The Plain Truth

The History of New Years

  In 46 B.C.E. the Roman emperor Julius Caesar first established January 1 as New Year’s day. Janus was the Roman god of doors and gates, and had two faces, one looking forward and one back.  Caesar felt that the month named after this god (“January”) would be the appropriate “door” to the year.  Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee.  Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets.  In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgies—a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.

As Christianity spread, pagan holidays were either incorporated into the Christian calendar or abandoned altogether.  By the early medieval period most of Christian Europe regarded Annunciation Day (March 25) as the beginning of the year.  (According to Catholic tradition, Annunciation Day commemorates the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would be impregnated by G-d and conceive a son to be called Jesus.)

    After William the Conqueror (AKA “William the Bastard” and “William of Normandy”) became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the date established by the Roman pagans, January 1.  This move ensured that the commemoration of Jesus’ birthday (December 25) would align with William’s coronation, and the commemoration of Jesus’ circumcision (January 1) would start the new year - thus rooting the English and Christian calendars and his own Coronation).  William’s innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.

    About five hundred years later, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII (AKA “Ugo Boncompagni”, 1502-1585) abandoned the traditional Julian calendar.  By the Julian reckoning, the solar year comprised 365.25 days, and the intercalation of a “leap day” every four years was intended to maintain correspondence between the calendar and the seasons.  Really, however there was a slight inaccuracy in the Julian measurement (the solar year is actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds = 365.2422 days).  This slight inaccuracy caused the Julian calendar to slip behind the seasons about one day per century.  Although this regression had amounted to 14 days by Pope Gregory’s time, he based his reform on restoration of the vernal equinox, then falling on March 11, to the date had 1,257 years earlier when Council of Nicaea was convened (March 21, 325 C.E.).  Pope Gregory made the correction by advancing the calendar 10 days.  The change was made the day after October 4, 1582, and that following day was established as October 15, 1582.  The Gregorian calendar differs from the Julian in three ways:  (1) No century year is a leap year unless it is exactly divisible by 400 (e.g., 1600, 2000, etc.); (2) Years divisible by 4000 are common (not leap) years; and (3) once again the New Year would begin with the date set by the early pagans, the first day of the month of Janus - January 1.

    On New Years Day 1577 Pope Gregory XIII decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services.  On New Years Day 1578 Gregory signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a “House of Conversion” to convert Jews to Christianity.  On New Years 1581 Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community.  Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.

    Throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, January 1 - supposedly the day on which Jesus’ circumcision initiated the reign of Christianity and the death of Judaism - was reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue and book burnings, public tortures, and simple murder.

    The Israeli term for New Year’s night celebrations, “Sylvester,” was the name of the “Saint” and Roman Pope who reigned during the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.).  The year before the Council of Nicaea convened, Sylvester convinced Constantine to prohibit Jews from living in Jerusalem.  At the Council of Nicaea, Sylvester arranged for the passage of a host of viciously anti-Semitic legislation.  All Catholic “Saints” are awarded a day on which Christians celebrate and pay tribute to that Saint’s memory.  December 31 is Saint Sylvester Day - hence celebrations on the night of December 31 are dedicated to Sylvester’s memory.

U.S. News and World Report December 23, 1996

Shocking: The FDA Says You Have No Right To Freedom Of Food

You thought you had the right to choose what you eat? The FDA says you don't. They claim that there is no fundamental right to choose your food or freedom to contract for it. Responding to a Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund lawsuit, the FDA clearly states that you do not have the right to freedom of choice in your diet.

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) Lawsuit Against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

The FTCLDF is a 501(c)(4) organization, which means that it exists to promote the social welfare of its members and community. They define their reason for being in one sentence:

Sustainable farming and direct farm-to-consumer transactions further the common good and general welfare of all Americans.

Their Mission Statement says, in whole:

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is a 501 (c) (4) non-profit organization made up of farmers and consumers joining together and pooling resources to:

• Protect the constitutional right of the nation’s family farms to provide processed and unprocessed farm foods directly to consumers through any legal means.
• Protect the constitutional right of consumers to obtain unprocessed and processed farm foods directly from family farms.
• Protect the nation’s family farms from harassment by federal, state, and local government interference with food production and on-farm food processing.

On behalf of its members and for all family farms in the US, the FTCLDF filed a lawsuit against the FDA, claiming "that the federal regulations (21 CFR 1240.61 and 21 CFR 131.110) banning raw milk for human consumption in interstate commerce are unconstitutional and outside of FDA's statutory authority as applied to FTCLDF's members and the named individual plaintiffs in the suit."

The FDA responded by claiming a number of things, including the absurd idea that the FTCLDF has no standing to file the case! That is, they're claiming that the organization that represents the people who have been harmed by the FDA's actions does not actually represent them. They claim that no harm has been shown, in spite of the fact that the FDA's actions have prevented farmers from producing and selling raw milk and their customers have lost the ability to obtain it.

The FDA's Response and Claims      MORE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

SEX and GOD

By Bob Barney

First published in 2007

 

This is a commentary on our recent Healthy Sex story. Many, including some in my family thought the story was too salacious for our news site.  That’s exactly the response I wanted. Why? Well, the plain truth is that most of us do not understand the truth behind sex. It is very unfortunate that so many people have had their minds obfuscated with false religious dogma concerning sex and what God really wants us to know about the subject. You will see that God is no prude when it comes to sex and actually has given us a guideline on how to enjoy it without any guilt!

 

 In Genesis, God creates man and woman after the GOD kind. Notice that all other created beings are created after their own kind, but man was created after God’s own kind. Note also that God says “Let US make man in OUR image”. At least two beings are talking together, and they claim to be God  (see the meaning of the word God here http://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/nbi/1303.html ). What is the very first thing that God realized about man? “It is not good for the man to be alone.”  God does not want us to be alone. He wants us in a union with another human, just as God is one, he wants us to be one, with the helpmate that God gives us. Next notice the first command God gave to Adam and Eve. Gen 1:28   God blessed them and told them, "Multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Be masters over the fish and birds and all the animals."  Then we read a little later this: Gen. 4:1   “Now Adam slept with his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant.” (NLT translation).

 

 So sex was made for us to enjoy and to recreate after our own kind! We are meant to become part of the God Family. However, this command to have sex does not give us the license to have it with just anyone. Here are just SOME of the Biblical restrictions:
Lev 15:24   If a man has sexual intercourse with her during this time, her menstrual impurity will be transmitted to him. He will remain defiled for seven days, and any bed on which he lies will be defiled. 
Lev 18:1   Then the Lord said to Moses, 
Lev 18:2   "Say this to your people, the Israelites: I, the Lord, am your God. 
Lev 18:3   So do not act like the people in Egypt, where you used to live, or like the people of Canaan, where I am taking you. You must not imitate their way of life. 
Lev 18:4   You must obey all my regulations and be careful to keep my laws, for I, the Lord, am your God. 
Lev 18:5   If you obey my laws and regulations, you will find life through them. I am the Lord. 
Lev 18:6   "You must never have sexual intercourse with a close relative, for I am the Lord. 
Lev 18:7   Do not violate your father by having sexual intercourse with your mother. She is your mother; you must never have intercourse with her. 
Lev 18:8   Do not have sexual intercourse with any of your father's wives, for this would violate your father. 
Lev 18:9   "Do not have sexual intercourse with your sister or half sister, whether she is your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was brought up in the same family or somewhere else. 
Lev 18:10   "Do not have sexual intercourse with your granddaughter, whether your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter; that would violate you. 
Lev 18:11   Do not have sexual intercourse with the daughter of any of your father's wives; she is your half sister. 
Lev 18:12   Do not have intercourse with your aunt, your father's sister, because she is your father's close relative. 
Lev 18:13   Do not have sexual intercourse with your aunt, your mother's sister, because she is your mother's close relative. 
Lev 18:14   And do not violate your uncle, your father's brother, by having sexual intercourse with his wife; she also is your aunt. 
Lev 18:15   Do not have sexual intercourse with your daughter-in-law; she is your son's wife. 
Lev 18:16   Do not have intercourse with your brother's wife; this would violate your brother. 
Lev 18:17   "Do not have sexual intercourse with both a woman and her daughter or marry both a woman and her granddaughter, whether her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter. They are close relatives, and to do this would be a horrible wickedness. 
Lev 18:18   "Donot marry a woman and her sister because they will be rivals. But if your wife dies, then it is all right to marry her sister. 
Lev 18:19   "Do not violate a woman by having sexual intercourse with her during her period of menstrual impurity. 
Lev 18:20   "Do not defile yourself by having sexual intercourse with your neighbor's wife. 
Lev 18:21   "Do not give any of your children as a sacrifice to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. 
Lev 18:22   "Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin. 
Lev 18:23   "A man must never defile himself by having sexual intercourse with an animal, and a woman must never present herself to a male animal in order to have intercourse with it; this is a terrible perversion. 
Lev 18:24   "Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the people I am expelling from the Promised Land have defiled themselves. 
Lev 18:25   As a result, the entire land has become defiled. That is why I am punishing the people who live there, and the land will soon vomit them out. 
Lev 18:26   You must strictly obey all of my laws and regulations, and you must not do any of these detestable things. This applies both to you who are Israelites by birth and to the foreigners living among you. 
Lev 18:27   "All these detestable activities are practiced by the people of the land where I am taking you, and the land has become defiled. 
Lev 18:28   Do not give the land a reason to vomit you out for defiling it, as it will vomit out the people who live there now. 
Lev 18:29   Whoever does any of these detestable things will be cut off from the community of Israel. 
Lev 18:30   So be careful to obey my laws, and do not practice any of these detestable activities. Do not defile yourselves by doing any of them, for I, the Lord, am your God."
 

Paul even adds: 1Cr 6:9 "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind". So sex within a God inspired marriage is guiltless, but outside of these perimeters it will literally kill you!

 

 So, we can see that sex is something very special to God and it should be to us. Some of the most moving scriptures in the whole Bible is God comparing us (before we are saved) to a whore! We see the total agony we have put God through in our sinful lives, and he uses sexual imagery to demonstrate it. One actually feels the agony of what adultery means and how bad it hurts when God uses the same terminology to show to us how bad GOD hurts:

 

 Eze 23:3   They became prostitutes in Egypt. Even as young girls, they allowed themselves to be fondled and caressed.  Give her this message from the Sovereign Lord: You are nothing but a Canaanite! Your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite!   When you were born, no one cared about you. Your umbilical cord was left uncut, and you were never washed, rubbed with salt, and dressed in warm clothing. 

 

No one had the slightest interest in you; no one pitied you or cared for you. On the day you were born, you were dumped in a field and left to die, unwanted.   "But I came by and saw you there, helplessly kicking about in your own blood. As you lay there, I said, `Live!'  And I helped you to thrive like a plant in the field. You grew up and became a beautiful jewel. Your breasts became full, and your hair grew, though you were still naked.  And when I passed by and saw you again, you were old enough to be married. So I wrapped my cloak around you to cover your nakedness and declared my marriage vows. I made a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine. 
"Then I bathed you and washed off your blood, and I rubbed fragrant oils into your skin.  I gave you expensive clothing of linen and silk, beautifully embroidered, and sandals made of fine leather.  I gave you lovely jewelry, bracelets, and beautiful necklaces,  a ring for your nose and earrings for your ears, and a lovely crown for your head.  And so you were made beautiful with gold and silver. Your clothes were made of fine linen and were beautifully embroidered. You ate the finest foods-fine flour, honey, and olive oil-and became more beautiful than ever. You looked like a queen, and so you were! 

 

Your fame soon spread throughout the world on account of your beauty, because the splendor I bestowed on you perfected your beauty, says the Sovereign Lord.  "But you thought you could get along without me, so you trusted instead in your fame and beauty. You gave yourself as a prostitute to every man who came along. Your beauty was theirs for the asking!   You used the lovely things I gave you to make shrines for idols, where you carried out your acts of prostitution. Unbelievable! How could such a thing ever happen?  You took the very jewels and gold and silver ornaments I had given you and made statues of men and worshiped them, which is adultery against me.  You used the beautifully embroidered clothes I gave you to cover your idols. Then you used my oil and incense to worship them. 

 

Imagine it! You set before them as a lovely sacrifice the fine flour and oil and honey I had given you, says the Sovereign Lord. 
"Then you took your sons and daughters-the children you had borne to me-and sacrificed them to your gods. Was it not enough that you should be a prostitute?  Must you also slaughter my children by sacrificing them to idols?   In all your years of adultery and loathsome sin, you have not once thought of the days long ago when you lay naked in a field, kicking about in your own blood. 
"Your destruction is certain, says the Sovereign Lord. In addition to all your other wickedness,   you built a pagan shrine and put altars to idols in every town square.  On every street corner you defiled your beauty, offering your body to every passerby in an endless stream of prostitution.  Then you added lustful Egypt to your lovers, fanning the flames of my anger with your increasing promiscuity.  That is why I struck you with my fist and reduced your boundaries. I handed you over to your enemies, the Philistines, and even they were shocked by your lewd conduct! 
You have prostituted yourselves with the Assyrians, too. It seems you can never find enough new lovers! And after your prostitution there, you still were not satisfied.  You added to your lovers by embracing that great merchant land of Babylonia[fn1]-but you still weren't satisfied!  "What a sick heart you have, says the Sovereign Lord, to do such things as these, acting like a shameless prostitute. 

 

You build your pagan shrines on every street corner and your altars to idols in every square. You have been worse than a prostitute, so eager for sin that you have not even demanded payment for your love! 

 

Yes, you are an adulterous wife who takes in strangers instead of her own husband. 
Eze 16:33   Prostitutes charge for their services-but not you! You give gifts to your lovers, bribing them to come to you.  So you are the opposite of other prostitutes. No one pays you; instead, you pay them!  "Therefore, you prostitute, listen to this message from the Lord! 

 

Do you see why we must forgive other sinners?  The answer is above. When we were apart from God, we committed adultery against GOD. We were no different than a cheap whore. These are the words God uses to describe our ungodly state. These are not Robert R. Barney’s words, they are GODS!

 

 So you see the importance of the article. God wants us to be happy. Have a great sex life and HE has blessed us with great benefits for engaging in it.  A long happy, heart healthy, cancer free, sexually active life into old age. After all, we read the Abraham had Isaac when he was 100 years old and Sarah, his wife was ninety! Isaac was a blessing from God yes, but it shows that the two were still having sex ! (Jer 29:6 Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.)

 

Read you Bible! It’s not boring. It is the best seller of all time, and for a great reason: The author is the greatest writer of all time!

 

 

 

Little Known Facts:
 Did you know the Bible talks about incest!
  Gen 6:4   In those days, and even afterward, giants[fn1] lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with human women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes mentioned in legends of old.  Gen 19:5   They shouted to Lot, "Where are the men who came to spend the night with you? Bring them out so we can havesex with them."  Gen 19:31   One day the older daughter said to her sister, "There isn't a man anywhere in this entire area for us to marry. And our father will soon be too old to have children. 

 

Gen 19:32   Come, let's get him drunk with wine, and then we will sleep with him. That way we will preserve our family line through our father."  Gen 19:33   So that night they got him drunk, and the older daughter went in and slept with her father. He was unaware of her lying down or getting up again. 

 

Gen 19:34   The next morning the older daughter said to her younger sister, "I slept with our father last night. Let's get him drunk with wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him. That way our family line will be preserved."  Gen 19:35   So that night they got him drunk again, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. As before, he was unaware of her lying down or getting up again.   Gen 19:36   So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father.

 

 What the Bible has to say about a moral love affair.
These passages are taken from Song of Songs and it is in YOUR Bible! What do you think “raisins and apples” mean, or “private garden.”
Sgs 1:4   Take me with you. Come, let's run! Bring me into your bedroom
Sgs 2:5   Oh, feed me with your love-your `raisins' and your `apples'-for I am utterly lovesick! 
Sgs 4:5   Your breasts are like twin fawns of a gazelle, feeding among the lilies. 
Sgs 4:12   "You are like a private garden, my treasure, my bride! You are like a spring that no one else can drink from, a fountain of my own. 
Sgs 4:13   You are like a lovely orchard bearing precious fruit, with the rarest of perfumes: 
Sgs 6:12   Before I realized it, I found myself in my princely bed with my beloved one
Sgs 8:10   "I am chaste, and I am now full breasted. And my lover is content with me.

Your next MRI could cost you your life

Jonathan Benson

Natural News 

Patients who undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans are often given drug injections to enhance the quality of scan images. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that these drugs will now require a black box warning label--the strongest in the industry--because they can cause a rare, and sometimes fatal, condition known as nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy (NFD).

The drugs contain a magnetic, metallic chemical called gadolinium that travels throughout the heart and other organs to help clarify image quality during scans. Gadolinium is a known liver toxin that is also harmful to the unhealthy kidneys, but the FDA has permitted its use in medical imaging drugs since 1988.

Read more »

Frankincense: Could it be a cure for cancer?

 

The gift given by the wise men to the baby Jesus probably came across the deserts from Oman. The BBC's Jeremy Howell visits the country to ask whether a commodity that was once worth its weight in gold could be reborn as a treatment for cancer.

Oman's Land of Frankincense is an 11-hour drive southwards from the capital, Muscat.

Most of the journey is through Arabia's Empty Quarter - hundreds of kilometres of flat, dun-coloured desert. Just when you are starting to think this is the only scenery you will ever see again, the Dhofar mountains appear in the distance.

On the other side are green valleys, with cows grazing in them. The Dhofar region catches the tail-end of India's summer monsoons, and they make this the most verdant place on the Arabian peninsula.

Warm winters and showery summers are the perfect conditions for the Boswellia sacra tree to produce the sap called frankincense. These trees grow wild in Dhofar. A tour guide, Mohammed Al-Shahri took me to Wadi Dawkah, a valley 20 km inland from the main city of Salalah, to see a forest of them.

"The records show that frankincense was produced here as far back as 7,000 BC," he says. He produces an army knife. He used to be a member of the Sultan's Special Forces. With a practised flick, he cuts a strip of bark from the trunk of one of the Boswellia sacra trees. Pinpricks of milky-white sap appear on the wood and, very slowly, start to ooze out.

Boswellia sacra produces the highest-quality frankincense

"This is the first cut. But you don't gather this sap," he says. "It releases whatever impurities are in the wood. The farmers return after two or three weeks and make a second, and a third, cut. Then the sap comes out yellow, or bright green, or brown or even black. They take this."

Shortly afterwards, a frankincense farmer arrives in a pick-up truck. He is white-bearded, wearing a brown thobe and the traditional Omani, paisley-patterned turban.

He is 67-year-old Salem Mohammed from the Gidad family. Most of the Boswellia sacra trees grow on public land, but custom dictates that each forest is given to one of the local families to farm, and Wadi Dawkah is his turf.

Camel train

He has an old, black, iron chisel with which he gouges out clumps of dried frankincense.

"We learnt about frankincense from our forefathers and they learnt it from theirs" he says. "The practice has been passed down through the generations. We exported the frankincense, and that's how the families in Dhofar made their livings."

Salem Mohammed: Young people prefer careers in oil or government

And what an export trade it was. Frankincense was sent by camel train to Egypt, and from there to Europe. It was shipped from the ancient port of Sumharan to Persia, India and China. Religions adopted frankincense as a burnt offering.

That is why, according to Matthew's Gospel in the Bible, the Wise Men brought it as a gift to the infant Jesus. Gold: for a king. Frankincense: for God. Myrrh: to embalm Jesus' body after death.

The Roman Empire coveted the frankincense trade. In the first century BCE, Augustus Caesar sent 10,000 troops to invade what the Romans called Arabia Felix to find the source of frankincense and to control its production. The legions, marching from Yemen, were driven back by the heat and the aridity of the desert. They never found their Eldorado.

Oman's frankincense trade went into decline three centuries ago, when Portugal fought Oman for dominance of the sea routes in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.

Salalah's Haffa souk: The place to buy Omani brands such as Royal Hougari

Nowadays, hardly any Omani frankincense is exported. Partly, this is because bulk buyers, such as the Roman Catholic Church, buy cheaper Somalian varieties. Partly, it is because Omanis now produce so little.

"Years ago, 20 families farmed frankincense in this area," says Salem Mohammed Gidad. "But the younger generation can get well-paid jobs in the government and the oil companies, with pensions. Now, only three people still produce frankincense around here. The trade is really, really tiny!"

Cancer hope

But immunologist Mahmoud Suhail is hoping to open a new chapter in the history of frankincense.

Scientists have observed that there is some agent within frankincense which stops cancer spreading, and which induces cancerous cells to close themselves down. He is trying to find out what this is.

The Catholic church mostly buys Somalian frankincense

"Cancer starts when the DNA code within the cell's nucleus becomes corrupted," he says. "It seems frankincense has a re-set function. It can tell the cell what the right DNA code should be.

"Frankincense separates the 'brain' of the cancerous cell - the nucleus - from the 'body' - the cytoplasm, and closes down the nucleus to stop it reproducing corrupted DNA codes."

Working with frankincense could revolutionise the treatment of cancer. Currently, with chemotherapy, doctors blast the area around a tumour to kill the cancer, but that also kills healthy cells, and weakens the patient. Treatment with frankincense could eradicate the cancerous cells alone and let the others live.

The task now is to isolate the agent within frankincense which, apparently, works this wonder. Some ingredients of frankincense are allergenic, so you cannot give a patient the whole thing.

FRANKINCENSE FACTS Boswellia sacra grows in Oman, Yemen and Somalia Other Boswellia species grow in Africa and India The tree may have been named after John Boswell, the uncle of Samuel Johnson's biographer In ancient Egypt frankincense was thought to be sweat of the gods Source: The Pharmaceutical Journal

Dr Suhail (who is originally from Iraq) has teamed up with medical scientists from the University of Oklahoma for the task.

In his laboratory in Salalah, he extracts the essential oil from locally produced frankincense. Then, he separates the oil into its constituent agents, such as Boswellic acid.

"There are 17 active agents in frankincense essential oil," says Dr Suhail. "We are using a process of elimination. We have cancer sufferers - for example, a horse in South Africa - and we are giving them tiny doses of each agent until we find the one which works."

"Some scientists think Boswellic acid is the key ingredient. But I think this is wrong. Many other essential oils - like oil from sandalwood - contain Boswellic acid, but they don't have this effect on cancer cells. So we are starting afresh."

The trials will take months to conduct and whatever results come out of them will take longer still to be verified. But this is a blink of the eye in the history of frankincense.

Nine thousand years ago, Omanis gathered it and burnt it for its curative and cleansing properties. It could be a key to the medical science of tomorrow.

 

 VISIT YOUR HEALTH TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Read Your Health Today - Everyday..

Green Tea Compound May Prevent Diabetes

A compound found in green tea could slow or even prevent the development of type 1 diabetes, new research in mice suggests.Green tea contains several antioxidants that have been shown to curb inflammation, prevent cell death, and possibly even ward off cancer.

 

Metabolic Syndrome Affects One-Fourth US Workers

The combination of health risks known as metabolic syndrome affects slightly less than a quarter of the U.S. workforce and is linked to increased absenteeism and poorer health status, reports a study in the October Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

 

Female sexual dysfunction a distressing problem

Boston, October 31: A study assessing the prevalence of female sexual problems shows that about 40 percent of the women have sex dysfunction and 12 percent are significantly distressed by it.

A survey of more than 32,000 women aged 18 and more, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology (The Green Journal), showed that one in ten experienced diminished feelings of sexual desire.

Sexual problems persisted in high numbers in women over 65 but this group displayed the lowest levels of distress. The rate of depressiondefine was highest in the mid-age bracket of 45-65 years. The lowest distress symptoms were found among the young ladies.

 

Eating Fish Could Prevent Diabetic Kidney Disease

For adults with diabetes, eating fish twice a week may help prevent kidney disease -- one of the most serious complications of diabetes, according to British researchers.

 

Get This, US has Lowest Life Span in Western World - And we smoke LESS!

These are the surprising facts. Don't shoot me, I am just reporting what our government (The CIA) and the United Nations (WHO) statistics show! I am sorry that the facts don't support the what the government and leading scientist tell us (you know like Global Warming is REAL when the facts don't support the claim?) about the physical cost of smoking. Heck, I don't even smoke! I could not find a more recent report, but that would be meaningless, in that it is during these years that smoking was blamed for many of the deaths in the USA.

YOUR HEALTH TODAY

Hitchcock's 'The Birds': Has mystery been solved?

Whodunit? A final mystery surrounding the work of film legend Alfred Hitchcock – what triggered the crazed bird flocks that helped inspire his 1963 thriller The Birds – appears solved by scientists.

Dying and disoriented seabirds rammed themselves into homes across California's Monterey Bay in the summer of 1961, sparking a long-standing mystery about the cause among marine biologists. The avian incidents sparked local visitor Hitchcock's interest, along with a story about spooky bird behavior by British writer Daphne du Maurier.

Read the whole story at USA Today.

Hurricane forecasters give up trying to predict summer storm season in December – because they can’t do it

American's top hurricane experts have admitted defeat and abandoned efforts to make a December forecast of the number of hurricanes the following year.

William Gray and Phil Klotzbach are famous for their advance predictions of how many storms are likely to hit during the following hurricane season, which runs from June to November.

But the pair, from Colorado State University, have now announced that a look back at the past 20 years of forecasts shows that their methods do not actually work.

Weathermen: William Gray, left, and Phil Klotzbach, of Colorado State University, have given up trying to predict the numbers of storms six months in advance

CSU's hurricane forecasting team has since 1992 predicted the number of storms that will take place the following year in early December, mere days after the end of the previous season.

Residents and authorities in the U.S. Deep South's hurricane country have paid close attention to the forecasts, as even a mid-strength hurricane can cause billions of dollars of damage.

More...Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2073908/Hurricane-forecasters-trying-predict-summer-storm-season-December.html#ixzz1gYwxEGNv

Afghanistan Signs Its First Oil Contract – With China

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's government signed a deal Wednesday with China's state-owned National Petroleum Corporation, allowing it to become the first foreign company to exploit the country's oil and natural gas reserves.

The contract, which covers the northeastern provinces of Sari Pul and Faryab, is the first of several such blocks to be put on the market in coming months, Afghan Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani said during the signing ceremony.

MORE>>>>>>>

China hit by ANOTHER toxic milk scandal as its largest dairy firm destroys batch with toxins that cause liver cancer

China's dairy industry has been hit by yet another safety scare - as the country's biggest milk producer was forced to destroy a batch containing high levels of a cancer-causing toxin.

Mengniu Dairy Group (MDC) said it found milk containing high levels of aflatoxin - which can lead to liver cancer - before it had made its way to market and was sold to the public.

But China's food chain, and especially the diary industry, has come under increased scrutiny in recent years because of a series of safety problems

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2079074/China-hit-ANOTHER-toxic-milk-scandal-largest-dairy-firm-destroys-batch-containing-cancer-causing-toxins.html#ixzz1hwR77s2X

Apple’s Incredible New Plans Revealed

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office have received proposals from Apple that indicate the electronics company is working on products powered by hydrogen fuel cells, that they claim have the potential to stay charged for weeks, and “eliminates the need for a bulky and heavy battery.”

Remarks by the company in the patent fillings would indicate that the proposal to shift to hydrogen fueled products was influenced not by user experience but customer awareness:

MORE

Seven Devastating Facts About 2012

As we enter 2012, the presidential candidates would do well to wrap their minds and messages around these seven mathematical facts:

1. Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion.  This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.
2. The real unemployment rate is a jaw-dropping 11 percent.
3. Every fifth man you pass on your way to work is now out of work.
4. College graduates are now 34% less likely to find a job under Obama than they were under President George W. Bush.
5. Every seventh person you pass on the sidewalk now relies on food stamps.
6. The ravages of the Obama economy now mean that more Americans live under the federal poverty line than at any time in U.S. history since records have been kept.
7. Under President Barack Obama, every fifth child in America now lives in poverty.

Read the story>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The USSA of R

I first wrote this commentary way back in September of 2008 - even before Barack Obama was crowned emperor!  Take a look and tell me what you think. Was I mainly right?

 

commentary by Bob Barney

Today we have witnessed what I wrote about last spring about the eventual demise of the United States as a superpower and the Biblical outlook that we are destined to be destroyed by aliens among us as well as our dishonest leaders in Washington, with the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke has begun the conversion of the USA into the USSA (United Socialist State of America). This metamorphosis of the United States into a country where there is socialism for only the rich and well connected.  Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized) continues  today with the nationalization of AIG as being owned by Uncle Sam!

This most recent exploit on AIG accompanies a diversity of many other policy actions that suggest a massive government intrusion in the financial markets and the economy: the bailout of the Bear Stearns; the bailout of Fannie and Freddie; the use of the Fed balance sheet (hundreds of billions of safe US Treasuries swapped for junk toxic  private securities); the use of the other GSEs (the Federal Home Loan Bank system) to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of "liquidity" to hard-pressed, illiquid and bankrupt mortgage lenders; the use of the SEC to falsify the stock market (restrictions on short sales); the use of the US Treasury to juggle with the mortgage market (Treasury will now for the first time outright buy agency MBS to manipulate and prop up this market); the invention of a whole host of new bailout facilities (TAF, TSLF, PDCF) to prop and rescue crooked banks and, for the first time since the Great Depression, to bail out non-bank financial institutions; the recent extension of the collateral available for the TSLF and PDCF facilities to a much wider range of toxic securities including equities and thus allowing the Fed to effectively manipulate even the stock market; Furthermore, a whole range of other executive and legislative actions (including the recent bill to provide a public guarantee to mortgages for banks willing to reduce their face value).

Watch out for the icebergs... cruise recreating Titanic's fateful voyage is sold out

For some, it might sound too much like tempting fate – and for others, it smacks of "disaster voyeurism". But for more than 2,000 Titanic enthusiasts, the chance to mark the centenary of the maritime disaster by sailing on a large cruise ship to commemorate the sinking on the very spot of the tragedy is proving difficult to resist.

A British company has almost sold out two cruises for people to mark the anniversary on 15 April by following the route of the Titanic to where it struck an iceberg. The booming demand for Titanic-related travel has led to another travel company offering the chance to explore the wreckage of the ill-fated vessel in a Russian-built submarine next summer at a cost of $59,000 (£37,000) per person. Places for that voyage are already "very limited".   More>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

What are the Great Pyramids really made of?

One hundred thousand slaves tug multi-ton blocks across the desert. A complicated series of pulleys lifts each hand-cut stone into the perfect place. This is history's image of ancient Egyptian pyramid construction.

What if the Egyptians were using an easier, more efficient method? Recent theories and scientific evidence suggest that people assembled cement blocks on site to construct the exterior of the pyramids. Here's why everything you thought you knew about how we built the Great Pyramids is probably wrong.

Top image: via sculpies/Shutterstock.

X-raying the Pyramids

Materials scientist Joseph Davidovits suggests a more realistic way to look at how the pyramids were built. Unconvinced of Egyptian abilities to construct and move large blocks to create the pyramids, Davidovits posits that Eqyptians molded blocks from limestone and vegetable matter available nearby. These blocks, built on site, are then used to build the pyramids. Existing only as a hypothesis, Davidovits later supported his idea using X-Ray Diffraction data, a technique common in chemistry and material science.

Analysis of Casing Stones

Scientific inquiries revolve around the "casing stones" used on the pyramids – the outer layer of polished stone. In the paper X-Ray Analysis and X-Ray Diffraction of Casing Stones from the Pyramids of Egypt, and the Limestone of the Associated Quarries, Davidovits looks at stones from six different sites.

Through analysis, the casing stones at the sites contain air bubbles. This is stark contrast to rocks from the quarries, quarries the casing stones are typically associated with, with the quarry rock containing no bubbles. The presence of air bubbles in the casing stones supports the "cement" theory. Davidovits also wrote a journal article describing how a cement-like substance could be made using local fauna and tools like antlers and bone.

Evidence for Cement Technology   Read More>>>>>>>>>

Do You Know the Real History of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’?

HANOVER, N.H. (AP) — You know Dasher and Dancer and the rest of the gang. But do you recall, the most “Perfect Christmas Crowd-Bringer” of all?

That’s how executives at Montgomery Ward originally described Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, who first appeared in a 1939 book written by one of the company’s advertising copywriter and given free to children as a way to drive traffic to the stores.

Peter Carini holds a first edition of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer", part of a special collection at Dartmouth College, on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011 in Hanover, N.H. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

Curious to know more about how Rudolph really went down in history? It’s all in the pages of a long-overlooked scrapbook compiled by the story’s author, Robert L. May, and housed at his alma mater, Dartmouth College.

May donated his hand-written first draft and illustrated mock-up to Dartmouth before his death at age 71 in 1976, and his family later added to what has become a large collection of Rudolph-related documents and merchandise, including a life-sized papier-mache reindeer that now stands among the stacks at the Rauner Special Collections Library.

But May‘s scrapbook about the book’s launch and success went unnoticed until last year, when Dartmouth archivist Peter Carini came across it while looking for something else.

“No one on staff currently knew we had it. I pulled it out and all the pieces started falling out. It was just a mess,” Carini said.

The scrapbook, which has since been restored and cataloged, includes May‘s list of possible names for his story’s title character – from Rodney and Rollo to Reginald and Romeo. There’s a map showing how many books went to each state and letters of praise from adults and children alike.    MORE>>>>>>>>

Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers Up to $250K Per Vehicle

Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

Defense department agrees to allow Muslim cadets to wear hijabs

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) announced today that the Department of Defense will begin allowing Muslim and Sikh students who wear an Islamic head scarf (hijab) or a turban to participate in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC).

An American Christmas

What are some Christmas traditions in the U.S.?

There are so many Christmas traditions in the US! Where did they all come from? America is often called a “melting pot” and its Christmas traditions can be seen the same way! It is a country of immigrants from all over the world who each brought their culture’s unique traditions to the New World. Read on to find out how Americans came to celebrate with Santa Claus, stockings, trees, gifts and more!

 

U.S. Army uniforms to include Muslim headscarves, turbans?

By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WND

 

 

JROTC cadets on the USS Theodore Roosevelt

After intervention by the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Defense Department reportedly decided it will now allow Muslim students participating in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps to wear headscarves and turbans while in uniform.

The decision marks the latest influence by controversial Islamic groups on military affairs.

WND previously broke the story that an Islamic group that has been closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas is the official endorsing agency for the U.S. Armed Forces Muslim chaplain program.

The Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, also runs regular events for the military's Muslim chaplains.

WND also reported the Army's Muslim chaplain program was founded by a terror-supporting convict while the Army's first Islamic chaplain, who is still serving, has been associated with a charity widely accused of serving as an al-Qaida front.

On Thursday, CAIR announced its activism was responsible for the decision to allow Muslim garb in the JROTC.

The Islamic group got involved following an incident in October in which a Muslim teen, Demin Zawity, reportedly quit the JROTC when her commanding officer at a Brentwood, Tenn., high school would not allow her to wear her hijab in the homecoming parade.

CAIR sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta requesting "constitutionally-protected religious accommodations for the girl and for future Muslim JROTC participants."

Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army Larry Stubblefield responded to CAIR's complaint by explaining the JROTC program will not allow religious headwear.

"Based on your concerns, the Army has reviewed its JROTC uniform policy and will develop appropriate procedures to provide Cadets the opportunity to request the wear of religious head dress, such as the turban and hijab," Stubblefield wrote in the letter, made public by CAIR. "This change will allow Miss Zawity and other students the chance to fully participate in the JROTC program."

Christmas history in America

 

Christmas history in America : see also Santa Claus in America

In the early 17^th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday. 

The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings. By contrast, in the Jamestown settlement, Captain John Smith reported that Christmas was enjoyed by all and passed without incident.

After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America’s new constitution. Christmas wasn’t declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

Washington Irving reinvents Christmas

 

Evolution: 'The most foolish notion ever'?

When Americans banned Christmas

The first 'War on Christmas' was declared almost 400 years ago, courtesy of our Puritan forefathers  

posted on December 20, 2011, at 12:48 PM

The Pilgrims who came to America in 1620 were strict Puritans who didn't celebrate Christmas: They spent their first Dec. 25th in Plymouth Colony working in the fields as they would on any other day. SEE ALL 12 PHOTOS

How did the first settlers celebrate Christmas? 
They didn't. The Pilgrims who came to America in 1620 were strict Puritans, with firm views on religious holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Scripture did not name any holiday except the Sabbath, they argued, and the very concept of "holy days" implied that some days were not holy. "They for whom all days are holy can have no holiday," was a common Puritan maxim. Puritans were particularly contemptuous of Christmas, nicknaming it "Foolstide" and banning their flock from any celebration of it throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. On the first Dec. 25 the settlers spent in Plymouth Colony, they worked in the fields as they would on any other day. The next year, a group of non-Puritan workmen caught celebrating Christmas with a game of "stoole-ball" — an early precursor of baseball — were punished by Gov. William Bradford. "My conscience cannot let you play while everybody else is out working," he told them. 

Why didn't Puritans like Christmas? 
They had several reasons, including the fact that it did not originate as a Christian holiday. The upper classes in ancient Rome celebrated Dec. 25 as the birthday of the sun god Mithra. The date fell right in the middle of Saturnalia, a monthlong holiday dedicated to food, drink, and revelry, and Pope Julius I is said to have chosen that day to celebrate Christ's birth as a way of co-opting the pagan rituals. Beyond that, the Puritans considered it historically inaccurate to place the Messiah's arrival on Dec. 25. They thought Jesus had been born sometime in September.

So their objections were theological? 
Not exclusively. The main reason Puritans didn't like Christmas was that it was a raucously popular holiday in late medieval England. Each year, rich landowners would throw open their doors to the poor and give them food and drink as an act of charity. The poorest man in the parish was named the "Lord of Misrule," and the rich would wait upon him at feasts that often descended into bawdy drunkenness. Such decadence never impressed religious purists. "Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas," wrote the 16th-century clergyman Hugh Latimer, "than in all the 12 months besides." 

Rest of the Story - It

Why free-market economics is a fraud

© 2011 WND

If there's one thing everyone in America knows, it's that free-market economics is true and free markets are best.

After all, we're not communists, are we? They starved and lost the Cold War because they believed otherwise. And their watered-down European cousins the socialists? More of the same, only less so. Even liberals get this nowadays. All hail the free market!

Trouble is, things "everyone" knows are often wrong. And this is no exception.

It's time to start getting honest about a very simple fact: Nobody, but nobody, really believes in free markets. That's right. Not the Republican Party, not the libertarians, not the "Wall Street Journal," nobody.

Here's why: a truly free market is a perfectly competitive market. Which means that whatever you have to sell in that market, so does your competition. Which means price war. Which means your price gets driven down. Which means little or no profit for you.

Oops!

Naturally, businesses flee perfectly competitive markets like the plague. In fact, the fine art of doing so is a big part of what they teach in business schools.

That's why businesses use strategies like product differentiation, so their competition is no longer selling the exact same product they are. That's why they use strategies like branding, so their buyers don't think the products are the same.

Businesses will, in fact, do almost anything to get out of the hell of pure head-to-head competition.

They don't do it because they're crooked; they do it because they have an intrinsic economic incentive to. Always.

This is part of the innate essence of capitalism. It is not a flaw or a defect. It is part of what makes the whole system go. It is part of what makes capitalism capitalism.

People are the same way. Consider your own career. Why do you get paid more than the minimum wage? (I'm hoping you do.) Probably because you have some skill that everybody else doesn't have. So you don't have to bid against every unemployed person in your area to hold your job. Just a few of them. Which pushes your wage above the legal minimum.

That skill of yours is what economists call a "barrier to entry" – entry into the market for your job, that is. And if you're anything other than a damn fool, you'll cherish it like your very life.

I sure do.

Now let's consider the other side of the equation. We've looked at free markets in things you sell. Now let's consider free markets in things you buy.

Here everything gets turned around. If I'm buying something, I want the freest possible market in that product.

I don't, to take an example recently on my mind, want there to be only one market for live Christmas trees in my town. I want there to be two (or more), and right next to each other so I can easily comparison shop. And I want to shop for more-easily shippable goods on the Internet, if possible, where I can potentially find the lowest price in the entire world.

I want, in other words, every seller's nightmare. Which every smart seller will use every legal trick in the book to avoid.

As a result, nobody with any wits about them really believes in free markets. People believe in them when it's in their interest, but not when it's the other way around.

This is a systemic, structural condition, so anyone who tells you they believe in "free markets" is either lying, stupid, or hasn't thought the whole concept through properly.

The latter category is quite common. Many people do their thinking about political ideology in an entirely different – and dreamily disconnected – mental space than they use for managing real life.

Frankly, everyone I've ever met gets the truth well enough in practice, in their own personal life or in how they run their business, so I just don't believe anymore that anyone does believe in free markets.

Like any rational person, I'm open to counter-examples if anyone can show me any. But I've been asking around for a while on this, and haven't come up with much.

This is not just an esoteric point, still less yet one more example of the familiar fact that people are hypocrites in politics.

Here's why it matters. The political players in America today who claim to support free markets don't. They support free markets in the things their backers buy, but maximum barriers to entry in the things their backers sell.

For example, one of the great unnoticed achievements of the Republicans (and their Democrat collaborators) from Reagan onward has been to gut U.S. antitrust law. Having a monopoly, or a cozy oligopoly with friendly rivals, is one of the best barriers to entry around.

As recently documented in Barry Lynn's fine book "Cornered: the New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," American industry is now concentrated as it hasn't been since before the era of Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters. (There's a different kind of Republican for you, by the way. These truths are not liberal or conservative.)

Most Americans don't realize this has happened because, unlike in the old days of Standard Oil, oligopolies today are cunning about masking their existence.

To take just one example, America's eyeglass frame industry is now dominated by the conglomerate Luxottica. That's why frames are so expensive. And any company, like Oakley the sunglass maker, that tries to break into the market? They find themselves shut out of a Luxottica-controlled distribution system. And retailers are now afraid to receive distribution from anyone else, lest they be cut off.

It's a remarkably well-oiled scheme, and it has its parallels in many other industries. But the average consumer has no idea about this, because the range of brands, if not suppliers, in optical shops remains diverse.

We're fat, dumb and happy. We've been fooled. But behind the smiling mask of a hundred labels smirks a single monopolist.

But aren't there laws against this sort of thing?

Well, there sure used to be, enforced by unsung lawyers and bureaucrats (horrors!) at the Justice and Commerce Departments. Whom nobody considered very glamorous, but who were doing the rest of us a big favor. Talk about forgotten wisdom!

Consider some other examples:

• Tyson in chicken
• Smithfield in ham
• Menu Foods in pet food
• Frito-Lay in chips
• InBev and MillerCoors in beer
• PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and Nestlé in bottled water
• Dickinson in medical devices
• Microsoft in operating systems
• Iron ore (three companies)
• Aluminum
• Cement
• Railroads
• Banking

The number of problems caused by letting monopoly power – whose key consequence is known as "pricing power" – is astonishing.

For one thing, this is a huge part of what ails American farmers. Family farmers are caught between the agribusiness monopolies who push up the price of their inputs (feed, seed, fertilizer etc.) and the agribusiness monopolies who push down the price of their outputs. (The economists' term for the latter is "monopsony," with an "s," but it works the same way as monopoly.)

It's the perfect racket.

And it's no surprise that on the other side of the equation, "free" market politicians are very diligent in imposing genuinely free markets where this suits the interests of the multinational "American" corporations that fatten their campaign coffers.

This is done, of course, as a matter of high principle and sophisticated economic rationality. It's remarkably easy to make wonderful after-dinner speeches about free markets.

Let's start with labor. Post-Nixon Republicans have genuinely supported just about every policy designed to weaken the pricing power of labor. This starts with weakening unions and letting the inflation-adjusted minimum wage fall, but it doesn't end there.

You think Ronald Reagan got in 1986, and George W. Bush wanted in 2007, amnesties for illegal immigrants because they were nice, compassionate people? To ask the question is to answer it. Whatever the ultimate merits of amnesty as policy, for them it was about cheap labor, plain and simple.

The reality is that the past prosperity of America has never been based on pure free markets – starting with the fact that we had the highest average income in the world in 1776 because the colonies had structurally tight labor markets due to the open frontier. (Europeans and other Old World peoples were trapped by the iron law of wages because they had nowhere to go.)

Free, or nearly free, markets do have their rightful place in many parts of the economy, and it would be foolish to sabotage them. But in other areas – above all, in labor markets – our prosperity was based on pricing power.

A number of areas other than labor also worked better thanks to a healthy dose of pricing power. Try advanced technology, for a start. The patent system, which is not natural, is a fairly recent invention, and does not de facto exist even today in much of the world, is one. Innovation doesn't come cheap, and without pricing power for innovators, few companies could afford it.

Even the existence of scale economies, which are intrinsic to modern, large-scale, capital-intensive industry, implies markets that are less than free. Why? Because scale economies intrinsically imply a small number of large producers and thus give rise to oligopoly, with the consequences mentioned earlier.

This is why most other industrialized nations aren't romantics about free markets, are honest about their frequent nonexistence, and focus their policies on taming the negative effects of oligopoly while capturing the positive ones. They understand, for one thing, that big corporations are necessary but often pirates, and focus on making them share their loot with their crews.

We, on the other hand, live in a state of denial about the piracy.

So the next time someone tells you to believe in "free" markets, just tell them you'll believe as soon as they do.

When pigs fly.