Steel producers summit threatens stepped-up trade war against China

Robert Stevens

Representatives of the world’s leading steel producing nations have failed to agree on any measures to tackle the crisis in the industry.

A meeting Monday in Brussels was billed as a “High-Level Symposium on Excess Capacity and Structural Adjustment in the Steel Sector,” organised by the Belgian government and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Instead of resolving tensions, it marked a further stepping up of an ongoing trade war.

Ministers and other high-level government officials in charge of steel-related industrial and trade policies from 34 countries attended, including the United States, China and India, which collectively produce 93 percent of global steel output. Alongside these were representatives from the European Union (EU), World Trade Organisation, the World Steel Association, and delegates from various private sector steel corporations.

The meeting was called in response to the massive global overcapacity in steel production. The OECD noted that global steelmaking capacity was 2.37 billion tonnes in 2015, but declining production meant only 67.5 percent of that was being used—down from 70.9 percent in 2014. New plants were set to add another 47 million metric tonnes by 2018.

China, which has gone from producing a few percent of the world’s steel a few decades ago, produced half of all steel worldwide in 2015. It now has an overcapacity of 350 million tons, according to EU estimates. This is double the amount produced in one year in the entire EU. China’s attempt to export some of its surplus has led to a collapse in steel prices of up to 40 percent. In March, China announced that 500,000 jobs would go in its steel industry, with capacity to be drastically reduced.

According to World Steel Association chairman Wolfgang Eder, “The problem in Europe is that there is too much capacity” and the industry would probably have to be reduced by half in the next 15 years to survive. Given that 330,000 workers are employed at more than 500 sites throughout Europe, the scale of job losses entailed would be staggering.

The “overarching focus” of the Brussels meeting was “on promoting structural adjustment in the steel industry and reducing excess capacity by removing distortionary government policies and through industry restructuring.” It aimed to “agree on steps to reduce competition-distorting policies.”

Behind such phrases, the real agenda of the meeting was for the major imperialist powers to confront China, not an OECD member, with threats of escalating sanctions.

Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Kris Peeter, who chaired the meeting, acknowledged that “very frank” discussions took place. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said, “It’s now life or death for many companies” as “the massive surge in steel imports from China is hitting Europe very hard and the price of steel in Europe has dropped by 40 percent in the last years.” Singling out China again, she said a “crucial problem here is of course the involvement of states and support, and not market needs, and this has created incentives to overproduce.”

Malmstrom warned that the EU has begun to impose a series of tariffs against China and was now “examining a few other Chinese issues as well and we might bring them further later this year.”

Following the meeting, US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Trade Representative Michael Froman released a belligerent statement, warning: “Unless China starts to take timely and concrete actions to reduce its excess production and capacity in industries including steel ... the fundamental structural problems in the industry will remain and affected governments—including the United States—will have no alternatives other than trade action to avoid harm to their domestic industries and workers.”

Li Xinchuang, the vice secretary general of the China Iron and Steel Association, was belligerent in his response, stating, “It is a totally pointless complaint from the US and it’s biased against China.”

Speaking to Reuters, Li said, “China’s steel industry is market-based and Chinese steel products have good quality, low price and good service. The complaint on government subsidies is also crap.”

Xinhua, China’s official state news agency, declared that assigning blame to the Chinese steel industry was “a lame and lazy excuse for protectionism. … Blaming other countries is always an easy, sure-fire way for politicians to whip up a storm over domestic economic woes, but finger-pointing and protectionism are counterproductive.”

China's assistant commerce minister, Zhang Ji, told reporters that China had cut 90 million tonnes of capacity and would reduce it by a further 100-150 million tonnes. Asked what steps the government would take following the unsuccessful talks, Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told reporters Tuesday, “China has already done more than enough. What more do you want us to do?”

Even though any decisions reached at the meeting were to be nonbinding, nothing whatsoever could be agreed other than a “follow-up high-level discussion in September 2016.”

For decades, the trade unions in every country have played a central role in dividing steel workers and sabotaging all struggles, as they facilitated the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and attacks on wages, terms and conditions, and pension rights. Today they openly act as the nationalist cheerleaders for corporations and are the staunchest advocates of protectionism and trade war measures.

On February 15, Brussels witnessed the repulsive spectacle of steel unions and employers associations from 17 European countries holding a joint demonstration at the EU Commission to demand further trade war measures against China. Given their record it was fitting that trade union representatives were invited to speak at Monday’s meeting. The union reps were asked to present reports in a session of the summit dealing with “structural adjustment challenges in the steel sector.” Their expertise was called on in a session aimed at “Drawing on the experiences that economies have had in restructuring their steel industries in the past … and how these lessons could be applied to develop effective strategies for addressing the current crisis in the steel industry.”

The official report of the meeting said the trade union speakers “noted the importance of ensuring that all countries play by the same trade and social rules.”

The pro-capitalist unions will stop at nothing in defending the corporations.

The same day as the Brussels summit, the United Steel Workers union (USW) filed a case with US regulators to demand “four years of increased tariffs” on “a flood of foreign [aluminium] imports.” The USW said, “The majority of the aluminium currently flooding into the US market comes from Canada, the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela.” USW International President Leo W. Gerard said, “Aluminium is vital to our national and economic security, and this case will help us retain and begin to rebuild domestic production of primary unwrought aluminium.”

Aluminium, he continued, “is a vital product for our aircraft and weapon systems. It’s used in construction, manufacturing and in electrical transmission.”

China had to be confronted, insisted the USW, as the “significant imbalance between supply and demand in primary unwrought aluminium” was “principally caused by massive capacity additions in China that exceed growth in demand.”

Lining up with the Obama administration’s war drive against China, the statement warned, “Aluminium, steel, paper and many other USW-represented sectors have been the targets of unfair trade. … This vital case draws a line in the sand. We will not cede primary unwrought aluminium production.”

Tensions rise between Italy and Egypt over Giulio Regeni murder

Marianne Arens

The brutal murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni in Cairo has resulted in an open diplomatic crisis between Egypt and Italy.

On April 8, the government in Rome recalled its ambassador to Egypt. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that Italy had a duty to Regeni’s family “but also to the dignity of us all” to bring the “genuine truth” to light.

Italian student and journalist Giulio Regeni was tortured to death in Egypt in January in a bestial manner. On January 25, the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution, he disappeared without a trace close to Tahrir Square. Then on February 3, his horrifically disfigured body was found in a ditch by a highway.

To date, Egyptian Interior Minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar has avoided acknowledging any government involvement in Regeni’s murder, but the regime is notorious for torture and murder. Last year, Human Rights Watch wrote of the disappearance of 41,000 people in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood alone stated that 29,000 of its members had been arrested.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the gravedigger of the Egyptian revolution, came to power in 2013 after a coup against his predecessor Mohamed Mursi. Since then, police have murdered thousands of regime opponents, thrown tens of thousands in jail, and condemned over a thousand political opponents to death, including the former Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi.

After Regeni’s death, Egyptian authorities presented six different explanations. He allegedly died first in a car accident, then of a rape committed by homosexuals, and then in something to do with the drug trade.

Shortly before Easter, Egyptian police suddenly presented Giulio’s passport, student cards and bank cards, together with other objects, which could not however be matched to Regeni. The latest “explanation” states that Egyptian authorities shot four mafia members dressed as policemen who kidnap foreigners to rob them. The objects had been secured in an apartment belonging to the sister of one of the victims.

This “version” is not credible, as it does not explain why Regeni was tortured or why the criminals threw his body in a ditch while retaining his passport and other personal belongings.

These grotesque proceedings were finally exposed to Italian newspaper La Reppublica via email by an anonymous, well-connected source. The author of the email described himself as a member of the Egyptian secret police and apparently has detailed knowledge of the case.

From a Yahoo account, he described the events in a mixture of English, Arabic and Italian: “The order to arrest Regeni was given by General Khaled Shalabi, head of the criminal commissariat and the office of investigations in Cairo. He had been carrying out surveillance on Giulio’s apartment and ordered national security officers to search it. The General held Regeni for 24 hours after his arrest in the Gizeh barracks.”

There, Regeni was asked “about his network of contacts to Egyptian workers’ leaders,” but he refused to make any statements without the presence of a interpreter or representative from the Italian embassy. He was subsequently brutally beaten. During the night of January 26 to 27, he was transferred “at the orders of interior minister Magdi Abdel Ghaffar…to an office of the national security in Nasr City.” The chief of national security was ordered to “make him talk.”

In the following 48 hours, Giulio was tortured with increasing brutality. He was “hit in the face,” then “beaten on the soles of his feet with a stick” and “hung from a door,” he was “subjected to electric shocks on sensitive parts of the body,” and was given “no water, no food, no sleep.” They also “placed [him] naked in a room overflowing with water, which [was] subjected to electric shocks lasting several seconds every 30 minutes.”

The injuries resulting from such torture apparently match those found by the autopsy in Rome. This and several other details were known only to the torturers and Italian investigators, and had not been published anywhere. La Reppublica concluded that the author of the anonymous report was credible.

Further details confirm this credibility, such as when the author reports that the secret police in Nasr City subjected the victim to “cuts with a kind of bayonet,” which the autopsy also confirmed.

The transfer to the military intelligence service was decided upon jointly by the interior minister and presidential adviser Ahmad Jamal ad-Din. There, torturers “pressed cigarette butts on his throat and ears,” which would explain why the body was found with its earlobes cut off.

On the day when Italian minister Federica Guidi travelled to Cairo to investigate Regeni’s fate, consultations were held about what should be done with the body. The interior minister, along with Egyptian President Al-Sisi, was personally involved in these discussions. “In the meeting it was decided to portray the incident as a kidnapping with a homosexual background and therefore to throw the body naked in a roadside ditch,” according to the anonymous report.

On 11 April, La Reppublica wrote that Giulio’s death had to be finally “described for what it is: a state murder.”

Since February, protests against the cover-up of Regeni’s murder have grown. All of Italy watched as Regeni’s mother, Paola Regeni, reported in a March 29 press conference before the parliament building about the terrible state in which she found the body: “I could only recognise Giulio by the tip of his nose.” She demanded to know the truth and noted that Giulio was not an isolated case.

A petition demanding the uncovering of Giulio’s murder was signed by almost 5,000 academics internationally. Rallies are growing in Italy, blockades are being held in front of the Egyptian embassy, and the case is being discussed in detail online.

This has put the Italian authorities under pressure. In early April, the government felt compelled to demand rapid clarification from Egypt. Italian officials called for the publication of the mobile telephone records of the victim, surveillance video from metro stations and all forensic data and results. On 5 April, a delegation of high-ranking Egyptian jurists arrived in Rome, but without bringing the material which had been called for.

Three days later, Italian state prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone stated that the talks with the Egyptians had collapsed without a result. On the same evening, foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni recalled ambassador Maurizio Massari from Cairo “for consultations in Rome,” as it was stated, to “discuss the next steps.”

Italy threatened to place Egypt on a list of dangerous countries for tourists, while the number of Italian tourists in Egypt has already dropped by one tenth. The British government has also demanded a full accounting from the Egyptian government, and the European Parliament discussed whether to halt weapons exports to Cairo.

Nonetheless, Italy does not want to risk its good relations with Egypt. It has steadily expanded economic and political cooperation with the al-Sisi regime. Italy is dependent on Egypt’s cooperation in particular in its preparations for a military intervention in Libya, and annual trade between Italy and Egypt amounts to €5 billion. On April 14, the Italian state prosecutor merely directed an official request for legal cooperation to Egypt.

In addition, Italian energy firm Eni discovered a huge gas field of over 100 square kilometres off the Egyptian coast. Renzi welcomed the find on Twitter with the hashtag, “goodnews.”

Obama flies to Saudi Arabia amid rising tensions

Bill Van Auken

US President Barack Obama arrives in Saudi Arabia today for meetings with Saudi King Salaman and the other crowned heads of the Sunni Arab oil monarchies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. The trip comes amid rising tensions both within the Middle East and between Washington and the Saudi royal family, over issues ranging from the nuclear deal with Iran to US legislation that would allow American citizens to sue Saudi Arabia over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

These frictions notwithstanding, the House of Saud, with its medieval mass beheadings and extreme sectarian Wahhabi ideology, has remained a linchpin of US imperialist policy in the Middle East and a bulwark of reaction and repression in the Arab world for seven decades.

The most immediate source of conflict between Washington and Riyadh is the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a piece of legislation before the US Congress permitting lawsuits against foreign governments responsible for supporting terrorist attacks on American soil.

With bipartisan support, including from both Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the legislation is clearly aimed at the Saudi regime. It has been triggered in large measure by renewed attention to the continued censorship of a 28-page chapter from the report of the joint congressional committee on 9/11 that details Saudi support and funding for the September 11 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi citizens.

In an interview broadcast by CBS on Tuesday, Obama made clear his intention to veto any such legislation, raising the danger that it could trigger actions against the US itself. “If we open up the possibility that individuals in the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries.” This line of argumentation is unintentionally revealing, given US imperialism’s role as the world’s main state sponsor of terrorism.

The Saudi regime has threatened punishing retaliation if the legislation is enacted. The Saudi foreign affairs minister, Adel al-Jubeir, reportedly personally informed the White House that Riyadh would retaliate with the wholesale sell-off of $750 billion in US assets.

Such a “nuclear option” would not only deal a blow to the US economy, but would drastically reduce the value of Saudi assets themselves, exacerbating an already deepening crisis over the fall of oil prices. Whether the monarchy would really carry out such a reckless action or not, the fact that it threatens to do so is indicative of the tensions in the US-Saudi alliance.

At the heart of the controversy over the 9/11 report is the fact that this alliance has, since the CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Afghanistan in the 1980s, involved the use of the Saudi regime and prominent Saudi citizens, such as Osama bin Laden, to mobilize Islamist fighters as US proxies. This has continued through the 2011 war in Libya and the ongoing conflict in Syria, which will no doubt be one of the main topics of discussion at the meeting in Riyadh.

US officials recently revealed that Washington is preparing to implement its “Plan B” in Syria should the cessation of hostilities negotiated at the end of February collapse and the talks between the Syrian government and Western-backed “rebels” in Geneva break down. It would involve the pouring of new and more deadly weapons into the conflict, in particular, anti-aircraft weapons that could be used to bring down both Syrian government and Russian jets.

The unraveling of both the cease-fire and the talks now appears to be taking place. The Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate and its CIA-vetted allies launched an offensive in Aleppo province earlier this month, prompting a government counteroffensive.

The Saudi- and US-backed “High Negotiations Committee” representing the Islamist militias fighting the Syrian government announced Monday that it was suspending its participation in the UN-brokered talks, while the “rebels’” chief negotiator, Mohammed Alloush, the leader of Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), a rabidly sectarian militia fighting to impose an Islamic state in Syria, wrote on Twitter urging a new offensive. “Strike them at their necks. Strike them everywhere,” he said, quoting a passage from the Quran.

The Saudis have long urged the provision of more weaponry, including man pads, i.e., portable surface-to-air missiles capable of bringing down both military jets and passenger planes.

Other tensions have arisen in relation to an interview with Obama published in the April issue of the Atlantic magazine in which the US president described the Saudis as “free riders” who depended on the US for their defense while seeking to pull it into conflicts that did not serve Washington’s interests.

That the monarchy would take offense is entirely understandable. Far from riding “free,” Riyadh has paid some $95 billion in cash for US weapons systems under the Obama administration and negotiated deals worth over $100 billion more, making it by far the biggest customer of the US military-industrial complex.

A significant amount of new spending has gone into replacing bombs and missiles fired at civilian targets in Yemen, where over a year of a Saudi war has killed thousands and left half the population on the brink of starvation. The Pentagon has provided both intelligence and logistical support for this bloodbath.

Another not incidental consequence of the war has been the dramatic strengthening of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has established a mini-state around the southeastern port city of Mukalla and amassed unprecedented financial resources and arms stockpiles.

As in its intervention in Syria, Saudi Arabia has waged the war in Yemen in the name of countering Iranian influence, though there is no evidence of major Iranian support for, much less control over, the Houthi rebels.

Among the statements made by Obama in the Atlantic interview that grated the most with the Saudi monarchy was his proposal that it “find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace” with Iran. Riyadh bitterly opposed the nuclear deal with Tehran, fearing it could signal a rapprochement between Iran and the US that would diminish its own role as US imperialism’s principal regional ally.

Despite the nuclear accord, Washington remains determined, including by military means, to prevent Iran from challenging its hegemony in the Middle East.

Growing strains within Saudi society itself resulting from falling oil prices and consequent reductions in spending that threaten to provoke social discontent are the backdrop to these geopolitical tensions. The stability of US imperialism’s key Arab ally is being called increasingly into question.

Clinton, Trump post New York primary victories

Patrick Martin

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire Donald Trump won the Democratic and Republican primaries in New York State Tuesday, cementing their positions as the frontrunners for the presidential nominations of the two big business parties.

Clinton defeated Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent, rolling up a total of nearly 1.1 million votes compared to some 800,000 for her opponent. Democratic turnout was up about 10 percent compared to the last contested primary, in 2008, when Clinton defeated Barack Obama by nearly the same percentage margin.

In terms of delegates for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, which were divided proportionally, Clinton won 135 and Sanders 104, increasing Clinton’s lead among elected delegates by 31. Media tabulations have Clinton with 1,424 elected delegates to 1,149 for Sanders, a margin of 275. When unelected superdelegates—party officials and officeholders, who overwhelmingly favor Clinton—are included, Clinton’s lead more than doubles to 713, with 1,893 for Clinton compared to 1,180 for Sanders. A total of 2,382 are required to win the Democratic nomination.

Clinton rolled up her majority in New York City and its suburbs, sweeping all five boroughs of the city and the five suburban counties, Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island and Westchester, Rockland and Orange north of the city. Upstate, Clinton won narrowly in Erie County (Buffalo), Monroe County (Rochester) and Onondaga County (Syracuse). Sanders actually won 49 of New York’s 62 counties, including the rural areas and the smaller manufacturing centers like Schenectady, Utica and Binghamton, as well as the state capital, Albany.

The Sanders campaign complained that Democratic Party rules making New York a closed primary—limited only to registered Democrats—excluded as many as 3 million voters registered as independents. Nearly all of the remaining primaries, with the exception of California, the most populous state, will be conducted under similar rules, increasing Clinton’s chances of winning most of those contests.

Sanders’s victories in 15 primaries and caucuses have been largely due to a big turnout among independent voters, particularly young people. Exit polls suggest that he has won a majority among registered Democrats in only one primary, in his home state of Vermont.

The Sanders campaign outspent Clinton by two-to-one and mobilized large numbers of young people, but Clinton had the unstinting support of Democratic Party officeholders and the bulk of the trade union apparatus in the state.

In the Republican primary, Trump won 60 percent of the vote, while his two remaining opponents, Ohio Governor John Kasich and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, divided up the remainder. Kasich won 25 percent of the vote and Cruz 15 percent. The total Republican vote was up more than 20 percent compared to 2008, but still far below the total in the Democratic contest. All three Republicans combined won fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in the heavily Democratic state.

Under Republican Party rules awarding delegates on a winner-take-all basis if a candidate wins 50 percent of the vote in a congressional district or statewide, Trump won at least 90 of the 95 delegates elected Tuesday, with Kasich taking the remainder. Cruz won zero delegates, finishing a poor third in all 27 congressional districts in the state.

Trump now leads the Republican contest with 849 delegates compared to 559 for Cruz, with 1,237 required for the nomination. The New York result does not clinch the nomination for Trump, but it makes it considerably more difficult to prevent him accumulating the needed delegates in the 15 states still to vote.

Kasich’s five or so delegates were the first he has won since the March 15 primary in Ohio, his home state. He has only 148 delegates, fewer even than Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who suspended his campaign more than a month ago.

The result of the New York primary is that it appears more likely that the Democratic and Republican parties will nominate as their candidates the most widely despised figures in modern American political history. An opinion poll published last week found that Trump was viewed favorably by only 24 percent, compared to 65 percent disapproving, for a net negative standing of minus 41 percent, the worst figure ever recorded for a presidential frontrunner of a major capitalist party. Clinton’s numbers were the second worst ever recorded: 32 percent favorable compared to 56 percent unfavorable, for a net negative of minus 24 percent. Ted Cruz was little better, with a net negative rating of minus 23 percent.

These figures reveal not just the unpopularity of these individuals, but the widespread popular hostility to both political parties and the financial aristocracy they represent and serve.

In her victory speech in Manhattan Tuesday night, Clinton sought to identify herself with what she called “a progressive tradition from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama,” espousing “bold progressive goals backed up with real plans.”

While listing a litany of unmet social needs, from “rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure” to education, health care, the environment, systemic racism and pay discrimination against women, she gave no hint as to why the Obama administration has so signally failed to improve conditions of life in any of these areas.

As has become the pattern throughout the campaign, Clinton made no reference to foreign policy or the looming threat of war, the day after the Obama administration approved the latest escalation of US military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

Proclaiming her own campaign to be “the only campaign, Democratic or Republican, to win more than 10 million votes,” counting all primaries and caucuses so far, she declared that “the race is in the home stretch and victory is in sight,” the first time she has made such a public claim.

Clinton appealed to Sanders and his supporters, saying that “much more unites us than divides us,” and made no explicit criticism of her Democratic rival, instead attacking Republicans Trump and Cruz.

Both Trump and Clinton are currently leading in the polls in all five of the states with primaries scheduled for next Tuesday, all on the East Coast: Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Victory in all five would likely secure the Democratic nomination for Clinton, but would not foreclose the possibility of a contested Republican convention.

Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, appearing on MSNBC after the dimensions of Clinton’s victory in New York had become apparent, said that Sanders must win at least three of the five contests on April 26 to have a path to the nomination, indicating Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island as the most likely.

Sanders addressed a rally at State College, Pennsylvania before the polls closed in New York, and then flew home to Vermont without making any public statement other than a congratulatory phone call to Hillary Clinton.

Other results from exit polls of Democratic primary voters showed results quite similar to those in previous primary states, with Sanders winning by large margins among younger voters and running even with Clinton among minority voters under 45, while Clinton won by huge margins among African-American and Hispanic voters, including 77 percent of minority voters aged 45 and over.

On the Republican side, exit polls suggested a deepening split over the candidacy of Trump. A majority of those who voted for either Kasich or Cruz, some 55 percent, said they would not vote for Trump in November if he is the Republican nominee.

Kashmir: Killings, Curfew And The Myth Of Normalcy

Aadil Farooq

As the authorities lifted curfew in Kupwara and Handwara towns after days of demonstrations and subsequent killings, it seems that normalcy has returned to valley. But such arguments whose premises are laid on an ultra-myopic sense are themselves subjected to debate. What we mean by normalcy when the context is Kashmir specific.

Have Kashmir faced Handwara like situation for the first time. Have killing been done in Kashmir for the first time. It is not like that Kashmir saw it in zainakote it saw it in pulwaom, in Palhalan, in Sopore, in Veijbour, in Shopain in Chouhdhur, in Varmul, in Islambad, Bandpore, Kulgoam, Badgoam in every part of it and every bit of it, in the interiors and exteriors…everywhere. One can hardly find an area in Kashmir where blood is not spilled. The same spree was followed by the same myths of normalcy and everything was presumed to be normal devoid of identifying the brunt it was building.

The word normalcy and its obnoxious, abhorrent, disgust and continuous mortification in Kashmir is quite visible. Can things be normal when the barrel of gun is always pointing at you? Can things be normal when every Kashmiri is gazed as a suspect? Can things be normal when every phone call is tracked and traced? Can things be normal when even social media is subjected to scrutiny?

After the days of killings and curfew – and the subsequent restrictions laid by the occupational institutions – people seem to have finally moved on with their daily works and thus depicting normalcy. The mayhem of death was not an audient drama, but a reality of Kashmir which we have been facing since 90s or even before that.

Over the past three decades, especially during the 90s, Kashmir has been a witness to so many massacres. Then came 2008. There was a massive civilian uprising against the Indian occupation. Initially the authorities fired upon the peaceful demonstrations to silence the protesters. More than 60 civilians were killed. When India state saw things running out of their control, they imposed strict curfew. Things repeated in 2009 and 2010 (in 2010, 126 civilians were killed by Indian army and paramilitary forces).

So, such a situation of killings and curfew only reveal a persistent cycle of miseries that Kashmir seems to have got used to. The incidents of this kind are always followed by curfews and detention or house arrest of the resistance leaders. So in nutshell nothing – literally nothing; neither the attitude of the Indian state nor the counter strategies of the Kashmir’s resistance leadership – has really changed. Indian forces keep on killing our youth; the shameless Indian mainstream media keeps of defending their rapist and murderer forces. And on the other hand Kashmir’s pro-freedom leadership keep on issuing the statement of condemnation to further nurture their victimhood.

Iranian Teacher Racially Abuses Ahwazi Children For Speaking Arabic

Rahim Hamid

A Persian Iranian teacher reportedly punished two Ahwazi Arab primary school pupils for speaking with each other in their Arabic mother tongue last week by forcing them to wash out their mouths with soap and water, warning other pupils that they would face the same punishment if he heard them speaking Arabic or if they were reported to have done so in his absence.

The latest incident of overt anti-Arab prejudice from a regime official, which took place at a school in the Amaniyeh neighbourhood of the regional capital, Ahwaz, has sparked outrage among Ahwazi people, who already face extensive apartheid-style laws outlawing their Arab language, dress, and culture.

Speaking to ‘Arabi 21,’ prominent human rights activist Abdul Karim Dahimi condemned the teacher’s “heinous act,” adding that such overt and shameful racism towards young children exceeds even the customary brutal anti-Arab prejudice from the regime.

Dahimi explained that Ahwazi Arabs are forbidden from speaking their native language, despite the fact that it is “the language of the Quran and the mother tongue of the Arab people of Ahwaz,” adding that this “despicably ugly incident shows the extent of Iranian teachers’ hatred towards Arab language and culture since they consider all things related to Arabs to be filth.”

Other activists pointed out that although the Iranian regime’s constitution, specifically Articles 15 and 19, explicitly allow Ahwazi Arabs to be educated in their own Arabic language, in practice those articles of the constitution which pertain to non-Persian Iranians are disregarded by the regime, with the Persian language being forcibly imposed on the Ahwazis for decades as the sole language permitted.

Dahimi, a former teacher, told Arabi 21, “In recent years, anti-Arab hatred and Iranian supremacism have trickled down from the Iranian elite to the mainstream among the Persian community, and today we see these acts and this sort of racist behaviour recurring extensively against Ahwazi people, going unchecked even in a nation which calls itself Islamic.”

Talking about the latest incident involving the teacher’s abuse of the two children, the activist said, “The parents of these children raised complaints about the Iranian teacher’s racist crime, but they haven’t seen any serious legal action by the Department of Education officials against this racist teacher. We demand that [the education department] take legal action against this teacher and bring him to trial so that Arab students can’t be insulted, with legislation outlawing such abuse included in all international laws regarding crimes against children.”

Ahwazi activists point out that offensive racist depictions of Arabs are common in Iranian media which show a deep contempt for Arab culture and identity and use derogatory terms throughout even supposedly serious programs. Whilst Iranian regime officials claim that their abusive anti-Arab rhetoric and media coverage is directed solely against the regime’s Saudi opponents, this excuse is extremely unconvincing to Ahwazis, who have been subjected to such abuse for decades.

Empire Files Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents

Robert Barsocchini

The above is devastating for Clinton and will further diminish her wavering support among non-oligarch US citizens, relegating her to being elected by the anti-democratic means on which she relies, from kick-backs and slush-funds to hundreds of billions of dollars in arms sales to foreign dictators. (Using and dealing in high-explosive devices is among Hillary’s most prominent trademarks.)

One of the key points in the investigation is that in what we are told is the US ‘democratic system’, a set of oligarchs with corrupt financial ties to the elite-catering candidates, like Hillary, literally get to have their individual votes count as thousands upon thousands of votes.

These oligarchs, dubbed ‘super-delegates’, bribe and support the candidate that works to make them (and in turn the politician in question) even richer and more powerful, and who is fine with, or in Hillary’s case gleeful about, mass-killing any ‘unpeople’ (1984) who stand in the way.

Another point raised is that Hillary’s first political work was “campaigning for the Donald Trump of the ’60s, far right Republican” and corporate oligarch Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was a white supremacist reacting against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, and Hillary was inspired. (She regularly uses white-supremacist imagery in her own political campaigns.) She later became president of the Young Republicans Club, and to many independent analysts and neo-cons today, it is obvious that Hillary is herself an ideological member of the neo-con terrorist organization.

Again in the eighties and since, Hillary strongly supported policies that top government staffers have said were designed to, and have succeeded terrifically at, imprisoning and killing vast numbers of African Americans and other impoverished or dissident groups.

Indeed, expert Roger Morris finds in his extensive interviews with Hillary/Bill staffers (Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America) that Hillary, as one might expect from her record, harbors utter personal disdain and disgust for honest, non-oligarch US citizens, whom she is known to call ‘red-necks’ and the like.

Morris further discusses the Clintons’ involvement in shipping money and weapons to the ‘secret’ US terrorist army known as The Contras. For attacking Nicaragua with this and other forces, the US was found guilty in the world’s highest court and the UNSC and GN of international terrorism and aggression. Due to the court’s inability to enforce judgments against history’s biggest empire, the US simply increased its terror against the poor nation that had been, according to international agencies, making great strides in improving the lives of Nicaragua’s population, which consisted predominantly of, as Hillary knew, poor people.

Since entering politics, the Clintons have increased their net worth hundreds of times over, and today have a net worth approaching two-hundred-million dollars, mainly derived from corporate bribery or, to use the touted phrase, ‘speaking fees’. You know all those guys at Goldman Sachs just think Hillary is a genius and they need to pay her five thousand dollars a minute for financial advice. But in reality, they really are interested in what she has to say, albeit for a reason that actually makes sense: they want to make sure they will get a return on their investment, hinting at why Hillary refuses to release transcripts of her ‘speeches’, and why the most intensive, comprehensive academic studies find that the US government responds only to oligarchs and swindlers, and never the actual population of the country.

While it is a widely held international and academic opinion that the US has the world’s most corrupt government because it is based on bribery and maintaining tight oligarchic control, professor David Graeber notes (Debt – The First 5,000 Years) that biased Western-run ‘watch-dog’ agencies are able to lower the US’s corruption ranking on the lists they create because in countries like Russia and China, bribing politicians is illegal, and thus considered corruption, whereas in the US it is rampant to the extent that the offending politicians and oligarchs simply declared bribery to be ‘legal’, and thus not counted as a form of corruption.

But not to worry: Hillary doesn’t just take millions from US oligarchs. She is also flush with millions from foreign oligarchs and dictatorships, and responds to their ‘generosity’ by supporting them privately and publicly, such as backing their efforts to overthrow democracies, or when she recently propagandized for apartheid Israel, just after it was declared the world’s top human rights violator by the United Nations.

Martin ends the investigation by saying US citizens can and should fight both the Republicans and the Democrats, and that she “completely rejects Hillary’s brand of bourgeois ‘feminism’ because it leaves out millions of immigrant women, poor women, and the women [and girls] under her bombs” – all ‘unpeople’ who have stood, or accidentally been, in the way of expanding the corporate empire.

Alcoholism, Game Theory and Peace in the Middle East

Andrew McLean

The world continues to watch with dismay as killing continues in the Middle East. I might say senseless killing but to those who instigate the acts it makes all the sense in their world.

How can this issue even remotely relate to alcoholism?

Gregory Bateson was a social scientist and anthropologist with an interest in systems and relationships. In 1971 he published a seminal work, “The Cybernetics of Self: A Theory of Alcoholism.” Bateson determined that alcoholic struggle for sobriety was part of an errant “Occidental stance.” He believed the success of the mutual aid group Alcoholics Anonymous was due to a change in epistemology, the alcoholic’s way of knowing and being in the world. For Bateson, an examination of the type of relationship within the system was paramount in effecting change. Bateson identified two primary relationship types: “symmetrical” and “complementary.”

Symmetrical relationships are competitive: Like-Like (think nuclear proliferation). They are part of a zero-sum game. In addiction, sobriety competes with non-sobriety. As action “A” (sobriety) occurs, so does the counter action of “B” (non-sobriety). Not only does Other compete with Other, other competes with anti-Other.

Bateson reminds us that in a system, parts operate from within and cannot have unilateral control over the whole. His view was that the alcoholic doesn’t overtly will drunkenness- he commands sobriety and then is disobeyed…

In the same global sense, as long as one is in a “black and white” relationship, war might not necessarily be planned, but easily becomes the correction of non-war. Pride (whether alcoholic, tribal, sectarian or national) narrows the concept of self and assumes a naïve sense of control while placing events/blame outside its scope. If countries in conflict believe they hold separate, indisputable self-evident truths and can only continue in symmetrical relationships, there can be no resolution.

Complementary relationships foster differences (Unlike-unlike) yet allow for “goodness of fit.” In alcoholic recovery, conversion is a shift from a symmetrical relationship to a complementary view.   The alcoholic “gives it up” to a higher power.

(In light of this treatise, ‘higher power’ in the addiction world was never intended to be an exclusionary entity).   His fight for sobriety, which he cannot win, is relinquished.

Paradoxically in doing so he bridges the self/other gap, expanding his world by becoming part of something “bigger than himself.” It can be, in the burying of pride, celebratory o differences and at the same time expansive of one’s scope.

Politically, there are many opportunities in the Middle East for potential complementary shifts. One example could be Israel transferring control of occupied territory. An example of overcoming “pride” to expand one’s own scope could be Palestine’s acknowledgement of Israel’s “right to be.” (Whether “other” would be less likely envisaged in a one-state vs. two-state environment remains to be seen.)

But how to sit at the table and change the relationship? Part of the inherent difficulty in peace talks is the mistrust not only of “other,” but the inclusion of a mediating 3^rd party into that system.

Another shift could be for the dialectic to occur via a truly neutral party, rather than standard political entities. A number of years ago in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, theNobel Peace Prize-nominated Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh led a retreat. He joined together the unlikely couple of “law enforcement” and the concept of “compassion.”

The results were surprisingly positive and powerful.

A mindful apolitical Zen master leading a Middle Eastern peace talk process?

We could do worse.

Cholesterol Ghost Everywhere

B. M. Hegde

This white, powdery, odourless and waxy substance does not even have any taste, but causes so much trouble for almost all those who have the habit of reading today's health magazines. It does not cause so much havoc for human health as it does to human happiness, as no literate man, woman or child escapes its horrors in print and electronic media. The headlines scream: "Cholesterol is one of the three controllable risks for heart attacks"-"You could be the next person to get the heart attack"-"Heart attacks are the biggest widow makers" etc. In addition, the Task Force on cholesterol screening divides human levels as desirable, borderline high and high. Who can escape the mental torture of all this propaganda?

Where is the truth? Truth always is the casualty when money business gets into any field, medicine not excluded. The business of cholesterol research and the cholesterol lowering drugs runs into billions of dollars. As Professor Pickering wrote years ago about the business of anti-hypertensive drugs, more people make a living off cholesterol than dying of it. Some of the researchers have built their empires on this substance. They are the same people who sit in committees of research, or the watch dog bodies overseeing research and also in the advisory panels (pay roll) of big drug companies. They are the ones who make the rules for screening, testing, research grant giving and also drug advice to patients and their doctors. This is a close knit circle of fellow travellers!

There are a few who see through their game but do not have the money, time and also the academic support to pursue their intuition further into the complicated research web that the vested interests have woven around them to protect themselves with that magic word "science". Occasional ones who dare to take them head on are being frustrated. In their heartland, the USA, a layman declared war on the establishment by publishing a direct assault on the academia in the national press ten years ago. He was Thomas Moore.1 Interestingly a practising cardiologist, Randall Marsh, from Greeley in Colorado wrote to support Moore's contentions ten years later.2 I wonder how many of you have read my repeated assaults on the cholesterol myth in many of my writings, books and innumerable medical talks to the establishment, long before Moore, both in India and abroad. Most of the readers take me to be a "therapeutic nihilist" or a cynic. Drug companies have an eye on me.3

The fundamental economics of all this boils down to the fact that anti-hypertensive and anti-cholesterol drugs are the two classes of drugs that the hapless victims have to take for the rest of their lives, a good business proposition for the drug manufacturers. Rest of the drugs are used to treat symptoms of diseases and they are used for a short time and when the symptoms disappear they are no longer used. So the companies bend over backwards to sell the former two classes of drugs. The latest craze in America is in the vitamin market. They are also to be taken life long from childhood to the time of death. Most of the companies are in this business. Every house has a large stock of all kinds of vitamins, although studies have shown that these do not do much good compared to extra intake of fruits and vegetables. The latter have many other hidden anti-oxidants in them comapred to the known A,C, and E vitamins sold in the pills.
In fact, I am only worrying about the millions of people who fall a prey to the blatant misuse of the academic machinery that pours fourth half truths, falsehoods and fearful misrepresentation of the truth in this field. May be they believe in the old saying that a lie repeated thousand times could be passed off as truth. "Truth could influence only half a score of men in a century while falsehoods and mystery will drag millions by the nose", said Aristotle centuries ago. Having met with Marsh recently and having studied Thomas Moore carefully, I think time has come for me to update the readers in this field.

Cholesterol is found in all foods of animal origin. There is no cholesterol in anything vegetarian. It is an integral part of the animal cell wall. If one remembers that millions of cells die everyday in the human body to be replaced by new ones, one would quickly realize the importance and need for cholesterol for man. Various hormones in the body are manufactured from cholesterol. Even if one does not eat cholesterol at all, human liver could make enough for the body's needs. 90% of the total cholesterol is made inside our liver and only 10% of it comes from the diet. Since cholesterol does not dissolve in water its transport inside the body needs a vehicle. The latter is usually the protein package-the lipoprotein. Cholesterol is found in all major lipoproteins, the Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) and the High Density Lipoprotein (HDL). Usual range of normal cholesterol has been, since my college days, between 150-250 mg per deciliter. Recently the American bosses of cholesterol research thought it fit to change this time honoured normal range by declaring three levels for humans thus:4

less than 200 mg/dl.................DESIRABLE.
200-239 mg/dl.........................BORDERLINE-HIGH.
More than 240 mg/dl...............HIGH.

The story behind this is intriguing. My hunch is that there are at least 50-60 million Americans in the normal range of 200-250 mg, who by the above classification are not only frightened out of their wits, but come under the net for life long anti-cholesterol drug therapy. With the present drugs being sold at such phenomenal prices the catch would not be less than 10 billion dollars per year for the drug companies. Apart from this there does not seem to be any other valid reason in the medical literature to support this new found wisdom on the part of the cholesterol pundits!

Americans are tormented by reports that swear that if only every one of them either ate very low fat diet or took the wonder drugs to lower their cholesterol levels they would survive for all times. If not 30% of the two million deaths in America per year due to heart attacks would eat them up as well. The pamphlets tell them "THE ARTERIES BECOME NARROWER AND NARROWER, MUCH AS OLD WATER PIPES BUILD UP SCALY MINERAL DEPOSITS".
This analogy also helps another money spinner of coronary revascularisation. Lay people think that blocked coronaries are like blocked toilet pipes to be bypassed. Never do they realize that the body has its own wisdom to compensate for those long standing blocks, many of which start in early childhood, by providing collateral vessels and also remodeling the blocked vessels.

The blood supply to the heart muscle does not as much depend on the blocked four large coronaries on the surface of the heart that your doctor shows you on the x-ray(angiogram) as it does on the capacity of the millions of small vessels going directly into the muscle of the heart having a wide capacity to dilate excessively in case of reducewd supply from the larger vessels. This Flow Fraction Ration (FFR) is called CORONARY RESERVE, the latter could vary from one to another, the large surface vessel patency notwithstanding!

It is not the science of medicine that is bad but it is the "scientist" that twists the facts to suit his convenience that is bad and is the pain in the neck. Thomas Moore was bold enough to take them head on. Years later he was joined by the American College of Physicians (ACP) who had their own guidelines-much more saner than the horrendous guidelines of the Task Force- the Force put together to fight the cholesterol war-may be against the gullible public!5 The ACP guideline tried to correct the mistake done by the task force, but was severely criticized by the latter in no uncertain terms. If an equally qualified body like the ACP could come forward to rubbish the earlier guidelines on their own turf without much success, lesser mortals like me and Mr. Moore have very little hope of succeeding in our uphill task. But fight we must for the truth to come out. Here are the facts for all to see.

In the late eighty's a thinking American cardiologist, and a respected one at that, wrote an article in the American College of Cardiology Journal warning his colleagues about the fallibility of the task force guidelines. He said " if one were to very strictly follow the guidelines and eat no fat at all or take drugs to lower his cholesterol all his life, one could hope to live only for three days to three months extra on this planet!" Another great British expert on cholesterol, and a most respected one at that, Sir Michael Oliver, was so upset about the task force misrepresenting the Transatlantic Consensus Conference Data, wherein he was an important invited member, wrote an editorial in The Lancet, after coming back from the USA, entitled "Consensus or Non-senses Conference."

Let us look at the genesis of this myth.

“Lowering your cholesterol is next to impossible with diet, and often dangerous with drugs-and it won’t make you live any longer” said Thomas Moore in his article in the September 1989 issue of The Atlantic.

One morning in early October 1987 The US Health Department made a significant announcement that 25% of the US adult population had a very dangerous condition that has no symptoms, needing urgent medical treatment. Since there were no symptoms there is need to screen the whole population to identify those in danger. One in four adults would be on drugs for the rest of their lives. This was called the National Cholesterol Education programme.

At this stage no unequivocal evidence existed in science that lowering cholesterol would save lives! The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute must have spent about $ 300 million to get to this inconclusive stage of research. The total human subjects involved in research was a staggering 3,61,622 men and 60% of the Institute’s budget! At that point in time the only drug available was potentially dangerous and had no track record at all (Cholestyramine). In addition, the testing laboratories, even controlled by research bodies, could not deliver identical cholesterol reports, not to speak of the thousands of laboratories in the periphery.

“Nation’s clinical laboratories performance was so poor that millions of normal people were labelled high cholesterol victims.” wrote Moore.

This drama began in 1951 when Pentagon dispatched a team of pathologists to Korean war zone to study the autopsies of the young soldiers who were killed in the war. A large percentage of them had blocks of the coronary vessels at the young age of 22 years. This report by Major William F. Enos and Lieutenant Colonel Robert H. Holmes was the beginning of this sordid cholesterol drama. In Europe it had started after the second world war. 77% of the Korean war victims at the tender age of 20 had severe coronary artery blocks, which by today’s x-ray standards,would have warranted coronary artery bypass surgery. They were all very fit to be in the American army though and were unfortunately killed by the bullet!

Another drama was unfolding in yet another set up. Epidemiology has served medical science very well in detecting the cause of epidemics of infectious diseases. Cholera in London, typhoid Mary and many other examples could be given here. The same epidemiology applied to chronic degenerative diseases tells nothing about whether a particular person gets a particular disease; but it may identify groups of men at risk. However this was overlooked in all epidemiological diseases and today epidemiologists at times cause epidemics!

Such a scenario started in a remote small town of Framingham in Massachusetts way back in 1948.The Framingham experiments now being quoted everywhere in the world, “built a detailed portrait of coronary artery disease” from a very small sample of just 5,127 adults, of whom 404 died of heart attacks over a period of twenty-four years! There were so many loopholes that even the medical profession is not aware of. Many of the people did not come for regular check ups, the laboratory reports were not controllable over such a long period of time, while major changes took place in the laboratory technics themselves, so that their uniformity was lost completely. Although it was a sound study, its limitations in projecting it on to the world population are phenomenal, to say the least. While tidy mathematical charts and graphs using linear mathematics tell the tale of Framingham for lectures, lot of medical guess work went into the final conclusions.6, 7

A series of risk factors emerged out of this study, almost all of which have been shown to have no predictability for the future even for groups, leave alone individuals. Two of the major risk factors could never be changed- male sex and old age! So the war against all the minor and relative risk factors began from then on; one of them being the ghost of cholesterol which haunts every one even to this day, based on a study whose scientific validity is open to question. Advertisements, newspaper articles, books, and television talk shows kept up the tempo all over the world.

Life depends on cholesterol. All the life giving substances are derived from that chemical and that is why it is found in abundance in a hen’s egg. While it is true that all studies showed a direct relationship between rising cholesterol and heart attacks they also showed that extensive and fatal heart attacks could occur even in those with low cholesterol.

Be that as it may, the variations from laboratory to laboratory, even in the small group of research laboratories of the Task Force, were significant. The time of the day, the way blood is collected, whether taken sitting or supine, how long after collection was the analysis done, and even using diluants in blood, the diet that the patient was on just before taking blood and, of course, the laboratory which does the testing, could all change the results by as much as 10-18%. That, in itself, would make a man go from low to dangerously high levels, creating anxiety strong enough to provoke a heart attack!

The above statement does not take into consideration the quality of laboratories in the far flung areas of the world. Dr. D.M.Hegsted, of Harvard University, showed that a variation of 5-9% in serum cholesterol levels even in hospitalized patients, on uniform diet, was not unusual! The sub-fraction measurement of HDL and LDL was of no significance for use in clinical setting as shown by a group of researchers in Stanford where they found that 39% of the laboratories tested showed an error rate of 31%.

Then started the saga of lowering elevated cholesterol in the population. First attempts were by diet control. Very soon studies done even by the Framingham study group concluded: “There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of coronary disease in the study group.” We have many other studies subsequently giving varied conclusions. Even the “Heat-Diet Pilot” of 1971 did not achieve significant success.

Then started the intervention trials with drugs. To sum up, all of them while showing a fall in fatal and non-fatal heart attacks in those whose cholesterol levels were significantly lowered by drugs, also showed a higher total death in the treated cohorts. The largest and the most expensive of them was the MRFIT study which cost $ 115 million and involved 250 researchers. The following facts emerged.8

* Behaviour of large groups of people could be changed.

* Drastic changes that the participants were made to make in their diets did not have any effect on the levels of cholesterol in their blood.

* No significant difference in deaths could be found in the treated group and the control after nine years of follow up as on 28th February 1982.

* In fact, slightly more deaths occurred in the treated group!

* In the control group deaths from heart attacks were 40% lower than expected in the beginning, showing how fallacious future predictions in linear mathematics could be. Doctors have been predicting the unpredictable.

At this point in time there was no scientific validity for all the advice given to patients. More studies followed. Another mile stone and expensive study was the Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (CPPT). It screened 4,80,000 middle aged men to select 3,810 subjects for this study over a period of three years.

Cholestyramine was the drug used in this study, but even the placebo used did have side effects. The drug, of course, had significant side effects. In Europe clofibrate was being used at the same time for the first large study, The Newcastle Edinburgh Study. CPPT and the MRFIT together cost the NIH a total of $ 494 million dollars! The CPPT trial did not show any significant benefit in the treatment group compared to the control group at 99% or even at 95% significant levels. Instead of admitting that, the researchers went in for a less exacting “one-tailed” test to compare the groups and came up with the startling statement that “ the study leaves little doubt about the benefit of cholestyramine therapy.” 9

Although there were dissenting voices at that stage, the Heart Institute went ahead and bulldozed the population with the National Cholesterol Education Programme. The American Medical Association and many drug companies assisted the Heart Institute’s efforts. While we believe that lowering one’s cholesterol is good there are disquieting reports that lowered cholesterol levels could be associated with cancer.10 While there is a possibility that it could be due to the original cancer itself, studies have shown low cholesterol levels in those who developed cancer even after 5-7 years. Japanese studies have also shown a higher rate of stroke in people with very low cholesterol levels.

Many powerful drugs have come on the scene since then, but almost all of them showed a higher total death at the end of the day in treated groups compared to the controls.11,12,13 The latest are the statins. They have not been there for long enough to be really tested like their predecessors. Among the cholesterol-synthesis inhibitors like lovastatin, were triparanol and compactin. The first was withdrawn hastily because it produced severe side effects like rapid cataracts, severe skin rashes and heavy loss of hair. Compactin was also withdrawn under a veil of secrecy, but thought to have given rise to high cancer rate in dogs. Europe had by then gone ahead with another drug Gemfibrozil with the same results- good effect on the cholesterol levels in the laboratory reports but slightly higher death rate in the treated group!

The original screenees of the MRFIT study have been followed up, all 3,61,662 of them by a group led by Jeremiah Stamler at the Northwestern University, 70 times larger than the Framingham data and people coming from eighteen US cities. Although the data here are not reliable as it depended on death certificates it did show that the hazards of high cholesterol are, if anything, only modest. The study, however, put out one statement which is being used and reused by all and sundry all over the world. The statement goes thus: “Each one per cent reduction in cholesterol will lead to two percent reduction in death due to coronary disease.” The truth is that this result was never seen in this study. What was observed was: “For each one percent increase in cholesterol level the risk of coronary disease could go up by two percent.” 1 The difference in these two statements is like the difference between lightening and the lightening bug!

Much water has flown under the bridge since these studies and there have been many more small big and medium studies carried out in many other parts of the world, but even today the wisdom of the medical profession could be summed up in the words of Eliot Corday in his article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 1989.

* Cholesterol should be checked only if there are sound clinical indications.

* A mixed diet low in calories and saturated fat should be recommended along with some physical exercise.

* It is irresponsible to force public into a costly cholesterol reducing programme without firm scientific evidence.
To that I add mine:14

* Do not rely on one reading of the fat profile, check at least five to six times from different laboratories, if the original result was high.

* Indian vegetarian diet without much fried foods and other saturated fats and low salt is the ideal one for most people.

* Avoiding alcohol and tobacco is as important if not more important than worrying about cholesterol.

* Recent studies show the mind and its effects on the heart as more important risk factors than all the above mentioned ones. Keep your mind at peace. Hostility and depression are real culprits for heart attacks.

* Future prediction, using linear mathematics, as we do now in medicine is only a part time job, as the rest of the time you will have to try and keep your foot out of your mouth.

* Epidemiology does not tell us who in society would get any disease, as time evolves.