Ha! You make it seem that the US doesn't sell out arms to repressive nations either. Every first world nation is guilty of selling weapons, its just too lucrative of a trade to ignore.

Citing threats from Iran, Syria, and various terrorist groups, the Bush administration is offering more than $60 billion in new weapons and military assistance to Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other U.S. allies in the Middle East.

Egypt is a dictatorship that has been under emergency rule for close to 40 years now. Saudi Arabia is nation with countless human rights abuses. Israel is constantly taking out Palestinians who can only sometimes retaliate with a suicide vest against M-16s, Apache gun ships, F-16s and Merkava tanks.

The United States retained its dominance of the Third World arms market for the eighth year in a row in 2002, according to the latest in an annual series of reports produced by the Congressional Research Service.

Washington accounted for close to one-half of all new arms transfer agreements concluded during the year, as well as actual arms deliveries. Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the US government.

New arms agreements with developing nations totaled US$17.7 billion, a 10 percent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, US sales came to $8.6 billion, or almost 48 percent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 percent the previous year.

Washington was followed by Russia, which sold $5.7 billion worth of arms; Ukraine ($1.6 billion); Italy ($1.5 billion); and Germany and France ($1.1 billion each).

Arm sales, shit so hot everyone fucks with it.

And Pprt I seen you post some heinous shit before but this really is fucking stupid.

"I also anxiously await the day Africans will put aside their petty tribalism and begin working instead of loafing about and conducting sporadic warfare"

"The stark truth is that Africans have been around for longer than us, and have adapted to their environment accordingly in temperament and constitution. They have higher levels of sexual hormones, a lower gestation period a "thrifty" gene permitting greater retention of nutrients and as ethnomedicine evolves, drugs will further target their distinctive biology."

Oh please, that's such stupid xenophobic bullshit. The same kind of attitude that the US pushed in South American interventionism, as if civil war, the drug trade and rebel movements were ingrained in their DNA.

>> ^kulpims:
^@Pprt: "chinese are bleeding the richest continent in the world dry"...
man, you can't be serious and say those words at the same time, especialy if you are coming from europe or the states, as I assume you do. that's like a bunch of vampires feeding of a dying man and when one more joins in the rest of them shout "murder!"
sure, chinese approach to this neo-colonialism is more totalitarian and not so cleverly masqueraded under the guise of free trade, democracy and market capitalism as was that from their western rivals which I dare say have been systematically killing Africa for hundreds of years now. and don't even get me started on the weapons trade issue, we all know who's the biggest dealer on the block here...
and fuck peter hitchens and other such critics. where are they when american pharmaceutical companies are conducting experiments on african people or over charging them for drugs and vaccines they desperatly need. where are they when millions of people are being killed for some bullshit minerals used in our cellphones or oil or fucking diamonds or some other shit they might have that our corporations are willing and able to steal from them


I sense alot of sympathy (and some guilt) on your behalf. As Pooterius said, I also anxiously await the day Africans will put aside their petty tribalism and begin working instead of loafing about and conducting sporadic warfare. However, I am not so optimistic as to believe that Africans can accomplish this any time soon. And for goodness sakes, it is NOT our duty to fix their countries.

I detect a hint of thought that you believe that Westeners have somehow have taken it upon themselves to eradicate the African peoples with AIDS in order, I assume, to plunder their territory.

You may be interested to know that recent discoveries (last week, actually) suggest that AIDS is far older than previously thought (see here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7213/abs/nature07390.html), dating from possibly 1908. Decades before bioengineering was even conceptualized.

The stark truth is that Africans have been around for longer than us, and have adapted to their environment accordingly in temperament and constitution. They have higher levels of sexual hormones, a lower gestation period a "thrifty" gene permitting greater retention of nutrients and as ethnomedicine evolves, drugs will further target their distinctive biology.

As for comparing Chinese to Western colonialism, it would be an interesting debate, although I can assure you that the way the Chinese go about in 2008 would never fly in a Western country. They have actually stated their intentions of offloading some of the large Chinese population in Africa. Their latest plan is to dump 10 million excess Chinese by 2050.

This link contains a very comprehensive comparison of the value of eating raw versus cooked food.

The paper goes into a lot of detail but the most general conclusions are:

• Virtually all foods contain more nutrients in the raw state. On the other hand, the differences are not very great: ranging from approximately 10-25% in the case of most vitamins, while the difference is negligible (almost zero) with respect to minerals.


• However, there are also digestibility, antinutrients/toxicity, and bioavailability to take into consideration when assessing how many nutrients can actually be assimiliated from a particular food. Cooking can affect these considerations positively or negatively, depending on the circumstance.

There is also an interesting comment with regard to caloric content:

"An additional issue is the difficulty on all-raw vegan diets of getting enough calories due to bulk. Cooking coarse veggies makes them softer, and easier to eat more. While this might make overeating easier, it also allows one to get more nutrients as well. Most vegetables provide, on a caloric basis, relatively little nutrition and thus require consumption of very large amounts daily if one bases their diet primarily around them. It is hard to eat nutritionally significant amounts of coarse veggies when raw--but it's easier when cooked."

LOL gorilla was like

'what? WHAT? WTF j00 lookin' at!?!?!'

Jokes aside, vegetarian animals often eat their own poop because:

1. It still contains a Lotta nutrients, because fibrous food takes a long time to digest.

2. The dung is softer and easier to digest after the previous digestion. Saves energy.

3. Rabbits and goats do similar things.

Indeed, manipulative as the ad is, there is is no use fighting this stuff with FUD.
There have been a few basic studies on the dietary impact of glucose and fructose, particular in relation to insulin.

In terms of satiety, this is a fairly recent report :
^ Monsivais et al. (2007). "Sugars and satiety: does the type of sweetener make a difference?". American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 86: 116–123.

Chemically the corn syrup (55% fructose and 45% glucose) used in foods is very similar to sucrose (50% fructose and 50% glucose) and thus mimics its apparent sweetness.
The chief difference, aside from the slight increase in fructose is that sucrose is a disaccharide - the fructose and glucose are covalently bonded by a condensation reaction (removal of a H20).
Corn syrup however, consists of individual molecules of glucose and fructose, which aside from tasting different, can be absorbed more readily by the body : The body requires an enzyme to break down the sucrose into fructose and glucose.

It's pretty clear that refined foods are for the most part bad for us because they deliver nutrients in concentrations far greater than we could ever get by harvesting food by hand. High concentrations of fructose could be problematic.
Honey from bees contains free fructose and glucose molecules (48%,47%), and so would pose a similar risk - the main difference is that honey is not consumed in such vast concentrations as found in soft drinks.

If you really want to taste how much sugar is in a soft drink. Let it go cold and flat and see how much you can drink.
http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=1243

So sadly, I think the advert does have a point: It is probably fine in moderation though perhaps they should have stated (and like honey, it is fine in moderation).

No dumbasses, be afraid, if we don't get to tap into Alaska for the last legal drug for cars, controlled like opiates, guns, and people are....These symbols created for you are what keep you perception-bound:
If cash is what one needs at the grocery to get down the road, so be it-Use cash-You don't wanna fuck yerself outta nutrients-As long as oil is still the driving force of the planet, take the power of those who control it, who only seek more power, and fuck them with it-

The US needs to get the world fucking energized, there really are enough creative minds still here UNFORTUNATELY, most of them are distracted with other peoples programs besides their own...and the ones who would step out, do so only in doubt of their mortality....

There's a few things to point out here, one most fruits as we know them produce much more fruit to seed ratio than their wild relatives. So the 'natural' investment isn't like what you'd see in the grocery store. You may have known that already I just felt it necessary to point out. Also pollen is part of the fertilization phase, as a pollen producing plant can often also produce a fruit.

The rest is just speculation on my part, so take it for what its worth. Being disbursed by animals rather than say wind or just dropping to the ground has a few benefits over the former. With fleshy fruits where the animal swallows the seeds and eventually passes them, the seeds pass along with the fecal matter which I'd imagine would be a good high nitrate fertilizer, plus another seed eating animal such as a squirrel or bird would be less likely to go picking through feces for a meal. Only humans do that, what with their high priced monkey poo coffee beans (yeah I'm sure a few other animals do to). Even when the animal actually eats he seeds, in the case of squirrels, they tend to bury a lot more acorns than they actually eat, thus the seed become buried in the ground where if not found again by the squirrels it can germinate.

Animals can travel far and aren't hampered by which direction the wind happens to be blowing in, so there's always the benefit of that. Plus some of the seeds in fruits are a bit larger, which would have a harder time traveling on the wind. A larger seed generally means more nutrients for the potential plant to draw on.

Also evolution isn't always what seems the most logical, it's what develops and what works. So it not like some ancient not quite apple trees were sitting around and decided fruit was the way to go, it was a trait that developed, it worked and so now many happy animals have delicious apples to snack on. It's actually a fairly common occurrence in nature, two or more different methods for dealing with the same problem develop. Mammals have bear live young, birds have eggs, both have their draw backs both have their advantages, and both seem to work as of this point in time.

Anyways that's what I got, hope I was at least somewhat insightful.

I'm a physicist, which is to say, the worst kinda biologist there is, but here is my stab: maybe bigger more nutrient fruits develop in soils and environments in which it is difficult for seeds to germinate and take root. The parent plant insures the survivability of at least some of its seed with nutrient rich fruit matter and any waste/excess enriches the local ecosystem near the parent plant, which in turn increases its fitness and likelihood for future reproduction. It seems, generally berries are present in rich soils (i.e. forests) whereas big fruit naturally occur in poor tropical soils. Alright I'm done bullshittin' for now.

Banned? By whom, pray tell.

Okay, please indulge me for one moment. This video reminds me of a very stupid joke from when I was a kid. Here goes:

A bodybuilder has a competition coming up and he's starting to freak out; no matter how much he eats and lifts, he keeps getting thinner. He finally sees a doctor who diagnoses him with a tapeworm that, he explains, is eating all the nutrients the bodybuilder consumes.

The doctor tells him to pull down his pants and bend over. He's so desperate he complies without question. The doctor shoves two Oreo cookies up his butt then tells him to return the next day.

When he arrives the doctor repeats the treatment, shoving two Oreos up the bodybuilder's rectum.

The third day the bodybuilder returns again. This time the doctor crams only a single Oreo cookie inside and tells the patient to stay still in the jack-knife position.

Suddenly the tapeworm sticks his head out the guy's ass and yells, "Hey! Where's my other fuckin' cookie asshole?!"

The doctor grabs the sucker by the neck, smashes his head with a claw hammer, and yanks the damned thing out.

I told you it was stupid, but couldn't resist. Please forgive me.

*bad hypnosis. Satisfaction is mostly mental. Hunger is physical, appetite is not. People are fat because they confuse appetite with hunger and so the mechanism to STOP EATING is not received. Meanwhile, most obesity is not necessarily the result of overeating, but rather an overdeveloped appetite for the WRONG nutrients. (The paradox of the obese person starving for real nutrition, and eating only junk food.)

Food Reward in the Absence of Taste Receptor Signaling

Neuron, Volume 58, Issue 2, 24 April 2008, Page 295
Ivan E. de Araujo, Albino J. Oliveira-Maia, Tatyana D. Sotnikova, Raul R. Gainetdinov, Marc G. Caron, Miguel A.L. Nicolelis and Sidney A. Simon


Summary

Food palatability and hedonic value play central roles in nutrient intake. However, postingestive effects can influence food preferences independently of palatability, although the neurobiological bases of such mechanisms remain poorly understood. Of central interest is whether the same brain reward circuitry that is responsive to palatable rewards also encodes metabolic value independently of taste signaling. Here we show that trpm5−/− mice, which lack the cellular machinery required for sweet taste transduction, can develop a robust preference for sucrose solutions based solely on caloric content. Sucrose intake induced dopamine release in the ventral striatum of these sweet-blind mice, a pattern usually associated with receipt of palatable rewards. Furthermore, single neurons in this same ventral striatal region showed increased sensitivity to caloric intake even in the absence of gustatory inputs. Our findings suggest that calorie-rich nutrients can directly influence brain reward circuits that control food intake independently of palatability or functional taste transduction.

Full Article (Subscription only):

http://preview.tinyurl.com/57pgmn

>> ^jimnms:
You're asking Doc to produce stats to back up how many people are obese because of medical conditions, yet lacking those stats you boldly claim that "the vast majority of fat people are fat due to lack of self control, NOT by a mental or physical defect." Where are your stats to back that up?

I don't disagree that some people are fat because they are lazy, but just because SOME people are lazy, it doesn't mean they're ALL lazy.

My mother has a condition, don't know the name, but basically her stomach never shuts off the "I'm hungry" signal. Imagine every waking hour of your life feeling hungry, even knowing you just ate. Do you think you could have the self control to resist your body telling you it's hungry all the time?

And you're doing even worse, you're taking ONE CASE, your mother, and trying to extrapolate that to everyone else.

From the wiki entry on obesity:

Most researchers have concluded that the combination of an excessive nutrient intake and a sedentary lifestyle are the main cause for the rapid acceleration of obesity in Western society in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Diseases which cause obesity haven't suddenly skyrocketed, but the number of fat people have. It's the lifestyle for the VAST majority of people.

I never said that ALL are lazy, you did, I said MOST were. There are SOME who have conditions like your mother, and that's terrible, but what makes it worse is all the fat, lazy people who are fat due to pure laziness and bad eating who then try to garner some sort of sympathy for their 'condition'. This takes away any sympathy most of us have for those like your mother who truly do have a condition.

As such you should dislike the lazy fat even more than most, because they make your mother's life even worse.

Would someone PLEASE sit her down and remind her of exactly what has happened over the last 7.
Either that or just kindly ask her to stop eating the lint from her own belly button, she's obviously not getting the nutrients she needs and her brain is malfunctioning.

...or maybe this woman grew from the side of Ann Coulter's head. She is the dumber, more slack jawed version of her.

Unfortunately a lot of foods marketed as "low calorie" or "low fat" have no nutritional value and cause people's muscles to atrophy, slowing their metabolism, making them fatter. Nutrient-sparse high-glycemic-index carbs are the worst thing to eat if you are trying to lose weight, yet lots of them are marketed that way. I recommend milk and boca burgers. My weight has stayed at 138±5 lbs from age 17 to age 23.

People can become deficient in fat. Getting some kinds of fat from food is absolutely essential.

^ here you are JAPR with a little bit of context as to why those scientists would be upset over the issue of clissifying fluoride as an essential element. I am showing snippets from both sides so please read the entire letters for the fullest conext of what transpired between the two groups.

TWO UNANSWERED LETTERS
http://www.fluoride-journal.com/98-31-3/313-153.htm

the Dietary Reference Intakes report on calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, vitamin D, and fluoride prepared by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and scheduled for publication this month, contains a number of recommendations concerning fluoride that are cause for grave concern over their validity for setting public health policy. This concern has been heightened by statements made by speakers and panel members and their responses to queries at the recent September 23rd workshop on the report held at the National Academy of Sciences.

We, the undersigned, regard the problem as so serious that we are requesting you to take immediate steps to delete the fluoride section of the report and to have it re-addressed by a panel that includes members of the scientific community who are not committed to promoting or supporting fluoride use. What follows is a brief summary of the basis for our concern.

Of even greater concern, in relation to public health, is the proposal in the report that only the early stages of skeletal fluorosis are the appropriate criteria for fluoride intoxication. For this purpose a tolerable upper level ingestion limit of 10 milligrams of fluoride per day for 10 or more years in persons age 9 or older is proposed. But this level of intake is not tolerable, and, according to the sources cited in the report, it can and does lead to crippling skeletal fluorosis (Hodge, 1979). For young adults, assuming 50% retention of ingested fluoride in hard tissues, as stated on page 8-2 of the prepublication copy of the report, an absorbed intake of 10 mg/day amounts to a yearly accumulation of 1.8 grams or over 50 grams after 30 years. At this level debilitating skeletal fluorosis was observed by Raj Roholm in his classic studies of cryolite workers. But before this condition is reached, there are various pre-skeletal phases of fluoride intoxication with serious health implications that arise from much lower levels of intake, especially when calcium and magnesium are marginal, an aspect not considered in the report. Among these manifestations are increased hip-fracture among the elderly from deterioration in bone strength and quality (in agreement with long-term laboratory animal studies), increased osteosarcoma in young males (also demonstrated in male rats), chronic gastrointestinal irritation (reversible with decreased exposure to fluoride), and various neuromuscular disorders whose connection with fluoride has been well confirmed in peer-reviewed publications without convincing refutation. Recent studies showing decreased IQ scores correlating with dental fluorosis (again backed up by laboratory animal research) were also omitted from consideration.

When questioned at the workshop about these omissions, the speakers and the members of the panel became defensive and were unwilling or unable to explain why such findings had been excluded in setting the upper tolerance level of fluoride at 10 mg/day. From the record of some of the committee members' past promotion or support of fluoride use, including slow-release fluoride for treatment of osteoporosis (known to produce abnormal bone of inferior strength), these responses, although disappointing, are perhaps not too surprising. But, in such an important matter, should not at least some balance of viewpoint have been represented? As seen in the videotape (a copy of which has been sent to the Academy) the attitude of some of the presenters and panelists toward those who cited contrary data and questioned why such findings were not discussed can only be described as condescending and demeaning.
__________________________________

http://www.fluoride-journal.com/99-32-3/323-187.htm

The two letters referred to at the beginning of the letter were also published in Fluoride 31(3) 153-157 August 1998.

In a separate letter from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), also dated November 20, 1998, James Jensen, Director of the National Research Council Office of Congressional and Governmental Affairs of NAS, replied to an inquiry from Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter on behalf of one of his constituents, who wanted to know why my joint letter of October 15, 1997 to Dr. Bruce Alberts, President of NAS, had not received a reply. In his letter to Senator Specter, Mr. Jensen wrote:

"When Dr. Burgstahler’s letter on fluoridation [actually, it was about the proposed Dietary Reference Intake standards for fluoride and only indirectly about fluoridation] arrived at the Academy, a response was drafted but never sent out. There is little excuse for this, but this is what occurred. . . .

__________________________________

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE (reply)
http://www.fluoride-journal.com/99-32-3/323-187.htm

We want to thank you and your co-signers for your October 15, 1997 letter to us concerning the Food and Nutrition Board’s (FNB) recent report, Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Vitamin D and Fluoride. The publication of the report represents the initial report of a major new activity of the FNB: the development of a comprehensive set of reference values for nutrients and food components of possible benefit to health, that may not meet the traditional concept of a nutrient. If adequate scientific data exist that support a health benefit from the inclusion of these components in the diet, reference intakes will be established.

In replying to your letter, we have consulted with the Committee that produced the FNB report and asked them to review the important points that you raised concerning their report and the associated workshop, as well as to explain why they have reached the conclusions they reached despite the information you cite.

First, let us reassure you with regard to one concern. Nowhere in the report is it stated that fluoride is an essential nutrient. If any speaker or panel member at the September 23rd workshop referred to fluoride as such, they misspoke. As was stated in Recommended Dietary Allowances 10th Edition, which we published in 1989: "These contradictory results do not justify a classification of fluoride as an essential element, according to accepted standards.

________________


Albert W. Burgstahler. Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, The University of Kansas (reply)
http://www.fluoride-journal.com/99-32-3/323-187.htm

But clearly, the average fluoride intake of an adult drinking water containing more than 10 ppm fluoride will very likely exceed 10 mg/day and therefore, according to Professor Whitford, would create a risk for crippling skeletal fluorosis, even in the United States and Canada. Why residents of these two countries supposedly do not develop skeletal fluorosis from levels of fluoride intake that are well known to cause it elsewhere is deftly shoved aside by citing studies in the U.S. that did not report finding it.

Equally disturbing in the Alberts-Shine letter is the unexplained jump of an "adequate" fluoride intake of only 0.01 mg/day for infants up to age six months to 0.05 mg/kg body weight/day for the second six months of life and thereafter. By age six months, a baby weighing 6-8 kg would therefore have an "adequate" fluoride intake of 0.3 to 0.4 mg/day – a 30- to 40-fold increase from the first six months to the second six months of life after birth! No such huge increase is proposed for any other dietary component.

As pointed out by Dr. John Yiamouyiannis at the end of the following letter, this 0.05 mg/kg/day figure for fluoride appears to be based on an effort to justify or "sanctify" water fluoridation. Thus, an average daily total fluoride intake of 3.5-mg by a 70-kg adult drinking 1-ppm fluoridated water amounts to 3.5 mg/70 kg/day or 0.05 mg/kg/day. And this is sound "scientific" thinking by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences?

In the end, however, all these considerations are moot, since the basis for setting an "adequate intake" of fluoride rests on its alleged ability to prevent tooth decay. But since any such dental benefit from fluoride, to whatever extent it exists, is now known to be largely topical and not systemic (from ingestion), how can there even be a daily "adequate intake"?