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Five items you see that every day that contain animal ingredients

by Jeanette Padilla

When you start to read the fine print, it becomes very clear that avoiding animal products in non-food items is nearly impossible. It’s hard enough trying to navigate through food items to avoid eating something containing animal byproducts; avoiding animal products in non-food items is an entirely different challenge. A growing number of individuals are becoming part-time vegetarians and opting for meatless meals one or more days a week. This growing trend is a welcomed one since it will help lead to healthier lifestyles, less livestock-produced methane and happier animals. However, many individuals are not aware of the many animal-derived ingredients used in common everyday products, some of which you’d never guess contain animal ingredients.
Toothpaste
Glycerine, also known as glycerin or glycerol, is a common ingredient in toothpaste. It’s present in nearly every brand of toothpaste as well as in many beauty products. Glycerin can be sourced from animals or vegetables, which makes it tricky when trying to avoid animal products. Animal-derived glycerine comes from the fatty tissue of animals. The fat contains triglyceride molecules, each of which contains three fatty acid chains all connected to a glycerol base. When processed, the bonds between the fatty acids and the glycerol are broken and glycerine results as a byproduct.
Soap
The majority of all bar soaps contain animal-derived tallow. This is what gives them the ability to moisturize. Some individuals choose to use tallow soap because of specific allergies. However, most people using bar soap won’t ever realize that they’re washing with animal fat. If you’re using a large brand of bar soap, chances are, your soap has tallow in it. Current Dove soap bars list the ingredient as “sodium tallowate.”
Shampoo
Glycerin may not be the only animal-derived ingredient in your personal care products. According to information from PETA, there may be over 20 animal-derived ingredients in your shampoo. Ingredients may include “panthenol,” “vitamin B” and “amino acids,” all of which can be derived from animals.
Fabric softener
Tallow or tallowate is the fat derived from animals such as cows, sheep, pigs and horses. The fat is rendered down and after a few chemical alterations is added to fabric softeners like Downey. On the bottle, it’s labeled as “dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride.” What it really is: fat coating your clothing.
Plastic bags
Animal ingredients in cosmetics, beauty products, and similar products isn’t too far-fetched, but how about in plastic bags? Yes, even plastic bags have animal-derived ingredients. Animal fat is added to plastic bags, such as those you get at the grocery store, pharmacy, retail stores and just about everywhere really. The fat serves as a “slip-agent” and is added to a large array of other plastics as well. Yet another reason to forego plastic bags and switch to reusable bags made from animal-friendly materials.
Animal fat is used in a large variety of products, from cosmetics and personal care products to plastics and even some electronics. The fat typically comes from cows, pigs, sheep or horses. Additionally, some products are processed using animal components even though they may not be a part of the final product. Food items such as sugar are processed using cow and horse bones, and beer and wine are clarified using fish bladders, also known as isinglass. Vegetable-sourced substitutions are available to be used in place of all of these animal-derived components; however, using animal-derived components is far cheaper. Natural News.

Hard labor in the organic patato field

by David Bacon

By 7:30 in the morning it is already 80 degrees in a potato field in Lamont, in the southern San Joaquin Valley. By mid-afternoon here it will reach 107. The workers moving up and down the rows are not dressed in shorts and tank tops, though. They wear multiple layers of clothing, including long sleeves and, in the case of women, bandannas that cover their faces, leaving only their eyes visible.
Farmworkers know how to handle heat. They work in these intense conditions every day. ‘’Clothing is like insulation,’’ says Evelina Arellano. ‘’It actually protects you. And if I didn’t wear my bandanna, by the end of the day it would be hard to breathe because of the dust.’’ [The names of the workers in the field have been changed-Ed.]
The rows are as long as two football fields, each a deep furrow next to a mound bearing the potato plants. Between the potatoes grow weeds, some spreading out next to the dirt and others growing as tall as the workers themselves. On this day in mid-June the farm labor crew is pulling the weeds.
Men and women walk from weed to weed, bending down low, pulling each out by the roots. You can hear the breath expelled by each effort to tear a big one from the ground.
Everyone carries a bag on his or her back, and stuffs the weeds into it. As workers move down the rows, the bags expand and get heavy. The weeds are scratchy, even with gloves, and as the morning wears on, the sun gets hotter. There is a lot of dust everywhere in the air in the southern San Joaquin Valley, which has some of California’s worst air quality.

Soon you are unable see to the far edge of the field next to this one.
If this were a potato field like most in the valley, the dust would contain pesticide and herbicide residue. Here the dust may be unpleasant, but it is not toxic, because the field is growing organic potatoes for one of California’s largest producers of organic vegetables, Cal Organic Farms.
Potato plants take from three to four months to grow to maturity, and this field contains anywhere from 17,000 to 22,000 plants. Probably back in late February or early March, it was seeded with potatoes or pieces of potatoes that contain the eye, from which the new sprout grows. Cal Organic Farms says it can get two crops a year in the San Joaquin Valley.
This field is almost ready to be harvested, and weeds can interfere with the operation of the mechanical harvester. Weeds also compete for water, not a minor factor given California’s drought, and can provide an environment for pests that can damage the tubers.
So a healthy attractive organic potato-ready for au gratin, potato salad, or your grandmother’s adobo – is much more a product of workers’ labor than the non-organic kind. Organic produce not only has created somewhat healthier conditions for these farmworkers, it has also meant more work. Since the grower cannot use herbicides, weed removal is accomplished by hand. That means workers are hired to remove them, instead of spraying the field with chemicals.
Cal Organic Farms grows a variety of vegetables, and other operations also require human labor instead of chemical inputs. As a result, the work season for a Cal Organic crew lasts longer than for many other farmworkers.
‘’I started on January 27th,’’ explains Josefina Reyes, ‘’and I’ll work until November 1st.’’
Hernandez and her husband, Alfredo, are the oldest workers in the crew. They are no longer able or willing to do what others do to get nine months of work a year: hit the road to northern California or even Oregon and Washington. Organic farming gives them enough work so that they can live in Lamont year-round. If they save their money, they will be able to make it through the three months of winter when growers are not hiring.
At lunch break the couple talk to each other quietly in Mixteco, an indigenous language that was spoken in their hometown of Tlaxiaco, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, long before Columbus arrived in the Americas.
For lunch small groups of friends sit together at the side of the field, and some build small fires to heat their tacos. One popular taco filling is chorizo, the spicy Mexican sausage, mixed with papas, or potatoes. Organic potatoes are expensive in the market, but these workers are surrounded by fields of them. Many like the idea of eating food with no pesticides as much as anyone. Farmworkers are exposed to much greater pesticide levels than what is contained in food. Many here in this crew worked in sprayed fields earlier in their work lives, and pesticide residue is omnipresent in small farmworker towns like Lamont.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Lamont and the southern San Joaquin Valley were strongholds of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), the union founded by Cesar Chavez, Larry Itliong, and Dolores Huerta. At the height of the UFW’s strength, the base wage for farm labor in this area was two to three times the minimum wage. Translated into today’s terms, this would be $16-24 per hour. One method the union used to get wages up was to ban labor contractors, and instead to operate union hiring halls. In the 1980s the union lost most of its contracts here, the hiring halls disappeared, growers went back to using contractors, and wages fell. Worker abuse increased as well.
Low wages and abuse are as prevalent in organic agriculture as they are in the non-organic sector. Case records at the California Occupational Safety and Health Agency (Cal OSHA) show that organic growers and contractors have engaged in practices that were prohibited forty years ago.
The organic potatoes from the Lamont field by now have been harvested, and are sitting in the bins at stores, and in the potato drawer in kitchens across the country. The weeding crew has moved on to some other field, getting the next vegetable ready for its journey to the plate. Despite their hard work, however, it often seems as though these workers live in a different dimension. We may eat the food they produce, but most people do not know what it is like to labor out in the heat and dust, or what it takes to get food onto the dinner table.
Those broccoli florettes sauteed in cheese and wine, the green onions chopped onto that fish steamed with soy sauce and sesame oil, the carrots in that chilled potato salad-they all came from somewhere. That somewhere is likely a field like the one in Lamont. And the hands that pulled the weeds, so those vegetables would flourish, belong to Josefina and Alfredo Reyes, Natalia Arevalo, Evelina Arellano and others like them.
They are connected to us. We all eat the product of their labor.

The Orwellian re-branding of “mass surveillance” as merely “bulk collection”

by Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept

Just as the Bush administration and the U.S. media re-labelled “torture” with the Orwellian euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” to make it more palatable, the governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now attempting to re-brand “mass surveillance” as “bulk collection” in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal). In the past several weeks, this is the clearly coordinated theme that has arisen in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand as the last defense against the Snowden revelations, as those governments seek to further enhance their surveillance and detention powers under the guise of terrorism.
This manipulative language distortion can be seen perfectly in yesterday’s white-washing report of GCHQ mass surveillance from the servile rubber-stamp calling itself “The Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament (ISC)”(see this great Guardian editorial this morning on what a “slumbering” joke that “oversight” body is). As Committee Member MP Hazel Blears explained yesterday (photo above), the Parliamentary Committee officially invoked this euphemism to justify the collection of billions of electronic communications events every day.
The Committee actually acknowledged for the first time (which Snowden documents long ago proved) that GCHQ maintains what it calls “Bulk Personal Datasets” that contain “millions of records,” and even said about pro-privacy witnesses who testified before it: “we recognise their concerns as to the intrusive nature of bulk collection.” That is the very definition of “mass surveillance,” yet the Committee simply re-labelled it “bulk collection,” purported to distinguish it from “mass surveillance,” and thus insist that it was all perfectly legal.
This re-definition game goes as follows: yes, we vacuum up and store literally as much of the internet as we possibly can. Then we analyze all the data about what you’re doing, with whom you’re speaking, and who your network of associates is. Based on that analysis of all of you and your activities, we then read the communications that we want (with virtually no checks and concealing from you what percentage of it we’re reading), and store as much of the rest of it as technology permits for future trolling. But don’t worry: we’re only reading the Bad People’s emails. So run along then: no mass surveillance here. Just bulk collection! It’s not mass surveillance, but “enhanced collection techniques.”
One of the many facts that made the re-defining of “torture” so corrupt and indisputably invalid was that there was long-standing law making clear that exactly these interrogation techniques used by the U.S. government were torture and thus illegal. The same is true of this obscene attempt to re-define “mass surveillance” as nothing more than mere innocent “bulk collection.”
As Caspar Bowden points out, EU law is crystal clear that exactly what these agencies are doing constitutes illegal mass surveillance. From the 2000 decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Amann v. Switzerland, which found a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and rejected the defense from the government that no privacy violation occurs if the data is not reviewed or exploited:
The Court reiterates that the storing of data relating to the “private life” of an individual falls within the application of Article 8 § 1  …. The Court reiterates that the storing by a public authority of information relating to an individual’s private life amounts to an interference within the meaning of Article 8. The subsequent use of the stored information has no bearing on that finding (emphasis added).
A separate 2000 ruling found a violation of privacy rights even when the government is merely storing records regarding one’s activities undertaken in public (such as attending demonstrations), because “public information can fall within the scope of private life where it is systematically collected and stored in files held by the authorities.”
That’s why an EU Parliamentary Inquiry into the Snowden revelations condemned NSA and GCHQ spying in the “strongest possible terms,” pointing out that it was classic “mass surveillance” and thus illegal. That’s the same rationale that led a U.S. federal court to conclude that mass metatdata collection was very likely an unconstitutional violation of the privacy rights in the Fourth Amendment.
By itself, common sense should prevent any of these governments from claiming that sweeping up, storing and analyzing much of the Internet — literally examining billions of communications activities every week of entire populations — is something other than “mass surveillance.” Yet this has now become the coordinated defense from the governments in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. It’s nothing short of astonishing to watch them try to get away with this kind of propagnadistic sophistry. (In the wake of our reports with journalist Nicky Hager on GCSB, watch the leader of New Zealand’s Green Party interrogate the country’s flailing Prime Minister this week in Parliament about this completely artificial distinction.)
But — just as it was stunning to watch media outlets refuse to use the term “torture” because the U.S. government demanded that it be called something else — this Orwellian switch in surveillance language is now predictably (and mindlessly) being adopted by those nations’ most state-loyal media outlets.
The other night, I was on the BBC program Newsnight to discuss the new report. As usual, they decided to interview me first, and then interview a security services official after me, so that I could not respond to what the official said. In this case, the interviewee after me was former GCHQ director David Omand (last seen refusing to answer a difficult question about surveillance from the U.K.’s often-excellent Channel 4 by literally walking away from the interview, insisting he had to catch a train).
The somewhat contentious BBC interview from last night is worth watching, in part because Omand literally demands that there be no more surveillance disclosures or debate because The Committee Has Spoken (also a clearly coordinated message). But it’s worthwhile even more so because this interview illustrates the “bulk collection” language fraud that is now being perpetrated with the eager help of the largest media outlets in these countries:

2 million Mexicans in precarious jobs, according to expert

by the El Reportero’s wire services

The recent protests of the day of workers of San Quintín, in Baja California, made visible today the conditions of precarious work of approximately 2 million peasants and Mexican natives, affirmed the doctor Armando Bartra.
The teacher of the posgraduate course on Rural development of the Unit Xochimilco of the Metropolitan Autonomous University expressed that this situation has increased in the last 30 years.
He highlighted that this is an exercise of violence that is practised from the moment in which the whole family works.
This activity facilitates the work of children and women t, that is why when they come to the famrs, they all work but not get paid, as it is the case of children, he said.
Bartra pointed out that it is necessary to demand the fulfillment of the Constitution and the Federal Law of Labor, since the rights of the workers are not recognized as it happens with other sectors, and for that reasonit among their demands it is to receive at least a daily salary of 200 pesos (15 dollars).
Mexican university designs hand prosthesis
Experts at the Universidad del Valle de Mexico (UVM) have designed a low-cost, patent-free electromechanical hand prosthesis called Dextrus Hand, engineer Josué Rico said today.
The average cost of this kind of orthopedic equipment could exceed a hundred thousand dollars, therefore it is important the prosthesis has a low cost since many people in need of them lack the money to obtain them, he said.
The prostheses are printed based on a free code known as Open Hand Project, created by Joel Gibbard in the United Kingdom., he added.
The new prototype, built together with engineering students, consists of a group of engines, pulleys and batteries that operate mechanically the movement of the fingers.

Carnaval SF 2014- 2015

One Love: A Musical Adventure in Unity, Peace and Music

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff

The College of San Mateo proudly invite you to a super evening of musing.

Featuring the best of its repertoire will be The CSM Reggae Band, with Special Guests and dancers, and refreshments. Only $5 donation. FREE PARKING at Beethoven Lot 2. May 13, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. For more information: Email ramirezr@smccd.edu or call (650) 574-6372. https://www.facebook.com/events/1578058212448377.

Sam Francisco International Arts Festival returns to Fort Mason

Tickets are now available for the 2015 San Francisco International Arts Festival and for the month of March 10 percent of the seats for all shows are on sale at the incredibly special Early Bird Price of $12.
There are 70 performing arts ensembles from the Bay Area and 16 different countries presenting their work at this year’s Festival, which is co-presented by Fort Mason’s FMC Presents series.
These and more are some on the long list of talent participating in this year’s performers.
Gabriel Urgell-Reyes – Meeting Ginastera
Gabriel Urgell invites the audience to an in-depth exploration of classical works for piano by outstanding Latin-American composers Argentinian Alberto Ginastera and Carlos Fariñas from Cuba.
Hugo Candelario and Grupo Bahia with Colombian Soul
Traditional Colombian South Pacific Coast Dance and Music with contemporary choreography and fusion.
Jesús Díaz
The Festival welcomes Jesus Díaz widely respected and recognized by many mus cians and fans for his contributions to the richness of an ever expanding Afro-Cuban musical genre worldwide.
For the full list of artists and more information, dates, times and the on-line box office call 415-399-9554 and 800-838-3006 to purchase tickets over the phone.
The festival runs from May 21 to June 7, $12 Early Bird Tickets Now On Sale.

My Name is Tango, World Premiere
Me Llamo Tango explores the soul of tango, not simply a lover’s tryst, but a venerable embrace of cultural solidarity and self-expression. This is the premier performance of the Debbie Goodwin Dance Company (DGDC), sponsored by the long-running, successful non-profit arts organization, Alma del Tango. Guest artist Eduardo Saucedo (Buenos Aires, Argentina) brings the cultural heritage of Argentina to the presentation through both drama and dance. Seth Asarnow y Su Sexteto Tipico are one of the premiere tango orchestras in the United States, dedicated to preserving the authentic style of Golden Age tango.
The newly formed Debbie Goodwin Dance Company (DGDC) represents the culmination of director Debbie Goodwin’s 20 years of performances, choreography, teaching and collaboration within the Bay Area tango community.
Fri May 22 9:30 p.m.
Festival Central, Building A, at Fort Mason, SF
Tickets: $15-$30 Reserved Seating & General Admission

Colombian police on the trail of stolen book of García Márquez

by the El Reportero’s news services

Colombian police analyzes the video security cameras Corferia fairgrounds, where it was stolen a copy of the first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.
The theft was detected on Saturday night at the Macondo Pavilion, where he is honored at the International Book Fair in Bogotá (FILBO) the Nobel Prize for Literature, a year after his death in Mexico City.
National morning news refer that investigators received the recordings of the security cameras and other information provided by the fact the authorities of Corferia and FILBO organizers, whose last day takes place on Monday, after its inauguration last 21 last month.
The stolen copy is from the first 1967 edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Editorial Sudamericana de Buenos Aires, which then printed eight thousand copies.
The book was delivered on loan for display at FILBO-2015 by the bookselle  Alvaro Castillo and contains a dedication by the novelist in the name of its owner.
“For Alvaro Castillo, his friend Gabriel”, expresses the dedication contained in the stolen copy now, which its owner said is invaluable.
Executives of the Book Chamber of Colombia and Corferia director, Andrés López also stressed the incalculable value of the missing volume.
The emblematic work of Gabo has been printed in more than 30 million copies, translated into some 35 languages. With it, the Colombian writer was awarded in 1982 the highest distinction awarded by the Swedish Academy of Letters, the Nobel Prize.

Canada comes alive with a fusion of Latin Music styles and rhythms
Koerner Hall comes alive with a fusion of Latin music styles and rhythms 24 May 2015.
Sultry and sensual, the music of Latin cultures urges countless couples toward dance floors around the world’s and continues to exert a potent influence on other genres.
Tango, flamenco, bossa nova, fandango, klezmer, afro-samba, and jazz are among the styles featured in an evening of musical “encounters” featuring internationally acclaimed guitar virtuosos Grisha Goryachev and Fabio Zanon.
The all-star lineup also includes Argentinian bandoneon player Héctor Del Curto, Colombian singer María Mulata, and Juno Award-winning pianist and composer Serouj Kradjian. Co-pro duced with the Royal Conservatory of Music as part of its 21C Music Festival, and including world premieres by Canadian composers Andrew Staniland and Mark Duggan, this colourful event also pays tribute to Toronto’s hosting of the 2015 Pan American Games songs.

The dwindling U.S. economy

The United States is an economic basket case

by Paul Craig Roberts

The announcement today (April 29) of a barely positive GDP first quarter 2015 growth rate of 0.2 percent (two-tenths of one percent) is an intentional exaggeration.
Today’s GDP report is the “advance estimate.” There will be two revisions, with the first occurring in one month on May 29.
Although the “consensus estimate,” which is Wall Street’s estimate, declined dramatically over the past month, the consensus estimate was for 1.0 percent.
The BEA’s advance estimate bears the burden of impact on financial markets even though it is the least reliable estimate. Subsequent revisions receive much less attention. Because of its market impact, the advance estimate is fudged by the Bureau of Economic Affairs (BEA) in order not to upset financial markets keyed to the consensus forecast.
All indications are that the first quarter experienced negative GDP growth, that is, a decline from the previous quarter. However, if BEA reported a negative GDP when the financial markets were relying on positive real growth, the government’s Plunge Protection Team might be unable to prevent a substantial market decline.
Therefore, the BEA in its advance estimate reported a barely positive result that kept GDP out of negative territory. This gives financial markets a month to undergo an orderly reduction prior to the first and then second revisions of the advance estimate, or simply to forget the poor performance altogether until the second quarter advance estimate.
Maintaining stability and not shocking financial markets is now ingrained in US economic reporting. No government statistical department wants to be blamed for crashing the financial markets. So bad news leaks in slowly if at all.
Indications are that the second quarter 2015 will also have negative GDP growth, that is, a further decline. As John Williams (shadowstats.com) is likely correct that there has been no recovery from the prior recession, just bottom bouncing with stock and bond markets driven by the Fed’s outpouring of liquidity, the first half of 2015 will signal a second downturn in the US economy which is collapsing as a result of jobs offshoring and a deregulated financial system.
The real economic outlook, which will emerge from BEA in a month or two, should be obvious to anyone who had the introductory course to macroeconomics. The economy depends on consumer spending. Consumers have two ways of spending more. One way is from rising incomes. The other way is from rising consumer debt.
With the advent of jobs offshoring, real median family incomes ceased to rise. The ability of consumers to substitute larger debt burdens for the missing growth in their real incomes was used up by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan’s policy of expanding consumer debt in order to fill in for the missing growth in consumer income. Today consumer debt levels are too high for consumers to incur more debt. The only element of consumer debt showing an increase is student loans.
The offshored jobs were not replaced with the promised “New Economy” jobs. No one has seen any sign of the mythical New Economy jobs. The “New Economy” is the transformation of the once powerful US economy into a third world labor force where new jobs exist only in domestic non-tradable services (services that cannot be exported) such as retail clerks, hospital orderlies, waitresses, and bartenders. As there are not enough of these jobs to go around, the labor force participation rate has dropped sharply.
The United States is an economic basket case. Washington has given away the US economy to Asian countries with lower labor costs. The owners and mangers of capital have benefitted, but the vast bulk of Americans have suffered. As capital’s owners and managers are not sufficiently numerous to drive the economy with their expenditures, the fabled American economy is no more.
What will bring the US economy out of the second leg of the downturn? If massive federal budget deficits and zero interest rates could not correct the first leg of the downturn, what does fiscal and monetary policy have left in its arsenal?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available. Infowars.

Meet the secretive group that runs the world – Part 2 of a series

NOTE  FROM THE EDITOR:

Dear readers, I found this great article, previously published by Zero Hedge, on one of the most secretive banks: the Bank of the International Settlements. This is the bank that is above all banks, top of the top of the world controllers. Higher than all world Central Banks. Super interesting! THIS IS PART TWO OF A SERIES.

Nothing comes closer to the stereotypical, secretive group determining the fate of over 7 billion people, than the Bank of International Settlements

by zero hedge

Over the centuries there have been many stories, some based on loose facts, others based on hearsay, conjecture, speculation and outright lies, about groups of people who “control the world.” Some of these are partially accurate, others are wildly hyperbolic, but when it comes to the historic record, nothing comes closer to the stereotypical, secretive group determining the fate of over 7 billion people, than the Bank of International Settlements, which hides in such plain sight, that few have ever paid much attention.

The BIS strictly guards the bankers’ secrecy. The minutes, agenda, and actual attendance list of the Global Economy Meeting or the ECC are not released in any form. This is because no official minutes are taken, although the bankers sometimes scribble their own notes.Sometimes there will be a brief press conference or bland statement afterwards but never anything detailed. This tradition of privileged confidentiality reaches back to the bank’s foundation.
“The quietness of Basel and its absolutely nonpolitical character provide a perfect setting for those equally quiet and nonpolitical gatherings,” wrote one American official in 1935. “The regularity of the meetings and their al- most unbroken attendance by practically every member of the Board make them such they rarely attract any but the most meager notice in the press.”8 Forty years on, little had changed. Charles Coombs, a former foreign exchange chief of the New York Federal Reserve, attended governors’ meetings from 1960 to 1975. The bankers who were allowed inside the inner sanctum of the governors’ meetings trusted each other absolutely, he recalled in his memoirs. “However much money was involved, no agreements were ever signed nor memoranda of understanding ever initialized. The word of each official was sufficient, and there were never any disappointments.”
What, then, does this matter to the rest of us? Bankers have been gathering confidentially since money was first invented. Central bankers like to view themselves as the high priests of finance, as technocrats overseeing arcane monetary rituals and a financial liturgy understood only by a small, self-selecting elite.
But the governors who meet in Basel every other month are public servants. Their salaries, airplane tickets, hotel bills, and lucrative pensions when they retire are paid out of the public purse. The national reserves held by central banks are public money, the wealth of nations. The central bankers’ discussions at the BIS, the information that they share, the policies that are evaluated, the opinions that are exchanged, and the subsequent decisions that are taken, are profoundly political. Central bankers, whose independence is constitutionally protected, control monetary policy in the developed world. They manage the supply of money to national economies. They set interest rates, thus deciding the value of our savings and investments. They decide whether to focus on austerity or growth. Their decisions shape our lives.
The BIS’s tradition of secrecy reaches back through the decades. During the 1960s, for example, the bank hosted the London Gold Pool. Eight countries pledged to manipulate the gold market to keep the price at around thirty-five dollars per ounce, in line with the provisions of the Bretton Woods Accord that governed the post–World War II international financial system. Although the London Gold Pool no longer exists, its successor is the BIS Markets Committee, which meets every other month on the occasion of the governors’ meetings to discuss trends in the financial markets. Officials from twenty-one central banks attend. The committee releases occasional papers, but its agenda and discussions remain secret.
Nowadays the countries represented at the Global Economy Meetings together account for around four-fifths of global gross domestic product (GDP)— most of the produced wealth of the world—according to the BIS’s own statistics. Central bankers now “seem more powerful than politicians,” wrote The Economist newspaper, “holding the destiny of the global economy in their hands.” How did this happen? The BIS, the world’s most secretive global financial institution, can claim much of the credit. From its first day of existence, the BIS has dedicated itself to furthering the interests of central banks and building the new architecture of transnational finance. In doing so, it has spawned a new class of close-knit global technocrats whose members glide between highly-paid positions at the BIS, the IMF, and central and commercial banks.
The founder of the technocrats’ cabal was Per Jacobssen, the Swedish economist who served as the BIS’s economic adviser from 1931 to 1956. The bland title belied his power and reach. Enormously influential, well connected, and highly regarded by his peers, Jacobssen wrote the first BIS annual reports, which were—and remain—essential reading throughout the world’s treasuries. Jacobssen was an early supporter of European federalism. He argued relentlessly against inflation, excessive government spending, and state intervention in the economy. Jacobssen left the BIS in 1956 to take over the IMF. His legacy still shapes our world. The consequences of his mix of economic liberalism, price obsession, and dismantling of national sovereignty play out nightly in the European news bulletins on our television screens.
The BIS’s defenders deny that the organization is secretive. The bank’s archives are open and researchers may consult most documents that are more than thirty years old.

The BIS archivists are indeed cordial, helpful, and professional. The bank’s website includes all its annual reports, which are downloadable, as well as numerous policy papers produced by the bank’s highly regarded research department. The BIS publishes detailed accounts of the securities and derivatives markets, and international banking statistics. But these are largely compilations and analyses of information already in the public domain. The details of the bank’s own core activities, including much of its banking operations for its customers, central banks, and international organizations, remain secret. The Global Economy Meetings and the other crucial financial gatherings that take place at Basel, such as the Markets Committee, remain closed to outsiders. Private individuals may not hold an account at BIS, unless they work for the bank. The bank’s opacity, lack of accountability, and ever-increasing influence raises profound questions— not just about monetary policy but transparency, accountability, and how power is exercised in our democracies.

Watching TV increases American’s diabetes by nearly 18 percent

by Melanie Grimes

Television watching increases diabetes risk, scientists have now confirmed. By studying over 3,000 overweight Americans, a research study demonstrated that risk for type 2 diabetes increased over 14 percent in those watching four hours of television a day. The average American watches 5.11 hours of television per day. The diabetes risk increased by 3.4 percent for each hour of television watching. Other seated activities, such as computer use, may have a similar detrimental effect, but the study only investigated the impact of television watching.
The research study was conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and published in the journal, Diabetologia. Lead author Dr. Bonny Rockette-Wagner found “…a significantly increased risk of developing diabetes with increased television watching (3.4 percent per hour spent watching television).”
She went on to state, “Our finding of a relationship between sedentary behavior and diabetes incidence means that reductions in sitting can translate into a positive health effect separate from improvements to moderate-vigorous activity like brisk walking.” During the study, participants were given either metformin (a commonly used drug to treat diabetes) or a placebo. All of them participated in lifestyle interventions. The interventions including adding 150 minutes of exercise per week to their lives. During the study, participants were asked to spend 140 minutes a day watching television. Funding for the research was provided by U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Television watching in the United States
With 99 percent of American homes owning a television and 65 percent of homes with more than one, the impact of television watching on health is enormous. Sixty-seven percent of Americans say that they eat dinner while watching television, and the average child now spends 1,480 hours a week in front of a television set. Compared to the 900 hours of school that children engage in every year, the average child spends one third more time watching TV, a total of 1,200 hour a year. This also adds up to 16,000 commercials a year, and 150,000 violent acts viewed by the time children are 18 years old.

Natural remedies for diabetes
There are many natural remedies for diabetes, which can help reduce the risk of type-2 diabetes, or reduce symptoms. Herbs, vitamins and foods can be found to lower blood sugar and insulin resistance. Nutrients like magnesium and niacinamide have been shown to lower diabetes risk. Consuming small amounts of cinnamon has been shown to lower blood glucose levels after only 40 days. Figs and chocolate both help lower blood sugar as well. Dark chocolate containing 60 percent cacao can reduce chocolate risk. Research on 8,000 people who ate four ounces of chocolate per day for one month had 13 percent less occurrence of diabetes later in life. Consuming foods that are low on the glycemic index helps maintain proper blood insulin levels. These foods include complex carbohydrates, like whole grains and legumes, along with proteins and healthy fats. Limiting sugar, fruits, simple carbohydrates helps the body to stabilize blood sugar levels. Some research shows that eliminating wheat entirely is beneficial for blood glucose levels. Coconut oil has also been used to reverse symptoms of type 2 diabetes. Any nutrients that fuel or rebuild the pancreas can be added to the diet to strengthen the body’s natural ability to balance its own blood sugar.

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