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tommie-suber · 5 years

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Dangers of pertussis vaccine

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Following is an article from TVR’s historical archives published in the Spring 1990 print edition on a scientific conference sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center in 1989 evaluating serious complications of pertussis infection and whole cell pertussis vaccine in DPT.

On September 28-October 1, 1989, the National Vaccine Information Center sponsored an international Workshop on the Neurological Complications of Pertussis and the Pertussis Vaccine. The scientists attending the multidisciplinary workshop concluded that both whooping cough and the current whole cell pertussis vaccine can cause permanent brain damage.

During the three-day workshop, the scientists agreed that toxins within the B. pertussis bacterium, which cause whooping cough and are in the pertussis vaccine, can cause a spectrum of permanent brain damage ranging from learning disabilities to severe retardation and seizure disorders. According to UCLA Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology John Menkes, MD, who coordinated the workshop, it was the consensus of opinion that the neurologic complications of the disease and vaccination are in part caused by the interaction of pertussis toxin and endotoxin present in B. pertussis bacteria.

DPT Convulsions Due to Effects of Toxins

The scientists also concluded that the convulsions which accompany severe cases of whooping cough and which follow vaccination are not solely caused by fever but are likely to be due to the combined effects of pertussis toxin and endotoxin. They also agreed that, although the vaccine may accelerate neurologic signs in some children with an underlying neurologic disorder, in many others no pre-existing brain abnormality exists. The scientists supported replacement of the current whole cell vaccine with less toxic acellular or genetically engineered pertussis vaccines.

Scientists from America and Abroad Attend

The workshop was international in scope and among the 19 scientists who came from Europe and Japan were: British epidemiologist Martin Bellman, MD, who co-authored Britain’s National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES); Swedish epidemiologist Jann Storsaeter, MD, who coordinated the Swedish clinical trials of Japanese acellular vaccine; neuroimmunologist P.O. Behan, MD, of Scotland’s Institute of Neurological Sciences; molecular biologist Toshiaki Katada, PhD, of the Tokyo Institute of Technology; Canadian bacteriologist John Cameron, MD, of the University of Quebec; and French neurologist Jean Aicardi, MD of Hopital des Engants Malades. Also attending was Reno Rappuoli, MD, who represented SCLAVO, an Italian vaccine manufacturer conducting clinical trials in Italy of a genetically engineered pertussis vaccine.

American scientists included pediatric infectious disease specialist James Bass, MD, of Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii; bacteriologist Robert Bond, MD, of University of South Carolina; neurologist Anthony Campagnoni, MD, of UCLA; neuropathologist Pasquale Cancilla, MD, of UCLA; statistician David Lane, PhD, of University of Minnesota; behavioral neurologist Marcel Kinsbourne, MD, of Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center; epidemiologist Donald Peterson, of University of Washington; epidemiologist Edward Mortimer, MD, of Case Western Reserve University; neurologist William Oldendorf, MD, of Brentwood VA Hospital; and neurologist Soloman Moshe, MD, of Albert Einstein School of Medicine.

The workshop was held on the grounds of Airlie Foundation located in the Virginia countryside near Washington, D.C. NVIC’s Executive Vice President Barbara Loe Fisher, who assisted Dr. Menkes in coordinating the workshop, emphasized that conclusions reached by the scientists help to clarify the question of whether the pertussis vaccine causes brain damage.

“This workshop brought together 19 of the finest basic science researchers and medical specialists in the world. Their unanimous agreement that toxins in the B. pertussis bacteria definitely have the capability of causing permanent brain damage both during the course of the disease and after vaccination is validation of what parents in our organization have been maintaining for eight years. Health officials in the government and the American Academy of Pediatrics, who maintain the vaccine does not cause permanent brain damage, are deliberately ignoring the evidence.”

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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Finally we have an end to a war we should never have fought in Syria!

We Know How Trump’s War Game Ends

Matt Taibbi

December 21, 2018

Rolling Stone

Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war

President Donald Trump reacts to the crowd as he arrives to speak to navy and shipyard personnel aboard nuclear aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., AP/Shutterstock

So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East.

GOOD!

What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half?

For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.

It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy.

Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.

“Today’s decision would cheer Moscow, ISIS, and Iran!” yelped Nicole Wallace, former George W. Bush communications director.

“Maybe Trump will bring Republicans and Democrats together,” said Bill Kristol, on MSNBC, that “liberal” channel that somehow seems to be populated round the clock by ex-neocons and Pentagon dropouts.

Kristol, who has rarely ever been in the ballpark of right about anything — he once told us Iraq was going to be a “two month war” — might actually be correct.

Trump’s decisions on Syria and Afghanistan will lay bare the real distinctions in American politics. Political power in this country is not divided between right and left, and not even between rich and poor.

The real line is between a war party, and everyone else.

This is why Kristol is probably right. The Democrats’ plan until now was probably to impeach Trump in the House using at minimum some material from the Michael Cohen case involving campaign-finance violations.

That plan never had a chance to succeed in the Senate, but now, who knows? Troop withdrawals may push a collection of hawkish Republicans like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ben Sasse and maybe even Mitch McConnell into another camp.

The departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis — a standard-issue Pentagon toady who’s never met an unending failure of a military engagement he didn’t like and whose resignation letter is now being celebrated as inspirational literature on the order of the Gettysburg Address or a lost epic by Auden or Eliot — sounded an emergency bell for all these clowns. The letter by Mattis, Rubio said:

“Makes it abundantly clear we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.”

Talk like this is designed to give political cover to Republican fence-sitters on Trump. That wry smile on Kristol’s face is, I’d guess, connected to the knowledge that Trump put the Senate in play by even threatening to pull the plug on our Middle Eastern misadventures.

You’ll hear all sorts of arguments today about why the withdrawals are bad. You’ll hear Trump has no plan, which is true. He never does, at least not on policy.

But we don’t exactly have a plan for staying in the Middle East, either, beyond installing a permanent garrison in a dozen countries, spending assloads of money and making ourselves permanently despised in the region as civilian deaths pile up through drone-bombings and other “surgical” actions.

You’ll hear we’re abandoning allies and inviting massacres by the likes of Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If there was any evidence that our presence there would do anything but screw up the situation even more, I might consider that a real argument. At any rate, there are other solutions beyond committing American lives. We could take in more refugees, kick Turkey out of NATO, impose sanctions, etc.

As to the argument that we’re abandoning Syria to Russians — anyone who is interested in reducing Russian power should be cheering. If there’s any country in the world that equals us in its ability to botch an occupation and get run out on a bloody rail after squandering piles of treasure, it’s Russia. They may even be better at it than us. We can ask the Afghans about that on our way out of there.

The Afghan conflict became the longest military engagement in American history eight years ago. Despite myths to the contrary, Barack Obama did not enter office gung-ho to leave Afghanistan. He felt he needed to win there first, which, as anyone who’s read The Great Game knows, proved impossible. So we ended up staying throughout his presidency.

We were going to continue to stay there, and in other places, forever, because our occupations do not work, as everyone outside of Washington seems to understand.

TV talking heads will be unanimous on this subject, but the population, not so much. What polls we have suggest voters want out of the region in increasing numbers.

A Morning Consult/Politico poll from last year showed a plurality favored a troop decrease in Afghanistan, while only 5 percent wanted increases. Polls consistently show the public thinks our presence in Afghanistan has been a failure.

There’s less about how the public feels about Syria, but even there, the data doesn’t show overwhelming desire to put boots on the ground.

When Trump first ordered airstrikes in Syria over Assad’s use of chemical weapons, 70 percent favored sanctions according to Politico, while 39 percent favored sending troops. A CBS poll around that time found 45 percent wanted either no involvement period, or airstrikes and no ground troops, versus 18 percent who wanted full military involvement.

Trump is a madman, a far-right extremist and an embarrassment, but that’s not why most people in Washington hate him. It’s his foreign-policy attitudes, particularly toward NATO, that have always most offended DC burghers.

You could see the Beltway beginning to lose its mind back in the Republican primary race, when then-candidate Trump belittled America’s commitment to Middle Eastern oil states.

“Every time there’s a little ruckus, we send those ships and those planes,” he said, early in his campaign. “We get nothing. Why? They’re making a billion a day. We get nothing.”

As he got closer to the nomination, he went after neoconservative theology more explicitly.

“I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,” he said, in March of 2016. He went on: “I watched as we built schools in Iraq and they’re blown up. We build another one, we get blown up.”

Trump was wrong about a thousand other things, but this was true. I had done a story about how military contractors spent $72 million on what was supposed to be an Iraqi police academy and delivered a pile of rubble so unusable, pedestrians made it into a toilet.

The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction noted, “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate.”

SIGIR found we spent over $60 billion on Iraqi reconstruction and did not significantly improvelife for Iraqis. The parallel body covering Afghanistan, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, concluded last year that at least $15.5 billion had been wasted in that country between 2008 and 2017, and this was likely only a “fraction” of financial leakage.

Trump, after sealing the nomination, upped the ante. In the summer of 2016 he said he wasn’t sure he’d send troops to defend NATO members that didn’t pay their bills. NATO members are supposed to kick in 2 percent of GDP for their own defense. At the time, only four NATO members(Estonia, Poland, the U.K. and the U.S.) were in compliance.

Politicians went insane. How dare he ask countries to pay for their own defense! Republican House member Adam Kinzinger, a popular guest in the last 24 hours, said in July 2016 that Trump’s comments were “utterly disastrous.”

“There’s no precedent,” said Thomas Wright, a “Europe scholar” from the Brookings Institute.

When the news came after Trump’s election that he’d only read his intelligence briefings once a week instead of every day as previous presidents had dutifully done, that was it. The gloves were off at that point.

“The open disdain Trump has shown for the agencies is unprecedented,” said Patrick Skinner, a former CIA official for both George W. Bush and Obama.

All that followed, through today, has to be understood through this prism.

Trump dumped on basically every segment of the political establishment en route to Washington, running on a classic authoritarian strategy — bash the elites, pose as a populist.

However fake he was, there were portions of the political establishment that deserved abuse, the Pentagon most of all.

The Department of Defense has been a money pit for decades. It has trillions in expenditures it can’t account for, refused an audit for nearly 30 years and then failed this year (as in failed completely, zero-point-zero, not producing any coherent numbers) when one was finally funded.

We have brave and able soldiers, but their leaders are utter tools who’ve left a legacy of massacres and botched interventions around the world.

NATO? That’s an organization whose mission stopped making sense the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. We should long ago have repurposed our defense plan to focus on terrorism, cyber-crime and cyber-attacks, commercial espionage, financial security, and other threats.

Instead, we continued after the Soviet collapse to maintain a global military alliance fattened with increasingly useless carriers and fighter jets, designed to fight archaic forms of war.

NATO persisted mainly as a PR mechanism for a) justifying continued obscene defense spending levels and b) giving a patina of internationalism to America’s essentially unilateral military adventures.

We’d go into a place like Afghanistan with no real plan for leaving, and a few member nations like Estonia and France and Turkey would send troops to get shot at with us. But it was always basically Team America: World Police with supporting actors. No wonder so few of the member countries paid their dues.

Incidentally, this isn’t exactly a secret. Long before Trump, this is what Barney Frank was saying in 2010: “I think the time has come to reexamine NATO. NATO has become an excuse for other people to get America to do things.”

This has all been a giant, bloody, expensive farce, and it’s long since time we ended it.

We’ll see a lot of hand-wringing today from people who called themselves anti-war in 2002 and 2003, but now pray that the “adults in the room” keep “boots on the ground” to preserve “credibility.”

Part of this is because it’s Trump, but a bigger part is that we’ve successfully brainwashed big chunks of the population into thinking it’s normal for a country to exist in a state of permanent war, fighting in seven countries at once, spending half of all discretionary funding on defense.

It’s not. It’s insane. And we’ll never be a healthy society, or truly respected abroad, until we stop accepting it as normal.

Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and winner of the 2008 National Magazine Award for columns and commentary. His most recent book is ‘I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street,’ about the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police. He’s also the author of the New York Times bestsellers 'Insane Clown President,' 'The Divide,' 'Griftopia,' and 'The Great Derangement.'

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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In Time of War

"In time of war, the loudest patriots are the greatest profiteers.”*

- August Bebel, 1870

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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VA police kill man during traffic stop. The 66 year old veteran who recently had hernia surgery was thrown to the ground by a VA Policeman injuring his face and causing an artery to burst in the brain. The family is suing the VA for the wrongful death.

See the report below:

**USA Today: Veteran died after** **KC****VA** **police officer injured him during traffic stop | The Kansas City Star**

**USA Today: Veteran died after** **KC****VA** **police officer injured him during traffic stop**

[BY ANDY ][BY ANDY][MARSO][BY ANDY]

DECEMBER 14, 2018 05:02 PM,

UPDATED DECEMBER 14, 2018 07:57 PM

A 66-year-old military veteran died after he was injured by a Kansas City VA Medical Center police officer when a routine traffic stop went wrong in May, according to USA Today.

VA officials, citing an ongoing investigation, have refused for six months to release to The Star information about the [death of Kingston, ][death of Kingston_][Mo][death of Kingston_][., resident Dale ][death of Kingston_][Farhner][death of Kingston_].

But an [internal report leaked to USA Today][] says Farhner suffered gashes to his face and scalp after he was pulled to the ground by the police officer. He later died of a brain hemorrhage at University of Kansas Hospital.

[BY ANDY]: mailto:[email protected]

[death of Kingston_]: https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/health-care/article222800675.html

[internal report leaked to USA Today]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/14/exclusive-internal-va-report-details-veterans-encounter-police-death/2305707002/

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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Border Protest

Brant Rosen

I Witnessed the Horror of Border Militarization, and Vow to Fight It

I ‘ve just returned from the San Diego-Tijuana border where I had the honor of participating in “Love Knows No Borders” — an interfaith action sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and co-sponsored by a myriad of faith organizations from across the country. As a staffer for AFSC and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace (one of the many co-sponsoring organizations), I took a special pride in this interfaith mobilization, in which more than 400 people from across the country gathered to take a moral stand against our nation’s sacrilegious immigration system. I’m particularly gratified that the extensive media from our action could shine a light on the brutal reality at our increasingly militarized southern border.

The date of the action (December 10) was symbolically chosen to take place on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and served as the kick off to a nationwide week of action that will conclude on December 18, International Migrant’s Day. The action set three basic demands before the US government: to respect people’s human right to migrate, to end the militarization of border communities, and to end the detention and deportation of immigrants.

Over the course of this past weekend, hundreds of participants streamed into San Diego for orientation and training. To conclude our preparation and as a precursor to the upcoming action, an interfaith service was held in the packed sanctuary of University Christian Church. As one of the Jewish leaders of the service, I noted that it was the eighth and final night of Hanukkah and invited the Jewish members of our delegation up to sing the blessings.

Before the lighting, I explained that the final night of Hanukkah is the night in which our light shines the brightest, and I pointed out the wonderful confluence of this Jewish festival with our interfaith action the following day. Rev. Tracie Blackmon, a United Church of Christ leader and prominent social justice activist, delivered one of the most powerful messages of the evening, properly placing the issue of immigrant justice within the context of US white supremacy.

Arrests at the Border

The next morning, we gathered at AFSC’s San Diego office and left in buses to Border Field State Park, located just north of the border with Tijuana. After a press conference, we marched west down the trail to the beach, then turned south and approached the border fence, which snaked across the beach and jutted several hundred feet into the water. As we got closer, we could see a tangle of barbed concertina wire laid out in front of the fence. Behind the wire stood a phalanx of heavily armed border police.

The action set three basic demands before the US government: to respect people’s human right to migrate, to end the militarization of border communities, and to end the detention and deportation of immigrants.

When we reached the edge of the wire, some of the clergy formed a semi-circle and offered blessings for the migrants. As the prayers were spoken aloud, the police used a megaphone to inform us that we were trespassing on federal property and that we needed to move to the back of the wire. I recited the Priestly Benediction in Hebrew and English (“May God bless you and keep you …”), doing my best to articulate the prayer between the voices of police barking out orders (a ceremonial first for me).

When our blessings were over, we went back to the other side of the barbed wire and those of us in front formed a line directly facing the guards. A policeman repeatedly told us to leave, adding that he did not want any violence — an ironic statement considering that he and the rest of the riot-gear clad border police wielded automatic weapons in front of our faces. We began to chant freedom chants and held the line, even as the police inched forward and started to push us back.

While we were careful not to touch any law enforcement officers, we continued to hold the line as the police pushed us forward. Eventually, protesters who did not yield were grabbed, pulled to the police side of the line and arrested. Most men were thrown to the ground and held down with their faces in the sand while their hands were bound together with plastic ties; women were generally allowed to kneel before they were led away from the beach to waiting police vans.

When we stood up to the line of armed border police, I couldn’t help but flash back to my very similar experience in Hebron.

As I continued to hold the line on the far west end of the front line, I noticed a commotion at the other end: Police had broken through the line and were chasing protesters down the beach. I saw one of our protest organizers, AFSC staffer Matt Leber, roughly thrown to the ground by at least five or six border police officers, handcuffed and led away. While Leber did not intend to take an arrest, this kind of intentional targeting of organizers is a common police tactic.

We learned later that Leber had been charged with felony assault against a federal officer. In video taken of the incident, however, you can see Leber (wearing the red T-shirt and backpack) guiding the protest when he is suddenly attacked, unprovoked, by the police who lunge at him and yank off his backpack. You can also see AFSC staffer Jacob Flowers (wearing the yellow vest) attempt to nonviolently de-escalate the situation by placing his body between Leber and the police before they throw him to the ground.

Shortly after Leber’s arrest, I dropped to my knees and was grabbed and pinned down by two border police officers. When it became clear that I wasn’t resisting, they allowed me to stand of my own accord and led me to the line of arrested protesters who were arrayed along a fence, waiting to be placed into police vans.

All told, 32 of us were arrested and charged with the misdemeanor of “nonconformity to the orders of a Federal Law Enforcement officer.” After we were cited and released, we learned that Leber had been charged with felony assault of a law enforcement officer. When a day went by with no further word, AFSC released a statement calling for his immediate release. To our collective relief, Leber was eventually let out later on Tuesday afternoon and the charges against him were dropped.

The True Meaning of Border Militarization

During our debrief, many noted the ferocity of the border guard’s response to our prayerful, nonviolent demonstration. Many of us — in particular the white, privileged members of our delegation — agreed that we had gained a deeper sense of empathy and solidarity with our migrant neighbors, a stronger understanding of the toxic effects of militarization on our border communities, and a more profound conviction than ever that we must all fight for a nation that receives immigrants with open hearts and open doors.

This experience also served to demonstrate what “militarization of the border” truly means. My friend and fellow Jewish Voice for Peace member Elaine Waxman put it well when she wrote about our experience on her Facebook page:

What has stuck with me most in the last 24 hours is a deeply uncomfortable sense of what that border surely looks like when the witnesses are gone, the journalists are not taking pictures, and the encounters are with migrants instead of documented (and often white) community leaders. Because what we saw yesterday looks like a police state.

Indeed, when we stood up to the line of armed border police, I couldn’t help but flash back to my very similar experience in a direct action with Youth Against Settlements during the summer of 2006 in Hebron. In both cases we faced heavily armed soldiers, the loud screaming of orders, and the use of the threat of violence to intimidate and deter those who do not yield to state control.

Clergy demonstrators hold the line at the San Diego-Tijuana border fence.

I also noticed another, more specific similarity between these two experiences. When I stood in front of the border guards on the beach, I noticed familiar tear gas canisters belted across their chests. I’d seen the same on soldiers throughout the West Bank and Gaza: silver cylinders with blue writing manufactured by Combined Tactical Systems in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.

Seeing those same canisters at the US-Mexico border reminded me of the multiple intersections between systems of state violence and corporate profit – and of the need for a movement that will expose and dismantle them once and for all.

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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Red meat linked to heart disease

NEWS RELEASES NIH

Monday, December 10, 2018

Findings reveal tripling of blood levels of TMAO from red meat diet, but dietary effects can be reversed

Researchers have identified another reason to limit red meat consumption: high levels of a gut-generated chemical called trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), that also is linked to heart disease. Scientists found that people who eat a diet rich in red meat have triple the TMAO levels of those who eat a diet rich in either white meat or mostly plant-based proteins, but discontinuation of red meat eventually lowers those TMAO levels.

TMAO is a dietary byproduct that is formed by gut bacteria during digestion and is derived in part from nutrients that are abundant in red meat. While high saturated fat levels in red meat have long been known to contribute to heart disease—the leading cause of death in the United States—a growing number of studies have identified TMAO as another culprit. Until now, researchers knew little about how typical dietary patterns influence TMAO production or elimination.

The findings suggest that measuring and targeting TMAO levels—something doctors can do with a simple blood test—may be a promising new strategy for individualizing diets and helping to prevent heart disease. The study was funded largely by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. It will be published Dec. 10 in the European Heart Journal, a publication of the European Society of Cardiology.

“These findings reinforce current dietary recommendations that encourage all ages to follow a heart-healthy eating plan that limits red meat,” said Charlotte Pratt, Ph.D., the NHLBI project officer for the study and a nutrition researcher and Deputy Chief of the Clinical Applications & Prevention Branch, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, NHLBI. “This means eating a variety of foods, including more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, low-fat dairy foods, and plant-based protein sources such as beans and peas.”

“This study shows for the first time what a dramatic effect changing your diet has on levels of TMAO, which is increasingly linked to heart disease,” said Stanley L. Hazen, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and section head of Preventive Cardiology & Rehabilitation at the Cleveland Clinic. “It suggests that you can lower your heart disease risk by lowering TMAO.”

Hazen estimated that as many as a quarter of middle-aged Americans have naturally elevated TMAO levels, which are made worse by chronic red meat consumption. However, every person’s TMAO profile appears to be different, so tracking this chemical marker, Hazen suggested, could be an important step in using personalized medicine to fight heart disease.

For the study, researchers enrolled 113 healthy men and women in a clinical trial to examine the effects of dietary protein—in the form of red meat, white meat, or non-meat sources—on TMAO production. All subjects were placed on each diet for a month in random order. When on the red meat diet, the participants consumed roughly the equivalent of about 8 ounces of steak daily, or two quarter-pound beef patties. After one month, researchers found that, on average, blood levels of TMAO in these participants tripled, compared to when they were on the diets high in either white meat or non-meat protein sources.

While all diets contained equal amounts of calories, half of the participants were also placed on high-fat versions of the three diets, and the researchers observed similar results. Thus, the effects of the protein source on TMAO levels were independent of dietary fat intake.

Importantly, the researchers discovered that the TMAO increases were reversible. When the subjects discontinued their red meat diet and moved to either a white meat or non-meat diet for another month, their TMAO levels decreased significantly.

The exact mechanisms by which TMAO affects heart disease is complex. Prior research has shown TMAO enhances cholesterol deposits into cells of the artery wall. Studies by the researchers also suggest that the chemical interacts with platelets—blood cells that are responsible for normal clotting responses—in a way that increases the risk for clot-related events such as heart attack and stroke.

TMAO measurement is currently available as a quick, simple blood test first developed by Hazen’s laboratory. In recent published studies, he and his colleagues reported development of a new class of drugs that are capable of lowering TMAO levels in the blood and reducing atherosclerosis and clotting risks in animal models, but those drugs are still experimental and not yet available to the public.

The study was supported by grants from the NHLBI and the Office of Dietary Supplements (HL103866, HL126827, HL106003, HL130819) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (DK106000). The study was also supported by UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Unit.

Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) plans, conducts, and supports research related to the causes, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart, blood vessel, lung, and blood diseases; and sleep disorders. The Institute also administers national health education campaigns on women and heart disease, healthy weight for children, and other topics. NHLBI press releases and other materials are available online at https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov National Institutes of Health, 9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20892

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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Guillain-Barré Syndrome

Medically reviewed by Debra Sullivan, PhD, MSN, RN, CNE, COI

What is Guillain-Barré syndrome?

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare but serious autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks healthy nerve cells in your peripheral nervous system.

This leads to weakness, numbness, and tingling. It can eventually cause paralysis.

The cause of this condition is unknown, but it’s typically triggered by an infectious illness, such as the stomach flu or a lung infection.

Guillain-Barré is rare, affecting only about 1 in 100,000 Americans, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

There’s no cure for the syndrome, but treatment can reduce the severity of your symptoms and shorten the duration of the illness.

There are multiple types of Guillain-Barré, but the most common form is acute inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (AIDP). It results in damage to myelin.

Other types include Miller Fisher syndrome, which affects the cranial nerves.

What causes Guillain-Barré syndrome?

The precise cause of Guillain-Barré is unknown.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about two-thirds of people with Guillain-Barré develop it soon after they’ve been sick with diarrhea or a respiratory infection.

This suggests that the disorder may be triggered by an improper immune response to the previous illness. Learn more about autoimmune disease here.

Campylobacter jejuni infection has been associated with Guillain-Barré. Campylobacter is one of the most common bacterial causes of diarrhea in the United States. It’s also the most common risk factor for Guillain-Barré.

Campylobacter is often found in undercooked food, especially poultry.

The following infections have also been associated with Guillain-Barré:

influenza

cytomegalovirus, which is a strain of the herpes virus

Epstein-Barr virus infection, or mononucleosis

mycoplasma pneumonia, which is an atypical pneumonia caused by bacteria-like organisms

HIV or AIDS

Anyone can get Guillain-Barré, but it’s more common among older adults.

In extremely rare cases, people can develop the disorder days or weeks after receiving a vaccination.

The CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have systems in place to monitor the safety of vaccines, detect early warning signs of side effects, and record any cases of Guillain-Barré that develop following a vaccination.

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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The Remedy for Hope is Action

The following is the Epilogue from Jeffrey St. Clair’s and Joshua Frank’s new book The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink, available now from CounterPunch Books.

In the spring of 2017, the carbon dioxide readings at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai’i cracked 410 parts per million, an all-time record and a frightening one. On Earth Day, climate marches took place in cities across the world. Trump’s policies didn’t drive the spiking CO2 levels, but they did propel tens of thousands onto the streets for a few hours of fun. Where were those people during eight years of Barack Obama, an oil and gas man of some distinction? Where were they during eight years of Bill Clinton, one of the greatest environmental con men of our time?

Has Donald Trump finally shattered our illusions, so that we can see clearly the forces—economic, political and technological—that are plunging the planet toward a man-made heat death? Is he, in fact, a kind of clarifying agent for the real state of things?

One can hope so.

Except one mustn’t hope.

As Kafka, the High Priest of Realism, admonished his readers, “There is hope. But not for us.”

Hope is an illusion, an opiate, an Oxycontin for the masses. Instead of hope, we need a heavy dose of realism. A realism as chilling as reality itself.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Buddha instructed us that the world is suffering, and indeed it is. He also advised us that the cure for suffering is empathy, especially for those living beings—among which we would include redwood trees, sea coral and saguaro cacti—which have no defense against the forces that are inflicting that globalized torment.

That’s where we come in. Defenders of the Earth need to abandon all hope before entering the fray. Hope is a paralytic agent. Hope is the enemy.

The antidote is action.

Action, however, is not marching in a parade a couple of times a year, featuring puppets, vagina hats and signs printed up by the Sierra Club©. Action is not taking selfies with a celebrity in the back of a police wagon after a designer arrest. Action is not typing your name on a MoveOn e-petition or voting for a Jill Stein-like candidate in safe states like Oregon or California. Action is standing arm-in-arm before water cannons and government snipers on the frozen plains of North Dakota. Action is hanging from a fragile perch 150-feet up in Douglas fir tree in an ancient forest grove slated for clearcutting, through howling winter storms. Action is chaining yourself to a fracking rig in rural Pennsylvania or camping out in the blast zone at a Mountain Top Removal site in the hills of West Virginia. Action is intervening when police in stormtrooper gear are savagely beating a defenseless woman on the streets of Portland. Action is jumping into the Pacific Ocean with a knife in your teeth to cut the vast trawler nets ensnaring white-sided dolphins and humpback whales. Action is stopping bad shit from going down, or trying to.

The time for protests is over.

Protests will not prick the conscience of the unmasked beast called Donald Trump. Trump has no conscience to arouse, no shame to trigger, no remorse to cultivate. Trump is a full-frontal menace, that dangerous object in the mirror that is closer than it appears. It is the old threat, coming at us faster than before and from all directions at once. An unchained beast that will not be moderated by regulations, social conventions or appeals to common decency.

We are witnessing the wet-dream of Steve Bannon—the Trump Whisperer—made manifest: the dismantling of the regulatory state. This new reality compels us—for those who are willing to look—to confront the shedding of another illusion, an illusion that mainstream environmentalists have been marinating in since the 1970s, when our most progressive president, Richard M. Nixon, cynically created the modern environmental regulatory state in order to split the anti-war movement, pacify the Left and smother a much more radical defense of the natural world.

The green regulatory state—as personified by the EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service and the BLM (Bureau of Livestock and Mining), as well as thousands of laws, administrative rules and regulations, the meaning of which can only be divined by lawyers, lobbyists and professional environmentalists—has not slowed the decimation of native forests, the extirpation of wildlife or the poisoning of our air and water. It has simply codified and systematized the destruction, allocating the looting to a coterie of well-connected corporations large enough and shrewd enough to navigate the legal labyrinth for their own bloody profits.

At the same time, the creation of the regulatory state effectively neutered the once potent environmental movement as a real threat to the System. As their budgets swell, often fattened by the largess of grants from foundations linked to the fossil fuel industry, the big DC-oriented conservation groups become more and more complicit with the political fool’s gold of neoliberalism. Try finding a lobbyist from NRDC with callouses on their hands and a trace of mud on their boots.

As Trump begins the demolition of the regulatory state, we start to see how hollow many of Gang Green’s alleged environmental victories of the past—from coal mining and air quality regulations to endangered species protections and new national monuments—really are. They are being wiped out with a slash of the pen.

As the archdruid David Brower used to say: “When we win, it’s only a stay of execution, when they win it’s forever. Thus we must be eternally vigilant.” These days the corporate environmental movement is vigilant about only one thing: claiming fake victories in their sustained barrage of fund-raising appeals.

But the days of the laptop environmentalism are numbered. Trump is creating a battlefield where professional conservationists will fear to tread, a direct, face-to-face confrontation with the machinery of ecocide.

And we know who will rise to the call. The ones who always have in the past: the indigenous, the altruists and the anarchists. Those are the ones who will fight as if their lives depend on the outcome, because, of course, they do.

If we are to believe the sociobiologists, such as E.O. Wilson, the altruistic gene may only be present in three percent of the human population—may their gene pool increase! But, hell, that’s still three times as many people as the one-percenters who are running the show! If you want hope, there’s a microdot to swallow.

Small, scruffy and unruly as it is, we’ve seen the power of our movement in the past. When our backs are—often literally—against the wall, when the battle lines are clear from the immobilizing fog of liberal rhetoric and free from the timid advice of professional compromisers. We’ve seen it emerge from the Lacandon jungle to say enough is enough and overtake the streets of Seattle to shut down the World Trade Organization. We’ve seen grandmothers and housewives expose the toxic crimes of Love Canal and corn farmers shut down nuclear power plants. We’ve taken the international timber industry to its knees on its home turf, blocked strip mines, pipelines and river-killing dams. We’ve thrown monkey-wrenches big and small into the gears of the System. It has been done and it will be done again and again. No grant applications or protest permits needed.

As Ed Abbey used to say: there’s no battle more important, no fight more fun waging, no comrades more trustworthy than those in the trenches with us when we rise up together in defense of life on Earth. To crib a line from Leonard Cohen: “we may be ugly, but we’ve got the music.”

So draw a line and take a stand—almost any place will do, since the whole shebang is under threat—and let loose an old battle cry so that others will know where to come join you: Earth First!

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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Trump is a Mussolini in Drive to Destroy America

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

24 October 18

Trump proudly says he is a “nationalist.”

He is, of course, saying this to shore up support among white nationalists. The Nazi sites on the web were all having wet dreams in the aftermath.

From the 1990s, polling has found that about 10% of Americans support far right militias. These are the white nationalists. Trump came to power by mobilizing that 10% and combining it with Republicans and independents.

It is not an accident that Benito Mussolini called his party “Nationalist Fascism.” The two go together. Trump performs the “fascist” part of this two-part term every time he does a rally, so he doesn’t have to say “I am a Nationalist Fascist,” i.e. a Mussolini-ist. But that is what he is.

Somehow Benito Mussolini is not often brought up in contemporary American political debates. His armies slaughtered 330,000 Allied troops during World War II, including large numbers of Americans. Two of my uncles fought in World War II in the European theater, and I’m not willing to let Mussolini skate. Of 45,000 Italian Jews, 8,000 were delivered to Nazi death camps and a similar number were forced to flee abroad. Some $1 billion was stolen from them as a community. I’m not sure how Trump’s Rasputin, Steve Bannon, gets away with praising this mass murderer and then being invited to major cultural and political gatherings in the West.

Erminio Fonzo in a 2016 article (1) explains that the big industrialists in Italy formed the “Nationalist Association” in 1910. Their policies and actions in the subsequent decade helped undermine the liberal Italian state. Fonzo writes that they were “anti-liberal, protectionist, clerical, opposed to any improvement for the lower social classes and favoured expansionism at any cost.” Most American industrialists today cannot be characterized this way, but a fraction of the business class here holds these very values, and Trump is their exemplar. The only difference is that they are not monarchists, and they tend to support Evangelicals rather than Catholic priests.

Mussolini forged links with elements of the Nationalist Association during WW I, when he broke with the Socialists over their insistence on neutrality and lurched to the far right of militarism. His new, fascist party received a good deal of money from the Ansaldo arms manufacturing company, just as Trump’s increase for military spending is intended to attract campaign monies from US armaments firms.

When he turned against socialism, which upheld the welfare of the working class, Mussolini substituted nationalism. He said, “the nation is a history of sentiments, traditions, language, culture, and race.” Concerns of welfare for the workers and the poor, he thought, only arise among“a people that has not integrated itself into its proper linguistic and racial confines.”

Race, language, national identity, exalting an imagined people and its glorious history, contrasting it with hated others– this was the heady brew Mussolini substituted for attempts of workers to unionize or limit their work hours or abolish child labor. It was of course, a cruel illusion that the nation was undifferentiated and unified by “race.” By the early 1930s Mussolini was casting Italy’s workers into profound poverty, favoring his backers, the business classes.

So when he came to power Mussolini declared the Nationalist Fascist Party to be his vehicle, as a way of co-opting the illiberal business classes.

Mussolini became dictator. He had been a journalist at some points, and manipulated the press to shine a bright political light on him and on his doings.

Part of what he meant by Nationalism was an exaltation of the Roman Empire and an aspiration to revive it as a vehicle of modern Italian power. Nationalist renewal was central to his vision–making Italy great again. He considered Arabs and Africans inferior races (an early 20th century way of talking about what Trump calls “shithole countries.”) He dreamed of expanding Italian hegemony into the Arab world, and turned Libya, which Italy had aggressively conquered in 1911, into one big concentration camp. This is sort of like what Trump is trying to help the Israelis do to the Palestinians in the Palestinian West Bank under Israeli colonization.

Trump didn’t mean he is a patriot. He used the word nationalist deliberately, and admitted that it was a word held in bad odor. He wants to bury the people who object to the word, which is intended to strengthen white nationalism.

It is important that everyone understand how dangerous what Trump said is. He intends to destroy the United States as it has existed in modern history, as a country of the rule of law, a country of laws and not of men, a country with a free press. He intends to mobilize his supporters in the far rightwing gangs, in the police and the armed forces as Black Shirts if he can, to break heads. He intends to move the country to Fascism. That is what he means when he says, “I am a nationalist.”

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tommie-suber · 5 years

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END TRUMP'S CAPITALISM

President Trump is the son of a racist Klu Klux Klan member. Trump inherited a white nationalist world view and has pursuant to his views discriminated repeatedly in his rental properties in violation of Federal and State open housing laws. Trump companies have been found quality of this activity especially in the New York city metropolitan area. Upon becoming president Trump has sought to shape immigration laws to his racist views. Trump attacked “ chain” migration whereby immigrants can sponsor relatives. His attacks on chain migration did not, however, apply to his wife bringing her parents from eastern Europe. Instead, Trump applies this anti-immigrant policy to people of color from the southern hemispheres whose countries Trump famously referred to as “shithole” countries. Trump has changed the immigration policies in the following ways:

Banned nationals of eight countries, most majority-Muslim, from entering the United States.

Reduced refugee admissions to the lowest level since the resettlement program was created in 1980.

Reversed the decline in arrests of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. interior that had occurred during the last two years of the Obama administration.

Cancelled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which is currently providing work authorization and temporary relief from deportation to approximately 690,000 unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children.

Ended the designation of Temporary Protected Status for nationals of Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan, and signaled that Hondurans and possibly Salvadorans may also lose their work authorization and protection from removal in 2018.

Imprisoned 15,000 and counting children with many in tents in the Southwestern desert where temperatures exceed 120 degrees F.

Lost the records of 3,000 children many of which cannot as a result be reunited with parents.

The racist anti immigrant policies of the Trump administration extend to the comical demands of a border wall. A wall that will never be built. Trump represents a rising fascist movement of the right in America and this must necessarily be defeated and never allowed to rear its ugly face in America ever again.

What is needed is a mass movement of opposition with demonstrations, civil disobedience, and every imaginable act of resistance. Without such a movement, the depravity of the Trump administration and the underlying racism of capitalism will continue. Racism has always been used by big business capitalists to divide and conquer workers movements in the United States. Henry Ford famously created two towns in suburban Detroit. One was created by Ford as a city for Ford’s white workers called Dearborn. The second city Ford created was called, by him, Inkster as a pun on the fact that it was to be for all his black workers. These cities continued to be racially segregated until the late 1960’s with what were known as covenants to the deeds. These legal covenants prohibited property in Dearborn from being sold to anyone but white people. Eventually, the Supreme Court invalidated these restrictions but the Detroit suburbs remain today among the most racially segregated places in America. But Ford was not the only industrialist to practice pitting one group of workers against another in order to divide workers along lines of race, sex, national origin and other irrelevant factors. Such discrimination will not end until we wipe capitalism from the face of the earth. All people must, for the sake of their humanity end the degradation promulgated by the rich against everyone else. Trump's immigration policies are merely a reflection of the hate promulgated by the capitalists. But we can unite and defeat them as we are many and they are few. We must start by taking the fight to the streets and say such divisions and hate started by the bosses will not stand.

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