilateral trade deals with Brazil and Malaysia to denominate their trade in China’s yuan rather than the dollar, pound or euro. Russia promises to begin trading in the ruble and local currencies. The governor of China’s central bank has openly called for the abandonment of the dollar as reserve currency, suggesting in its place the use of the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights. What the new system will be remains unclear, but the flight from the dollar has clearly begun. The goal, in the words of Russia’s president, is to build a “multipolar world order” that will break the economic and, by extension, military domination by the United States. China is frantically spending its dollar reserves to buy factories and property around the globe so it can unload its U.S. currency. This is why Aluminum Corp. of China made so many major concessions in the failed attempt to salvage its $19.5-billion alliance with the Rio Tinto mining concern in Australia. It desperately needs to shed its dollars.

“China is trying to get rid of all the dollars they can in a trash-for-resource deal,” Hudson said. “They will give the dollars to countries willing to sell off their resources since America refuses to sell any of its high-tech industries, even Unocal, to the yellow peril. It realizes these dollars are going to be worthless pretty quickly.”
The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar, they also break America’s military domination. Our military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official U.S. defense budget for fiscal year 2008 is $623 billion, before we add on things like nuclear research. The next-closest national military budget is China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

There are three categories of balance-ofpayment deficits. America imports more than it exports. This is trade.Wall Street and American corporations buy up foreign companies. This is capital movement. The third and most important balance-of-payment deficit for the past 50 years has been Pentagon spending abroad. It is primarily military spending that has been responsible for the balance-of-payments deficit for the past five decades.

To fund our permanent war economy, we have been flooding the world with dollars. The foreign recipients turn the dollars over to their central banks for local currency. The central banks then have a problem. If a central bank does not spend the money in the United States, then the exchange rate against the dollar will go up. This will penalize exporters. This has allowed America to print money without restraint to buy imports and foreign companies, fund our military expansion and ensure that foreign nations like China continue to buy our Treasury bonds.

This cycle appears now to be over. Once the dollar cannot flood central banks, and no one buys our treasury bonds, our empire collapses. The profligate spending on the military, some $1 trillion when everything is counted, will be unsustainable.

“We will have to finance our own military spending,” Hudson warned, “and the only way to do this will be to sharply cut back wage rates. The class war is back in business. Wall Street understands that. This is why it had Bush and Obama give it $10 trillion in a huge rip-off so it can have enough money to survive.”

The desperate effort to borrow our way out of financial collapse has promoted a level of state intervention unseen since World War II. It has also led us into uncharted territory. “We have in effect had to declare war to get us out of the hole created by our economic system,” Lanchester wrote in the London Review of Books. “There is no model or precedent for this, and no way to argue that it’s all right really, because under suchand- such a model of capitalism…there is no such model. It isn’t supposed to work like this, and there is no road map for what’s happened.”

The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations.

We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25% of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses.

There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics.

America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.  
For more articles by Chris Hedges, whose latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and Triumph of
Spectacle, go to Truthdig.com.

Given President Barack Obama’s campaign promises, you’d think that, once in office, he’d have swiftly put an end to the warrantless spying on the American people. But, in fact, he has yet to halt this Bush-era policy of snooping into our private communications—our phones calls, e-mails and God knows what else—even though it’s a clear violation of our civil liberties. What are we to make of this? It may well be that, despite Obama’s best intentions, political realities have made it difficult to rescind the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Given the way Washington, D.C., operates—especially when it comes to the intelligence community— that wouldn’t be a big surprise. But if Obama won’t stand up for our civil liberties, he doesn’t deserve a second term. Let’s hope Obama isn’t just another empty suit playing a shell game with the American people.

As healthcare reform legislation works its way through Congress, the following lawmakers have appreciable financial interests in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nevada): invested to the tune of $50,000 in a major healthcare index;

family of Representative Jane Harman (DCalifornia): a $3.2-million stake in numerous healthcare entities;

Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and wife: $5.2 million in pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly and Merck;

Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire): possibly as much as $560,000 worth of stock in Bristol-Myers Squibb, etc.;

Senator Johnny Isakson (RGeorgia): $165,000 in medical and drug stocks; Senator Kay Hagan (D-North Carolina): holdings in 20 healthcare companies for $180,000 or more;

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Connecticut): wife received more than $200,000 in stocks and salary as a board member of four healthcare firms;

Senator Michael Crapo (R-Idaho): owner of healthcare stocks worth $16,879.

Do you really expect these gas bags to be impartial when considering alternatives to the current system that could affect their bottom line?

If you could look inside Carrie Prejean’s head, you’d probably find a black hole sucking out every intelligent thought she’s ever had. That assumes the dethroned Miss California USA ever had an intelligent thought.

Prejean, an evangelical Christian, first came to the nation’s attention during the 2009 Miss USA pageant, which is owned by Donald Trump. Asked by celebrity judge Perez Hilton for her views on gay marriage, Prejean torpedoed any chance she might have had of winning the competition by remarking, “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. … I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman…that’s how I was raised.”

What the fuck is this “opposite marriage” shit? Opposite marriage would be no marriage, wouldn’t it? Calling straight marriage opposite marriage made her look like a confused, inarticulate ass, which, of course, she is.
Prejean explained her statement by claiming that Satan tempted her to give one answer, but that God instructed her to tell the truth. Chalk one up for the Almighty! But we guess Satan won the argument about Prejean improving on God’s work by getting breast implants. “It’s okay, Carrie,” Satan must have whispered. “What does God know about bathing suit competitions anyway?”

Having to settle for first runnerup, Prejean once again demonstrated her inability to follow a simple logical thread by claiming that her beliefs about gay marriage had cost her the Miss USA crown. Clearly, however, a more compelling reason for her defeat—if indeed she was ever close to winning the title—was Prejean’s clumsy, inarticulate and downright stupid way of presenting her views on a controversial subject.

No sane person expects the participants in a beauty pageant to be smart. For the most part, these women have been able to get by solely on their looks. They have no need to study or read, God forbid. They are, however, very adept at plucking their eyebrows and applying lip gloss. Can you say vacuous?

But let’s take a closer look at the leggy blonde’s position on gay marriage. Following the pageant, Miss Brain Dead 2009—no one can take that title from her—appeared in a television commercial produced by the National Organization for Marriage. It argued against granting gay couples the right to legally wed.

It’s one thing to say you don’t favor gay marriage and quite another to actively work against it. The Jessica Simpson lookalike was now making public appearances and lobbying for issues outside—and often in conflict with—her contractual obligations as Miss California USA.

It was, however, seminude pics of Prejean on the Internet that first got her into hot water. The clueless Bible thumper responded to the hullabaloo by stating that she was “naive” and “young” when the photography was done and that “photos taken of me as a teenager have been released surreptitiously. … I am not perfect, and I never claimed to be.”

Scientists believe nothing can escape from a black hole but scattered random particles. In Prejean’s case, what escaped were random lies. The photos, it turns out, had been taken the same year as the pageant. So the 21st century’s Anita Bryant isn’t even good at lying, something most attractive women excel at.

Even so, Prejean survived that firestorm. It was the rapidly imploding notalent’s apparent inability to show up for scheduled activities that proved her ultimate undoing. Personally, we at HUSTLER feel this was not a satisfactory reason for canning the beauty queen. Given her neutrino-size intellect, we suspect Prejean gets lost whenever she steps out of her front door. You have to expect certain problems when you hire the handicapped.

Had we the opportunity, we would ask the formerly flat-chested Prejean what exactly God has against gay marriage. Is it the oral sex? The anal sex? The obsessive need to color coordinate? We seem to recall that Jesus preached, “Love one another.”We don’t recall any subsequent amendments.

As regards black holes, some astrophysicists believe that matter sucked into one might pop up in an alternate universe. In fact, string theory postulates that we live in a multiverse where every possibility exists. If that’s true, somewhere there’s a universe in which Hitler was victorious. And another where Carrie Prejean is intelligent. Nah! Maybe scientists should reexamine string theory.

One good thing: Prejean’s liberal arts degree in special education means that when this Asshole starts to teach, she might actually be able to keep up with her students.

by Mancow Muller

Mark Muller is the red-blooded type of American male we don’t see anymore. I blame the estrogen in the public water supply. My brother ain’t some big-talking, noaction sissy-boy. He’s the guy every male wants to be. Being a man used to mean something completely different.

“A man’s bond is his word, son,” my father would preach to us.We Muller brothers—Mark, John and I—paid attention to him. We could mess up, no problem…but if we lied? Dad’s belt would do vicious laps across our backsides.We don’t lie, but that doesn’t mean our storytelling abilities are held back by the truth. A handshake is as good as gold with us.We will not sell out a brother or a friend or a business partner. We underpromise and overdeliver. We have found that this simple behavior has become extremely valuable in a world now populated with liars.

Mark and I hunted for venison to feed my father while he lay dying. Cancer patients are told deer meat is healthy for them. I found great irony in having to score Dad a bag of weed when he was ill. “Smoke the marijuana, son, and next time you’ll do the cocaine. Barry Goldwater’s daughter thought she could fly and jumped off a building after smoking the grass!” He would lecture us Willy Lohman-style. Okay, we knew he had it all wrong, but we loved him anyway.

Brothers always have each other. After a copperhead snake bit my ankle in Raytown, Missouri, when I was ten, it was Mark who cut the bite with his buck knife, sucked the venom out and tied off my leg, saving my life. In Arizona eight years ago, when our hot air balloon crashed, Mark broke his own arm shielding me from the rocky cliff we’d slammed into—saving my life again.

Growing up in the heartland city of Kansas City, Mark frequently modeled for Hallmark’s greeting cards. This brought him wads of cash and all the women that go with being goodlooking and rich at 18. Mark is eight years older than me. My parents made a huge mistake when they put us together when we were younger. You see, our family showed championship Tennessee Walking Horses, so we traveled a lot. Mark and I often shared motel rooms. Good idea? No—horrible!

There was the cast member just out of her Minnie Mouse costume at Disney World who I saw deflowered in Florida, the Atlanta Waffle House waitress 20 years Mark’s senior and that cute television weathergirl in St. Louis. Watching your brother piledrive a woman and hearing him say his little brother right beside them was asleep—that was just creepy. Didn’t these women think I had to be dead or drugged to be able to stay asleep through their passionate screams of ecstasy?

Somehow, in 1976, at the Las Vegas Hilton, my dad talked his way backstage, where our family got to hang with the greatest entertainer the world has known: Elvis. It was America’s bicentennial, and the green room was transformed with red, white and blue. My dad was a kitchen cabinet salesman by trade, but he turned into talent agent Broadway Danny Rose when promoting my mediocre impersonations of Kermit the Frog, Nixon and Carol Channing to Mr. Presley. I was seven, and our sweating host rolled with laughter at my inane routine.
Elvis enjoyed my family. We amused him. We were straitlaced, Bible-loving Midwesterners. He showed us his pearl-handled pistol and did “ghetto handshakes” with my big brothers. While my mom and dad talked to the stage manager, Mark and John revealed to the King how obsessed they were with Las Vegas chorus girls.
Later, at 2:15 in the morning, four chorus girls arrived at our hotel room—a gift from the King. The quartet took turns with my big brothers while I “slept.” Elvis’s gift of those girls to Mark and John gave me a story that is first on my list to tell at every cocktail party. Less than a year later I cried when I found out that nice man named Elvis had died.

Maybe it was that childhood meeting with Elvis that so affected my brother Mark—or maybe it was his death—that encourages him to live so fearlessly and over-the-top. There’s his car-racing team, Thundercock Racing; his trips into the wilderness; and his speedboat, which may one day spell the end for him. But Mark will not go out with a whimper; he’s going down guns-a-blazing with a cigar clenched between his teeth!

by Alex Bennett

I have been suffering from irritable bowel syndrome for years. While not a serious problem, it’s annoying to me and—due to the flatulence it produces—those around me. This is what you get for becoming older. It’s probably where the term “old fart” comes from.

My doctor prescribed Elavil, an old-line tranquilizer that, in small doses, can help with IBS. But it made me drowsy. If taken before bedtime, you sleep like a baby, but when you wake up the next day, you lack energy. That’s why I stopped taking it. Predictably, the IBS came back.

Recently I asked my doctor if there had been any new advances in the three years since he’d originally prescribed Elavil. He mentioned something called Xifaxan—an experimental therapy that showed promise. In small doses it stops diarrhea. In large doses—two tablets three times a day for ten days—it seems to stop IBS. I jumped at the chance for a prescription.

When I got to my pharmacy, I was told my medical plan would cover only $4 of the total bill, which came to—grab tightly onto whatever you’re holding—$316! Was this some kind of scam between the insurance company and the drug maker? My physical relief was being held for ransom!

I had to have Xifaxan and the promise that it held for me. However, standing between me and blessed relief was the drug dealer on the corner called a pharmacist. Treating IBS has become the geriatric equivalent to scoring smack. Pharmacists are America’s new drug dealers.

When I was younger, I never got sick. Sure, I did drugs and plenty of them, but that’s not the kind of drugs we’re talking about. Still, I have to say, the dealers I knew in those days were infinitely more honest than these thieves.

Don’t give me any crap about how much it costs to develop this stuff. That’s like a doctor telling you how much it cost him to go to medical school. He broke even a long time ago, and so did drug makers. Now they’re cashing in. Besides, most drug research is sponsored by the government. Big Pharma actually gets our tax money to develop a product that they then charge us up the ass for—literally, in my case.

My girlfriend had a similar problem. She needed Nexium, an acid reflux medicine to counteract a bone medicine she was taking that had a corrosive effect on the stomach. Since her plan wouldn’t cover it, she was advised to take over-the-counter Prilosec. But that drug wasn’t effective in treating the problem. Who knows more about what is good for a patient—a doctor or some pencil pusher at an insurance company? Clearly, it’s time to reform healthcare.

But wait a minute! There’s a hitch. The insurance companies have a lot of money to fight universal healthcare. You know where they got it? From you and me and those damn fucking monthly premiums. We all make a bet.We bet that we’re going to get sick, and they bet we won’t. The problem is when they lose, they often find a way to disqualify you. On the street they’d get their legs broken, or worse, but in this bizarro world we’re the ones who suffer!

Our newly minted President claims he wants to change the medical system. He says he wants to make insurance “affordable” for everyone, but the words affordable and single payer don’t belong in the same sentence. It’s all or nothing. You either have universal healthcare or you don’t. There can be no compromise on this.

When are we going to realize it is our duty as human beings to make sure no one dies by the side of the road. When I hear about people dying of cancer because they couldn’t afford the medicine they needed or because their free clinic had closed due to lack of funding, it makes me want to scream. How can we do this to each other?

If we don’t get universal healthcare now, then when? Every day we fail to address this problem, more Americans die of systematic neglect. The day must come when the crooks running the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries are no longer able to profit at the expense of the sick and dying. It’s time to rebel. Let’s run the bastards out of town. Meanwhile, excuse me. It’s time for me to take two of my $5.20 pills. Gee, they’re so small.

by Nat Hentoff

As of now, it’s highly unlikely that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be punished, at least in U.S. courts, for the war crimes they ordered under our laws and international treaties— except by history. But some of their accomplices are becoming apprehensive. A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report has disclosed that former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had authorized waterboarding (known to its victims as “controlled drowning”) of suspected terrorists in 2002. Yet she persistently defended Bush’s “enhanced interrogations” techniques here and around the world.

Rice is back at Stanford University, a professor of political science, assuring students— as she echoes the unrepentant Bush and Cheney—that everything done to prisoners was legal. However, on May 4, 2009, a delegation of Stanford students, faculty and alumni dramatically nailed a petition to the door of the university’s president, demanding that Professor Rice be held accountable and, if facts warrant, be prosecuted.

It has already been revealed here in the States and globally that an extensive investigation by the Justice Department’s ethics police—the Office of Professional Responsibility—had charged the three lawyers responsible for the infamous “torture memos”—John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee—with such flagrantly unethical conduct that they be referred to bar associations for possible disciplinary action. “That means,” reported Ari Shapiro on National Public Radio, “once-prominent government lawyers could be barred from ever working as attorneys again” and that Bybee (now a federal appellate judge on the Ninth Circuit) could be thrown off the bench.

Meanwhile, Spain—one of the nations whose justice system includes the “universal jurisdiction” to prosecute citizens of other countries for war crimes—has launched a criminal investigation of not only Yoo and Bybee, but also four other high-level Bush-Cheney operators, including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The charges are that they “participated actively and decisively in the creation, approval and execution of a judicial framework that allowed for the deprivation of fundamental rights of a large number of prisoners, the implementation… of torture…[and] the protection of the people who participated in illegal tortures.”

In charge of Spain’s inquiry is the John Wayne of international prosecutors, Baltasar Garzon, who relentlessly pursued the monstrous Chilean torturer—and master of making suspects disappear—Augusto Pinochet, ultimately indicted under “universal jurisdiction” in Chile.

Some other countries, angered by the kidnapping of their citizens in CIA “renditions” to be tortured outside their borders, could possibly indict Bush, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. President Obama would not allow those defendants to be extradited, but labeled as international pariahs, they may then be afraid to ever travel abroad again.

But what about us, the great majority of American citizens who allowed eight years of systematic torture and other war crimes by a Presidential administration that substantively was never legally made accountable by our elected representatives in Congress?

I expect that for years to come, an increasing number of Americans—very much including students—will be confronted with the ever-increasing revelations raised by Jacob Weisberg, editor in chief of the Slate Group (Slate.com). In the May 11-18, 2009, Newsweek he examined “Our Tacit Approval of Torture.” He pointed out that unlike a previous world disgrace—the internment of Japanese- Americans during World War II—”waterboarding was ordered and served up in secret.”

Weisberg added, however, “By 2003, if you didn’t understand that the United States was inflicting other tortures upon those deemed enemy combatants, you weren’t paying much attention…. Well before the nation reselected George W. Bush in 2004, the country’s best investigative reporters had unearthed the salient aspects of his [Bush's] torture policy.”

In April 2004, Seymour Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib story (you could see the photos on 60 Minutes ). Shortly thereafter Newsweek revealed that “Cheney’s lawyers had declared waterboarding a legal and acceptable practice.” Then in September 2006, John McCain and other lawmakers passed the Military Commissions Act, “which shielded U.S. interrogators from potential prosecution for torture.” So Congress thought. But an independent investigation may bring about prosecutions that many CIA interrogators have long feared.

Don’t worry. Those Americans who tacitly and complicitly approved our war crimes—by not raising hell with Bush, Cheney and Congress— won’t be indicted as coconspirators, But, as Jacob Weisberg suggested, “What we need now is a public airing through Congressional hearing and perhaps an independent commission,” an idea President Obama firmly resists.

Most Republicans in Congress are angrily opposed to making their former President and his team accountable. Most of their Democratic counterparts agree with Obama that he not be “distracted” from his urgent domestic and international challenges. So it is up to We the People! How many of the tacit Americans, who by their inaction scandalized this nation even among our allies, are willing to demand, in the streets if necessary, that no future administration will be confident it can get away with the atrocities now thoroughly chronicled in official documents and such searing books as Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side ? Again, this time it’s clearly up to you!