~
Jay Knott wrote The Mass Psychology of Anti-Fascism.
New book: “The politics of empire. The US, Israel and the Middle East”
By James Petras | Clarity Press
This book provides a unique conception of US empire building, linking overseas expansion with:
– the growth of a police state and declining living standards;
– advanced technologically driven global spying on adversaries and allies with declining economic competitiveness and military defeats;
– large scale, long term commitments of economic and military resources to wars in the Middle East to the detriment of major corporate interests, but for the benefit of a pariah state, Israel; and
– the power of a foreign state (Israel) over US policy via its domestic pro-Zionist power configuration The interplay of these four specific features of US empire building has no past or present precedent among imperial states.
Because of Israeli-Zionist influence on US imperial policy, the main targets and objectives of imperial wars are located in the Middle East. The objectives of Israeli and Zionist- influenced US policy in the Middle East is to enhance Israeli regional power and the dispossession of the Palestinian people. The trillion dollar cost of US wars for Israel, however, has alienated the vast majority of US society and driven a wedge between the political elite backing new wars for Israel, and the public prioritizing of domestic economic welfare. This study highlights how the domestic foundations of empire building have deteriorated and forced the imperial presidency to modify its approach, seeking diplomatic negotiations over new military interventions, specifically in the cases of Syria and Iran.
Imperial politics is viewed as a multi-sided power struggle between military and economic elites, Israel and the Zionist power configuration, overseas resistance movements and nationalist regimes, and the US public. The resolution of this power struggle is more than an academic question; it will determine whether the US will become a full blown police state, ruled by the pawns of a racist-colonial state engaged in endless wars or return to its roots as an independent democratic republic “free of foreign entanglements”.
The politics of empire. The US, Israel and the Middle East
by James Petras
ISBN: 978-0-9860731-0-6 $18.95 / pp. / 2014
Available in the US from Clarity Press, amazon.com, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Ingram and online booksellers
Available from Distributors in the USA, the UK/Europe, Middle East, Malaysia/Singapore
Request a review or desk copy
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
By Lenni Brenner | CounterPunch | February 24, 2014
I’m American, but my first book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (now finally back in print), was published in Britain. American houses wouldn’t risk selling an expose of Zionist collaboration with Hitler. Then I found pro and anti-Zionist books published by Croom Helm Ltd. I went to them. They gave me an ultimatum: “You are about to write the most controversial book imaginable…. So there can be no mistakes. You must send us a photocopy of every document you quote.” It was published in 1983.
While British leftists organized a lecture tour for me, I went to Israel. By luck, that visit ultimately generated international attention to the book.
When Menachem Begin retired and Yitzhak Shamir became Israel’s 2nd Likud Prime Minister, I had a Palestinian English-language weekly publish a translation of his 1940-41 outfit’s offer to go to war on Hitler’s side. An Israeli newspaper questioned him about it. I went on to London and there, in the 21 October Times, was the PM’s lie:
“Shamir… denied that he had any part in the efforts by Mr. Abraham Stern… to establish contact with the Nazis and Italian Fascists.
‘There was a plan to turn to Italy for help and to make contact with Germany on the assumption that these could bring about a massive Jewish immigration to Palestine. I opposed this… but I did join Lehi after the idea of contacts with the Axis countries was dropped.’”
The “Proposal of the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the side of Germany” was found post-war in Germany’s Turkish embassy. The Sternists declared that
“The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.
Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.”
I went to The Times with the German original, the translation and a letter. “You sure didn’t make this up in German!” My letter appeared on 4 November:
“Away from my files, I cannot be certain exactly when in 1940 Shamir joined the group. But in any case, isn’t he confessing that he knowingly joined an organization of traitors which had offered to ally itself to the archenemy of the Jews? Nor can there be any doubt that he joined up with Stern before December 1941, when the Sternists tried to send Nathan Yallin-Mor to Turkey to contact the German ambassador there with the same proposal.”
I relocated evidence that Shamir was a ‘Stern Gang’ founder and presented it to The Times. He organized their 1944 assassination of Britain’s Middle East High Commissioner in Cairo. In 1963, Gerold Frank published The Deed about it.
Stern split off from David Raziel’s Irgun in September 1940. Frank wrote up a meeting where “Yizernitsky” (Shamir’s born-name)….“spoke tersely, summing up the reason, behind Stern’s decision decision to walk out of the Irgun.” One of the assassins “could not forget Yizernitsky’s ‘fire and powder’ remark in the days immediately following the Raziel-Stern split.”
This led to Edward Mortimer reviewing the book in the 11 February 1984 Times:
“Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that “each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews”?
No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organization and later still the first president of the state of Israel….
Zionism itself encouraged and exploited self-hatred in the Diaspora. It started from the assumption that anti-Semitism was inevitable and even in a sense justified so long as Jews were outside the land of Israel.
It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join the war on Germany’s side in 1941, in the hope of establishing “the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich.” Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to join….
Mr Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler’s; he is careful also to put on record the opposition to such policies within the Zionist movement.
In retrospect these activities have been defended as a distasteful but necessary expedient to save Jewish lives. But Brenner shows that most of the time this aim was secondary. The Zionist leaders wanted to help young, skilled and able-bodied Jews to emigrate to Palestine. They were never in the forefront of the struggle against fascism in Europe.”
Indeed the Stern Gang weren’t the only Zionist collaborators. On June 21, 1933 the Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland, the German Zionist Federation, appealed to the Nazis:
“May we therefore be permitted to present our views, which, in our opinion, make possible a solution in keeping with the principles of the new German State of National Awakening…. because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group….
For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews…. Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.”
The WZO made the Ha’ Avara (Transfer) agreement in 1933. The Nazis ‘taxed’ money leaving Germany, but the rate was lowest for German Zionists buying Nazi goods which the WZO sold in Palestine and the Middle East. In 1935 Weizmann explained that the WZO “should concern ourselves with the constructive solution of the German question through the transfer of the Jewish youth from Germany to Palestine, rather than with the question of equal rights of Jews in Germany.”
The WZO opposed anti-Nazi boycott movements. Fritz Reichart, the Gestapo’s Palestine agent, wrote to his headquarters:
“The London Boycott Conference was torpedoed from Tel Aviv be- cause the head of the Transfer in Palestine, in close contact with the consulate in Jerusalem, sent cables to London. Our main function here is to prevent, from Palestine, the unification of world Jewry on a basis hostile to Germany.”
The ZVfD asked Baron von Mildenstein of the Nazi SS elite corp to write pro-Zionist articles in the Nazi press. He visited Palestine for six months as the ZVfD’s guest and wrote 12 articles for Der Angriff (The Assault), the leading Nazi propaganda organ, about how Jewish soil under a Jew’s feet “reformed him and his kind in a decade. This new Jew will be a new people.”
To commemorate the Baron’s expedition, Propaganda Minister Goebbels had a medal struck: the Zionist star and EIN NAZI FÄHRT NACH PALÄSTINA — A Nazi Travels to Palestine — on one side, the swastika UND ERZÄHLT DAVON IM Angriff – And tells about it in Angriff – on the other.
The medal is on the front cover of the new edition of my book.
The WZO tried to extend its relationship with Nazism. On February 26, 1937, Feival Polkes of the Haganah Labor Zionist militia, met with Adolf Eichmann in Berlin. The report on their negotiations was in SS files found after the war:
“Polkes…. noted that the Haganah’s goal is to reach, as soon as possible, a Jewish majority in Palestine…. he declared himself willing to work for Germany in the form of providing intelligence as long as this does not oppose his own political goals. Among other things he would support German foreign policy in the Near East. He would try to find oil sources for the German Reich without affecting British spheres of interest if the German monetary regulations were eased for Jewish emigrants to Palestine.”
Eichmann and another SS man went to Palestine on October 2nd. Polkes took them to a kibbutz, a Labor Zionist co-op farm. Two days later the British realized that the visitors also contacted Reichart, known to be a Gestapo agent, and they expelled them to Egypt. Polkes met them in Cairo. He passed on two pieces of “intelligence”:
“The Pan-Islamic World Congress convening in Berlin is in direct contact with two pro-Soviet Arab leaders: Emir Shekib Arslan and Emir Adil Arslan…. The illegal Communist broadcasting station whose transmission to Germany is particularly strong, is, according to Polkes’ statement, assembled on a lorry that drives along the German-Luxembourg border when transmission is on the air.”
Later, Eichmann, hiding in Argentina, taped a look-back at his career. The holocaust’s prime organizer waxed nostalgic about Palestine:
“I did see enough to be very impressed by the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land. I admired their desperate will to live, the more so since I was myself an idealist. In the years that followed I often said to Jews with whom I had dealings that, had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not imagine being anything else. In fact, I would have been the most ardent Zionist imaginable.”
MUSSOLINI: “YOUR FASCIST, JABOTINSKY”
Most American pro-Zionists, Jew or gentile, know little Zionist history. Most can’t identify Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880 – 1940) even though he was the founder of the Zionist-Revisionist movement, the precursor of the Likud Party, and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s father was his secretary.
In 1917 Jabotinsky organized a Jewish Legion to help the British take Palestine from Ottoman Turkey. When Britain declared it the “Jewish national home,” Palestine included today’s Jordan. But in 1921 London separated it from Palestine and gave it to the son of Britain’s puppet Sharif of Mecca. As no Zionists lived there, WZO leaders accepted the loss. But Jabotinsky insisted that the WZO had to “revise” its policy. Britain giving part of Palestine to an Arab would inspire Palestinians to struggle on until London completely abandoned Zionism. “One side of the Jordan is ours – and so is the other.” So goes Shtei Gadot, a song identified with Revisionism from 1923, when Jabotinsky founded the Betar youth movement, until well after the 1948 creation of Israel.
In 1923 he wrote Revisionism’s Bible, an article, “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)”:
“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel.”…. Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. This means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population –- behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”
Jabotinsky looked for a new imperial protector committed to a ruthless policy towards Arabs. Italy was appealing with its bloodthirsty Libyan colonialism. But he had been a student in Italy and couldn’t see anything wrong with the liberal and aristocratic traditions that Mussolini repudiated. In 1926 he sneered at Fascism:
“There is today a country where ‘programs’ have been replaced by the word of one man… Italy; the system is called Fascism: to give their prophet a title, they had to coin a new term—‘Duce’—which is a translation of that most absurd of all English words—‘leader’. Buffaloes follow a leader. Civilized men have no leaders.”
But for Ex-Labour Zionists turned Revisionist, ex-socialist Mussolini was a hero. At the 1932 Revisionist World Conference, Abba Achimeir and Wolfgang von Weisl proposed Jabotinsky as their Duce. He refused but, without abandoning liberal rhetoric, he incorporated Mussolini’s concepts into his ideology.
Jabotinsky proposed quitting the WZO, but their World Union Executive saw no gain in splitting. He took personal control of the movement and let the ranks choose between him and the Executive in a plebiscite. He wrote a letter: “The time has apparently come when there must be a single, principal controller in the movement, a ‘leader’, though I still hate the word. All right, if there must be one, there will be one.”
Jabotinsky set up the New Zionist Organization. Achimeir, its Palestine leader (Britain barred Jabotinsky from Palestine) ran his Yomen shel Fascisti (Diary of a Fascist) in their paper. Von Weisl, NZO’s Financial Director, told a newspaper that “He personally was a supporter of Fascism, and he rejoiced at the victory of Fascist Italy in Abyssinia as a triumph of the White races against the Black.”
In 1934 Mussolini authorized a Betar squadron at his maritime academy. In 1935 he met a rabbi and hailed “your fascist, Jabotinsky.” Mussolini reviewed the squadron in 1936.
The orientation towards Italy ended in a debacle. The Spanish civil war persuaded Mussolini to unite with Hitler to ward off worker revolutions. It was impossible to be Hitler’s ally and have Jews in his own party. He expelled Jews from the party and geared up for war. The Revisionists declared that they were wrong for the right reasons:
“For years we have warned the Jews not to insult the fascist regime in Italy. Let us be frank before we accuse others of the recent anti-Jewish laws in Italy; why not first accuse our own radical groups who are responsible for what happened.”
Stern and Shamir’s “historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis” evolved from this fanaticism.
“THERE IS NOT THE REMOTEST CHANCE OF WAR”
Shmuel Merlin, NZO’s Secretary-General, later explained that in January 1933 Jabotinsky “thought that Hitler would either reform or yield to the pressure of the Junkers and Big Business.” But by March he called for an anti-Nazi boycott. On June 16 Revisionists assassinated Labor Zionist Chaim Arlosoroff who negotiated the Ha’Avara pact with Berlin.
Two days later the British police brought Revisionists Avraham Stavsky and Zvi Rosenblatt in for an identity parade. Arlosoroff’s widow recognized Stavsky. Rosenblatt was cleared on a legal technicality but Stavsky was sentenced to hang. Later the Palestine Court of Appeal acquitted him on technicalities but the Chief Justice was displeased: “in England… the conviction would have to stand.” In 1944 a ballistics expert discovered the gun that killed Arlosoroff was used in the Cairo assassination by the Stern Gang splitters from Jabotinsky’s organization.
There’s no evidence that Jabotinsky ordered Arlosoroff killed but he insisted that Revisionists didn’t commit the crime. Many in the WZO opposed Ha’Avara, but they wouldn’t unite with Arlosoroff’s murderers in anti-Nazi actions. Alone they accomplished nothing and inevitably Revisionist policies re Germany became surreal.
Even as they demonstrated against Hitler throughout Europe, their Staatzionistische Organisation and its leader, George Kareski, were Hitler’s favorite Zionists. On April 13, 1935, the Gestapo declared that State Zionism would receive “permission to let its members… wear uniforms indoors… because the State Zionists have proven to be the organization which had tried in any way, even illegally, to bring its members to Palestine, and… meets half-way the intention of the Reich Government to remove the Jews from Germany.”
The scandalized NZO ranks compelled a resolution that, under the circumstances, there was no German Revisionist movement and Jabotinsky called on him to deny any Nazi connection. However in 1936 Kareski was his go-between with the German publishing house holding the copyright to one of his books, and the Fascists around von Weisl remained in contact with him.
In 1937 Kareski went to Palestine. German Jews discovered him and chased him through the streets until police rescued him. I’d like to report that he died alone and hated, but in 1947 he was appointed chairman of a Revisionist health fund.
In 1939, a week before Hitler invaded Poland, Jabotinsky insisted that “There is not the remotest chance of war.” He planned to invade Palestine, landing a boatload of Betarim on Tel Aviv’s beach while the Irgun seized Government House in Jerusalem, and a provisional Jewish government was proclaimed abroad. After his capture or death, it would operate as a government-in-exile.
His model was the 1916 rising in Ireland. Its leaders were executed, but their martyrdom inspired a revolutionary movement. However it is impossible to see how an invasion could have convinced Jews in Palestine, mostly his WZO enemies, to rise up after his defeat. The plan’s fantasy was revealed on the night of August 31-September 1. The British arrested the Irgun command as they debated whether to take part in the scheme and, within hours, Hitler started the war Jabotinsky insisted wouldn’t happen.
The December 4, 1948 New York Times ran a letter by Albert Einstein and other Jews re Menachem Begin’s visit to the US, exposing his Herut Party which evolved into today’s Likud. Given that Achimeir and von Weisl wrote for Herut’s newspaper, Einstein’s evaluation of Begin’s Revisionist commitment bears quotation:
“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’ (Tnuat HaHerut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties…. They have preached an admixture of ultra-nationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority… it is imperative that the truth about Mr Begin and his movement be made known in this country.”
Indeed Zionist Revisionist history must be known here. Read Zionism In The Age Of The Dictators and then convince other Americans to read it.
Lenni Brenner can be contacted at BrennerL21@aol.com.
Sugar: Killing us Sweetly
Staggering Health Consequences of Sugar on Health of Americans
By Dr. Gary Null | Global Research | February 3, 2014
In September 2013, a bombshell report from Credit Suisse’s Research Institute brought into sharp focus the staggering health consequences of sugar on the health of Americans. The group revealed that approximately “30%–40% of healthcare expenditures in the USA go to help address issues that are closely tied to the excess consumption of sugar.”[1]The figures suggest that our national addiction to sugar runs us an incredible $1 trillion in healthcare costs each year. The Credit Suisse report highlighted several health conditions including coronary heart diseases, type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome, which numerous studies have linked to excessive sugar intake.[2]
Just a year earlier in 2012, a report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta appearing on 60 Minutes featured the work of Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist from California who gained national attention after a lecture he gave titled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth” went viral in 2009. Lustig’s research has investigated the connection between sugar consumption and the poor health of the American people. He has published twelve articles in peer-reviewed journals identifying sugar as a major factor in the epidemic of degenerative disease that now afflicts our country. The data compiled by Lustig clearly show how excessive sugar consumption plays a key role in the development of many types of cancer, obesity, type II diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. His research has led him to conclude that 75% of all diseases in America today are brought on by the American lifestyle and are entirely preventable.[3]
Until the airing of this program, no one in the “official” world acknowledged anything wrong with sugar, here is a sampling of some the latest research available to them if they chose to look:
Consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Drinks Linked to Heart Disease
Lawrence de Koning, Vasanti S. Malik, Mark D. Kellogg, Eric B. Rimm, Walter C. Willett, and Frank B. Hu.Sweetened Beverage Consumption, Incident Coronary Heart Disease and Biomarkers of Risk in Men. Circulation, March 12 2012 DOI:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.111.067017
How Fructose Causes Obesity and Diabetes
Takuji Ishimoto, Miguel A. Lanaspa, MyPhuong T. Le, Gabriela E. Garcia, Christine P. Diggle, Paul S. MacLean, Matthew R. Jackman, ArunaAsipu, Carlos A. Roncal-Jimenez, Tomoki Kosugi, Christopher J. Rivard, Shoichi Maruyama, Bernardo Rodriguez-Iturbe, Laura G. Sánchez-Lozada, David T. Bonthron, Yuri Y. Sautin, and Richard J. Johnson. Opposing effects of fructokinase C and A isoforms on fructose-induced metabolic syndrome in mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 27, 2012 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1119908109
Corn Syrup and Obesity
Bray, George et al. Consumption of high fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol. 79, no. 4, p. 537-543, April 2004.
Soda and Sugary Beverages linked with Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome, V. S. Malik, B. M. Popkin, G. A. Bray, J.-P. Despres, W. C. Willett, F. B. Hu. Sugar Sweetened Beverages and Risk of Metabolic Syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes: A Meta-analysis.Diabetes Care, 2010
Fructose intake connected with an increased risk of cardiovascular illness and diabetes in teenagers
N. K. Pollock, V. Bundy, W. Kanto, C. L. Davis, P. J. Bernard, H. Zhu, B. Gutin, Y. Dong. Greater Fructose Consumption Is Associated with Cardiometabolic Risk Markers and Visceral Adiposity in Adolescents.Journal of Nutrition, 2011; 142 (2): 251 DOI:10.3945/jn.111.150219
Fructose consumption increases the risk of heart disease.
K. L. Stanhope, A. A. Bremer, V. Medici, K. Nakajima, Y. Ito, T. Nakano, G. Chen, T. H. Fong, V. Lee, R. I. Menorca, N. L. Keim, P. J. Havel. Consumption of Fructose and High Fructose Corn Syrup Increase Postprandial Triglycerides, LDL-Cholesterol, and Apolipoprotein-B in Young Men and Women. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2011; DOI:10.1210/jc.2011-1251
The Negative Impact of Sugary Drinks on Children.
Lustig, RH, and AA Bremer. “Effects of sugar-sweetened beverages on children..” Pediatric Annals 41.1 (2012): 26-30. pubmed.gov. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.
Sugar and High Blood Pressure
Lustig, RH, and S Nguyen. “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the blood pressure go up..” Expert Review of Cardiovascular Therapy 8.11 (2010): 1497-9. pubmed.gov. Web. 2 Apr. 2012.
Sugar Consumption Associated with Fatty Liver Disease and Diabetes
Lim JS, Mietus-Snyder M, Valente A, Schwarz JM, Lustig RH. The role of fructose in the pathogenesis of NAFLD and the metabolic syndrome. Nature Reviews of Gastroenterology and Hepatology 2010; 7:251-64.
Fructose: metabolic, hedonic, and societal parallels with ethanol.Lustig RH. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 2010; 110:1307-21.
The Adverse Impact of Dietary Sugars on Cardiovascular Health
Johnson RK, Appel LJ, Brands M, Howard BV, Lefevre M, Lustig RH, Sacks F, Steffen LM, Wylie-Rosett J. Dietary sugars intake and cardiovascular health: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association.Circulation 2009; 120:1011-20.
Princeton Study Shows High Fructose Corn Syrup Promotes Weight Gain
Bocarsly, ME, et al.. “High-fructose corn syrup causes characteristics of obesity in rats: Increased body weight, body fat and triglyceride levels.” Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavio 97.1 (2010): n. pag.pubmed.gov. Web. 1 Apr. 2012.
Rats Fed High Fructose Corn Syrup Exhibit Impaired Brain Function
Stranahan, Alexis M, et al..“Diet-induced insulin resistance impairs hippocampal synaptic plasticity and cognition in middle-aged rats.”Hippocampus 18.11 (2008): 1085-1088. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com. Web. 2 Apr. 2012.
High Fructose Corn Syrup Intake Linked with Mineral Imbalance and Osteoporosis.
Tsanzi, E,et al. “Effect of consuming different caloric sweeteners on bone health and possible mechanisms..”Nutrition Reviews 66.6 (2008): 301-309. Print.
Diet of Sugar and Fructose Impairs Brain Function
R. Agrawal, F. Gomez-Pinilla. ’Metabolic syndrome’ in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signaling and cognition. The Journal of Physiology, 2012; 590 (10): 2485 DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2012.230078
With the rapid spread of information in today’s internet age, more and more health-conscious consumers and watchdog groups are calling attention to the many studies demonstrating sugar’s harmful effects, but many of us in the natural health community have been alarming the public for decades. In point of fact, I have been writing about the hazards of sugar extensively in books and articles since 1971. In 2002, my documentary “Seven Steps to Perfect Health” premiered on PBS stations including WETA in Washington, DC. As part of the PBS program, I poured sugar out of a bag which equaled the number of teaspoons that the average American teenager consumes in a given day. The quantity was verified by my General Counsel, Mr. David Slater, who had measured the number of teaspoons earlier in the day. If anything, my demonstration understated the true amount of sugar we are consuming.
The program was very well received and the program director informed me that it was so successful that it had set a record for a non-prime-time programming and that he intended on replaying it eight or nine times. However, the next day I was informed by him that he was sorry but he had bad news: not only would the program not be aired again, but I would not be invited back to present on the station. This was after I had presented five medically-vetted, original PBS programs over the years, some of which had set station records. The program director explained that this was because the new information I presented on the dangers of sugar had run smack up against the president of the station board, Sharon Rockefeller. I was told that Ms. Rockefeller had received a phone call from the sugar lobbying group representing soft drink makers and sugar consumers and the decision was made to pull my program. I was informed that my statements regarding sugar’s damaging health effects were deemed inaccurate. As it turned out, Ms. Rockefeller was sitting on the board of Pepsi Cola’s at the time.
That was my first personal experience of dealing with the politics of sugar, which was also the politics of PBS. In response to this, I wrote letters to the sugar industry, the WETA station board and Sharon Rockefeller contesting their suppression of my program and their claim that sugar was unrelated to American health epidemics. This was ten years ago. When we realize how many people since that time have developed diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and many other illnesses after consuming these quantities of sugar, then should we not hold the major media, including Dr. Gupta and 60 Minutes, morally responsible for having so much scientifically verified information on the dangers of sugar consumption and yet choosing to accept the “official” statements from “official” medical groups, government agencies, trade groups, spokespersons, scientists-for hire-and in effect, accepting industry generated propaganda instead of seeking the truth? If we can find the truth with our limited resources, what possible excuse do Dr. Gupta and other respected physicians with unlimited research capacity have? Why has it taken 40 years since I first wrote about the dangers of sugar for them to finally discover this truth? And how many tens of millions of children and adults have suffered with diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancers during these years all because of the arrogance, hubris and complicity of the medical establishment and media?
Financing Disease
A deeper look at the politics of the sugar industry reveals that huge sums are being doled out by government to prop up sugar companies. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, writer Alexandra Wexler explains that American taxpayers are currently responsible for shelling out $280 million to cover the cost of loans from the USDA which sugar producers are unable to pay back.[4] Given the undeniable evidence demonstrating the toxicity of sugar and its enormous toll on the well-being of Americans, why is it that our health agencies and elected officials are not calling for a much-needed overhaul of existing policies, which, in fact, offer generous support to the domestic sugar industry? Where is the outrage over bailing out the purveyors of what is likely the most dangerous staple in the American diet? For our answers we must follow the money-trail.
In May 2013, members of the US Senate voted 54-44 against an amendment to the Farm Bill introduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire that would have significantly curtailed federal lending to sugar processors. In an insightful analysis of the vote, Alan Farago points out that lawmakers opposing the measure were significantly more likely to either represent states in which sugar is grown or to count the sugar industry among their best campaign donors. Though the reform was voted down by senators on both sides of the aisle, Democrats were apparently even more beholden to sugar interests than their Republican counterparts. Farago writes that:
In the final tally, Democrats opposed sugar reform by 55 percent to 40 percent (NJ Senator Frank Lautenberg did not vote.). U.S. senators from states identified as “healthy” but with sugar constituencies — Minnesota (D), Vermont (D, I), Colorado (D), North Dakota (D, R) and Hawaii (D) — all voted against reform. The website, Opensecrets.org, points out that the second highest recipient of campaign cash from sugar interests was progressive champion, Al Franken (D-Minnesota). Franken in 2013 received $27,999. “Sugar is the only industry in the entire agribusiness sector that has consistently supported Democrats during the past two decades.” [5]
The fact is that the authorities we look upon as “official” are often compromised by lobbyists inside the Beltway while the mainstream media, in thrall to its advertisers, is still unwilling to report the whole truth about sugar. In order to raise public awareness about this critical issue, this article will provide an in-depth examination of sugar as a both a toxic food and as a thoroughly corrupt extension of Big Business.
The Most Current Research
In his latest published study, Lustig and his colleagues unearthed a strong relationship between the incidence of diabetes and sugar availability in populations around the world. Published in the online journal, PLOS ONE in February 2013, the study showed that those places in which sugar was more available had a greater incidence of type-2 diabetes.[6] Examining data from 175 countries over the last 10 years, the authors investigated whether the availability of other food groups including, oils, meats, cereals and fibers as well as socioeconomic factors such as income, urbanization and aging were related to diabetes prevalence, but only found statistically significant evidence of a sugar-diabetes link. […] In an article published in February 2012 in the journal Nature, Lustig and his co-authors state the following:
Regulating sugar will not be easy… We recognize that societal intervention to reduce the supply and demand for sugar faces an uphill political battle against a powerful sugar lobby, and will require active engagement from all stakeholders. Still, the food industry knows that it has a problem… With enough clamour for change, tectonic shifts in policy become possible. Take, for instance, bans on smoking in public places and the use of designated drivers, not to mention airbags in cars and condom dispensers in public bathrooms. These simple measures — which have all been on the battleground of American politics — are now taken for granted as essential tools for our public health and well-being. It’s time to turn our attention to sugar.[8]
The connection between America’s epidemic of chronic diseases and sugar grows clearer each day. A recent study by nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope of The University of California, Davis, associated higher intake of high fructose corn syrup with higher levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol as well as an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. In the study, test subjects were required to replace 25% of their caloric intake with sugary drinks. The study offered further proof that all calories are not created equally and that those coming from sugar are artery-clogging and actually promote weight gain.[9]
Stanhope’s findings corroborate the results of another study in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation that was published in March 2012. The study found that men who drank one 12 ounce beverage sweetened with sugar a day were 20% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than men who did not consume any sugary drinks.[10] Another recent study recently appearing in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology linked the intake of excess quantities of fructose with cardiovascular illness, diabetes, chronic kidney disease as well metabolic syndrome. [11]
The damaging effects of sugar on cognitive health have been the subject of several recent studies. In September 2012, scientists at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA uncovered that rats that were fed a diet high in fructose performed poorly in tests using mazes which were designed to assess memory and learning when compared to the control group.[12] In a 2012 article entitled “Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia”, researchers at Brown University discussed their findings that a diet high in sugary foods disrupts insulin levels and may trigger the buildup of toxic amyloid proteins, the protein directly implicated in the progression of dementia, in the brain.[13] These conclusions are reinforced by the results of a Mayo Clinic study released in October 2012 which showed that seniors who consumed a diet high in sugars and carbohydrates had a significantly greater risk of developing mild cognitive impairment and dementia when compared to seniors whose diet contained more fat and protein.
Sugar’s Harm on Your Body
When we think of sugar, we often only think about the refined white sugar bought in paper packages or cubed for tea. If we’re worried about too much sugar, maybe we’ll check the nutritional information on the backs of processed sweets before we make a purchase. But really, sugar is often underestimated because of its incredible predominance in a lot of what we eat every day.
The American Heart Association (AHA) and the USDA share this broader definition of sugar and the amount of sugar we consume each day. In an AHA Statement to Healthcare Professionals, the group provided a broad definition of what constitutes “sugar”:
There are many, sometimes confusing, terms used in the literature. Simple carbohydrate (sugar) refers to mono- and disaccharides; complex carbohydrate refers to polysaccharides such as starch. Common disaccharides are sucrose (glucose+fructose), found in sugar cane, sugar beets, honey, and corn syrup; lactose (glucose+galactose), found in milk products; and maltose (glucose+glucose), from malt. The most common naturally occurring monosaccharide is fructose (found in fruits and vegetables). The term dextrose is used to refer to glucose. Intrinsic or naturally occurring sugar refers to the sugar that is an integral constituent of whole fruit, vegetable, and milk products; extrinsic or added sugar refers to sucrose or other refined sugars in soft drinks and incorporated into food, fruit drinks, and other beverages.[14]
The latest statistics tell us that the average American consumes a 130 pounds of sugar each year- or more than one-third of a pound every day.[15] The average amount of sugar consumed by Americans today is shockingly excessive. As we shall see, this sugar excess contributes to the modern epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer.
Sugar and health
Refined sugar only really became a major part of human diet over the last few hundred years. As reported by the authors of Sugar Busters!, refined sugar has only been around during a “mere blink of time in man’s digestive evolution.”[16]
It is quite logical that we should have added refined sugar to the priority list of things that are, or may be, “Hazardous To Your Health” when you see the increase in disease caused by our huge consumption of refined sugar and certain other carbohydrates. Sugar just may be the number one culprit in lowering the quality of life and in causing premature death. There is certainly enough evidence to bring us to that conclusion.
Historical Deception
As far back as 1942, the American Medical Association stated it would be in the interest of public health to limit the consumption of sugar in any form when it is not combined with significant proportions of foods high in nutritious quality. Lately, however, the AMA and other medical organizations have been largely silent about sugar consumption. A recent Gallup poll indicates that nearly half of all Americans consume soft drinks on a daily basis and that those who do drink soda, average about 2.6 glasses per day.[17] Despite these and many other health risks, the soft drink industry consistently portrays its product as being positively healthful. In 1997 Coca-Cola spent $277 million in advertising targeted towards children. The advertising placed their logos and products within easy reach of children, and Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Seven-Up have licensed their logo to the baby-bottle manufacturer Munchin Bottling, Inc.[18]
In 1998, Ron Lord wrote in the Agricultural Outlook Forum that sugar had once “had a rather negative public image.”[19] Families generally viewed excessive sugar as a health risk and avoided processed sweets. “Then in the 1980s,” Lord goes on, “public attention became focused on fat as something to avoid; and about the same time a rather successful advertising campaign to promote the healthy and natural aspects of sugar was conducted.”[20] This resulted in an intense increase in carbohydrate—and especially sugar—consumption. As more sugar found its way into foods not even thought to be sweet, such as fast food and processed goods, this sugar intake has simply ramped up.
Our society is now experiencing the results of the sugar industry’s successful advertising campaign to promote the “healthy and natural aspects of sugar.” But let’s take a look at the negative aspects together. As you’ll see, a diet based in natural foods like vegetables, grains and legumes is a healthy alternative to this troubling explosion in sugar dependency.
Sugar and Addiction
People often say they have a “sweet tooth.” You may have a friend who excitedly rushes off for a “sugar fix.” But the links between sugar and addiction are actually well-documented in a number of studies. Dr. C. Colantuoni, an obesity researcher, showed that excessive sugar intake causes serious dependence and that the removal of sugar creates withdrawal symptoms. He and his colleagues showed that withdrawal from sugar is qualitatively similar to withdrawal from morphine or nicotine.[21] Similar findings concerning sugar addiction have been published by numerous researchers. Using MRI scanners measuring the brain’s reaction the sugar, scientists at the Oregon Research Institute established that sugar has a very similar affect on the brain as highly addictive drugs such as cocaine.[22]
Sugar and Aging
Of particular concern to those reaching the andropause and menopause stages of life, sugar’s effect on aging should be considered alongside its health risks. Anti-aging research has begun to show that sugar is one of the most powerful aging substances known. One of the most integral negative aging effects to consider is the bonding between glucose and collagen, called glycation, which can result in many negative effects, including thickened arteries, stiff joints, pain, feeble muscles and failing organs.
According to researcher L. Melton, diabetics age prematurely because the sugar-driven damage of glycation cannot be stopped. Diabetics suffer a very high incidence of nerve, artery and kidney damage because high blood sugar levels in their bodies markedly accelerate the chemical reactions that form advanced glycation products. According to Melton, “after years of bread, noodles and cakes, human tissues inevitably become rigid and yellow with pigmented glycation deposits.”[23]
Sugar and Appetite Suppression:
Researchers have also shown that a lifetime of sugar intake can actually lower your intake of necessary nutrients by suppressing your appetite. Anderson, etal., reasoned that a primary mechanism by which carbohydrates are thought to regulate satiety and food intake is through their effect on blood glucose. They found that food intake and subjective appetite are inversely associated with blood glucose response in the 60 minutes following consumption of carbohydrates. That’s why candy bars are recommended by advertisers to hold you over until you eat a meal. Your body may not be getting any of the nutrients it needs, but it is being tricked into thinking it has ingested the proper amount of energy.[24] Anderson’s study concluded that sugary foods cause appetite suppression and prevent people from achieving a balanced diet with proper nutrients unavailable in sugary products.[25] In other words, sugary snacks have the potential of leading to malnutrition.
Sugar and Cancer
In the 1930s, Otto Warburg, Ph.D., a Nobel Laureate in medicine, discovered that cancer cells have a fundamentally different energy metabolism compared to healthy cells. He found that increased sugar intake could increase cancer cell production. The more primitive nature of cancer cells requires a direct supply of glucose, not being able to master the more complex synthesis of glucose from larger molecules. The build up of lactic acid and an acidic pH from direct consumption of glucose in cancer cells is a diagnostic factor for cancer.[26] This means that there is a direct relationship between sugar ingestion and the risk of cancer.
An epidemiological study in 21 modern countries (in Europe, North America, Japan and others) revealed that sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to higher breast cancer rates, particularly in older women.[27] A four-year study in the Netherlands at the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection compared 111 biliary tract cancer patients with 480 controls. The study concluded that cancer risk associated with the intake of sugars had more than doubled for the cancer patients.[28]
These findings are mirrored in the research of Michaud, et al., at the National Cancer Institute, who followed up on two large studies conducted over the past 20 years on approximately 50,000 men and 120,000 women. They concluded that obesity significantly increased the risk of pancreatic cancer and that physical activity appears to decrease the risk of pancreatic cancer, especially among those who are overweight. Preventing obesity by dietary intervention and exercise is by far the best way to avoid pancreatic cancer.[29] But the Michaud team continued their investigation of the triggers of pancreatic cancer and found that evidence from both animal and human studies suggested abnormal glucose metabolism plays an important role in pancreatic carcinogenesis. They investigated whether diets high in sugar were to blame. They found that a diet high in sugar may increase the risk of pancreatic cancer in women who already have an underlying degree of insulin resistance.[30]
Sugar and Cardiovascular Disease
On July 23, 2002, the American Heart Association released a report on “Sugar and Cardiovascular Disease.” The report concluded that scientific data indicates that sugar consumption is detrimental to human health, that no data indicates that sugar consumption is advantageous, and that high sugar intake should be avoided. The report also stated that obesity is a definite cause of cardiovascular disease and death.[31]
A study in August, 2000, from the State University of New York at Buffalo reported that excess sugar in the blood increases the production of free radicals, which have been linked to aging and heart disease. Healthy adults who were given a drink containing 75 grams of pure glucose, the equivalent of two cans of cola, experienced a significant rise of free radicals in the blood one hour after the drink, and a doubling of free radicals after two hours. The sugar drink also produced an increase in a part of an enzyme that promotes free radical generation and a four percent decrease in levels of Vitamin E. Dr. Paresh Dandona concluded, “We believe that in obese people, this cumulatively leads to damage and may cause hardening of the arteries.”[32] Numerous other studies have repeatedly documented the relationship between high blood sugar levels and increased heart disease.[33]
In a 2001 UN report commissioned by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization, a team of global experts identified the excessive consumption of sugar from snacks, processed foods, and drinks, as one of a few major factors causing worldwide increases in cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. In 2001, such chronic diseases contributed approximately 59% of the 59.6 million total reported deaths in the world and 46% of the global burden of disease.[34]
Sugar and Children’s Behavior
Parents often joke about their children being on a sugar high, especially when those children act up or seem to be out of control. But several important studies have actually confirmed the relationship between sugar consumption and behavioral changes in children. Between 1973 and 1977, Dr. William Crook showed that a majority of children could have their behavior affected by the removal of particular foods.[35] This was one of the first studies to confirm a link between diet and behavior, but was only a stepping stone to what came later.
Dr. Stephen Schoenthaler conducted diet research on children for almost 30 years. His original seminal studies eliminated sugar and junk foods from the lunch programs of one million school children in over eight hundred New York schools during a seven-year period (1976-1983). Learning performance was established first, and then in 1979, diet changes were introduced. High sucrose foods were gradually eliminated or reduced and there was a gradual elimination of synthetic colors and flavors and selected preservatives (BHA and BHT). There was a 15.7% gain (from 39.2% to 55%) in learning ability compared with other schools during the years in which these changes in diet were introduced. Schoenthaler also noted that out of 124,000 children who had once been unable to learn grammar and mathematics, 75,000 were able to perform these basic tasks after dietary changes alone.[36] In other words, removing sugary foods made children smarter! Much of this change in learning ability, however, has to do with changed behavior in the classroom and during their studies as a result of removing the excess sugar in their diet. It should be noted that today, sugar intake in children and teens is much higher than it once was. A corresponding spike in behavioral problems and dropout rates should trouble concerned parents who see that diet is important to their children’s future.
Schoenthaler continued his work by studying thousands of juvenile delinquents on junk-food-free diets. The removal of these sugary foods always resulted in the same end product: an observed dramatic improvement in mood and behavior.[37]With regard to sugar intake in particular, Schoenthaler worked with the Los Angeles Probation Department Diet-Behavior Program and observed 1,382 incarcerated delinquents at three juvenile detention halls. When trying a low sucrose diet, these young delinquents showed an averaged 44% drop in antisocial behavior. The greatest reductions, however, were seen in particular groups: repeat offenders (86% drop in antisocial behavior), narcotics offenders (72%), rape offenders (62%), burglars (59%), murderers (47%) and assault offenders (43%).[38]
The second part of his study followed 289 juvenile delinquents at three juvenile rehabilitation camps. They exhibited a 54% reduction in antisocial behavior after sugar consumption was reduced. A similar Alabama Diet Behavior study by Schoenthaler observed 488 incarcerated delinquents for 22 months. The decline in antisocial behavior resulting from reduction in sugar consumption ranged from a low of 17% to a high of 53% (an average of 45%) depending upon gender, race and type of offender.[39] Schoenthaler’s work with juvenile delinquents and sugar intake offers up pretty unflattering evidence of the effect a sugary diet has on children’s behavior. As we often think about the effects of drug abuse on teen delinquency, it may be time we begin to consider what our kids are snacking on as well.
The sugar industry usually cites four very small-scale studies to deny any link between consumption of sugar by children and hyperactivity.[40] Although there were many flaws in those studies, the conclusions are used to suppress any objections to the increasing amount of sugar in children’s diets. Problems with these studies included a number of issues that weaken their claims. For instance, the amount of sugar used was too small to warrant a reaction, the size of the trial was very small, the observation times were short, the control group was denied a nutritious alternative to sugar, and artificial sweeteners—which had their own unmeasured effects—were used as the placebo controls.
One of the sugar industry’s favorite studies used an average of only 65 grams (13 teaspoons) of sugar daily for a trial group of 21 persons.[41] This is the average amount of sugar in a single ten-ounce can of soft drink. A milkshake alone has 30 teaspoons of sugar, and a sugar-loaded birthday party can net a child as much as100 teaspoons of sugar within several hours. If one were going to measure the overall effect of too much sugar on children, you would think a researcher would start at a higher rate. Some researchers have calculated that a growing pre-teen may consume on average as much as 50 teaspoons of sugar a day, far more than the meager 13 teaspoons used in the study. A clinical study based on giving children only 13 teaspoons of sugar, or about 25% of their normal daily consumption of sugar, should not have produced any appreciable results. Once the study was finished it hadn’t. Yet, by giving the children less sugar than they usually absorb in a day, this study concluded that the mothers of these children were wrong in saying their children were hyperactive as a result of the sugar they consumed.
Further, in the four central studies most often quoted by sugar promoters, the trial sizes were quite small, using only 10 to 30 children, and [researchers] followed them only for a period of a few hours. In contrast, in one of Schoenthaler’s studies, 800,000 schoolchildren were studied over a greater length of time. In six of his other studies, 5,000 juvenile delinquents were studied.[42] Schauss, in two studies, examined over 2,000 juvenile delinquents.[43] As anyone who has followed political polling or any other type of statistics knows, you get closer to the facts when you survey the greatest number.
It is important to note that the more trustable studies performed by Schoenthaler and Schauss both showed how diets high in sugar can lead to juvenile delinquency and behavioral problems in children. Their studies were also conducted over a period of several years, not just a few hours as was the case with some of the “pro-sugar” studies. For instance, Behar’s pro-sugar study gave 21 males their 13-teaspoon sugar drink and observed them for only five hours on three mornings. Wolraich observed his 32 hyperactive school-age boys for only three hours before concluding that consumption of sugar has no effect on human behavior.[44]
Other criticisms of the pro-sugar studies include that there were usually no controls on the childrens’ normal diets. Thus, the studies were performed with children who were told not to eat any breakfast in the morning. They would then go to school where they would be given a sugared drink and then tested for changes in behavior. Yet, for these children, the drink was equivalent to their missing breakfast, and would therefore not necessarily cause any changes in behavior.
As we can see, there is a general consensus among studies championed by the sugar industry: children’s behavior is unaffected by sugar. But there is an opposite consensus among researchers unassociated with the sugar industry and its lobby. That consensus holds that sugar does have an effect on children, causing behavioral problems that range from hyperactivity to delinquency. The best choice is a diet that removes unnecessary sugar and processed foods, one which has no negative effect on children’s behavior and creates a positive effect of lifetime health.
Sugar and Dental Caries
Studies have repeatedly confirmed that sugar causes dental caries—the cause of tooth decay and cavities. Dr. A. Sheiham, a professor of epidemiology and public health, found that sugars, particularly sucrose, are the most important dietary cause of dental caries. Both the frequency of consumption and the total amount of sugars are important factors that cause caries. The evidence establishing sugars as a cause of dental caries is overwhelming, with the foundation in the multiplicity of studies rather than the power of any one. In fact, we take it as a rule of thumb that sugar is bad for our teeth.
According to Sheiham, the intake of sugar beyond four times a day leads to an increased risk of dental caries. Further, sugars above 60 grams per person per day increases the rate of dental caries. Sheiham concludes that the main strategy to further reduce the levels of dental caries is to reduce the frequency of sugars in the diet.[45]
Jones, et al., studied over 6,000 fourteen-year-olds to examine the association between the consumption of different drinks and dental caries. The study concluded that consumption of sugary and carbonated drinks was associated with significantly higher levels of dental caries. Drinking unsweetened tea was associated with lower levels of caries.[46] A host of other studies establish that the consumption of sugar significantly increases the incidence of dental caries, tooth decay and cavities.[47]
As we age, our teeth often become weak from a lifetime of sugar damage, calcium depletion and wear. Dental bills stack up. Painful cavities can be ignored and grow worse. The best way to keep from causing all this unnecessary damage is to remove excess sugar from the diet and focus your meals on nutrient-rich foods.
Sugar and the Immune System
As discussed in other chapters of Sugar Busters!, the immune system—though often overlooked when we consider our health—is one of the most important layers of our body’s interconnected structure. The better our immune system, the better so many other systems. That’s why so much of the advice in Sugar Busters! is aimed at bringing optimal health to the immune system: by keeping away from hormone-treated meats, pesticides, and other toxins.
Several studies confirm a strong link between a high consumption of sugar and the suppression of the body’s immune system. For instance, in one study, 10 healthy people were assessed for fasting blood-glucose levels and the phagocytic index of neutrophils, which measures immune-cell ability to envelop and destroy invaders such as cancer. Eating 100 grams (24 teaspoons) of carbohydrates from glucose, sucrose, honey and orange juice all significantly decreased the capacity of neutrophils to engulf bacteria; the neutrophils became “paralyzed.” Complex carbohydrates from starch, on the other hand, did not have this effect.[48] More recently, Yabunaka found that sugar caused an increase in a protein that inhibits macrophage activity.[49] This also weakens the immune system’s ability to function. Elevated levels of blood sugar have also been linked to bacterial invasion and infectious diseases, such as sepsis and vaginal candidiasis.[50] Overall, excessive sugar intake has been shown on many levels to deplete and weaken the immune system. As we know, overall health and a sense of well-being during the andropause and menopause stage depends heavily on one’s immune system functioning at its best.
Sugar and Obesity
Obesity in American children is becoming an epidemic. In December, 2001, The Journal of the American Medical Association presented a comprehensive national picture of weight trends among children over a twelve-year period. From 1986 to 1998, the number of overweight non-Hispanic white children doubled from 6% to 12%. Roughly one in five, or 20% of African-American and Hispanic children are overweight, a 120% increase during the 12-year study period.[51] Several other studies faithfully document that since 1995, there has been a dramatic rise in obesity in American children.[52] This is an alarming change in the overall health of our children, and will soon impact a growing number of adults with the negative effects obesity brings to middle age.
The relationship between increased sugar consumption and obesity in children is well documented in an abundance of recent studies. In the late 1990s, The Children’s Hospital of Boston and the Harvard School of Public Health conducted the first long-term study to examine the impact of soda and sugar-sweetened beverages on children’s body weight. The study involved 548 sixth and seventh graders over a 21-month period. During this time, 57 percent of the children increased their daily intake of soft drinks, and more than half of them by nearly a full serving. The results showed that the odds of becoming obese increased 1.6 times for each additional can of soft drink consumed above the daily average. According to government studies, soft drinks are the leading source of added sugars in the diet of young Americans. In a six-year period, soft drink consumption by adolescent males rose from 11.7 ounces per day to 19.3 ounces per day.[53]
More recently, Ludwig, et al., supported by Bellisle’s work, found that one daily soda increases the risk of obesity by 60%. He found that about 65% of adolescent girls and 74% of adolescent boys consume soft drinks daily. The amount of sugar added to the diet by soda is 36.2 grams (9 tsp) daily for adolescent girls and 57.7 grams (14 tsp) for boys. It was said that Ludwig’s was the first study of its kind in spite of the fact that the majority of American children have been consuming empty caloric sodas from an early age.[54]
Adult obesity is also at record levels. Researchers at the CDC report that in 2000, most Americans were overweight (more than 56%), nearly 20% of adults were obese, 7.3% had diabetes and about 3% were both obese and diabetic. They said that diabetes rates could be as high as 10% if undiagnosed cases are considered.[55] Whitaker surveyed 9,000 people over a 17-year period and found that more than 25% of American adults are obese in their 30s, and over 60% are overweight.[56] The total number of individuals that are morbidly obese (generally at least 100 lbs overweight) rose from 0.78% in 1990 to 2.2% in 2000.[1] Dr. Mokdad, a researcher of obesity, cautions that, “Obesity continues to increase rapidly in the United States.” To alter these trends, Dr. Mokdad argues that “strategies and programs for weight maintenance as well as weight reduction must become a higher public health priority.”[57]
Another group of researchers found that “there are existing data on the metabolic and endocrine effects of dietary fructose that suggest that increased consumption of fructose may be detrimental in terms of body weight and adiposity and the metabolic indexes associated with the insulin resistance syndrome.”[58] In other words, high consumption of sugar has an indelible effect on weight gain and obesity.
The medical authors of Sugar Busters! summarize how increased sugar in the blood causes increased secretions of insulin, which leads to obesity:
Carbohydrates are broken down to glucose (sugar) in our body, and the glucose raises our blood sugar. Insulin is then secreted by the pancreas to lower our blood sugar, but in the process, insulin causes the storage of fat and also increases cholesterol levels. Insulin also inhibits the mobilization of (loss of) previously stored fat.[59]
According to Public Health Journal, obesity raises the risk of heart disease, osteoarthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure and certain types of cancer.[60] Researchers have shown that hypertension, Type 2 diabetes mellitus (80% are obese), gallbladder disease, hyperlipidemia, and sleep apnea are other complications of obesity. Other risks include coronary artery disease, knee osteoarthritis, gout, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, colon cancer, and low back pain.[61]
Sugar and Diabetes
Various anthropological studies have demonstrated that upon the introduction of refined sugar to a culture, the incidence of diabetes increases after a latent period of about 20 years. According to T.L. Cleave, author of The Saccharine Disease, the “virtual absence of diabetes in primitive communities who live on complex carbohydrates such as various grains and tubers compared with populations eating carbohydrates which are refined is anthropological proof that sugar is a leading cause of diabetes.”[62] But as we know, the link between too much sugar and diabetes is another of those rules of thumb. Yet, like sugar’s effect on dental health, we tend to ignore this shared wisdom when confronted with sugary sweets.
Studies demonstrating the undeniable link between sugar consumption and diabetes are well documented. Salmeron, et al., at the Harvard School of Public Health examined the relationship between glycemic (i.e., sugar) diets, low fiber intake, and the risk of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. They found that diets with a high glycemic load and a low cereal fiber content increase risk of diabetes in women.[63] A host of additional studies demonstrate that sucrose added to the diet of laboratory animals or increased in the diet of healthy volunteers has been shown to be associated with impaired glucose tolerance, retinopathy and nephropathy, and reduced insulin sensitivity of the tissues.[64] These are all major factors of diabetes.
And now there is an increase in adult-onset diabetes in children. One in four extremely obese children under the age of 10 and one in five obese adolescents under the age of 18 in the US have impaired glucose tolerance—a precursor to type 2 or adult-onset diabetes, which increases the risk of heart disease, kidney failure, blindness and limb amputations. Adult onset diabetes is a chronic degenerative disease that is typically seen in people past the age of 60.[1] The fact that children are now suffering from this debilitative disease would have shocked health professionals a generation ago.
Obesity and diabetes are also causing birth defects that destroy a child’s chance of a normal life. Researchers studied 23,000 pregnant women and found that obese women who also have type 2 diabetes are three times more likely than non-obese non-diabetic women to have a baby with a birth defect, and seven times more likely of giving birth to a child with a craniofacial defect such as cleft palate, or abnormal limb development. Nearly 6% of all women with type 2 diabetes had babies with major defects, compared with 1.34% of women without diabetes.[65]
Socioeconomic Impact
Though it does not directly affect health, it is always good to know the facts behind the products we take for granted. Often, when we consider a product we may be ready to do without, finding out the moral costs of that product helps to solidify our decision. As with the moral problems raised by meat consumption, sugar has its own moral complications. The sugar industry has a long and sordid history of using both slave labor and child labor to harvest sugar, refine it, and bring it to market. In an October 17, 2001 article for Creative Loafing, senior editor John Sugg reported the current exploitation of child labor by the sugar industry:
While we’re talking sweet, take a hard look at your sugar bowl. Much of the sugar on American tables comes from the Dominican Republic. The Rev. Kirton recalls seeing cane-cutters, braceros, as young as 6 labor dawn-to-dusk shifts. And it’s not a Dominican company that works the children. ‘Those plantations were owned by Gulf & Western, the same people who make movies at Paramount studios,’ Kirton says. (In 1985, Gulf & Western sold its 240,000 acres of plantations—along with a posh resort—to the politically powerful Fanjul family of Palm Beach. That clan is often accused of widespread abuses of labor in its fields in the Everglades, so it is unlikely to have improved conditions in the Dominican Republic.)[66]
The sugar industry was also one of the largest exploiters of slave labor. The University of Calgary, in its applied history tutorial “The Sugar and Slave Trades,” provides a concise review of sugar production’s historical origins:
Sugar cane cultivation had its origins in Southwest Asia. From there it was carried to Persia and then to the eastern Mediterranean by Arab conquerors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Shortly after sugar cane’s introduction to the Mediterranean, it was being grown on estates similar to the later plantations of the Americas. By the fourteenth century Cyprus became a major producer using the labor of Syrian and Arab slaves. Eventually sugar made its way to Sicily where a familiar pattern of enslaved or coerced labor, relatively large land units, and well-developed long-range commerce was established. The Portuguese and the Spanish both looked to Sicily as a model to be followed in their own colonies in the Atlantic, and in 1420 Prince Henry sent to Sicily for cane plantings and experienced sugar technicians.
An innovation in sugar production, the roller mill, was introduced to the Mediterranean (perhaps by the Sicilians) and the Atlantic Islands in the fifteenth century. The roller mill reduced the time and labor needed to prepare the sugar cane, thereby increasing the mill’s capacity. It was this technology, combined with the system of production developed in the Mediterranean, which was transplanted and expanded to the Atlantic Islands. The final component necessary for the industry’s growth was satisfying its requirement of a large labor force. The solution was the incorporation of African slaves.[67]
Herbert Klein, in his book African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (1990), traces the history of the sugar industry and compares it to other exploiters of African and indigenous Indian slavery:
Once we enter the more familiar history of the “Atlantic Islands”, sugar and slavery become the economic foundation for European imperialism, even more so than the cotton and tobacco industries. Before the cotton and tobacco plantations there was the sugar industry in Brazil. When the Dutch became the direct competitors of their former Brazilian partners in 1630, their first step was to deny Brazil access to its sources of African slaves because slavery was the pivotal component of the sugar industry. So much so, that the Brazilians were forced to enslave the indigenous Indian populations of the interior regions of Brazil. Dutch Brazil then became “the source for the tools, techniques, credit and slaves which would carry the sugar revolution into the West Indies, thereby eliminating Brazil’s monopoly position in European markets and leading to the creation of wealthy new American colonies for France and England.[68]
According to Klein, by the 1650s, with the decline in Brazilian production, the Dutch were forced to bring their slaves and sugar-milling equipment to the French and British settlers in the Caribbean. When the Dutch themselves migrated to the Caribbean, the sugar plantation system took hold on the islands and by the 1670s sugar became a larger commercial operation than tobacco and indigo. The accompanying slave trade led to a declining population of indentured whites and soon blacks outnumbered whites on Barbados for the first time. By 1700 every year saw the arrival of at least 1,300 black slaves and Barbados, with 50,000 slaves, became the most densely populated region in the Americas.[69]
Kretchmer and Hollenbeck, authors of Sugars and Sweeteners (1991), estimate that in the four centuries prior to the abolition of slavery, the transport of slaves involved 22 million people, 12 million of whom were utilized in the Americas. The remainder died on board ship or shortly after arrival. Further, “a number of historians state that sugar was responsible for 70% of the traffic of slavery.”[70] The critical historical role that slavery played in the development of the sugar industry in the Americas has also been well established in several other scholarly volumes on the subject.[71]
Kevin Bales noted in his book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (2001), that even today, large amounts of slave labor exists in Africa, Asia, Pakistan, Brazil, and the Caribbean, among other places. As a result of globalization and the international commodities markets, products tainted with slavery are being broadly distributed throughout the world. According to Bales, “Maybe 40 percent of the world’s chocolate is tainted with slavery. The same is true of steel, sugar, tobacco products, jewelry – the list goes on and on. Thanks to the global economy, these slave-produced products move smoothly around the globe.”[72] Banes points out that the global market in commodities, such as cocoa and sugar, functions as a money-laundering machine. Cocoa, for instance, coming out of West Africa and entering the world market almost immediately loses its ‘label.’ If you’re a buyer for a candy maker, you don’t say, ‘I’d like to buy six tons of Ghanaian cocoa.’ You just say you want six tons of cocoa. When the cocoa is delivered to your factory, you can’t tell where it’s from, so you may be passing on a slave-tainted product without knowing, and consumers will buy it without knowing. The same is true of sugar and other commodities, where the source is not easily identifiable.[73]
Peter Cox in the New Internationalist (November, 1998) asked the question, “Slavery on sugar plantations is a thing of the past. Or is it?” Cox’s investigation revealed the following:
‘We suffered all kinds of punishment,’ one witness told the Brazilian Justice Ministry. ‘We were hit with rifle butts, kicked and punched. I tried to escape, so did my uncle. He was shot and killed by farm gunslingers.’
The word is peonage – a vicious system of forced labor, common in many parts of Latin America, Asia and even in the southern US. A recruiter entices the poor and the homeless with promises of employment, good wages, food and shelter. Then they are trucked long distances to toil on remote plantations where they are held prisoner and compelled to work at gunpoint. The victims aren’t paid cash—they receive notional ‘credits,’ which are offset by extortionate charges for the tools they use and the hammocks they sleep in.
‘Life for these people is worse now than it was under slavery,’ says Wilson Furtado, of the agriculture federation in Bahia state, Brazil. ‘Then the owners had some capital tied up in their slaves so it cost them if one died, but now they lose nothing.’ No matter how hard the victims work – cutting sugar cane or felling trees—they can never break even. A loaded rifle keeps them in line, but it’s debt that keeps them working.[74]
However, Cox points out an irony for those countries relying on sugar as a cash crop while the sugar industry focuses on more research and development into artificial sweeteners. According to Cox, the plight of non-Western nations whose economies are dependent on cash crops such as sugar is identical to the position of the victims of peonage. Both are held to economic ransom by a system that ensures they can never free themselves of debt – no matter how hard they try. The more they produce, the more indebted they become. In 1981 the Dominican Republic earned $513 million from its sugar exports, yet by 1993 its income had dropped almost by half—to $263 million, despite increasing its production by 84,000 tons. This disastrous decline in income saw the Dominican Republic’s debt swell from $600 million in 1973 to a staggering $2.4 billion in 1983. And not only sugar producers are crippled: plummeting prices for commodities in general have impoverished many Third World economies, leading to widespread starvation.[75]
Cox also investigated how one of the richest islands of the Philippines could become the setting for another Ethiopia-type famine, where an estimated 85,000 Philippine children under six were suffering from moderate or severe malnutrition. Partly, according to Cox, this was because the corrupt Marcos regime mismanaged the industry. Also, the U.S. market for Philippine sugar had disappeared (being replaced by corn syrup), throwing a quarter of a million sugar workers out of their jobs. And the land—rich and fertile—was exclusively used for sugar cane which prevented self-sufficiency in food production. Cox concludes that a disaster was waiting to happen.[76] Quite a few other authors have documented exploitations of modern slavery, and its variants, by the sugar industry.[77]
Sugar and the Environment
Sugar production also causes stress on our natural environment. As cash-crop economies vainly struggle to repay their debts environmental devastation becomes another consequence of the modern sugar industry. In 1997, American University in Washington, D.C. issued a special-case study on the environmental consequences of the sugar industry on the environment of the Philippines:
The relationship between sugar production and environmental damage is found in deforestation, soil erosion, and consequent bio-diversity loss caused by forest conversion to sugar cane field. Forest clearing caused widespread soil erosion and had a devastating effect on the ecology, wiping out a third to a half of the known species of snail and birds in the Philippines.
In the overall Philippines, cultivated upland areas increased from 582,000 hectares in 1960 to over 3.9 million hectares in 1987. Soil erosion was estimated at about 122 to 210 tons per hectare annually for newly established pasture, compared to less than 2 tons per hectare for land under forest cover. Forest cover declined from 50 percent of the national territory in 1970 to less than 21 percent in 1987.[78]
The deforestation rate of the Philippines, driven in large part by the sugar industry, is now pegged at 25 hectares an hour or 219,000 hectares a year. Experts say the country can expect its forests to be gone in less than 40 years.[79]
The Multinational Corporations
Quite a few large multinational companies are invested in the sugar industry. One example, explored by Daniel Hellinger and Dennis Brooks in their book The Democratic Façade (1991), is Gulf and Western. They write:
Gulf+Western came to the Dominican Republic in 1966, two years after an invasion by U.S. Marines. Aided by major tax concessions granted by President Balaguer to foreign investors, economic penetration of the country quickly followed U.S. military and political intervention. With loans from Chase Manhattan Bank, Gulf+Western gained a foothold in the island’s economy with its purchase of the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company. By 1976, its investment had grown to $300 million in sugar, meat, citrus, tourism, and tobacco. Other transnational corporations also operated in the Dominican Republic, but Gulf+Western dominated the economy as the country’s largest landowner, employer, and exporter. Because the yearly revenues of Gulf+Western were greater than the Dominican Republic’s Gross National Product, it could accurately be called ‘a state within a state.’
Immediately on entering the country, Gulf+Western broke the sugarcane workers’ union, SindicatoUnido. Denouncing the union as communist controlled, the corporation fired the entire union leadership, annulled its contracts, and sent in police to occupy the plant while the American Institute for Free Labor Development (an agency financed in part by the CIA) formed a new union that obtained immediate acceptance from the Dominican president. The possibility of free unions on Gulf’s sugar plantations disappeared (along with dozens of labor leaders), with the result that of the country’s 20,000 cane cutters, only one out of ten is Dominican. Most of the cane workers are Haitian immigrants paid $1.50 to $3.00 a day to do what Dominicans call ‘slave work.”[80]
Hellinger and Brooks also describe how Gulf+Western set up the first of the industrial free zones that thrive in the Dominican Republic. Often called ‘runaway shops’ (because businesses relocate there from U.S. communities) or ‘export platforms,’ such zones offer a low-wage labor force, government subsidies, and freedom from taxes and environmental regulations. Unions are not permitted in these zones, and so in the mid-1980s, 22,000 workers earned an average of 65 cents per hour working in factories surrounded by barbed wire and security guards. Dominican Law 299 grants corporations a 100 percent exemption from Dominican taxes and also provides them with a 70 percent government subsidy of plant construction costs to set up business in the zones. Bestform, Esmark, Milton Bradley, Ideal Toys, Fisher Price, and North American Phillips are among the U.S. corporations that take advantage of the free zones to assemble and manufacture their products for export back to the United States.[81]
Conclusion
Excess sugar ingestion is rampant in today’s society. We are eating sugar in foods that don’t even warrant sweeteners. Sugary drinks and candies thrive in the business world. But this excess sugar has saddled us with alarming health risks like obesity and diabetes. The sugar industry, with its carelessness for workers and the environment, cannot be trusted to tell us the facts about the health of their product. But that doesn’t stop them from pushing to assure us that constant sugar ingestion is just a part of life.
The truth is, all this sugar doesn’t have to be a part of our everyday life. We can dump sugary products and take up a diet focused on nutrient-rich natural foods. Diets centered on vegetables, legumes and whole grains provide everything a body needs for optimal health, and helps to suppress the addictive desire for sweets. The best choice for those moving into the andropause and menopause stage of life is to drop sugar and pick up healthy alternatives to ensure a long and happy life.
Notes
[1]“Sugar Consumption at a crossroads.”Credit Suisse Research and Analytics. https://doc.research-and-analytics.csfb.com/docView?language=ENG&source=ulg&format=PDF&document_id=1022457401&serialid=atRE31ByPkIjEXa/p3AyptOvIGdxTK833tLZ1E7AwlQ= (accessed January 14, 2014).
[3]“Is sugar toxic? – CBS News.”Breaking News Headlines: Business, Entertainment & World News – CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57407294/is-sugar-toxic/?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody (accessed April 2, 2012).
[4]Wexler, Alexandra . “Sugar companies get generous taxpayer bailouts.” MSNMoney. http://money.msn.com/investing/post–sugar-companies-get-generous-taxpayer-bailouts (accessed January 23, 2014).
[5]Farago, Alan. “Killer Fact: 30-40 Percent of Health Care Spending in the U.S. Is Tied to Excess Sugar Consumption.” Alternet. http://www.alternet.org/food/killer-politics-big-sugar?page=0%2C1 (accessed January 23, 2014).
[6]Basu S, Yoffe P, Hills N, Lustig RH (2013) The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data. PLoS ONE 8(2): e57873. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057873
[7]Bittman , Mark. “It’s the Sugar, Folks.” Opinionator Its the Sugar Folks Comments. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/its-the-sugar-folks/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 (accessed January 28, 2014).
[8]Lustig, Robert H, et al. “http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7383/full/482027a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG.” Nature 482, no. 27-29 (2012). http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v482/n7383/full/482027a.html?WT.mc_id=FBK_NPG (accessed November 12, 2013).
[9]Stanhope KL, Bremer AA, Medici V, et al. Consumption of fructose and high fructose corn syrup increase postprandial triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol, and apolipoprotein-B in young men and women [published online August 17, 2011]. Journal of EndocrinMetab. 2011;96(10): E1596-E1605. – See more at: http://www.ajmc.com/publications/evidence-based-diabetes-management/2013/2013-1-vol19-sp7/Does-Sugar-Cause-Cardiometabolic-Disease-Stanhope-Reviews-the-Evidence#sthash.TsuUIIyW.dpuf
[10]“Sugar-sweetened drinks linked to increased risk of heart disease in men, study suggests.” Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120312162744.htm (accessed April 2, 2012).
[11]“Research offers insight to how fructose causes obesity and other illness.” Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120227152723.htm (accessed April 2, 2012)
[12]R. Agrawal, F. Gomez-Pinilla. ‘Metabolic syndrome’ in the brain: deficiency in omega-3 fatty acid exacerbates dysfunctions in insulin receptor signaling and cognition. The Journal of Physiology, 2012; 590 (10): 2485 DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2012.230078
[13]Trivedi, Bijal. “Food for thought: Eat your way to dementia.” New Scientist 3 Sept. 2012: n. pag.http://www.newscientist.com. Web. 19 Sept. 2012.
[14]Howard, B.V. and J. Wylie-Rosett. Sugar and cardiovascular disease: A statement for healthcare professionals from the Committee on Nutrition of the Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Metabolism of the American Heart Association. Circulation 2002 Jul 23;106(4):523-7. American Heart Association Report at: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/106/4/523.
[15]Walton, Alice. “How Much Sugar Are Americans Eating? [Infographic].” Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2012/08/30/how-much-sugar-are-americans-eating-infographic/ (accessed January 29, 2014).
[16]Steward, H.L., M. Bethea, MD, S. Andrews, MD, and L. Blart, MD, Sugar Busters!, Sugar Busters LLC, 1995
[17]Melnick, Meredith. “American Soda Consumption: Half Of Us Drink It Everyday, Study Says.” The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/half-of-americans-drink-soda-everyday-consumption_n_1699540.html#slide=1074464 (accessed January 29, 2014).
[18]“Soft Drinks Undermining Americans’ Health.” CPSI. http://www.cspinet.org/new/soda_10_21_98.htm (accessed January 29, 2014).
[19]Lord, R. Agricultural Outlook Forum Tuesday, February 24, 1998. U.S. SUGAR OUTLOOK, Ron Lord Agricultural Economist, USDA.http://jan.mannlib.cornell.edu/reports/erssor/specialty/sss-bb/1998/sss223f.asc
[21]Colantuoni. C., et al. Evidence that intermittent, excessive sugar intake causes endogenous opioid dependence. Obes Res 2002 Jun 10(6):478-88.
[22]See, e.g., Grimm, J.W., et al. Effect of cocaine and sucrose withdrawal period on extinction behavior, cue-induced reinstatement, and protein levels of the dopamine transporter and tyrosine hydroxylase in limbic and cortical areas in rats, BehavPharmacol 2002 Sep 13(5-6):379-88; Frisina, P. and A. Sclafani. Naltrexone suppresses the late but not early licking response to a palatable sweet solution: opioid hedonic hypothesis reconsidered. PharmacolBiochemBehav, 2002 Dec 74(1):163l; Levine, A.S., et al. Naltrexone infusion inhibits the development of preference for a high-sucrose diet. Am J PhysiolRegulIntegr Comp Physiol 2002 Nov 283(5):R1149-54. Pecoraro, N., et al. Brief access to sucrose engages food-entrainable rhythms in food-deprived rats. BehavNeurosci 2002 Oct 116(5):757-76. Bartley, G. Neural systems for reinforcement and inhibition of behavior: relevance to eating, addiction, and depression. Well-being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology 1999 pp. 558-572. Matthews, D.B., etal. Effects of sweetened ethanol solutions on ethanol self-administration and blood ethanol levels.PharmacolBiochemBehav 2001 Jan 68(1):13-21. Rogowski, A. et al. Sucrose self-administration predicts only initial phase of ethanol-reinforced behaviour in wistar rats. Alcohol 2002 Sep-Oct 37(5) 436-40. Olson, G.A., et al. Naloxone and fluid consumption in rats: dose-response relationships for 15 days. PharmacolBiochemBehav 1985 Dec, 23(6):1065-8. Cichelli, M., and M. Lewis.Naloxone nonselective suppression of drinking of ethanol, sucrose, saccharin, and water by rats.PharmacolBiochemBehav 2002 Jun 72(3):699. Files, F.J., et al. Sucrose, ethanol, and sucrose/ethanol reinforced responding under variable-interval schedules of reinforcement. Alcohol ClinExp Res 1995 Oct 19(5):1271-8. Czachowski, C.L., Independent ethanol- and sucrose-maintained responding on a multiple schedule of reinforcement. Alcohol ClinExp Res 1999 Mar 23(3):398-403.
[23]Melton, L. AGE breakers, Rupturing the body’s sugar-protein bonds might turn back the clock. Sci Am. 2000 Jul 283(1):16. See also. Cerami, A., H. Vlassara, and M. Brownlee.Glucose and Aging. Scientific American May 1987: 90.
[24]Anderson, G.H., et al. Inverse association between the effect of carbohydrates on blood glucose and subsequent short-term food intake in young men. Am J ClinNutr 2002 Nov 76(5):1023-30.
[27]Seeley, S. Diet and breast cancer: the possible connection with sugar consumption. Med Hypotheses 1983 Jul 11(3):319-27.
[28]Moerman, C.J., et al. Dietary sugar intake in the aetiology of biliary tract cancer. Int J Epidemiol 1993 Apr 22(2):207-14.
[29]Michaud, D.S., et al. Physical activity, obesity, height, and the risk of pancreatic cancer. JAMA 2001 Aug 22-29 286(8):921-9.
[30]Michaud, D.S., et al. Dietary sugar, glycemic load, and pancreatic cancer risk in a prospective study. J Natl Cancer Inst 2002 Sep 4 94(17):1293-300.
[31]Burfoot, A. Sugar and cardiovascular disease, and other health issues. Runner’s World Website, 2003; http://www.runnersworld.com/home/0,1300,1-53-84-3623,00.html. The American Heart Association Report “Sugar and Cardiovascular Disease” is located athttp://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/106/4/523.
[32]Rostler, S. Excess blood sugar may boost free radical production. Atkins Diet & Low Carbohydrate Website 2000.
[33]See Mohanty, P., et al. Glucose challenge stimulates reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation by leucocytes. J ClinEndocrinolMetab 2000 Aug;85(8):2970-3. Hoogwerf, B.J., et al. Blood glucose concentrations < or = 125 mg/dl and coronary heart disease risk. Am J Cardiol 2002 Mar 1;89(5):596-9. Norhammar, A., et al. Glucose metabolism in patients with acute myocardial infarction and no previous diagnosis of diabetes mellitus: a prospective study. Lancet 2002 Jun 22;359(9324):2140-4. McGill Jr., H.C., et al. Obesity accelerates the progression of coronary atherosclerosis in young men; Circulation 2002 Jun 11;105(23):2712-8. Ziccardi, P., et al. Reduction of inflammatory cytokine concentrations and improvement of endothelial functions in obese women after weight loss over one year. Circulation 2002 Feb 19;105(7):804-9.
[34]World Health Organization Press Release, March 3, 2003, “WHO/FAO release independent Expert Report on diet and chronic disease.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/releases/2003/pr20/en/
[35]Crook, W., Sugar and children’s behavior. New England Journal of Medicine 1994 June 30;330(26):1901-1904.
[36]Schoenthaler, S., et al.The Impact of Low Food Additive and Sucrose Diet on Academic Performance in 803 New York City Public Schools. l986, Int J Biosocial Res 8:2.
[37]Schoenthaler, S., Detention Home Double-Blind Study: Sugar Goes on Trial. Int J Biosocial Res l982 3(1):1-9. Schoenthaler, S., Northern California Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Examination of 3,000 Incarcerated Juveniles in Stanislaus County Juvenile Hall. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):99-108.
[38]Schoenthaler, S., Detention Home Double-Blind Study: Sugar Goes on Trial. Int J Biosocial Res l982 3(1):1-9. Schoenthaler, S., Northern California Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Examination of 3,000 Incarcerated Juveniles in Stanislaus County Juvenile Hall. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):99-108
[39]Schoenthaler, S. The Los Angeles Probation Department Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Analysis of Six Institutional Settings. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):88-89. Schoenthaler, S. Alabama Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Evaluation at Coosa Valley Regional Detention Center. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):78-87.
[40]See, e.g., Aylsworth, J. Sugar and Hyperactivity.Winter l990 Priorities; 31-33. Behar, D., et al. Diet and Hyperactivity.NutrBehav l984; 1:279-288. Rapoport, J.L., et al. Behavioral Response to Sweeteners in Preschool Children. Presented at the International Conference on Nutrients and Brain Function, Scottsdale, Arizona, Feb 12, l986. Originally published in American Journal of Psychiatry, November 1987, Vol. 144, No. 11;http://www.cmer.org/class/articles/sugar1.html. Prinz, R.. et al. Associations Between Nutrition and Behavior in 5-Year-Old Children. May l986 Nutr Rev. Rapoport, J. Diet and Hyperactivity.May l989 Nutr Rev Supp 158-161.
[42]Schoenthaler, S., et al.The Impact of Low Food Additive and Sucrose Diet on Academic Performance in 803 New York City Public Schools. l986, Int J Biosocial Res. 8:2. Schoenthaler, S. Detention Home Double-Blind Study: Sugar Goes on Trial. l985, Int J. Biosocial Res 3(1):1-9. Schoenthaler, S. Types of Offenses Which Can be Reduced in an Institutional Setting Using Nutritional Intervention: A Preliminary Empirical Evaluation. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 4(2):74-84.
[43]Schoenthaler, S., The Los Angeles Probation Department Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Analysis of Six Institutional Settings. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):88-89. Schoenthaler, S. Alabama Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Evaluation at Coosa Valley Regional Detention Center. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):78-87. Schoenthaler, S. Northern California Diet-Behavior Program: An Empirical Examination of 3,000 Incarcerated Juveniles in Stanislaus County Juvenile Hall. l983, Int J Biosocial Res. 5(2):99-108. Schoenthaler, S. The Effects of Citrus on the Treatment and Control of Antisocial Behavior: A Double-Blind Study of an Incarcerated Juvenile Population. l983, Int J Biosocial Res 5(2):107-17.Shauss, A., et al. Published in two parts with Simonsen and Bland-Simonsen J. A critical analysis of the diets of chronic juvenile offenders.Orthom Psychiatry l978 8(3):149-157, and l979 8(4):222-226. Shauss, A. Diet Crime and Delinquency; Parker House. Berkley, California. l981.
[44]See Graves, F., July-Aug l984: Common Cause, p 25. Wolraich, R., et al. J Pediatr; l985, 106:675-682.31. Schoenthaler, S. J., et al. The Impact of Low Food Additive and Sucrose Diet on Academic Performance in 803 New York City Public Schools.l986Int J Biosocial Res 8:2.
[46]Jones, C., K. Woods, G. Whittle, H. Worthington, and G. Taylor. Sugar, drinks, deprivation and dental caries in 14-year-old children in the northwest of England in 1995. Community Dent Health 1999 Jun 16(2):68-71.
[47]Parajas, I.L. Sugar content of commonly eaten snack foods of school children in relation to their dental health status. J Philipp Dent Assoc 1999 Jun-Aug 51(1):4-21. Rodrigues, C.S. and A. Sheiham, The relationships between dietary guidelines, sugar intake and caries in primary teeth in low income Brazilian 3-year-olds: a longitudinal study. Int J Paediatr Dent 2000 Mar;10(1):47-55. Huumonen, S. L. Tjaderhane, T. Backman, E.L. Hietala, E. Pekkala, and M. Larmas. High-sucrose diet reduces defensive reactions of the pulpo-dentinal complex to dentinal caries in young rats. ActaOdontolScand 2001 Apr;59(2):83-7. Spruill, W.T. PDA establishes position statement on cola contracts in schools. Pa Dent J (Harrisb) 2000 Sep-Oct;67(5):29-32. Johnson, R.K. and C. Frary. Choose beverages and foods to moderate your intake of sugars: the 2000 dietary guidelines for Americans–what’s all the fuss about? J Nutr 2001 Oct;131(10):2766S-2771S. Levine, R.S. Caries experience and bedtime consumption of sugar-sweetened food and drinks–a survey of 600 children. Community Dent Health 2001 Dec;18(4):228-31. Van Wyk, W., I. Stander, and I. Van Wyk. The dental health of 12-year-old children whose diets include canned fruit from local factories: an added risk for caries? SADJ 2001 Nov;56(11):533-7. Falco, M.A. The lifetime impact of sugar excess and nutrient depletion on oral health. Gen Dent 2001 Nov-Dec;49(6):591-5. Sayegh, A., E.L. Dini, R.D. Holt, and R. Bedi. Food and drink consumption, sociodemographic factors and dental caries in 4-5-year-old children in Amman, Jordan. Br Dent J. 2002 Jul 13;193(1):37-42. Nobre Dos Santos, M., L. Melo Dos Santos, S.B. Francisco, J.A. Cury. Relationship among Dental Plaque Composition, Daily Sugar Exposure and Caries in the Primary Dentition. Caries Res 2002 Sep-Oct;36(5):347-52.
[48]Sanchez, A., et al. Role of sugars in human neutrophilic phagocytosis. Am J ClinNutr 1973 Nov;26(11):1180-4.
[49]Yabunaka, N., et al. Elevated serum content of macrophage migration inhibitory factor in patients with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes Care 2000 Feb;23(2):256-8.
[50]See, Donders, G.G. Lower Genital Tract Infections in Diabetic Women. Curr Infect Dis Rep 2002 Dec;4(6):536-539.
[51]Strauss, R.S. and H.A. Pollack. Epidemic increase in childhood overweight, 1986-1998; JAMA 2001 Dec 12;286(22):2845-8.
[52]Troiano, R.P., et al. Overweight prevalence and trends for children and adolescents; The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, 1963 to 1991. Arch PediatrAdolesc Med 1995 Oct;149(10):1085-91. Melnik, T.A., et al. Overweight school children in New York City: prevalence estimates and characteristics. Int J ObesRelatMetabDisord 1998 Jan;22(1):7-13. Adair, L.S. and P. Gordon-Larsen.Maturational timing and overweight prevalence in US adolescent girls. Am J Public Health 2001 Apr;91(4):642-4. Styne, D.M. Childhood and adolescent obesity: Prevalence and significance. PediatrClin North Am 2001 Aug;48(4):823-54(vii). Strauss, R.S. and H.A. Pollack. Epidemic increase in childhood overweight, 1986-1998. JAMA 2001 Dec 12;286(22):2845-8. Ogden, C.L., et al. Prevalence and trends in overweight among US children and adolescents, 1999-2000. JAMA 2002 Oct 9;288(14):1728-32.
[53]Ludwig, D.S., K.E. Peterson, and S.L. Gortmaker. Relation between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and childhood obesity: a prospective, observational analysis. Lancet 2001 Feb 17;357(9255):505-8.
[54]Ludwig, D.S., K.E. Peterson, and S.L. Gortmaker. Relation between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and childhood obesity: a prospective, observational analysis. Lancet 2001 Feb 17;357(9255):505-8. Bellisle, F., et al. How sugar-containing drinks might increase adiposity in children. Lancet 2001 Feb 17;357(9255):490-1.
[55]Mokdad, A.H., et al. The continuing epidemics of obesity and diabetes in the United States. JAMA 2001 Sep 12;286(10):1195-200. Flegal, K.M., et al. Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults, 1999-2000. JAMA 2002 Oct 9;288(14):1723-7.
[56]Whitaker, R.C. Understanding the complex journey to obesity in early adulthood. Ann Intern Med 2002 Jun 18;136(12):923-5.
[57]Mokdad, A.H., et al. The spread of the obesity epidemic in the United States, 1991-1998. JAMA 1999 Oct 27;282(16):1519-22.
[58]Elliott, S.S., et al. Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome. Am J ClinNutr 2002 Nov;76(5):911-22.
[59]Steward, H.L., M. Bethea, MD, S. Andrews, MD, and L. Blart, MD, Sugar Busters!, Sugar Busters LLC, 1995, pp 34-35.
[63]Salmeron, J., et al. Dietary fiber, glycemic load, and risk of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in women. JAMA 1997 Feb 12;277(6):472-7.
[64]Cohen, A. M., et al. Experimental Models in Diabetes.In Sugars in Nutrition; San Francisco, Academic Press, l974, p 483-511. Storlien, L.H., et al. Effects of Sucrose vs. Starch Diets on in Vivo Insulin Action, Thermogenesis, and Obesity in Rats. l988, Am J ClinNutr 47:420-7. Levine, R. Monosaccharides in Health and Disease. l986, Ann Rev Nutr 6:221-24. Schusdziarra, et al. Effect of Solid and Liquid Carbohydrates Upon Postprandial Pancreatic Endocrine Function. l981, J ClinEndocrinolMetab 53:16-20. Bruckdorfer, K.R., et al. Insulin Sensitivity of Adipose Tissue of Rats Fed with Various Carbohydrates. l974, ProcNutrSci 33:3A. Wright, D., et al. Sucrose-Induced Insulin Resistance in the Rat: Moduclation by Exercise and Diet. l983, Am J ClinNutr 38:879-883. Reiser, S., etal. Serum Insulin and Glucose Insulinemic Subjects Fed Three Different Levels of Sucrose. Nov 1981 AM. J. Clin. Nutr. 34:2348.
[66] Sugg, J. “Suffer the Children, Tykes Toil to Fatten Corporate Coffers,” Creative Loafing, Atlanta, October 17, 2001;http://clatl.com/atlanta/suffer-the-children/Content?oid=1233833
[67]University of Calgary Applied History Research Group, The European Voyages of Exploration: The Sugar and Slave Trades, 1997.http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/Trade.html
[70]Kretchmer, Norman and Claire B. Hollenbeck.Sugars and Sweeteners, CRC Press, June 27, 1991, Preface, p v.
[71]See, e.g., the following. Beckles, H. “Sugar and Slavery, 1644-1692”, in H. Beckles, A History of Barbados from Amerindian Settlement to Nation State. Cambridge Univ. Press: Cambridge, 1990. Chardon, R.E. “Sugar Plantations in the Dominican Republic, 1770-1844”, Geographical Review, 74, 4 (1984). Curtin, P.D., “The Sugar Revolution and the Settlement of the Carribean”, in The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge Univ. Press: Cambridge, 1990. Dunn, R., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (1972).
[72]Jensen, D, “The New Slavery: an Interview with Kevin Bales,” © 2001, The Sun Magazine, Chapel Hill, NC, http://www.thesunmagazine.org/slavery.html.
[73]Jensen, D, “The New Slavery: an Interview with Kevin Bales,” © 2001, The Sun Magazine, Chapel Hill, NC, http://www.thesunmagazine.org/slavery.html.
[74]Cox, Peter, “Sweetness and plight: Slavery on sugar plantations is a thing of the past. Or is it?” New Internationalist Magazine, Oxford, England, Issue 189 (November 1988), http://www.newint.org/issue189/plight.htm
[77]See, e.g., Dr. Charles Jacobs, “Slavery: Worldwide Evil, From India to Indiana, more people are enslaved today than ever before,” © 2001 Abolish.com, the Anti-Slavery Portal, http://www.iabolish.com/today/background/worldwide-evil.htm.
[78]American University, TED Case Studies, “Philippine Sugar and Environment,” January 11, 1997, http://www.american.edu/TED/PHILSUG.HTM
[80]Hellinger, Daniel and Dennis Brooks.The Democratic Façade. Cole Publishing Co, 1991, p 233-241;http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy_America/Exporting_Facade_TDF.html
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US-NATO War Crimes against Libya
By Ludwig Watzal | Dissident Voice | January 25, 2014
All the wars and attacks, which were started by the U. S. and its so-called allies in the wake of 9/11, have wreaked havoc. You name it, you got it: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and perhaps even Iran. The Islamic Republic is not yet off the hook. There are strong forces in the U. S. and in the Middle East that prefer war to peace at the expense of the U. S. Right now, there is a war going on in Libya against the Western installed puppet government, without notice of the corporate media.
Cynthia McKinney, a former African-American Congresswoman has edited a book, The Illegal War on Libya (Clarity Press, Atlanta 2012), on the illegal war on Libya fought by NATO members with the support of the Arab League and some despotic Arab regimes. As a member of the Democratic Party, she served six terms in the House of Representatives before she was defeated by Denise Majette in the 2002 Democratic primary. McKinney’s loss was attributed to her support of Arab causes and to her suggestion that George W. Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
Those whom the Western powers and their fawning media wish to destroy must first be demonised. This was exactly what happened to Libya’s leader Muammar al Gaddafi. Just before France, Great Britain and the U.S. started the war against Libya, Nikolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi and other Western politicians courted Gaddafi. When the Libyan leader visited Paris in 2007, he struck his tent in front of the guest house of the French government. His bizarre conduct and much more were accepted by Sarkozy in order to promote lucrative business with Libya. A few years later, he rewarded him with and his country with a bombing spree.
As a candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Barack Hussein Obama had nice things to say in December 2007: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” After he became U.S. President, he expanded drone attacks to an unprecedented scale. “As the U.S. fires its drones killing innocent Somalis, Pakistanis, Yemenis, Afghanis, and others around the world, it is my hope that this book will provide a rare prism of truth through which to view NATO’s illegal war in Libya, current and future events, and US foreign relations as a whole,” so McKinney in her introductory remarks.
In her book, Cynthia McKinney has gathered a large number of renowned authors who offer an alternative perspective of the events in Libya. Some authors even risked their life by reporting live during the war. Among them are Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Julien Teil, Stephen Lendman, Christof Lehman, Sara Flounders, Wayne Madsen, Bob Fitrakis, and many others. All of them illuminate the dark machinations of the U.S. in Libya and elsewhere. Their narrative reminds the readers of the overthrow of the Iranian, Guatemalan or Chilean democracy by the U.S. for corporate benefit. The same apparently held true for Libya.
The essays in McKinney’s anthology describe the horrors caused by the Western bombing campaign and the distorted picture of the events painted by mainstream media. Lizzie Phelan refers to a “full blown media war” and to the silence of Western journalists while Libya was “being bombed into extermination.” Although they witnessed these horrors, they found “all manner of justifications for their self and collective delusion.” Their behavior reminded the author of the riddle: “If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?” The Western media pundits played down the horrendous crimes against the Libyan people by cartooning Gaddafi as a “mad dog.”
Stephen Lendman designated the crimes committed by NATO against Libya as amounting to “a Nuremberg Level.” He added: “The US-led NATO war on Libya will be remembered as one of history’s greatest crimes, violating the letter and spirit of international law and America’s Constitution.” Whereas the “Third Reich criminals were hanged for their crimes. America’s are still free to commit greater ones.” Lendman invokes General Wesley Clark who was told at the Pentagon a few days after 9/11, that the Bush administration had already decided to attack seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and finishing off with Iran. According to Lendman, the U.S. won’t tolerate democratic rule in Libya, for it needs a puppet regime that would follow the dictates of Washington. Beyond that, the U.S. generously used terror weapons in all its wars. Weapons of mass destruction, including depleted and enriched uranium munitions were widely used in the different Iraq wars, leading to miscarriages and severe deformities by newborn babies.
The anthology also reveals that Gaddafi bore no responsibility for the Lockerbie incident. Although he took the blame and had Libya pay millions of U.S. Dollars to the families of the victims in order to have sanctions lifted against his country, the west thanked him by overthrowing his regime. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya suggests that Libya’s main “crimes” – as seen by the West – were “how (Libya L.W.) distributed and used its wealth, its lack of external debts, and the key role it was attempting to play in continental development and curtailing of external influence in Africa. Tripoli was a spoiler that effectively undermined the interests of the former colonial powers.”
Already at the International Security Conference in Munich, 2007, then President of The Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, used the strongest possible language to warn the U.S., saying that “its aggressive expansionism has brought the world closer to a third world war than it has ever been before.” So far, Putin’s diplomacy prevented U.S. aggression against Syria and Iran.
The book contains, inter alia, a scathing speech by Gaddafi, delivered at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, 2009. A chronology of the NATO-led assault on Libya completes the book.
This book is a must-read. It gives its readers a premonition of things that are yet to come.
Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany. He runs the bilingual blog “Between the lines.” He can be reached at: www.watzal.com.
Exposing the complex system of Israel’s domination over Palestinians and Palestine
By Georgina Reeves | January 8, 2014
Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction – Nadia Abu-Zahra Adah Kay, Pluto Press, 2013
The opening lines of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem Bitaqat Hawiyyah (identity card) are a poignant reminder of reality for Palestinians throughout the world:
“Register me!
I am an Arab
And my identity card number is fifty thousand”
And it is most fitting that Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay quote these powerful words within the first few pages of their book, Unfree in Palestine: Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction.
Over the past few years’ there’s been a general increase in awareness of what’s happening in Palestine and Israel. The daily challenges of living under illegal occupation–the roadblocks and checkpoints, the ‘separation’ barrier, the illegal colonies, and the constant threat of violence, detention, abuse and attack from both the Israeli army and settlers–are far more visible and understood than ever before.
Activists and solidarity groups regularly visit, witnessing and experiencing the effects of the occupation. They return home to share what they’ve seen with others, helping to raise consciousness and understanding. But there is a hidden oppression, one only experienced by Palestinians, one that is rarely discussed but which has the most profound impact on them and them alone.
Whether they live inside Israel, within the West Bank and Gaza, or for the many millions more living in the Diaspora, Palestinians are at the mercy of complex systems that underpin their control and dispossession, and have done so since the 1930s. Unfree in Palestine meticulously exposes these systems to the reader, providing a detailed chronology of development, and the impact of the various methods used to control and strip Palestinians of any rights whatsoever. That this is all done in contravention of international law and United Nations resolutions that should provide protection to the Palestinian people is a potent reminder of the international community’s ongoing complicity in these crimes.
Unfree in Palestine may only be 183 pages long, but it packs quite a punch with its in-depth analysis and the unraveling of the many complex tactics and strategies used by Israel to dominate, dispossess, control and denationalize Palestinians. The authors have gone to great lengths to ensure their narrative provides a detailed explanation of not only of how the tactics are used against Palestinians, but also the irrevocable impact these tactics have. Included in the book are some harrowing testimonies of Palestinians who are constantly subject to harassment, violence, humiliation and detention, purely because of the system that is used to control them.
Despite such a complex subject, with many strands and layers, the authors have categorized the different aspects and impacts with great care. The book, naturally, starts with registration and denationalization: a process which began in the 1930s under the British Mandate but was subsequently used with deliberant intent from 1948 following the establishment of Israel as a state for Jews and not for its indigenous Arab population.
The book then concentrates on blacklisting, coercion and collaboration–all of which are used to devastating effect in Palestine. The impact of such tactics which, as well as serving an intelligence purpose for Israel’s security forces, also encourages mistrust and suspicion within Palestinian communities, causes great harm to individuals, and successfully prevents the natural development and progression of society as a whole.
The next chapter looks at movement restrictions and induced transfer from the post-1948 period, the efforts to control Palestinians within Israel, and the efforts to keep displaced Palestinians out. Palestinians who’d remained in what had become Israel were subject to martial law (until 1966) and extreme measures, such as curfews and military-issued permits to travel between one village and the next, were used to restrict and impede everyday existence. This system provided the blueprint for what was to come when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, following the Six-Day War.
The authors then bring us to the early 2000s, focusing on the direct social impacts of Israel’s mechanisms of control on healthcare and education in the occupied territories. These chapters in particular highlight the reality of day-to-day life under a military occupation. Health and education systems are on the verge of collapse, and access to services and centers delivery is severely obstructed. And there is the ever-present threat of personal danger in trying to access services. This has also created an environment in which there can be no effective development of the infrastructure or institutions to support health and education services serving Palestinians.
One of the most heartbreaking and distressing testimonies in the book concerns access to healthcare. Rula Ashtiya was in labor but soldiers refused her passage through Beit Furik checkpoint. She was forced to deliver in the dirt by the side of the road, with her husband helpless by her side, pleading with the soldiers in Hebrew: their baby died. This is not an isolated incident but the terrible reality that Palestinians have to face, alone.
The book is far from a cheery read, but the authors’ conclusions provide some hope for the future. Despite all the restrictions and control over their lives, Palestinians, inside and out, and with international support, continue to resist. They remind us that, while disempowered and denationalized, Palestinians are not immobilized. The fact that more people today than ever before know about the occupation of Palestine and are sympathetic to their plight tells us we must continue the struggle for justice and equality.
Through the belligerent and expansionist project of Zionism, which expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, a highly complex, bureaucratic and racist system has been established. It has one goal: to deny Palestinians any and all of their rights. There are those who say that much of what happened in 1948 (and subsequently) was not part of a determined Zionist intention to expel Palestinians, that in times of war or conflict bad things happen that are beyond anyone’s control. Unfree in Palestine exposes this for the myth that it is: if there was never a premeditated or orchestrated plan to dispossess Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants, then why was so much energy expended by the Zionists, even in the 1930s, to catalogue and record with meticulous precision personal details of the Arab population? And why was the subsequent population register used explicitly to force Palestinians from their homes and to prevent others from returning?
The aims of Zionism have always been to take as much land and expel as many Palestinians as possible to create a state based on ethnic and religious exclusivity. Of all the tools, tactics and efforts used by Israel to achieve this, the use of registration, documentation and the restriction of movement have proved to be the most effective. Almost six million Palestinians live as refugees in the Diaspora. In Israel there are more than 1.6 million, and almost 4.5 million live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All of them have more than a national identity in common: they have all been systematically stripped of their rights.
Unfree in Palestine is required reading for anyone who is genuinely interested in the struggle for Palestine and what it means to be Palestinian. It goes beyond the headlines, beyond the solidarity and beyond the activism. It shines an uncomfortable light onto the world in which Palestinians have been forced to exist: one in which they have no control, no rights and no redress.
It is perhaps hard for some of us–who through virtue of our place of birth have the right of access to a passport, a nationality and relative freedom–to realise what being Palestinian actually means. Personally I feel no particular national allegiance to the country in which I was born, but I do understand and appreciate the privilege I have that grants me freedom of movement and the protection of my rights. Palestinians are not so ‘lucky’. Once you’ve read this book you’ll better understand why you will never experience the occupation in the way a Palestinian does.
– Georgina Reeves splits her time between Bethlehem and London, and is a co-founding trustee of Ahdaf, a British organization working with Palestinian students to support youth empowerment and community development. Visit: http://georgie.ripserve.com.
Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
The United States and Iran
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008
It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.
The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. Despite its widespread use, the meaning of the expression is not crystal clear; different individuals have had different interpretations of “containment” of Iran and Iraq. For some, it has meant keeping the two countries militarily, economically, and politically in check. This was the case with Iraq between 1990-when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and United Nations sanctions were imposed on Iraq-and 2003-when the US invaded Iraq for the second time and occupied the country. In the case of Iraq, it was hoped initially that economic pressures through extensive United Nations sanctions, as well as some limited military actions, would create discontent and lead to “regime change.” But since sanctions did not result in the overthrow of Hussein, Iraq was not exactly contained. The 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq showed that containment could go beyond sanctions and limited military operations; it could involve outright invasion of a country to achieve the desired goals.
To this day, the US military adventure in Iraq has not been successful, and the future of Iraq and its government remains uncertain. In this sense, some may argue that Iraq has not been contained. But a few might disagree with this conclusion. For these individuals Iraq has already been contained, since the country has been economically ruined, militarily shattered, and politically disintegrated. For decades to come, Iraq will not be able to rise from the ashes and challenge the US and Israel; and this, in the opinion of these individuals, is a successful containment. Such a view might appear to be too cynical to be held by anyone. But, as I have argued in my book, the attitude of many US and Israeli officials toward the Iran-Iraq war indicates that this view did actually exist. Some American and Israeli officials wished to see Iran and Iraq destroy one another in a costly and protracted war. They helped to prolong the war and make sure that neither side had a decisive victory. The horrendous eight-year war, which resulted in a massive loss of human life and severe economic losses, was therefore viewed as a kind of containment. The same view of containment seems to exist today among many so-called neoconservatives who, after pushing for the Iraq invasion, show no remorse for the resulting carnage and advocate bombing Iran.
Whatever the interpretation of the dual containment of Iran and Iraq, one aspect of this policy has been to use war, or threats of war, to bring about the desired change. Another has been to rely on sanctions. US unilateral sanctions against Iran started shortly after the 1979 Revolution and continued throughout the Iran-Iraq war. In this period many of the imposed sanctions were intended to prevent Iran from winning the war against Hussein’s Iraq. But it was also hoped that sanctions would bring about popular dissatisfaction in Iran and result in the overthrow of the new government. Such sanctions continued and became even more intensified after the Iran-Iraq war, particularly in the 1990s. Yet, even though these sanctions did harm the Iranian economy, they did not bring about the intended “regime change.” The failure was attributed to the unilateral nature of these sanctions, and therefore multilateral sanctions, imposed through the United Nations, were sought. So far three such sanctions have been passed against Iran. Whether these sanctions will have the desired results and, eventually, would do to Iran what has been done to Iraq is hard to predict. But it is even harder to make any predictions about the future without knowing the past. It was in the spirit of documenting the history, in order to better understand the present and the future, that The United States and Iran Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment was written. An outline of the book is as follows.
The origin of the dual containment policy, as mentioned above, goes back to the Carter Administration. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that individuals within the Carter Administration, contrary to their denials, gave Hussein the green light to invade Iran and assisted him after the invasion. It was hoped that the war would not only lead to the resolution of the so-called hostage crisis, but that it might lead to the overthrow of the Iranian government and the restoration of the old order, where the Shah of Iran maintained a symbiotic relationship with the US and Israel. However, assisting Hussein in his war against Iran did not mean that the US was planning to establish a long-term relationship with him. Befriending Hussein was temporary; and while the US was helping the Iraqi government, the Israelis were selling arms to Iran with the full knowledge of the US. Indeed, the Carter Administration itself was considering the possibility of providing Iran with military spare parts as well. This was the beginning of the policy of dual containment, when the US, playing the role of a double agent, tried to make sure that neither side would achieve a decisive victory in the Iran-Iraq war.
The dual containment policy continued in the 1980s under the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Administrations. But while the US assisted Hussein covertly during the Carter period, it did so overtly during the Reagan Administration, despite the official US policy of remaining neutral in the war. The support also became more vigorous. US officials tried to prevent Iran from winning the war against Hussein by providing him with intelligence, weapons, and extension of credit. They also established full diplomatic relations with Hussein’s government, lifted trade sanctions against Iraq, and imposed new economic sanctions against Iran. In addition, the Reagan Administration closed its eyes to the use of chemical weapons by Iraq in the war, and, indeed, supplied Saddam Hussein with chemical compounds that had multiple uses, including making poison gas. Subsequently, with the Iranian military victories, the US entered the war against Iran directly to assure that Hussein was not defeated. With this direct US intervention, in 1988 Iran was forced to accept a humiliating ceasefire, especially after the USS Vincennes affair. In the end, the Reagan Administration had managed by means of indirect and direct war to defeat Iran for all practical purposes and contain it. Yet the policy of dual containment demanded that not only Iran but also Iraq be emasculated as a potential challenger. Therefore, while helping Hussein, the US also sold arms to Iran, mostly with the help of the Israelis, in what came to be known as the “Iran-Contra scandal.” Furthermore, the US administration provided both Iran and Iraq with deliberately distorted or inaccurate intelligence data on the other’s capabilities. More importantly, with the end of the Iran-Iraq war-and the emergence of Iraq militarily stronger at the end of the war than at the beginning-the US turned its attention toward containing Iraq. This was accomplished through manufactured sensational news and incidents, as well as a sudden US interest in the “gross violation of international law” by Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. The final incident was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait after the US gave confusing messages to Hussein. Following this invasion, the US tried to contain Iraq by means of a war, UN economic sanctions, and limited military operations.
The US policy of the dual containment cannot be understood without understanding the role that Israel has played in it. Following the 1979 Revolution in Iran, which ended a cozy and symbiotic relation between the Jewish state and the Shah, Israel started a campaign against the new Iranian government. However, once the Iran-Iraq war started, Israel began to sell arms to Iran. This was not because Israel was against the US policy of dual containment and the devastation of Iran and Iraq in a costly and protracted war, but because Israel wished to see Iraq contained before Iran. As a result, while the US was aiding Iraq, Israel was selling arms to Iran, and, eventually, got the US to sell arms to Iran in the infamous Iran-Contra scandal. When put in historical context the Iran-Contra affair does not appear as an aberration or isolated incident. It was part of the policy of helping to contain both countries. At the end of the Iran-Iraq war, however, Israel, like the US, largely concentrated on containing Iraq. In so doing, Israel contributed greatly to the propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein before Iraq was invaded by the US. After the imposition of UN sanctions against Iraq in 1990 and the first US invasion of Iraq, Israel turned its attention toward containing Iran. With the help of its lobby groups in the US, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel concentrated on strengthening US economic sanctions against Iran. In this pursuit, Martin Indyk, the head of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an AIPAC affiliate, became instrumental. The meteoric rise of Martin Indyk to power in the Clinton Administration allowed him to carry on the policy of dual containment-which he took credit for devising-primarily by means of increasing sanctions against Iran. In this policy Iran was accused of three misbehaviors: sponsoring terrorism worldwide; opposing Middle East peace efforts; and developing weapons of mass destruction. Once formulated, these alleged misbehaviors became the rationale for maintaining and strengthening US sanctions against Iran. Indeed, during the Clinton Administration Israeli lobby groups became the major underwriters of US foreign policy toward Iran.
Besides Martin Indyk there were other individuals in the Clinton Administration who helped develop the Iran sanctions policy. One such individual was Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who had a particular animosity toward Iran since his hostage negotiation days. This animosity came in handy for Indyk and the Israeli lobby groups in implementing their sanctions policy against Iran. But this was not all; there was also a competition between a predominantly Republican Congress and a Democratic Administration as to which was more hostile to Iran and thus faithful to Israel. In this competition, the role of Senator Alfonse D’Amato in trying to pass sanctions acts against Iran is examined in my book. One major act, the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA)-which imposed secondary sanctions on foreign companies that would make new investments of at least $40 million in Iran-becomes a focus of my study. With the passage of ILSA, however, the US sanctions policy started to fall apart. Not only did many countries around the world defy it, the US corporate lobbies, too, began to organize to oppose various Israeli lobby groups. In this regard, I examine the role of some heavyweights that the corporate lobby brought forth to oppose the sanctions-such as two former national security advisors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft-the formation of an umbrella lobby organization called USA*ENGAGE, various individuals or lobbyist groups working with the Iranian government who started to organize, and a number of US Congressmen who were lobbied by the corporations to oppose the passage of further unilateral sanctions against Iran. All this, as well as the appointment of a new Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who tilted more toward the corporate lobby, resulted in an incoherent and inconsistent US policy toward Iran at the end of the Clinton era, a policy that tried to reconcile the irreconcilable aims and interests of Israel and the US corporations. It is worth noting that during the Clinton Administration the Mujahedin-e-Khalq-e-Iran (MEK), an Iranian exile group, became a convenient tool in the hands of strange bedfellows-namely Iraq, the US, and Israel-in a campaign to overthrow the Iranian government. Even though in 1997, as a result of some shifts in US foreign policy, the US State Department put MEK officially on the list of terrorist organizations, the group operates relatively freely in the US to this day.
The end of the Clinton era ushered in a new phase in the US policy of containment of Iran. The 2000 US presidential election brought uncertainty concerning the future policies of the Bush Administration toward the Middle East in general and Iran in particular. The fact that the new administration was top heavy with former oil executives added to this uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the uncertainty, Israel correctly perceived that the policy would be made more by the neoconservative forces within the new administration-such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle-than anyone else, including those in the State Department. Wolfowitz and Perle-who were on the Board of Advisors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an offshoot of AIPAC-had advocated, at least since 1992, the use of military force against Iraq. But Israel was more interested in containing Iran rather than Iraq and was hoping that the neoconservative forces, particularly those within the administration, would achieve that goal. The events of September 11, 2001 played a determining role in both containments. The neoconservative forces got what they had wished for when it came to invading Iraq. But as far as Iran was concerned, the initial reaction of the US State Department after 9/11 was to start a courtship dance with Iran, a dance that Israel, its lobby groups, and its neoconservative allies, in and out of the administration, watched with a great deal of trepidation. A concerted campaign was waged by Israeli officials, including Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, to end the dance. The US was warned by these officials not to cozy up to Iran. Such warnings, as well as the puzzling Karine-A affair, managed to end the US State Department’s attempt to approach Iran. The death of the rapprochement was made official by President Bush in his “axis of evil” speech on January 29, 2002, a speech in which Iran was accused, along with Iraq and North Korea, of aggressively pursuing weapons of mass destruction and exporting terror. In the end, Israel, its various lobby groups, and its neoconservative allies changed the direction of US policy toward Iran as conceived by the US State Department. A case had to be made as to why Iran should be targeted. Israel put forward a list of allegations against Iran that included everything from Iran’s involvement in the Karine-A affair to pursuing missiles capable of striking Israel with chemical and biological weapons, dispatching its Revolutionary Guards to foment anti-Israel activity in Lebanon, and being on schedule to develop a nuclear bomb by 2005. Yet even though Israel had made its case for targeting Iran, and wished to see Iran attacked before Iraq, it had to settle for second-best: wait until after the invasion of Iraq to contain Iran. Thus, in an interview with The Times (London) on November 5, 2002, Sharon stated that he considered Iran to be the “centre of world terror,” and “that as soon as an Iraq conflict is concluded, he will push for Iran to be at the top of the ‘to do’ list.”
How was Iran pushed to the top of the US’s “to do” list? As in the case of Iraq, Iran’s alleged development of weapons of mass destruction became the rallying point for targeting the country. The first step in the process came in late summer 2002, when, in a dramatic press conference, a representative of MEK revealed the construction of a uranium enrichment facility and a heavy water production plant in Iran, neither of which had been reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The actual source of the revelation appears to have been Israel, which passed the information to MEK. Once these constructions were disclosed, the US and Israel started to build a case for reporting Iran to the United Nations Security Council and for the imposition of sanctions. How the case proceeded is narrated in my book. Before that, however, the origin of Iran’s nuclear program is discussed. It is argued that the US and Israel had no problems with Iran’s nuclear program when the Shah of Iran was in power. Indeed, the US helped the Shah with nuclear technology and encouraged him to build nuclear power plants. Subsequently, the Shah signed an agreement to purchase two reactors from Germany to be installed at Bushehr. The construction of these power plants began in 1975, but after the 1979 Iranian Revolution the Germans left the country without completing the project. In 1995 Iran signed a formal agreement with Russia to finish the Bushehr reactor. But Russia continuously postponed the completion of the reactor and delivery of nuclear fuel. Given Russia’s foot-dragging, as well as the numerous US sanctions imposed on Iran, it appears that Iran had engaged in a number of nuclear-related activities not reported to the IAEA, including building the two structures that were disclosed by MEK. Even though, technically speaking, the construction of these facilities did not violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-to which Iran is a signatory-it provided the perfect excuse to the US and Israel to argue that Iran was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons. Such claims, however, were not new. They were heard as early as 1984, when a neoconservative argued that Iran might be only two years away from acquiring nuclear weapons. Following this claim there were numerous others concerning the impending development of nuclear weapons by Iran. Indeed, in the 1990s a number of sources associated with Israel claimed that Iran had already purchased three or four nuclear warheads from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. That allegation and subsequent assertions concerning Iran developing nuclear arsenals all proved to be false. But the guessing game continued well into the late 1990s and early 2000s. With each day passing and no nuclear weapons or even evidence of development of such weapons showing up, the ever-changing prediction of doomsday appeared to attract little attention until the revelation of the two unreported nuclear-related facilities in Iran. Once this revelation was made, Israel could push for Iran to be at the top of the US’s “to do” list.
The road was being paved to report Iran to the Security Council. The 2003 IAEA report mentioned certain failures by Iran to disclose information. It also encouraged Iran to sign the “Additional Protocol” to the IAEA Safeguards Agreements. But the report did not show any smoking gun and, therefore, was not the report that the US and Israel needed to contain Iran. Nevertheless, the report left a number of open questions that made the US and Israel hopeful about taking Iran before the Security Council. For example, why was Iran developing a facility to produce heavy water, building a uranium enrichment facility, manufacturing uranium metal, hesitant to allow IAEA inspectors visit an electric workshop and take environmental samples? The last question, in particular, made the US and Israel contend that Iran was hiding something, and this could be an indication of a nuclear weapons program. In the end, this allegation proved to be incorrect. However, such allegations continued to be made until Iran was reported to the Security Council. In addition to making false claims, the US and Israel intensified their psychological warfare against Iran, threatening a preemptive military strike on her nuclear facilities. Such threats made the Europeans, particularly France, Britain, and Germany (EU 3), worry and start negotiating with Iran in October of 2003 to sign the “Additional Protocol,” stop nuclear enrichment, and provide full disclosure of its nuclear program. The Iranian government capitulated and signed an agreement in December 2003, even though the Iranian parliament refused to ratify the “Additional Protocol.” The US and Israel, however, continued their pressure on Iran by making false claims and portraying Iran as a threat to Israel and the world at large. Pressure mounted in summer of 2004 to report Iran to the Security Council. The EU 3 made a last-ditch effort to stop Iran’s enrichment activities. The result was the November 2004 Paris Agreement, which asked Iran to suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities voluntarily and temporarily in exchange for some vague and, for all practical purposes, undeliverable economic promises. The US gave this agreement guarded approval but made it clear that it was a kind of “good-cop, bad-cop arrangement,” where the Europeans and Americans were working together but playing different roles.
The US and Israel intensified their threats of a preemptive strike against Iran in 2005. By now the argument had changed from not allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons to not even tolerating Iran having knowledge of nuclear enrichment. At the same time there were reports that the US might support EU negotiations with Iran and accept the so-called carrot and stick approach. Even though this was no more than the bad cop joining the good cop, Israel and its lobby groups were opposed to any shift in US policy and waged a campaign against it. In Iran, too, there was opposition to the Paris Agreement, especially after the US gave the agreement its tacit blessing. The opposition became stronger with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President of Iran, a man who was demonized by a massive US and Israeli disinformation campaign as soon as he took office. After protesting that the Paris Agreement was turning a voluntary and temporary halt in uranium enrichment activities into a permanent freeze and that the EU had not kept its part of the bargain, Iran ended the agreement. The campaign to report Iran to the Security Council by the IAEA gained momentum and a resolution to this effect was passed; however, the question of the timing of when the matter would be referred to the Security Council was left open. A number of events speeded up the process of referral. One such event was Ahmadinejad quoting Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that the occupying regime of Jerusalem must disappear from the page of time. The statement was translated in both Israel and the US as “wipe Israel off the map,” and was used in a massive campaign to portray Iran as Nazi Germany and Ahmadinejad as another Hitler poised to commit a holocaust. Another was the claim by American intelligence officials that they had discovered a stolen laptop showing Iran’s attempt to design a nuclear warhead. The contents of the laptop were shown to IAEA inspectors, but, IAEA officials doubted the authenticity of the material, and believed that much of the intelligence provided by the US and other intelligence services had proved to be wrong. Numerous assertions, even though false, made any compromise solution impossible. In the end, a relentless effort by the US and Israel to bring Iran before the Security Council and impose UN sanctions against her paid off in early 2006. The IAEA was forced to issue an early update brief followed by a full report on Iran’s compliance with the earlier resolution. But even before the full report was issued, the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany reached an agreement, and soon afterwards the US obtained the necessary vote to refer Iran to the Security Council. Iran, in turn, ended all voluntary cooperation with the IAEA.
Accusations and threats by US and Israel continued against Iran even after Iran’s referral to the Security Council. As the US allocated more funds to bringing “democracy” to Iran, AIPAC mounted another “largest ever policy conference” aimed at bringing about the harshest possible sanctions against Iran. Frantic efforts by those uneasy about imposing UN sanctions, including the Director General of the IAEA, failed as most US policy makers followed the lead of Israel and its allies in the US. The Security Council issued in late March 2006 a draft statement asking Iran to halt all enrichment activities, and ordered the Director General of the IAEA to report in 30 days on Iran’s compliance. This was not exactly the harsh resolution that the US and Israel were hoping for. The US pushed for the passage of a UN Chapter 7 resolution against Iran that could result in the use of military force against her. In this effort, parallels were continuously drawn between Iran and Nazi Germany and Ahmadinejad and Hitler. Iran’s alleged hidden nuclear programs were reported and talks of pre-emptive military attacks by either the US, Israel, or both were heard. In this atmosphere even the most outrageous tales would become credible news. One such story was an alleged new law in Iran that would force the Iranian Jewish population to wear yellow insignia. Even though the “news” proved to be a complete fabrication, it for some time and enabled many political figures around the world, particularly Americans, to condemn and demonize Iran. The US, however, still had to get the reluctant Russians and Chinese on board to impose sanctions against Iran. A new strategy was adopted: the US would join the EU 3 in negotiating with Iran if Iran halted all enrichment activities. The Bush Administration knew full well that this offer would not be accepted by Iran and was, indeed, worried about a possible positive response by Iran. The US gambit paid off, and the “carrot and stick” package offered was ultimately rejected by Iran. The US wielded more sticks, including financial sanctions to paralyze the Iranian banking system. Security Council Resolution 1696 was passed in July 2006, demanding that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and that the Director General of the IAEA give a report by the end of August 2006 on Iran’s compliance. If Iran did not comply, according to Resolution 1696, UN sanctions would be imposed. The stage was set for the imposition of the first set of UN sanctions against Iran.
The August 2006 IAEA report indicated that Iran was not complying with UN Resolution 1696. The report was followed by Iran’s adversaries calling for immediate imposition of sanctions. Any compromise offered, including a temporary suspension of uranium enrichment by Iran, was ruled out by the US and Israel. The US further tightened its financial sanctions against Iran, and Israel raised, once again, the specter of Iran becoming another Nazi Germany determined to commit another holocaust. The campaign to impose UN sanctions against Iran was beginning to bear fruit. Draft resolutions for such sanctions began to circulate in November 2006. War drums beat intensely and there was again talk of a possible military strike by Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities. US pressure mounted for adopting a sanction resolution. The push resulted in Security Council Resolution 1737 in December of 2006, the first UN sanction resolution against Iran. The resolution demanded that Iran halt all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities and suspend work on all heavy water-related projects. It asked all states to take the necessary measures to prevent the supply, sale, or transfer of all items, materials, equipment, goods, and technology which could contribute to Iran’s enrichment related, reprocessing, or heavy water-related activities, or to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. It also asked all states to exercise vigilance regarding the entry into or transit through their territories of individuals engaged in Iran’s proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities or the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. In addition, the resolution provided a list of certain Iranians and asked all states to freeze their funds, other financial assets, and economic resources.
Moreover, the resolution established a sanctions committee to monitor Iran’s compliance with the resolution and collect information from countries about their trade with Iran. Finally, the resolution asked the Director General of the IAEA to provide a report in 60 days on Iran’s compliance. Resolution 1737 was the crown jewel of the US-Israeli policy of containment of Iran. More than a quarter of a century of US unilateral sanctions against Iran, many underwritten by forces close to Israel, had not contained Iran. Even though this resolution was too weak to contain Iran, it was hoped that future resolutions would do the job. Iran shrugged off the sanctions and reduced its cooperation with the IAEA. The US levied more accusations against Iran and engaged in more provocative acts. Israel continued to call Iran an existential threat. In early 2007 there were fears that a war with Iran might become inevitable. In the end, however, the threats of war were used to set the stage for the second round of UN sanctions against Iran.
After an IAEA report indicating Iran’s non-compliance with Resolution 1737, the US and Israel pushed for another resolution. The result was Security Council Resolution 1747 in March 2007, which extended previous sanctions. The resolution called upon all states to exercise vigilance and restraint regarding the entry into or transit through their territories of certain Iranians engaged in or associated with Iran’s proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities. In addition, it provided another list of Iranian entities involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities and entities whose funds or assets shall be frozen. Among these was one of the largest banks in Iran. Resolution 1747 also stated that Iran shall not supply, sell, or transfer any arms or related materiel. Furthermore, it called upon all states to exercise vigilance and restraint in the supply, sale, or transfer of any battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles, or missile systems. Finally, the resolution asked all states and international financial institutions not to enter into new commitments for grants, financial assistance, and concessional loans to the Iranian government. As in the previous case, the resolution asked the Director General of the IAEA to prepare a report within 60 days as to whether Iran had complied with the demands of Resolutions 1737 and 1747. Iranian officials were defiant and shrugged off the effect of the resolutions. Yet Resolutions 1737 and 1747 put great pressure on Iran economically and politically, setting the stage for further, and harsher, resolutions to follow.
The next Security Council sanction resolution against Iran did not materialize until nearly a year after Resolution 1747. On March 3, 2008, the Security Council passed its third sanction resolution against Iran, Resolution 1803.[2] The new resolution tightens two previously passed sanction acts by 1) asking states to exercise “vigilance and restraint” against a new set of Iranian nationals purportedly involved in “proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities or the development of nuclear-weapon delivery systems”; 2) extending the freezing of the financial assets of persons or entities allegedly “supporting” the above mentioned activities; 3) calling upon states to “exercise vigilance over the activities of financial institutions in their territories with all banks domiciled in Iran, in particular with Bank Melli and Bank Saderat”; and 4) continuing to block the import and export of allegedly “sensitive nuclear material and equipment.”
Resolution 1803 also added a new provision to the previous sanction acts: it called upon states to “inspect cargo to and from Iran of aircraft and vessels owned or operated by Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line, provided ‘reasonable grounds’ existed to believe that the aircraft or vessel was transporting prohibited goods.” This new provision is one of the most dangerous provisions in all the resolutions that have been passed so far by the Security Council against Iran. The term “Reasonable grounds” is ambiguous. What is reasonable or unreasonable is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, theoretically, any adversary of Iran can now stop an Iranian aircraft or vessel to inspect it because it is “believed” there is “reasonable grounds” for such an inspection. If the Iranian vessel refuses inspection, all hell could break loose.
The new provision was probably one of the reasons why four non-permanent members of the Security Council, Indonesia, Libya, South Africa and Vietnam, tried in vain to stop, revise or at least slow down the passage of Resolution 1803. At the end, however, under pressure from the US and its allies, three of the four countries caved in and went along with the resolution. The fourth, Indonesia, abstained. US and its allies, who wanted unanimous vote against Iran in the Security Council, and wished for a much harsher resolution, declared victory nevertheless. But this was not enough. A day after, US, France and Britain tried to introduce another resolution against Iran at the meeting of the IAEA. This time, however, Russia, China and a number of countries belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) stopped the effort and argued that given the action by the Security Council a day earlier, a new resolution against Iran would be superfluous.
All this happened against the backdrop of two major reports undermining the necessity of passing a third sanction resolution against Iran. The first was the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report, entitled “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.”[3] The “Key Judgments” portion of the report that was made public stated:
We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.
The report, of course, claimed that Iran had exerted “considerable effort from at least the late 1980s to 2003 to develop such [nuclear] weapons.” But the assertion that such efforts had been halted in 2003 not only removed the rationale for the US and Israel to wage a military campaign against Iran but it apparently slowed down the attempt to pass a third sanction act through the Security Council. Indeed, the resolution which passed recently was supposed to have been passed in early summer of 2007. But almost immediately after the conclusion of the NIE report became public the US government, as well as its allies, belittled or even dismissed its value, and, in so doing, made the passage of a new sanction resolution against Iran appear to be urgent.
The second report that undermined the urgency of the 3rd round of UN sanctions was the IAEA report.[4] The summary of the report stated that
The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities. Iran has also responded to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on the issues raised in the context of the work plan, with the exception of the alleged studies. Iran has provided access to individuals in response to the Agency’s requests. Although direct access has not been provided to individuals said to be associated with the alleged studies, responses have been provided in writing to some of the Agency’s questions.
The summary also stated that the “Agency has been able to conclude that answers provided by Iran, in accordance with the work plan, are consistent with its findings.” But, the summary also added, the “one major remaining issue relevant to the nature of Iran’s nuclear programme is the alleged studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle.” According to the report, the documents related the allegations were only shown to Iran in February, as late as just a few days before the IAEA report. Iran the report states, “maintained that these allegations are baseless and that the data have been fabricated.” The Agency, the report stated, is examining the allegations and the statements provided by Iran.
The allegations apparently refer to the content of the “stolen laptop” that the US had in its possession and supposedly showed Iran’s plans to build a nuclear warhead.[5] The content of this mysterious laptop had resurfaced a number of times before and its authenticity questioned by a number of sources, including IAEA’s own experts. For example, on February 22, 2007, the Guardian reported that, according to “informed sources” at the IAEA, “most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors.” The report quoted an IAEA “diplomat” as saying: “Most of it has turned out to be incorrect. . . They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities.” The report then referred to the mysterious “stolen laptop” that the US had in its possession and supposedly showed Iran’s “plans to build a nuclear warhead.” As the report pointed out, in “July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.” But the report pointed out that IAEA officials doubted the authenticity of the laptop. “First of all,” the Guardian quoted one such official as saying, “if you have a clandestine programme, you don’t put it on laptops which can walk away [Moreover, the] data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you’d have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer.” A similar report appeared on February 25, 2007, in the Los Angeles Times under the heading “U.N. Calls U.S. Data on Iran’s Nuclear Aims Unreliable.” The report quoted a “senior diplomat at the IAEA” as saying: “Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us [by way of the CIA and other Western spy services] has proved to be wrong.” This report, too, pointed out that some IAEA officials doubted the authenticity of the laptop story.
Had IAEA officials changed their minds? Was there more to this report than had been divulged before? Or was the intense pressure exerted on the IAEA by the US and its allies, including repeated calls by the US and Israel to remove the IAEA Director, Dr. ElBaradei, resulted in the IAEA changing its position about the authenticity of the allegations? Given the number of false claims made by the US and its allies-which I have documented in my book-and given the intense pressure that the IAEA has been under to produce results agreeable to Iran’s adversaries, one cannot help but to suspect that story of the mysterious laptop might be another fabrication.
Whatever the nature of the US allegations, one thing is certain: even if the threat of military attack against Iran by the US, Israel or both has subsided for the time being, sanctioning of Iran has not. US unilateral sanctions, as well UN multilateral sanctions, are being intensified. Iran is clearly feeling the pain of numerous sanctions. It is, however, uncertain whether this pain is sufficient for Iran to relinquish its “inalienable right” to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination,” as guaranteed under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The fact that after three rounds of UN sanctions Iran is still cooperating with the IAEA shows that Iran is bending under the pressure. But even if Iran does forfeit its right and capitulates, it is uncertain whether the US and Israel would stop their attempts to contain Iran. If containment means the destruction of any country that stands in the way of US and Israel, the fate of Iran might be similar to that of Iraq; ultimately an excuse will be found to do to Iran what was done to Iraq. The advocates of the dual containment policy, particularly those who had argued that Iran should be contained before Iraq, have been relentless. They will not stop until they achieve the ultimate containment of Iran.
Notes
[1] This essay is based on the Introduction of my book: http://www.routledgemiddleeaststudies.com/books/The-United-States-and-Iran-isbn9780415773966
[2] The text of Resolution 1803 is available at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/sc9268.doc.htm
[3] The text of the report is available at: http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf
[4] The text of the report is available at: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2008/gov2008-4.pdf
[5] For more details about the “laptop” see my book, The United States and Iran, and a recent article by Gareth Porter, “Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group,” February 29, 2008: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41416.
Sasan Fayazmanesh is chair of the Department of Economics at California State University, Fresno. He can be reached at: sasan.fayazmanesh@gmail.com
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‘Conspiracy Theory’ Now Fact: Greater Israel Has Arrived
By Kit Klarenberg | Mint Press News | January 28, 2025
Ever since Tel Aviv’s 1948 creation, much has been said and written about ‘Greater Israel’ – the notion Zionism’s ultimate end goal is the forcible annexation and ethnic cleansing of vast swaths of Arab and Muslim lands for Jewish settlement, based on Biblical claims this territory was promised to Jews by God. The mainstream media typically dismisses this concept as antisemitic conspiracy theory, or at most the fringe fantasy of a minuscule handful of extremist Israelis.
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