Clear path to aquifer opens for pollution

By Robert Sargent and Ramsey Campbell
 Orlando Sentinel  July 7, 2002

The Battle for Water

By Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke

December 9, 2003

We are taught in school that the Earth has a closed hydrologic system; water is continually being recycled through rain and evaporation and none of it leaves the planet’s atmosphere. Not only is there the same amount of water on the Earth today as there was at the creation of the planet, it’s the same water. The next time you’re walking in the rain, stop and think that some of the water falling on you ran through the blood of dinosaurs or swelled the tears of children who lived thousands of years ago. (more…)

Debating How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass

The 4th of July

A Special  Holiday Collaboration by Gazette Columnists B. Bea Sharper and Tiger Tom–Their First Collaboration Ever

Facts You May Not Know About Signers of the Declaration of Independence

by B. Bee Sharper

Number of men who signed the Declaration of Independence: 56.

Number of these who were captured by the British as traitors and tortured  before they died: 5.

Number who had their homes pillaged and burned: 12.

Number who died from wounds from the Revolutionary War: 9.

Number who had sons killed or captured while serving in the Revolutionary Army: 4.

Number who were lawyers or jurists: 24.

Number who were farmers and wealthy plantation owners: 9.

Number who were merchants: 11.

Number who had a lot to lose when they stuck their their necks out by signing a treasonous document directed against their own government: 56.

Safe Patriotism, or Stuff They Didn’t Tell You  About The Declaration of Independence in School

by Tiger Tom

Most American-style people, I have noticed, think that the 4th of July was invented so people can shoot off some firecrackers, or watch some “professionals” shoot off some firecrackers for them (which is what I, Tiger Tom, often refer to as “safe fireworksing”). Or they go to some lake or other and get baked . Or they get drunk, or they go to a baseball game,  The real patriots might even get drunk and go to a baseball game. Or they sit at home and watch other people getting drunk at a baseball game on television (which is what I, Tiger Tom, often refer to as “safe baseballing”).

Usually here in Denton, Texas, the local newspaper trots out its good old editorial about how lucky we are to live in the land of the free and prints up some old pictures from its files that show kids playing in lawn sprinklers in the good old summertime and others of  families  participating in safe fireworksing or getting baked.  They always print a heartwarming letter to the editor from the local Budweiser dealer about how patriotic it is to drink beer on the 4th of July.  Beer, according to Budweiser Bill, is a great American tradition and all the guys in wigs who signed the Declaration were big beer drinkers who knew when to say when, which is what he says he wants us to do. (I, Tiger Tom, do not believe this for a minute. He does not tell us that if all the drunks started saying when, the Budweiser company would last about as long as a cherry popsickle in the fiery furnace into which Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego were cast. But that, of course, is another story which I, Tiger Tom, will one day tell  you under the title  “The Alcohol Industry’s Nasty Little Secret”.)

Another thing that I, Tiger Tom, have noticed about Americans is that when they get really steamed up about some great social injustice (like the high price of gasoline–I mean, somereally important issue like that), they get all pissed off and fire off an email letter, or more usually forward an email letter written by some organization, then they sit back and patriotically have a Budweiser and forget about the whole thing. They don’t put themselves at a lot of risk or go to a lot of trouble. And this is what I, Tiger Tom, call “safe patriotism.”

Now, for the guys in wigs who signed the Declaration, safe patriotism did not exist. These were all guys who had a lot to lose. Their money, their families, their asses.. Some of them got their houses burned down and some of them were captured and tortured and killed. Some of them lost sons. One guy, John Hart, lost his wife and 13 children and had to live hiding in forests and caves. He finally died from exhaustion. Another guy named Thomas McKeam had to keep his family in hiding and the British took away all his property. He lived and died in poverty. Thomas Nelson asked George Washington to destroy his home so the British could not use it as their headquarters.  He was forced into bankruptcy. A rich man from Virginia named Thomas Braxton who signed the Declaration had his ships destroyed by the British navy and had to sell his home to pay his debts.  He died in rags.

The biggest misunderstanding that Americans seem to have about the Revolutionary War is that it was really a Civil War. People think it was the Americans vs. the British. It wasn’t. It was a bunch of British guys telling their own government to get screwed. The revolt was not against a foreign government; it was against their own government.  They were guys telling their own government they weren’t going to obey its laws. Sort of what the guys at Waco did, when you come to think of it.

I, Tiger Tom, say it is time we do some serious considering about the sacrifices these guys made and the principles they stood for. And I, Tiger Tom, say it’s time we seriously kick some political ass and get rid of the greedy jerks that our one party system has spawned and put us in some representatives who respect the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence.  We enjoy greater liberty than anyone on earth, but our liberties are shrinking. We need to stick our necks out a little to protect them.

I, Tiger Tom, say that patriotism, real patriotism, like real sex,  is never safe.  And I, Tiger Tom, also say that although Budweiser Bill should be cast into the fiery furnace along with Shadrack et al. and roasted until his liver pops out, I, Tiger Tom,  will defend his right to say any slimy, self-serving thing about Independence Day that he wants to.

Back to Tiger Tom’s Index Page.

Back to Bee B. Sharper’s Index Page

Pure Water Gazette Front Page.

Beware of Mom

by Hardly Waite, Pure Water Gazette Senior Editor

Sept. 3, 2002

By the Gazette’s informal reckoning, American parents spend at least 37.46% of their time cautioning their children to beware of strangers.  Perhaps it’s as high as 41%.

By authentic and reputable non-Gazette statistics, there are fewer than 100 American children abducted and killed by strangers each year. In Great Britain, the average is five kids per year killed by strangers.

Here is the percentage breakdown for under-five-year-old children murdered in the UK during the last quarter of the 20th century:

Of all children under age 5 murdered from 1976-99 —

• 31% were killed by fathers
• 30% were killed by mothers
• 23% were killed by male acquaintances
• 6% were killed by other relatives
• 3% were killed by strangers

Actually,  talking to a dreaded “stranger,” so feared by American parents and consequently by American children, is statistically one of the safest things a kid can do. Far more children are killed by people they know, including relatives, than by strangers.  In fact, in brutal, unvarnished fact, the most dangerous person a child can  associate with is his mom or his dad. Almost 2/3 of the kids murdered are killed by one of their parents. And the number of children killed each year while traveling in an automobile with their mother is astronomical in comparison to the number abducted and killed by strangers. In Great Britain, the Sunday Times says that an average of five children per year are murdered by strangers, compared to 7,525 per year “killed or seriously injured” in road accidents.

With this in mind, it’s obvious that if we were a realistic race rather than a bunch of neurotic nervous nellies, we would tell our kids: “If your mom tries to get you to ride with her in a car, run away from her as fast as you can. If she offers you candy or tries to pull you into her car, run away fast and try to find a stranger to protect you.”

God Must Divest Himself of Earthly Holdings

or Dick Cheney Aux Enfers

By Tiger Tom

Your opinions are of no concern to us. —God.

There is a basic flaw in the way things are set up. I, Tiger Tom, say that it is absolutely unfair and detrimental to heathens and Christians alike for God to accept money from Christians. The practice creates an obvious conflict of interest.

Politicians, in theory, are required when they take office to give up control of certain assets in order to assure impartiality. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, made $39 million from oil holdings the year he was elected. That’s an undisputed fact. He is required to place his holdings in blind trust to assure that he will not be influenced to make self-serving decisions that would add more fat to his already-bulging bank account.

I, Tiger Tom, understand, of course, that Dick Cheney is a poor example to use for the principle in question, since vested or divested, participating or non-participating, profiting or not profiting, he’s going to make decisions that favor oil companies. That’s because helping oil companies is hard-wired into his brain.

What I, Tiger Tom, am concerned about is not the smalltime $39 million-a-year chumps like Cheney. I am talking about God. Now, there’s Someone with a real vested interest in the prosperity of Christians.

Consider that the Almighty is currently taking in big piles of cash—often in the form of a tithe, 10% of the earnings–from U. S. Christians. This means that when they profit, He profits.

I, Tiger Tom, say that this sets up a very dangerous situation, both for God and His followers. Not only does God have a vested interest in the financial well-being of Christians, it also puts us in front of one of those brain-splitting contradictions that the Holy Scriptures are famous for. Just consider this. Clearly, Jesus taught, once and again and several times after,  that the poor shall inherit the Kingdom of God and that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I am sure that there are those who will argue that camels were smaller in those days and that needles had bigger eyes and that if you grease the camel well with olive oil, etc., but Jesus was really crystal clear on the subject of the great advantage, nay, the absolute necessity of poverty if one’s aim is the salvation of one’s immortal soul. And when a certain specific rich guy came and asked Him directly how to gain salvation,  Jesus clearly told him to divest himself of his belongings and give the proceeds to the poor. He did not say anything about putting his stuff in a blind trust. He said get rid of it.

Dick Cheney: Cheerful Payer of Tithes and Taxes

Now I, Tiger Tom, do not know personally if Dick Cheney tithes, as it is called, by giving to God or at least to what are assumed to be God’s representative organizations, a tenth part of his net earnings. But let’s say that as a Christian man of high moral character, he does. And I, Tiger Tom, do not personally know if Dick Cheney as a tither is a netist or a grossist. Some years ago when I was a mere cub in Sunday School there was much heated debate about whether God intended people to give a tenth part of their gross or their net income, to wit, to give based on what you took in before or after taxes. The netists prevailed. It was decided that He meant pay a tenth of the net–what you have after taxes. Well, in Dick Cheney’s case, assuming that he is a netist,  since he owed $13 million of his $39 million in income tax (demonstrating clearly the need for a tax break for the rich) and was left with a paltry $26 million or so, he probably owed God no more than $2.6 million for the entire fiscal year 2000.

Now I, Tiger Tom, to give everyone and Everyone the benefit of the doubt, ask you to put yourself in God’s shoes. There are countless heathens who need to hear the Word. Up or down, right or left—everywhere you look, from God’s viewpoint there are sinners who need to hear the Word. Now, let’s say that God feels compelled to launch an ambitious missions campaign to spread his holdings in Africa, the very heart of heathen darkness, which He calculates will save 1.13 million souls if only the money can be raised to implement the campaign. So God is faced with a choice. He can spend his time tweaking the market a bit to  funnel, say, $10 million more Dick Cheney’s way, or He can spend a lot of time helping a teenage single mom in Houston get on her feet and get a job. The chick in Houston, let’s say, with a minimum wage job, is only going to owe God about $1,000 for the whole year. Let’s face it. Greed will likely kick in and she’ll decide to selfishly keep the whole ten grand for herself. But Dick Cheney, after taxes, is going to have to cough up at least two thirds of a million (a lot more if he can get another tax cut through). $667,000, God figures, will translate to at least 32,746 saved African souls, while the Houston girl’s thousand will barely buy a spare tire for one of  the salvation buses.

I, Tiger Tom, say that God did not get to be God by being impractical or dense. He did not fall off of a turnip truck.  He’s likely to think: “That girl should not have gotten herself knocked up. A little more time on the bottom will teach her a lesson. But Dick—that boy has always been a good and faithful servant. Look at the infidels he’s bombed! And he supports capital punishment! An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as I once so eloquently put it.”

Well, the obvious conclusion to draw from all this is that God has a vested interested in helping Christians. It’s as if they’re buying Him off with tithes the way the corporations buy the Tweedledums and Tweedledees who work in Washington.  He helps them, they help Him. The more they get, the more He gets.

But if you think this is a sweet deal for Christians, it is because you do not know all the facts. I, Tiger Tom, must tell you here about a vision that hath come unto me. It was as if an Angel of the Lord opened mine eyes.

Tiger Tom’s Vision

God is sitting at the toll booth to the Kingdom. (I know, it’s St. Peter who is supposed to be there, but it was his day off and God was sitting in.)  So  there’s God, thumbing through the brand new list of the recently defunct, when up steps none other than Dick Cheney.

God:  Hola, Dick. I see here that that last hunk of cow finally clogged up the old ticker for good.

Dick Cheney:  Well, you did give us dominion over the cattle of the field.  One would assume it was OK to eat them.

God:   I gave you dominion over your children, too, but I didn’t expect you to eat them.

Dick Cheney:  Whatever. Look, Man, I’m not feeling very well. Dying takes a lot out of you. Why don’t you just hand me my wings or do whatever it is you do so I can go on in and start my eternal reward with a good long nap.

God: I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong idea here. You’re carrying way too much baggage to come in here….

Dick Cheney: Hey, cut the comedy. I’m tired.

God: It’s no joke, man. You were way too rich to qualify.

Dick Cheney: Rich?  What’s wrong with rich?  And it was YOU Who made me rich!

God: That’s just a technicality. A rule is a rule. You know the one about the rich guy and the camel. And it clearly says in Luke 4:22: “Woe unto you that are rich!”

While they are talking, a pale, thin girl approaches the Gate, and God glances her way and waves her through.

Girl: Wait, isn’t this Heaven?

God: It certainly ain’t Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Girl:  Look, I’m not going in. I don’t even believe in all this crap.

God: Your opinions are of no concern to us. Jesus said clearly, “Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God.” I thought it was a little strong when He said it, but said is said, and I have to stick by it. The place is yours. Mi casa es tu casa.

Girl: Whatever

God: (He looks at his list and reads).  “Died of pneumonia while living under a bridge. Not eligible for food stamps because of welfare reform.” That’s you, isn’t it?

The Girl nods and He waves her through.

Dick Cheney: This really sucks! I say let’s take a vote. I’ll break the tie. And I want to appeal to the Supreme Court.

God: I am not only Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. I am also the Supreme Court.

Dick Cheney: Let me get this straight. You make people rich, then you condemn them for being rich, and you make other people poor and reward them eternally for being poor.

God: Something like that.  That’s what all the stuff about Alpha and Omega and the first being last and the last being first is all about, I think. I never understood it too well myself.

Dick Cheney: This place is more corrupt than the U. S. Senate.

God: Whatever. As I told the lassie from Houston, your opinions don’t matter around here. Adiós, Dick.

With these words, God slaps a button on the arm of His chair and the floor falls from under Dick Cheney’s feet. The hapless former Vice President tumbles screaming into the mouth of the fiery pit. When Dick Cheney is gone and all is quiet, God looks into the pit and, as an afterthought, shouts:

God: And thanks, Dick, for all those powerful tithes!

Gazette Columnist Tiger Tom tells it like it should be.  See more of his work at the  Best & Worst of Tiger Tom Page

 Drink More Coke

By Jim Hightower

August 21, 2001

In Mark Pendergast’s engaging book, For God, Country, and Coca Cola, he notes that this global purveyor of caffeinated sugar water once tried to pitch its drink to Cubans with a skywriting ad. But a wind gust distorted the Spanish word Tome to Teme, so instead of saying “Drink Coca Cola,” Cubans were implored to “Fear Coca Cola.”

All of the world’s people, including you and me, might want to reflect on this revealing slip of a verb, for Coke is a corporation on a mission. According to an excellent article by Sonia Shah in Progressive magazine, its mission is to replace drinking water with Coke as the world’s primary beverage.

This is no idle threat. The company asserts that “right now, in the United States, people consume more soft drinks than any other liquid – including ordinary tap water.” The company has big plans. A Coke executive has declared that soon, “we will see the same wave catching on in market after market, until, eventually, the number one beverage on Earth will be soft-drinks – our soft drinks.”

In her article, Shah reports that, rather than simply pushing this ambition in terms of its own corporate profits, Coca Cola wants to be credited with a humanitarian motive: “We’re redefining how consumers get hydrated,” the corporation brags in its annual report. Rationalizing this push into Third World poverty regions, Coke’s former CEO noted that “fluid replenishment is a key to health,” then he asserted: “Coca-Cola does a great service because it encourages people to take in more and more liquids.” Yeah, Bucko, and more and more of a liquid that causes rotting teeth, obesity, diabetes, and other health problems.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Coke wants to do more hydrating of U.S. consumers, too. Shah informs us that current CEO Doug Daft (yes, that’s his real name) envisions a Coke-on-tap system that will provide an endless stream of Coka Cola through the cold-water tap on your kitchen sink

Gazette’s Fair Use Statement

Milk Sucks, or Bossie’s Revenge

by Gene Franks

Editor’s Note: This article appeared originally in the July/Sept.1991 issue of the Pure Water Gazette. Since then, it has become popular to trash milk, although it still surprises us to learn that some people still drink it and seem to really believe that it’s “good for you.”

The amazingly successful and expensive advertising campaigns of the dairy industry not only got our mothers to feed us formula instead of breast milk, but seem to have convinced us that it is “natural” for people to drink cows’ milk. Nothing could be less natural. No species drinks milk beyond infancy and none consumes the milk of other species. –Neal Barnard, M.D.

When I was young, they packed me off to school,
And taught me how not to play the game. – Jethro Tull.

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity.–George Bernard Shaw.

It’s hard to give up the myths we grew up with. My mother taught me that cold, white cows’ milk was pure and wholesome and good for me. She learned that from those she trusted:  her mom, the schools, the doctor, Good Housekeeping. In every issue of Good Housekeeping, tucked neatly among the chocolate cake mix ads and the casserole recipes, was a doctor-approved weight-loss diet that let you start the new day with half a slice of enriched-bread toast, half a cup of stewed prunes, half a pat of butter, a poached egg, and some skim milk–the “Basic Four” foods that God intended us to eat.

When I drank cold, white milk as a child, I always imagined I was ingesting pure, healthful calcium and that it was solidifying right away into strong white bones and teeth. It would have been more realistic to imagine I was drinking glassfuls of chilled snot, because I’ve since learned, from research and from experience, that the bovine glandular secretion that we commonly call “milk” is a far more dependable source of mucous than of usable calcium.

The selling of milk is one of the great advertising coups. It has been so successful that almost no one objects that our taxes lavish subsidies on a fat-laden dairy industry whose cynicism and destructiveness equal the tobacco industry’s. Not long ago seven large milk companies quietly agreed to repay Texas schools over $15 million to settle charges of overcharging through bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies. It hardly made the papers that Borden’s, Cabell’s, Oak Farm and others were picking our pockets while their ads were telling us how much they loved our kids. Health writer Victoria Moran says, “Milk is so sacred in this country that living without it is a personal affair that should not be shared with everyone.” A Milwaukee school, she explains, reprimanded her for failing to include milk in her daughter’s lunch. thus denying her child one of the “basic 4.” Beware of the Milk Police.

Here are several things about milk that the ads don’t tell you:

1. Milk is “a natural” only for baby calves. Calves have fours stomachs and double their body weight in 47 days. Human babies have only one stomach and a much slower rate of growth. It takes human babies 180 days or so to double their weight, so they don’t need nearly as much protein as calves. Cows’ milk is 15% protein (it has 15% of its calories as protein); human breast milk is 5 % protein. Much of the rationale for believing that cows’ milk is an ideal food for human babies was based on research done with rats early in this century. The milk of mother rats is 49% protein and baby rats double their weight in just 4 days. This is yet another example of the difficulties we create for ourselves by trying to imitate rats.

2. Continuing to drink milk into adulthood is unnatural to all species. Only man could rationalize such weird behavior and learn to view it as “natural.” “Custom,” Shaw said, “will reconcile people to any atrocity. ”

3. Decades of meat and dairy propaganda have made Americans the world’s most outrageous protein gluttons. The most frequent question vegetarians hear is, “Where do you get your protein?” The answer is, “Where do horses, cows, gorillas, elephants, and giraffes get their protein?” Corpse-milk-egg protein is secondhand protein, inferior in quality to plant protein. And all plants, even lettuce, have protein. Here again is George Bernard Shaw: “Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay! ”

4. Although the officially recommended daily requirement for protein is probably more than double what we really need, government and university experts regularly advise that we take in an extra 30% or so just to be safe. More is better. When asked who needs this extra 30%, Dr. David Reuben, who popularized the importance of dietary fiber, replied:

The people who sell meat, fish, cheese, eggs, chicken, and all the other high prestige and expensive sources of protein. Raising the amount of protein you eat by 30% raises their income by 30%. It also increases the amount of protein in the sewers and septic tanks of your neighborhood 30% as you merrily urinate away everything that you can’t use that very _ day. It also deprives the starving children of the world of the protein that would save their lives. Incidentally, it makes you pay 30% of your already bloated food bill for protein you will never use [and] puts another $36 billion a year into the pockets of the protein producers. 

5. Question: Where do people who don’t drink milk get their calcium?

Answer: Where do cows get their calcium?

6. Question: Who needs the excess calcium that experts recommend?

Answer: The people who sell milk, cheese, and other high prestige and expensive sources of calcium. Raising the amount of calcium you eat by X amount raises their income by X amount.

7. Nutrition writer Frieda Kabelac says:

We have been thoroughly mis-educated about calcium and proteins, thanks to the dairy and meat interests, which have penetrated the school systems with their propaganda. So ingrained is the idea that we need milk after the weaning period for calcium that people doubt that we can get enough calcium from plant foods.

8. Calcium deficiency usually does not arise from too little calcium but from too much protein. Dr. John Scharffenberg writes:

A very high calcium intake is necessary in the United States diet because a high-protein diet increases  excretion of calcium. In one study, men 18-20 years of age were given protein ranging from 48-141 gm. daily. The higher levels of protein doubled the urinary excretion of calcium when both calcium and phosphorus intake were held constant…. A diet high in meat with its high protein content will therefore increase urinary excretion of calcium…. Vegetarians have significantly greater bone density than omnivores; thus vegetarians appear to be less prone to osteoporosis.

9, The dairy industry has spent millions funding a variety of research schemes aimed at proving that milk is good for us. Meanwhile, what is probably the most extensive epidemiological study ever undertaken in the field of nutrition found, decisively, that the opposite is true.

In 1983 a joint British-Chinese-American study known as the “Study of Diet, Nutrition and Disease in the People’s Republic of China” was begun for the purpose of studying the relationship between selenium and other nutrients and death rates from all forms of cancer. Because of its scope and the unique opportunity it offered, the study was expanded to examine many other health issues. It took exhaustive data–367 items per person were followed–on the lifestyle nutritional intake, and health status of 6,500 adults, half men, half women, spread throughout mainland China, over a six-year period.  I want to emphasize that this was not an American-style survey in which “researchers” phoned a lot of people and asked them  what they had for supper last night. It involved urine  and blood analyses, extensive questionnaires, measurements of foods consumed, and detailed examination of a broad spectrum of data that would have been impossible before the age of computers.

Although it will be years before all the China study information is analyzed and available, the earliest reports have been shocking, although not unexpected by many. Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University, who directed the massive study, told Jane Brody in a New York Times interview (May 8, 1990) that the study affirms that “we’re basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant foods and  minimizing our intake of animal foods.” On the question of osteoporosis, Dr. Campbell said:

“Ironically, osteoporosis tends to occur in countries where calcium intake is highest and most of it comes from

protein-rich dairy products. The Chinese data indicate that people need less calcium than we think and can get adequate amounts from vegetables.”

Specifically, Dr. Campbell told the Times that the Chinese study found an average daily calcium intake of  of 544 mg. in China, almost  none of this from animal products, and “there was basically no osteoporosis in China.” In the U. S., by contrast, where there is an average calcium intake of 1,143 mg per day, mostly from dairy products, “osteoporosis is a major public health problem.”

The most interesting findings of the China study, however. surface in the area of dietary fat and cholesterol and their relation to disease. U. S. studies have always failed to ask the real questions about animal vs. non-animal diets. Typically, they compare lean meat vs. choice cuts, or skim milk vs. whole milk, so the results fail to address the real impact of animal foods on humans. The China study takes a much broader view and allows comparison of a large base of plant eaters vs. animal eaters. The clear-cut conclusion is that for real-world human beings the greatest single influence on degenerative diseases such as cancer. diabetes. and coronary heart disease seems to be the amount of protein. particularly animal protein. in the diet. Here are some eye-opening facts from the China study as explained by Registered Dietician and nutrition writer Bob LeRoy-SiBrava:

The range of plasma cholesterol values found in U.S. populations is said to be 155-274 mg/dl (though a group of U. S. vegans, if identified, should show lower figures than this). Almost all of the China-group values,  88-165 mg/dl, are lower than the lowest in the U.S. range. Thus all of China equals or improves upon what would be an ideal target cholesterol level for just about any person in the U.S.

You might expect that cholesterol is therefore irrelevant in this study, and that every Chinese group would have the same monotonously low rate of heart disease, right? Wrong. [According to Dr. Campbell,] “Coronary heart disease risk in China continues to decline to an almost negligible level when plasma cholesterol levels are low.”  Colon cancer risk correlates in exactly the same way.

Likewise, the percentage of animal protein in the total protein consumed ranges from 0 percent to 20 percent among the Chinese groups, compared to an average of  70 percent in the U.S.  Even though the Chinese eat only a fraction of the animal protein eaten by Americans, the study found less risk for disease among those Chinese who eat the least amount of animal protein.

In other words, there is no “safe” amount of animal protein, and the more you eat the greater the risk. Remember, too, that from a nutritional standpoint, as Dr. John McDougall (The McDougall Plan) likes to say, “Milk is just liquid meat.”

10. If you plan to “cut down” on the fat overdose by drinking “low fat” milk, consider Bob LeRoySiBrava’s advice: “Healthwise, shifting from fattier meats to ‘leaner’ meats, cutting skin off poultry, reducing the number of times per week you eat egg yolks, and substituting 1% milk products for most whole milk products, is comparable to cutting smoking down to one pack per day.”

11. If cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis aren’t enough, here are a few more health problems that have been associated in medical literature with milk and excessive calcium:  kidney stones, gallstones aging and wrinkling of the skin, “frozen shoulder,” tendonitis, bursitis, heel spurs, otosclerosis ( which leads to deafness), bloating, cramping, diarrhea (of various types), colic, runny nose, bronchitis, asthma, inflammatory arthritis, eczema, ulcerative colitis, lymphatic leukemia, Hodgkins disease, multiple sclerosis, iron deficiency (due to milk-induced gastrointestinal bleeding), and even crime. [An article in the Journal of Orthomological Psychiatry  (8:149, 1979)  reported that the juvenile offenders studied drank twice as much milk as the control group.]

I’ll end this by adding the Gazette’s support to three very worthy boycott appeals that are outlined in a recent issue of the  Bunny Huggers’ Gazette. You can support all three of these boycotts simply by ignoring the dairy section at the supermarket as you would ignore other junk food sections.

One is a Greenpeace boycott of milk in cartons because of the presence of dioxin in cartons and the dioxin pollution caused by the manufacturing process. Dioxin in cartons is only one of many environmental concerns connected with dairy farming. Cows, according to John Robbins’ Diet for a New America, emit excrement in our country alone at the rate of 250,000 pounds per second, and a full 90% of our harmful waste water pollution is directly attributable to cattle. U. S. Water News reports frequently upon dairy-related water pollution. Two recent articles have described the “brown ice” problem in Vermont, a state that is home for more cows than people. In the winter of 1989, for example, the ice of Lake Champlain,, drinking water source of the Vergennes-Panton water district, turned “a distinct shade of brown” because of runoff from dairies. U. S. Water Newsexplains Vermont’s problem:

All of the runoff contaminants, manure, commercial fertilizers, milkhouse wastes, pesticides, are defined as non-point-source pollutants because they enter watersheds through natural channels instead of pipes. This natural seepage makes control difficult [and] the prime agricultural land is located in close proximity to Vermont’s most valuable rivers and streams.

A single farm discussed in the article produces 20,000 pounds of manure each day. That’s 7,300,000 every year, and 7,320,000 every Leap Year!

There’s another milk boycott sponsored by Farm Sanctuary of Watkins Glen, NY because of the widespread use by milk producers of BST, or Bovine Somatotrophin, a growth hormone used on dairy cows to increase milk production. Although there is a record surplus of milk and our tax dollars are being outrageously wasted to buy surplus milk, producers are milking cows for all they are worth by pumping them with health-endangering drugs and hormones. We also pay for pointless and cruel research in quest of genetically altered “super cows” to push surpluses even higher. Few people know that the greatest concentrations of pesticides in the human diet are from meat products, not fruits and vegetables. John Robbins’ figures for percentages of pesticides in the U. S. diet are 1% from grains, 4% from fruits, 6% from vegetables, 23% from dairy products, and 55% from animal flesh. It shows you how effective propaganda can be when you consider that most of us think of pesticides as something you try to scrub off of broccoli and apples!

A third boycott of milk products is sponsored by the Disabled and Incurably Ill for Alternatives to Animal Research (DIIAAR), Dona Spring of DIIAAR says the boycott is imposed because of “the suffering inflicted on dairy cows and the resulting veal industry. Their plight is worse than ‘beef’ cows.”

Some drink milk who do not eat animals, considering milk production less cruel because “they don’t have to kill the animal.” There was a time when that argument had validity, but today’s factory dairy farmers have equaled or surpassed the refined cruelties of factory meat farms. The image of Old Bossie the milk cow grazing in pastoral peace at Sunny Acres Farm, visited now and again by some amorous Ferdinand and surrounded by frolicking offspring, is a cruel fiction. Today’s factory-farmed Bossie knows Ferdinand only through artificial insemination,  and her many calves are taken from her at birth. Her relatively short life (most dairy cows become fast-food burgers as soon as their production drops) is spent in the confines of a metal and cement stall. Drugged, dehorned, and degraded, she is treated like a machine rather than a sentient creature. Her female calves follow in her footsteps, and their brothers are less fortunate. Except for the few who are designated to be “milked” for semen in their own chamber of horrors, male calves become the raw material of the veal factory. Their lives are, mercifully, short–about 14 weeks. They are kept in painful confinement and fed an antibiotic-rich, iron-deficient ” milk replacer” designed to produce the pale, anemic flesh that sophisticated eaters crave.

Veal is a by-product of the dairy farm. The only effective way to protest the cruelties of veal farming is to wean oneself from the bizarre and unnatural practice of cross-species milk consumption.

 What Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson Said about All This

Abraham Lincoln said: “I do not care much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

Gandhi said: “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

Thomas Jefferson said: “I tremble for my species when I reflect that God is just.”

The Pure Water Gazette says: It is time that people of good faith stop deluding ourselves with the self-serving nonsense about having “dominion” over the other animals. We also claim “dominion”–whatever that means–over our children, but, except for an occasional primitive throwback practice like circumcision, we do not assume the right to lop off parts of their bodies to suit our convenience, dissect them, fry them, or imprison them for fourteen weeks in cages so narrow they can’t lie down. We must also rid ourselves of the great falsehood that Descartes imposed upon us. It has clouded our thinking since his time. This is the notion that animals–except humans, of course–are merely instinct-driven machines that have no feelings. Anyone who has heard the heart-rending bawling of cows whose young are being trucked away to slaughter knows in his heart that Descartes was a liar or a fool.

Bossie’s Revenge

Like Thomas Jefferson, I believe that God is just. By that I mean I believe that there is an inexorable law of the universe that says that sooner or later the fiddler has to be paid. Call it the Law of Karma, reaping what you sow, ” what goes around, comes around,” or whatever you like. .

We jokingly call the unpleasant “turista” ailment we suffer in Mexico “Moctezuma’s Revenge,” acknowledging our sins against the native Mexicans. It would be more  fitting to lump most of our great health problems together under the single heading of “Bossie’s Revenge.”  Heart disease, cancers, kidney stones, ear infections, osteoporosis, asthma–all merely symptoms of “Bossie’s Revenge.”

Our sins against Bossie are many. The perfect model of passive resistance to evil, Bossie patiently chews her cud, as we dig our graves with our teeth. Bossie does not get mad. She gets even.