Chocolate really is good (for you)

Jewish World Review Fudging it: Chocolate really can be good for you By Hara Estroff Marano Psychology Today Magazine Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on print Share on email More Sharing Services149 Whether flagging from age or fatigue, ailing minds can benefit from chocolate JewishWorldReview.com | The very word "chocolate" is said to derive from the Mayan words for bitter water. Long before Cortes successfully introduced cocoa to Spain--Columbus was the first European to return with cocoa beans, but their value was unappreciated--the beans of the cacao tree were harvested, roasted, ground to a powder, and, mixed with water and spices, consumed as a beverage in Central and South America. An especially bitter cocoa beverage is still favored by Kuna Indians living off the coast of Panama, who drink about five cups a day. Researchers believe the bitterness is a mark of the very high content of flavanol phytonutrients in chocolate in its unprocessed state--which explains why the island-dwelling Kuna have unusually low rates of heart disease and cancer. FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". In addition to INSPIRING stories, HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. When the Indians move to the mainland, where they don't drink the same cocoa, they are no longer medically privileged. Scientists have gathered evidence that a high concentration of flavanols enhances blood vessel function throughout the body, and ongoing studies confirm that high-flavanol cocoa preparations especially boost brain blood flow. COCOA TREAT(MENT) Want to do a favor for someone in the early stages of memory decline? Give them a chocolate bar. In a double-blind randomized study, 90 elderly individuals with mild cognitive impairment were mentally quicker and more verbally fluent after consuming a daily cocoa drink loaded with flavanols. There were additional effects as well: Blood pressure decreased and metabolic and cardiovascular function improved during the eight-week trial. And there were no adverse effects. PRESSURE POINTS A daily treat of chocolate can help keep blood pressure under control. And that's a tasty way to modify a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. A meta-analysis of subjects who consumed cocoa products yielded a "small but statistically significant blood pressure-reducing effect." The flavanols in cocoa may be lowering blood pressure by stimulating production of nitric oxide, a powerful dilator of blood vessels. Increases in blood delivery to the brain generally enhance neural activity. STRIKE AGAINST STROKE Scandinavian researchers found that high chocolate consumption was associated with a lower risk of stroke. For those study subjects consuming the greatest amount of chocolate--2.2 ounces a week--the risk was nearly 20 percent less than for those consuming none. The effect was independent of type of stroke, whether hemorrhagic or obstructive. Researchers cite a variety of mechanisms by which chocolate helps--it's antioxidant, antiplatelet, and anti-inflammatory. FLOW CHARTED A single cup of flavanol-enhanced cocoa increases gray-matter blood flow, studies show. The boost in circulation is sufficient to power a short-term enhancement of cognitive skills. "This raises the possibility that certain food components like cocoa flavanols may be beneficial in increasing brain blood flow and enhancing brain function among older adults or for others in situations where they may be cognitively impaired, such as fatigue," says Ian MacDonald, of the University of Nottingham. A SHOT IN THE DARK It isn't the darkness of chocolate that brings health benefits. Nor, despite its prominence in labels, can you tell from the cocoa content of a chocolate bar how good it will be for you. In fact, the darkest chocolate can miss entirely what is medicinally good--flavanol phytochemicals. By nature, flavanols are bitter, and reducing the bitterness--by Dutch processing, or alkalinization--also reduces the amount of flavanol. Until labels show flavanol content, look for chocolate that has not undergone Dutch processing.

The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

This short explanation explains a lot.

Even for non-Marxists, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is considered one of the most profound analyses of revolution. Marx’s imagery is taken from the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte on November 9, 1799 (the Eighteenth of Brumaire in the revolutionary calendar), but his seminal analysis is about the reign of the general’s nephew, Louis Bonaparte, who was brought to power by a coup against the Second French Republic on December 2, 1851.

The work is most commonly known for its play on Hegel’s aphorism that history repeats itself. But what is commonly overlooked is Marx’s addition to Hegel’s adage: for Marx, history didn’t just repeat itself, it manifested itself first as tragedy and then as farce.

Louis Bonaparte’s presence on the stage of history was a farce. By culture he was a foreigner. By political inclination he was a pretender, a man who was all things to all people, and a man who was carried into political life by plying the outcasts of society with sausages. Then, as Marx so aptly put it, he plied them with sausages anew. Bonaparte represented no class interest and no transcendent interest except his own.

To Marx’s disgust, Bonaparte ruled by creating dependency on the state, by expanding the machinery of government. The organs of the state, the bureaucracy, and their ever-growing tentacles expanding into private life were Bonaparte’s substitution for a class or transcendent interest. Remember, the young Marx is the Marx of revolution who was appalled by the state as the corruption of humanity. Marx himself was a participant in the revolutionary skirmishes of 1848 and proclaimed the wrecking of the state — not its extension — as the road to the emancipation of humanity.

Confronting Marx was a political situation where no one class could achieve power. The bourgeois had failed to consummate its revolution, and the proletariat had marched too quickly on the bourgeois’ heels. This situation was ripe for exploitation by the foreigner, the pretender, who was all things to all people. To some scholars of this period, this was a description of whatwould later become known as fascism. The template for Hitler, Mussolini, and Peron is to be found in an examination of the reign of Louis Bonaparte.

So too, in a sense, is the presidency of Barack Obama.

As I have argued elsewhere, Obama is not a communist, even in the twentieth century meaning of the term. Communism is about state ownership of the means of production. The Obama administration does not seek ownership. In fact, where it acquired ownership through the bailout, the administration now works to divest itself. What Obama is building is a large government bureaucracy whose expanding limbs find their way into every facet of human existence, a government that does not own the means of production but controls them by increased and oppressive regulation and taxation. Obama’s political inspiration is more likely to be Mussolini or Peron, even Hugo Chavez, than Lenin or Stalin.

Obama has successfully done what few American presidential candidates have been able to do. He has mobilized the electoral periphery — the previously uninvolved youth, the apathetic poor, and the marginalized minorities. In politics, the agenda of the previous non-participants seldom resembles that of those traditionally involved in political struggles. This was one of Marx’s central considerations in his analysis of the Eighteenth Brumaire, and the one leftist political theorist Antonio Gramsci drew upon in comparing the rise of Mussolini to the rise of Louis Bonaparte.

How is it that a sitting president presiding over a damaged economy with high unemployment and no sign of recovery can get reelected? In part, the answer is that he has expanded access to the federal trough, made people dependent on the largess of the government, and caused them to be fearful that the “nasty” opposition is going to terminate the government programs upon which they are increasingly dependent.

Mitt Romney articulated it poorly and somewhat exaggerated the number, but the reality is that a large part of the population, especially the growing number of poor, is locked into the party that can be counted on to ply them with sausages. On the other side of the creation of dependency is an ever-growing government bureaucracy that administers those programs.

Mussolini and Peron, not to mention the recently departed Hugo Chavez, were popular with the social periphery. These dictators were the tragedy. As demagogues, they aggressively expanded state-created dependency on one hand and make-believe jobs on the other, giving many the comfort of a mediocre and predictable standard of living, while draining the real economy, borrowing incessantly, and perpetuating a dysfunctional system until its collapse could not be avoided. Obama, with his elitist pretensions and his insufferable allusions to the middle class, follows in their vein as farcical imitator.

The Peronist government managed the relationships between various interest groups and pretended to speak in the name of each of them, while micromanaging the economy with the promise of reducing income inequality. Ultimately, this policy led to one economic crisis after another.

The expanding role of government means a mutual dependency between a government bestowing favors and businesses and interest groups seeking them. This spawns an incestuous crony capitalism that produces Solyndras and causes the devastation of GM bondholders in favor of a United Auto Workers union that — like the Service Employees International Union — represents a Peronist-style syndicalism united with the Obama administration.

Louis Bonaparte came to power through a coup, as did Mussolini, but both Hitler and Peron were elected. Elections are not the only measure of democracy, especially when the incoming regime uses elections to expand power and seize wealth.  Peron, like Hugo Chavez, raided the private retirement funds of individuals and coerced them into government social security in order to pay for a government increasingly burdened with debt from pandering to the social periphery. There is a move now in leftist Democratic circles to have the Obama administration implement similar policies.

The monetizing of the government debt by aggressively and artificially lowering interest rates and falsifying real inflation has created problems for those dependent on interest-bearing instruments for their income. Meanwhile, programs for the social periphery are expanded in the name of compassion, where compassion has become a shibboleth that really means the government takes from some and gives to others.

The ultimate goal of such programs is neither compassion nor social justice, but building a political base of dependents made up of program recipients and program administrators on one hand and crony capitalists on the other. And so, we are in the era of another purveyor of an alien culture, a pretender who is all things to all people, and a demagogue who is hoisted on the shield of the social periphery that is constantly plied with sausages and then sausages anew. Welcome to the Eighteenth Brumaire of Barack Obama.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

Antithesis of the Austrian solution

Looking for the reason we are having difficulty getting a recovery on track one needs look no further than this explanation below.  As long as central banks keep expanding their balance statements by buying assets of governments we will have the makings of ever expanding financial bubbles.  This is all the antithesis of the Austrian school of economics solution which calls for the elimination of the misallocation of capital by allowing markets to function freely.  No pain no gain.

Then we get into more exotic territory, such as this offering from Steven Lewis at Monument Securities, via the FT:

More likely, investors realise the ‘knock-on’ effects from a Cypriot default are literally incalculable. But they are insensitive to bad news. They respond to those factors which would lead them to buy financial assets; they can do nothing with any other information. Central banks’ massive asset purchases have set up a situation where the markets’ normal signalling mechanisms no longer operate because investors have huge volumes of uncovenanted liquidity, created by the central banks, to commit to long-term assets. The central banks would, no doubt, claim this as a triumph for their asset-buying policies. They do not want to see economic recovery blown off course by recurrent financial crises. However, for those who believe free markets are the most efficient means of allocating capital, the impairment of the capital markets’ pricing function must be cause for concern. It presages serious misallocation of capital, carrying negative implications for future economic capacity. The most extreme and obvious form of misallocation is seen when a market ‘bubble’ forms. The bursting of a bubble may have spectacular consequences. But misallocation of capital may occur even when a ‘bubble’ does not form. For example, when investors, in their quest for yield, overlook significant differences in the risk-adjusted returns that assets may realistically be expected to provide. Central bankers say they are on the look-out for ‘bubbles’ but they seem unconcerned about any broader misallocation of resources their policies may generate.

The engines of the left

Here is a probably fairly complete list of all foundations that distribute millions of dollars every year to anti-capitalist, far left organizations and causes around the world.  Want to know why it's so hard to hear a conservative voice in the political dialogue these days?  The answers here.

The Wine, Women and Song Foundation

By Clarice Feldman

I have watched over the years how publicly unaccountable foundations have amassed billions of dollars, tax free, and spend it on dangerous, leftwing, often anti-American and anti-Israeli outfits, conferences and promoters.  Taxpaying citizens opposed to abortion without restrictions, open borders, balkanization of the country, erosion of their constitutional rights, dumbed down education of their children and environmental extremism are fighting opposition very generously funded by these groups.

The irony of this development is that capitalists -- like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Pew -- who owed their fortunes to American free market policies, started most of these foundations. Further, the notion of permitting many of the thousands of foundations to exist tax free developed during the Depression when public funds were tight and, it was argued, these foundations could supply the money to provide for necessary public services in the absence of any other resources that could do this.

Today the Ford Foundation sits on about $11 billion in assets. The Rockefeller Foundation holds about $5 billion in assets. The Carnegie Corporation holds about $2.5 billion in assets and the Pew Foundation about $5 billion. Those are just a few of the most  well-known of the "charitable" foundations.

The normal pattern with these is that the benefactor's family and/or associates who held his views sat on the board that determined how these funds would be spent. In time, they died or drifted away and the sums, which kept growing, were under the control of people who held views diametrically opposed to those of the founders.

While tax- exempt foundations are by law supposed to spend down a percentage of their assets annually, they've invented numbers of dodges around this and their fortunes grow as those of the taxpayers and government treasuries diminish.

I cannot list all of the misguided expenditures made by these foundations in recent years, but here's a short reminder:

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation played a large part in funding the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism (in Durban, South Africa), which degenerated into a circus of anti-Semitic and anti-American displays. Ford has given funding to a number of the NGOs that played key roles in the Durban Conference. Among these were: LAW (which received $1.1 million from Ford between 1997-2003); the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO (which, from 1999 to 2002, received several Ford grants, totaling $1.4 million, and an additional $270,000 supplemental grant); the Al Mezan Center (which, around the time of the Durban Conference, received $100,000 in Ford money for "community based advocacy work on economic, social and cultural rights in Gaza" -- i.e., the disruption of Israeli Defense Force activities); and the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute (which, around the time of the Durban Conference, received two Ford grants totaling $135,000). Ford has also provided large amounts of funding for Rabbis for Human Rights, for "rabbinically based" educations efforts "supporting human rights policies by Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."
Ford has provided financial backing to the New Israel Fund (NIF) since 1988. In 2003 Ford awarded a $20 million grant to NIF; four years later, it gave another $20 million to the organization.

Through its Cairo office, Ford disbursed more than $35 million in grants to 272 Arab and Palestinian organizations during 2000-2001 period alone -- plus 62 additional grants (totaling more than $1.4 million) to Arab and Palestinian individuals. From the 1950s through 2003, Ford's Beirut and Cairo offices awarded over $193 million to more than 350 Middle East organizations, almost all of which were Arab, Islamic, or Palestinian. Edwin Black, in a four-part article series titled "Funding Hate: Ford Foundation finances anti-Israel Activists," written for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, states: "The overwhelming majority of Ford's monies for the Middle East are granted to pro-Palestinian and Islamic rights groups."

Carnegie Corporation  

During the past few decades, the political leanings of the Carnegie Corporation (CC) have shifted leftward. Today CC believes that its mission is to serve as a catalyst for social change of a leftist nature. One notable individual who served on the Carnegie Board of Directors until recently was Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Senator John Kerry. [snip]

 Among the many recent recipients of Carnegie Corporation grants are the American Bar Association; the Alliance for Justice; the American Civil Liberties Union; the Aspen Institute; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center; theBrookings Institution; the Center for Community Change; Citizen Action; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Cornell University Peace Studies Program; Democracy Matters Institute; Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action; Duke University; the Earth Day Network; the Economic Policy Institute; the Gates Foundation Funds; Human Rights Watch; the Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project; the Interfaith Education Fund; the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the League of Women Voters Education Fund; the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund; theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense & Education Fund; the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; National Council of La Raza; National Public Radio; National Urban League; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Neighborhood Funders Group; the Paul Robeson Foundation; People for the American Way; the Ploughshares Fund; Project Vote; the Proteus Fund; the Public Broadcasting System; Public Citizen; the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; Rock the Vote Education Fund; the Rockefeller Family Fund; Rutgers University; State Voices; the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Urban Institute; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group; and the William J. Brennan Jr. Center for Justice.

The Pew Foundation

With other foundations, Pew manipulated surveys and provided fake research to facilitate the passage of the campaign finance reform act, now largely emasculated by the Supreme Court. This seems to be the clearest evidence that Pew and other tax-free foundations want to and have worked to retain their monopoly -- along with the mainstream media -- on free speech in America:

Starting in 1994, Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) and a few other leftist foundations began bankrolling front groups and so-called "experts" whose aim was to persuade Congress to swallow the fiction that millions of Americans were clamoring for "campaign-finance reform." This deceptive strategy was the brainchild of Sean Treglia, a former program officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts.3 Between 1994 and 2004, some $140 million of foundation cash was used to promote campaign-finance reform. Nearly 90 percent of this amount derived from just eight foundations, one of which was OSI, which contributed $12.6 million to the cause.4 Among the major recipients of these OSI funds were such pro-reform organizations as Common Cause ($625,000); Public Campaign ($1.3 million); Democracy 21 ($300,000); the Alliance For Better Campaigns ($650,000); the Center For Public Integrity ($1.7 million); the Center For Responsive Politics ($75,000); Public Citizen ($275,000); and the Brennan Center for Justice (more than $3.3 million).5 The "research" which these groups produced in order to make a case on behalf of campaign-finance reform was largely bogus and contrived. Forinstance, Brennan Center political scientist Jonathan Krasno had clearly admitted in his February 19, 1999 grant proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts that the purpose of the proposed study was political, not scholarly, and that the project would be axed if it failed to yield the desired results: "The purpose of our acquiring the data set is not simply to advance knowledge for its own sake, but to fuel a continuous multi-faceted campaign to propel campaign reform forward. Whether we proceed to phase two will depend on the judgment of whether the data provide a sufficiently powerful boost to the reform movement." The other seven foundations that, along with OSI, contributed most heavily to the promotion of campaign-finance reform were the Pew Charitable Trusts ($40.1 million); the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy ($17.6 million); the Carnegie Corporation of New York ($14.1 million); the Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million); the Jerome Kohlberg Trust ($11.3 million); the Ford Foundation ($8.8 million); and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($5.2 million).

Congress has known for some time the extent of the money locked up by these new era versions of Medieval abbeys -- then rolling in wealth garnered from tithes and taxes and gifts,   while all around them the peasants starved -- but has chosen to do nothing about closer monitoring their operations; limiting what this money can be spent on, forcing a faster pay out of this treasure for the public welfare.

There's only one thing left: The creation of a new Wine, Women and Song Foundation, led by yours truly, with the aim of persuading rich young men to spend their cash on wine women and song. (In the case of the newly rising cadre of wealthy women entrepreneurs, the term "women" embraces men.)

Do not leave your money to a foundation. You will not gain entry to heaven by doing so. You will surely be funding those whose views are anathema to you and who will prevent others living here from attaining what you did.

Buy that yacht!

Cover yourself and your loved ones with jewels.

Build 90,000 square foot homes wherever you choose to.

Travel the world in private jets.

Just don't leave your money in the hands of "public interest" grifters who will further beset your fellow countrymen  and the world.

It's for the public good.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/the_wine_women_and_song_foundation.html#ixzz2OTrOIQU8
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