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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Nuclear Kim
By Antonio C. Abaya Written Oct. 11, 2006 For the Standard Today, October 12 issue Iraq had its Chemical Ali, who earned his nickname by gassing the Kurds. North Korea now has its Nuclear Kim, who detonated his country�s first nuclear device last Monday, Oct. 9. Or did he? According to CNN, quoting unnamed sources, North Korea informed its only ally, the People�s Republic of China , that it was going to explode a nuclear device in the 4.0 kiloton range. But US observers put the yield at only 0.5 kiloton, and even as low as only 0.2 kiloton. Seismic monitors in the US detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude at the time and place of the nuclear test. But seismic monitors in South Korea , right next door, recorded only a 3.2 magnitude tremor. So was Monday�s event a failed nuclear explosion, or a deliberately small nuclear pop, or an explosion using merely conventional dynamite or TNT, pre-announced as nuclear, just to send the world in a tizzy. At this point, no one outside the inner circle in Pyongyang really knows. Kim Jong Il is a master-bluffer who can break the bank in Las Vegas in a game of marathon poker. If only he could overcome his fear of flying. (He travels only by train, like his late father Kim Il Sung, who once went to Moscow , by Trans-Siberian Railway.) Predictably, the world�s leaders have joined in a chorus of condemnation, calling North Korea �s nuclear test a threat to peace and stability, and threatening it with sanctions of all kinds. But short of a nuclear strike by the US , which would almost certainly trigger a retaliatory invasion of South Korea and missile strikes against Japan , there is really little that the rest of the world can do against Nuclear Kim. Economic sanctions or boycott of North Korean products would hardly cause any sleepless nights in Pyongyang . In the 2006 World Almanac and Book of Facts, North Korea �s total exports in 2003 is put at a miniscule $1.2 billion, compared to South Korea �s staggering $250.6 billion. North Korea �s national ideology is juiche or self-reliance, which the Kim Dynasty has interpreted literally. North Korea is self-sufficient in everything, including replicas of stretch Mercedes-Benz limousines for the ruling elite. They do not want to buy anything from or sell anything to, the outside world. Except oil. Which North Korea , like Cuba , used to get from the Soviet Union at friendly prices. Now, with the Soviet Union gone, its only source for oil is the People�s Republic of China , since it does not have the dollars to purchase it in the world market. China is the only country with any economic leverage with Pyongyang , and China is not in favor of any punitive measures against North Korea , except a rap on the knuckles. China is afraid that a collapsed North Korea would flood northern China with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of economic refugees. ( North Korea and its juiche self-reliance was/is admired by Filipino communists, including the late Renato Constantino Sr. and Edberto Villegas, former head of the communist propaganda outfit, IBON Data Bank, and brother of the capitalist Prophet of Boom, Bernie.) For the past ten years or so, North Korea has been devastated by, alternately, floods and droughts. It cannot feed itself anymore. It depends on food aid from China , South Korea , Japan and the US . So much for self-reliance. It is estimated that two million North Koreans have starved to death. Other millions are forced to subsist on grass and tree bark whenever food aid is late or insufficient.. Yet it spends the equivalent of billions of dollars on its awesome military machine and its weapons of mass destruction because it believes that the US is planning to invade. Or so it tells its people in order to whip up solidarity and patriotic fervor so vividly portrayed in those mammoth parades and synchronized mass rallies that we see on television. North Korea is hermetically sealed from outside influences as no other country is. All radios and TV sets in use are made locally and wired to receive only broadcasts and telecasts from government stations. In the 1980s, I used to regularly receive by postal mail copies of the Pyongyang Times, until some killjoy in military intelligence put a stop to the inflow of unintended light comedy. This newspaper was the epitome of �balanced journalism.� Every page was perfectly symmetrical in its layout. A two-column photo on the left side of the Respected and Beloved Leader Kim Il Sung (father of the present Great Leader Kim Jong Il) receiving a delegation from Eritrea was balanced on the right side by a two-column photo of the Respected and Beloved Leader Kim Il Sung receiving a delegation from Nicaragua, with everyone standing in stiff firing-squad group poses. And every mention of Kim Il Sung, which happened about 500 times in every issue, was preceded by the honorific �Respected and Beloved Leader.� Andrew Lloyd Weber or somebody else as talented should do a musical comedy on this weird country before it disappears from the map. He can call it �Don�t Laugh at Me, Argentina. �. And speaking of weird, one of the very first columns I wrote (in 1987, for the now defunct Business Day) was titled �Princess Di�s Weirdo Admirers.� I will have it loaded on www.tapatt.org one of these days. It had to do with a news story in the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review that the Democratic People�s Republic of Korea (the official name of North Korea ), the most Stalinist country after the death of Stalin, had just issued a set of commemorative stamps honoring � don�t laugh at me, Argentina � Britain �s Princess Diana. And the Review printed all five stamps in the set. There is Diana as a beaming pre-teen adolescent. A radiant young woman. A lovely wife in a wedding portrait with Prince Charles. A proud mother holding Bonnie Prince William (or was it Harry?) in his royal baptismal robe. And, finally, a royal portrait of the entire royal family: Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Crown Prince Charles, Princess Diana, with Bonnie Prince William (or was it Harry?) in his royal bassinet. Lovely! Apparently the North Koreans, jealously proud of their disdain towards the rest of the world, are not above cadging a few dollars here and there from little old ladies in tennis shoes who collect Princess Di memorabilia. Weird. It gets weirder. According to a Swedish journalist who wrote several articles from and about North Korea in the Far Eastern Economic Review, North Jorean society, far from being classless, was actually divided into 32 or 34 (I do not recall exactly which) classes, based on several criteria, including educational attainment, trade or profession, and - don't laugh at me, Argentina - physical looks. The Respected and Beloved Leader Kim Il Sung allowed only those in the top classes to live and work in Pyongyang because he could not stand the sight of physical deformities. SO all hunchbacks, midgets, cripples, epileptics, mongoloids, paraplegics, blind peoples, those with clubfoot or harelip, those missing an eye or an ear or an arm or a hand or a leg or a foot were required to live out their miserable existence only in the lowliets and most remote villages, there never ever to be in the line of sight of the Respected and Beloved Leader.. During the recent 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Award ceremonies, where I was asked to be a reactor to the presentation of one of the awardees, Park Won Soon of South Korea, I jokingly asked Mr. Park if it was true that North Korea would not be able to invade South Korea again because its tanks would not be able to get through the traffic in and around Seoul, which is only 40 kms from the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ. Mr. Park, who is a socialist and is not enamored of capitalism, laughed. But to give an idea of the conditions in the North, he told the audience that he was in Pyongyang last spring. He noticed two things: a) his tour group was on an expressway outside the capital for two hours during which they encountered only three other vehicles; and b) at night, except in the hotels, the city was in total darkness, obviously because there was not enough heating fuel and electricity. It is cold, it is dark, and you can�t get out. Which is why I have recommended in this space several times in the past three years that Joma Sison, who is due to be expelled from the Netherlands soon as an undesirable alien, should move to North Korea, instead of trying to wiggle his way into yet another depraved and exploitative capitalist country in Western Europe. It would not be as if he and Nuclear Kim would be total strangers to each other. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, while the elder Kim was still alive, the CPP-NPA-NDF had a working relationship with the Pyongyang regime, under which NPA hitmen trained in North Korea in batches of ten. That was the revelation of the assassin who shot and killed Col. Nicholas Rowe of Jusmag, and there is no reason not to believe him. Joma should experience at first hand the ambience of a communist society which it has been his life�s work to impose on the rest of us. Eat grass and tree bark, for a change, instead of Gouda cheese and hutspot met klapstuck.. It is good for the health. Do without electricity even at night. It helps save the planet from global warming.. Walk. Walk. Walk. Or join one of those colorful mass exhibitions of synchronized gymnastics in Pyongyang to honor Nuclear Kim. It is good for the heart. Practice what you preach, instead of preaching what you do not practice. Would the Vietnamese have loved Ho Chi Minh if he had spent the war years in the French Riviera? ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Reactions to �Nuclear Kim�
Good build-up to a good ending! Raffy Alunan, [email protected], Oct. 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya: Even as I write these lines, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is trying his best to get the Security Council to pass a resolution punishing Nuclear KIm for pursuing his program to produce WMDs and the missiles to deliver them. The punishment will be in the form of severe sanctions. But China, one of five members of the council with veto power, is reported to favor a less punitive resolution, probably for the reason you indicate in your essay. Up to this point, it is not clear what the final wording will be of the resolution the Council will adopt. My sense is that Nuclear Kim is not concerned over how that resolution will be worded. He must be prepared to ignore whatever sanctions the Security Council will impose on North Korea. He must know that like Pakistan, North Korea need wait only a few years, the time needed for the world to realize the futility of sanctions and finally accept North Korea as the eighth member of the Nuclear Club. Mariano Patalinjug, [email protected], Yonkers, New York Oct. 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony, But even American presidents ally themselves with despots, and 'weirdos' like Saddam, the Afhgani and Somali warlords when it serve their interest. why is it so strange to you that insurgent leaders like Joma once sought alliances with the likes of Kim Il Sung? And why for example would one sought sanctuary in a country as wretched and isolated as North Korea , a country marked for death by the US ? (It has to do with consistency. If you believe that communism is the best of all possible worlds, then you should live in a communist society, not in a capitalist, imperialist one. In 2006, Joma has only two choices, North Korea or Cuba. The others have all failed and abandoned their folly. One should always be man enough to live with the consequences of one�s choices. ACA) Even journalists like you would not dare wage your crusade in an Ilocos town, do you? and you seem to insist that all roads to social reconstruction lead to Kim Jong Il's republic? (Why would I want to live in an Ilocos town? Once again, with feeling. In 2006, all communist roads lead only to Kim Jong Il or Fidel Castro because the others have collapsed or have had second thoughts. Which one will it be for Joma? ACA) But your mind is too big and too knowledgeable of history and the sciences to think that the Filipinos and the North Koreans share the same story. Even Sweden , a democracy, differs from that of North America , and the state of New Orleans , in particular. (I do not understand what you are trying to say. New Orleans is a city, not a state. ACA) Ferdinand Anno, [email protected], Duolas, Sudipen, La Union, Oct 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya, I just saw your column yesterday and enjoyed it, but I have one correction -- the Far Eastern Economic Review continues to publish, since October 2004 as a monthly magazine. I'd be happy to send you a few copies if you'll give me an address to mail them to. Best regards, Hugo Restall, [email protected], Hong Kong, Oct. 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Bizarrely interesting international politics. A very small, very poor starving country has a small nuclear boobbbbooo! and the USA et al are scared stiff?! But Kim Jong Il is also right, why would they not let him have that bomb, while the other countries have an arsenal full of it!? Tocayo Oposa, [email protected], Oct. 14, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (Forwarded) THE U.S. IS SCARED THAT AN UNPREDICTABLE CRAZY DICTATOR WHO STARVES HIS PEOPLE FOR HIS MILITARY MACHINE AND CAN LAUNCH A WAR ON HIS WORD ALONE,CAN HAVE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION THAT CAN DESTABILIZE THE IMMEDIATE AREA, AND DRIVE JAPAN AND TAIWAN TO DEVELOP NUCLEAR AND OTHER WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION- IN PARTICULAR, KIM JONG SELLING THESE WEAPONS TO TERRORISTS. THINK OF A NUCLEAR WAR STARTED AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. U.S. HAS THE SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY AND NUMBER OF AMASSED WEAPONS TO DESTROY ANY COUNTRY, IF NEED BE..TOTAL WAR WILL BE DISASTROUS TO THE WELFARE OF ALL HUMANITY. THE ISLAMIC TERRORISTS WANT THIS TO HAPPEN.FOR ALLAH HAS 72 VIRGINS WAITING IN HEAVEN FOR EACH ONE OF THEM, BUT THE CATCH IS, THESE VIRGINS DO NOT HAVE HOLES, AND THEIR BALLS HAVE BEEN SHOT ON EARTH.. Roddick Gabuya, [email protected], Oct 15, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (The following was emailed to us.) World War II Trivia By Col. D. G. Swindon, USMC Oct. 15, 2006 If you think war is glorious rather than obscene and absurd, dig these data:-) Here are some interesting facts that came out of WWII. This is from Col. D. G. Swinford, USMC, Ret. and history buff. You would really have to dig to get this kind of ringside seat to history: *** The first German serviceman killed in WW II was killed by the Japanese ( China , 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians ( Finland 1940), the highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps. . . So much for allies. *** The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress.) *** At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika." All three were soon changed for PR purposes. *** More US servicemen died in the Air Corps than the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions your chance of being killed was 71%. *** Generally speaking there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane. *** It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rates go down. *** When allied armies reached the Rhine the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act). I found the photo (hand tinted black and white) *** German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort. *** German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet. *** Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army. *** Following a massive naval bombardment 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands . 21 troops were killed in the firefight. It would have been worse, if there had been any Japanese on the island. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (The following article was emailed to us) About the Italians By Wilfred McClay Posted on: <http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?m=2006&w=34> August 25, 2006 There was a welcome report on Wednesday that Italy had stepped into the vacuum created by the balking French, offering to serve as the lead country in supplying troops to man the multinational Lebanese peacekeeping force. This act of Italian leadership (two words you don�t often see together) seems to have induced a grudging President Chirac to announce yesterday his own commitment of two thousand troops. Taken in tandem with Italy�s victory over France in this year�s World Cup championship game�a victory that, while also involving a French default of sorts, produced a huge, ecstatic wave of Italian national pride�one might be tempted to see a pattern of Italian assertiveness and national self-confidence emerging, and doing so surprisingly soon after the close and bitter elections earlier this year that brought Romano Prodi�s fragile left-of-center coalition to power. But to forestall any such thought, the Times has also provided us with an antidote: an introduction to journalist Beppe Severgnini�s entertaining new book La Bella Figura, which describes Italy in rather more conventional terms, as a dysfunctional land of hedonism and theatricality, with a near-unique cultural combination of bureaucratic formalism and normative lawlessness, where elaborate rules about the most stupefyingly meaningless paperwork can coexist with a breathtaking indifference to such trivialities as oh, paying one�s taxes, stopping for traffic lights, and other such gross indignities. �We think it�s an insult to our intelligence to comply with a regulation,� writes Severgnini, a columnist for the Milan daily Corriere della Sera. �Obedience is boring. We want to think about it. We want to decide whether a particular law applies to our specific case. In that place, at that time.� So much for the American lock on individualism and antinomianism. Indeed, according to Severgnini, Italians consider tax evasion and lying outrageously about one�s income to be normal behavior, very much in contrast to what he has seen in his extensive time in the United States . If he were to cheat egregiously [outrageously] on his taxes in Italy , Severgnini writes, �two neighbors would come round to ask me how I did it,� and none would report him. This is, of course, much more amusing to report from a distance than it is to live with. Italy is, of course, still a far less rootless or anonymous society than is the United States . One in three Italians finds a job through a relative. One in five has moved in the past ten years, which is half the European average, and even further below that of mobile Americans. Telecommuting is virtually nonexistent, engaged in by only 0.2 percent of the work force�in part, Severgnini guesses, because it deprives Italians of �the social drama of the workplace.� Yet Italians seem to be even more technology-crazy, in many respects, than Americans, notably when it comes to items such as cell phones and food-preparation gadgetry. And the national preoccupation with la bella figura�looking good, dressing well, cutting a stylish, dramatic figure�is carried to a much higher level than is the case with Americans. There is much in Severgnini�s book that reminds one of such marvelous predecessors as Luigi Barzini�s still unsurpassed The Italians (1964), or more recently British journalist Tobias Jones� smart but gloomy study called The Dark Heart of Italy (2003). Their arguments always come to similar conclusions, a continuity that argues for the persistence of a distinctive Italian national character�either for that or for the ease with which all writers about Italy fall into repeating the same clich�s about it. If Severgnini is right, much has changed on the surface but little in the depths. Like both Barzini and Jones, he finds Italy to be on balance an unhappy country, full of thwarted souls, seething with anger and frustration over the incompetence of government, the chaos of the legal system, the crowding of its cities, and the lack of social dynamism or economic opportunity. And, with one of the lowest birth rates in the world, its long-range future does not look promising. �Our sun is setting in installments,� he writes. �It�s festive and flamboyant, but it�s still a sunset.� Of course, Italy has been counted out before, and there is almost nothing in Severgnini�s gloomy prognostications that has not been claimed in the books of his predecessors. And to find reasons for hopefulness, one need only look to the long history of the city of Rome, a story of almost unimaginable resiliency, in which the city was more than once reduced to being little more than a depopulated ruin or a Fort Apache set where rival family gangs battled it out like mobsters, unaccountable to any larger authority. Yet the city somehow survived and thrived. Still, the gloomy conclusions that so many knowledgeable writers reach about Italy ought at least to counterbalance somewhat our tendency to extol uncritically what is so often called �the Italian way of life,� that relaxed and guiltless embrace of la dolce vita and acceptance of the futility of reform that are thought to be quintessentially Italian. Over against the American romanticism of, say, Under the Tuscan Sun, one might remember the way Barzini concluded his book more than forty years ago: �The Italian way of life cannot be considered a success except by temporary visitors. It is the Italian way of life which makes all laws and institutions function defectively. � the resigned acceptance of the very evils man has tried to defeat, the art of decorating, ennobling them, calling them by different names and living with them.� Severgnini seems to be sounding the same theme. ***** wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww (The following article was emailed to us) From the book: Your Body�s Many Cries for Water AMAZING SECRETS FOR HEALTH AND WELLNESS By Ferreydoon Batmanghelidj, MD Cure # 1: Water prevents and cures heartburn. Heartburn is a signal of water shortage in the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract. It is a major thirst signal of the human body. The use of antacids or tablet medications in the treatment of this pain does not correct dehydration, and the body continues to suffer as a result of its water shortage. Tragedy: Not recognizing heartburn as a sign of dehydration and treating it with antacids and pill medications will, in time, produce inflammation of the stomach and duodenum, hiatal hernia, ulceration, and eventually cancers in the gastrointestinal tract, including the liver and pancreas. Cure # 2: Water prevents and cures arthritis. Rheumatoid joint pain - arthritis - is a signal of water shortage in the painful joint. It can affect the young as well as the old. The use of pain-killers does not cure the problem, but exposes the person to further damage from pain medications. Intake of water and small amounts of salt will cure this problem. Cure # 3: Water prevents and cures back pain. Low back pain and ankylosing arthritis of the spine are signs of water shortage in the spinal column and discs - the water cushions that support the weight of the body. These conditions should be treated with increased water intake - not a commercial treatment, but a very effective one. Tragedy: Not recognizing arthritis and low back pain as signs of dehydration in the joint cavities and treating them with pain-killers, manipulation, acupuncture, and eventually surgery will, in time, produce osteoarthritis when the cartilage cells in the joints have eventually all died. It will produce deformity of the spine. It will produce crippling deformities of the limbs. Pain medications have their own life-threatening complications. Cure # 4: Water prevents and cures angina. Heart pain - angina - is a sign of water shortage in the heart/lung axis. It should be treated with increased water intake until the patient is free of pain and independent of medications. Medical supervision is prudent. However, increased water intake is angina's cure. Cure # 5: Water prevents and cures migraines. Migraine headache is a sign of water need by the brain and the eyes. It will totally clear up if dehydration is prevented from establishing in the body. The type of dehydration that causes migraine might eventually cause inflammation of the back of the eye and possibly loss of eye sight. Cure #6: Water prevents and cures colitis. Colitis pain is a signal of water shortage in the large gut. It is associated with constipation because the large intestine constricts to squeeze the last drop of water from the excrements - thus the lack of water lubrication. Tragedy: Not recognizing colitis pain as a sign of dehydration will cause persistent constipation. Later in life, it will cause fecal impacting: it can cause diverticulitis, hemorrhoids and polyps, and appreciably increases the possibility of developing cancer of the colon and rectum. Cure # 7: Water and salt prevent and cure asthma. Asthma, which also affects 14 million children and kills several thousand of them every year, is a complication of dehydration in the body. It is caused by the drought management programs of the body. In asthma free passage of air is obstructed so that water does not leave the body in the form of vapor - the winter steam. Increased water intake will prevent asthma attacks. Asthmatics need also to take more salt to break the mucus plugs in the lungs that obstruct the free flow of air in and out of the air sacs. Tragedy: Not recognizing asthma as the indicator of dehydration in the body of a growing child not only will sentence many thousands of children to die every year, but will permit irreversible genetic damage to establish in the remaining 14 million asthmatic children. Cure # 8: Water prevents and cures high blood pressure. Hypertension is a state of adaptation of the body to a generalized drought, when there is not enough water to fill all the blood vessels that diffuse water into vital cells. As part of the mechanism of reverse osmosis, when water from the blood serum is filtered and injected into important cells through minute holes in their membranes, extra pressure is needed for the "injection process." Just as we inject I.V. "water" in hospitals, so the body injects water into tens of trillions of cells all at the same time. Water and some salt intake will bring blood pressure back to normal! Tragedy: Not recognizing hypertension as one of the major indicators of dehydration in the human body, and treating it with diuretics that further dehydrate the body will, in time, cause blockage by cholesterol of the heart arteries and the arteries that go to the brain. It will cause heart attacks and small or massive strokes that paralyze. It will eventually cause kidney disease. It will cause brain damage and neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. Cure # 9: Water prevents and cures early adult-onset diabetes. Adult-onset diabetes is another adaptive state to severe dehydration of the human body. To have adequate water in circulation and for the brain's priority water needs, the release of insulin is inhibited to prevent insulin from pushing water into all body cells. In diabetes, only some cells get survival rations of water. Water and some salt will reverse adult-onset diabetes in its early stages. Tragedy: Not recognizing adult-onset diabetes as a complication of dehydration will, in time, cause massive damage to the blood vessels all over the body. It will cause eventual loss of the toes, feet and legs from gangrene. It will cause eye damage, even blindness. Cure # 10: Water lowers blood cholesterol. High cholesterol levels are an indicator of early drought management by the body. Cholesterol is a clay-like material that is poured in the gaps of some cell membranes to safeguard them against losing their vital water content to the osmotically more powerful blood circulating in their vicinity. Cholesterol, apart from being used to manufacture nerve cell membranes and hormones, is also used as a "shield" against water taxation of other vital cells that would normally exchange water through their cell membranes. Cure # 11: Water cures depression, loss of libido, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy. These conditions are caused by prolonged chronic dehydration. They will clear up once the body becomes well and regularly hydrated. In these conditions, exercising one's muscles should be part of the treatment program. For More Information, Read the Book: Your Body's Many Cries for Water. by F. Batmanghelidj, M.D. (Biography) Fereydoon Batmanghelidj, M.D. - Dr. B. for short - is a formally trained medical doctor who received his medical education and training at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School of London University. He has spent most of his scientific life researching the link between pain and disease and chronic dehydration. Dr. Batmanghelidj discovered the healing powers of water 21 years ago when he was serving time as a political prisoner in an Iranian jail. He successfully treated 3,000 fellow prisoners suffering from stress-induced peptic ulcer disease with the only medication he possessed -water. This is when he understood for the first time in medical history that the body indicates its water shortage by producing pain. Since his prison experience, he has focused his full-time attention on dehydration-produced health problems in the body. His discovery has helped hundreds of thousands of people suffering from a variety of pains and degenerative diseases regain their health. Dr. Batmanghelidj has presented his findings at several international and world conferences, and they have been published and peer-reviewed in a number of scientific journals. His findings are now available to the public in an easy-to-understand form in his four books, and his videotapes and audiotapes of his lectures plus combination programs. These health-education materials have been peer- and media-reviewed and acclaimed both nationally and internationally. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |