|
Menachem's Writings
They're Out to Kill Us!
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is "our" rabbi. I don't mean at our yeshiva or in our town, Efrat. I'm talking about the swimming pool. The rabbi holds court each morning, first in the sauna (a session which I do not usually attend -- I'm in the water by then) and later in the locker room. The locker room parliament is where all the problems of the world are discussed, at length, and important resolutions effecting the entire human race, and even that of the lower angels, are passed. Three Menachems regularly frequent this venue. Menachem Feder is the rabbi's son-in-law, so in honour (or fear) of his father-in-law, he keeps his opinions to himself. The other two are referred to by the rabbi as Menachem Information and Menachem Conspiracy (in Hebrew these words, informatzia and conspiratzia, rhyme). Of course non-Menachems are there too. You probably guessed it -- yours truly is Menachem Conspiratzia. (Menachem Informatzia is the local supermarket proprietor, Menachem Perlman.) However the rabbi has agreed, in public, that some of my conspiratory theories have played out -- the most notable being my plea that no-one vote for Ariel Sharon when he ran for the office prime minister of Israel a few years back. They accused me, by not voting for Sharon, of effectively voting for the radical left. Sharon sure proved me correct when he attacked Gush Katif. And many parliamentarians apologised. I have not yet expressed my latest concerns directly in the Parliament. They have been partly mentioned in respect to my attitude to what we ingest into our bodies. But until today, this has been largely food related. In addition to his primary position of looker room sage, the Rabbi is also, amongst other roles, the Chief Rabbi of Efrat. As one of his responsibilities here, in accordance with his mentor, Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, he has taken upon himself to teach daf yomi, the daily Talmud page. The gentlemen at his lesson like to drink a bit, tea, coffee, soft drinks, etc. A few years ago one of the doctors at the lesson said to the rabbi, "Why are you drinking diet Cola? . . . Don't you know diet soft drinks are fattening?" "How can that be?" "Well have you ever seen a thin person drinking any?" That was enough to instantly wean our rabbi off diet drinks. But last week he had a new, more advanced view on diet soft drinks. Someone pointed out to him that "aspartame", the sweetener in many of these beverages, is a leading candidate as the cause of Alzheimer's Disease. Wow! He instantly banned all diet soft drinks from being brought into the synagogue building.
I am glad he has arrived at the realisation that not everything we put into our bodies, things sold as foodstuff, is good for us, is appropriate to eat. The opposite may in fact be sometimes be true. I am sure that he, and nearly everyone else around us, does not spend too much time thinking about the effects on our bodies of our food. I believe that the drug companies and food manufacturers are serious culprits in our lack of well-being. I am sure that this is not always on purpose, but I am sure that their desire to make money is more supreme than their yearning to keep us healthy. Seed suppliers, with their genetic modifications, also may be driven more by pocket lining than the benefit of humanity, both growers and consumers. It may even seem that these industries are in cahoots: the food industry poisons us and the drug companies detox us -- both making incredible amounts of money in the process. On the micro scale, it would seem that some of the caterers at our wedding halls don't worry about our health, they don't seem to care at all if they are poisoning you. What do they care about? Solely that by the time they get around to feeding you, usually after 10 p.m. (I agree that's not their fault) that the food looks fresh and has taste. They produce 500 or more individual meals each evening, two or three courses, during the morning hours (in the best case) and often at a location remote to the reception. So how could a sane person even expect the meals to be fresh? But we all pay them oodles of money . . . and I'm planning a wedding at the moment . . . Help! Caterers have well some known trips up their sleeves. Oil makes food look shiny, read looking fresh. Salt and monosodium glutamate, M.S.G., enhance and accentuate taste. M.S.G. may even have adverse physical effects on some people, including an allergic reaction commonly called "Chinese restaurant syndrome". Others report reactions including dizziness, headache, flushing and burning sensations. Trade names of monosodium glutamate include Ajinomoto, Vetsin and Accent. Most recent studies have indicated that M.S.G. is safe "in moderate quantities". Whatever moderate is? Does it build up over time? They said something similar about aspartame a few years back. "Don't drink too much diet drink each day". Well the rabbi is a step ahead of them. Are you? U.S. Food manufacturers have one hurdle when introducing a new food product to the market. They want/need to make sure they have F.D.A., Food And Drug Administration, approval. That's all they need, and they can sell. They are not in business to make you healthy. They are selling a good feeling, a sensation, a taste. Some diet colas have now added vitamins and minerals to their beverages. Milk too. Does that turn these into health foods? It's often easier to sell in some other countries. I'm not insinuating that it's easy to get F.D.A. approval for a new food or drug. But there's a hell of a lot of junk food out there on the market that has with permits, and there's a plenty of food that is certainly bad for you, or has no intrinsic value to you. Make no mistake -- the food industry is huge, mega millions. Their sole aim is to sell, to show the stockholders a continuing handsome profit. Other big players in our world are the drug companies. Forbes recently reported that the pharmaceutical companies are the most powerful force on the planet . . . much greater than the oil producers. I don't want to get into a discussion on whether the current swine flu may be man-made . . . or the virus just happened to jump species like Ebola and AIDS in the past. However I do remember that the original cases were reported in California and not Mexico. But it took hold in Mexico, just over the Californian frontier. Luckily for the Americans because the "American Flu" doesn't sound too good. The "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918, also an H1N1 virus, did not originate in Spain. "The disease was registered in the continental US and the rest of Europe long before getting to Spain." The Talmud in tractate Ta'anith, chapter three (page 21b), discusses a fast declared by Rav Yehuda when a disease amongst pigs became endemic in Babylon. The gemara assumes this was because the rabbi feared other [kosher] animals would also contract the disease, creating a shortage of meat on the market. However the reason for his concern was that pigs were different to all other animals. Their digestive tracts are similar to those of humans, and he feared the disease could spread to people. The drug companies are currently racing, against the clock, to produce an inoculation against the "new" influenza virus. Can you imagine the amount of money they will make when the U.S. Federal government enforces the already existing paragraph in the Patriot Act which requires, at pain of forced (no appearance before a court) incarceration, that everyone submit to vaccination when a pandemic is declared (and it has already been declared). And 60,000,000 units in Great Britain, and more for the rest of Europe, the rest of the civilised world. Mega-mega-mega bucks! Are people dying from the pandemic? Of course the pharmaceutical companies prefer you to believe so; otherwise they can't sell their new product. Yesterday the BBC reported an H1N1 related death in the U.K. "A six-year-old girl who died after contracting swine flu, had 'been through a lot' with other illnesses, her father has told an inquest". So what was her cause of death? The H1N1 virus of course! Look at other reports of deaths from this virus. There seems to be more happening in at least some of the cases, and not all is being fully reported. There seems to be a rise in attributed flu related deaths in general over the last couple of years. Are more people dying, or is this a marketing based reclassification?
So it was with these questions, for which I have not yet worked out or received answers -- and there probably are good answers -- please write to me -- that I came across the following report, that appears, yes I admit anonymously, on a number of Internet sites. This was originally posted at here, but has since been removed. I found it here. I have copied it in full with the copyright wavers, etc. I don't know too much about HealthFreedomUSA.org, but found the site after I heard one of their people interviewed on the radio. Original posting: I still really not sure what to make of all this. Please let me hear your thoughts. The world is a scary place, that undoubtedly is one thing of which I am certain.
Please feel free to
and don't forget to stop by my site to look at my latest (and classic) photographs. Previous posts:
Be part of the new Internet tapestry phenomenon: |