Wegapitiya to CID to save Mobitel Ranjith!

 

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

Laugfs Gas chairman W.H.K. Wegapitiya, who has been appointed by president Maithripala Sirisena to Sri Lanka Telecom, lodged a complaint with the CID yesterday (19) in order to save Ranjith Rubasinghe, a worst-corrupt person, who is the CEO of SLT-affiliate Mobitel, reports say. The president has completely disregarded the fact that Wegapitiya was one of the businessmen who had promoted the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa regime, and appointed him to SLT. In his complaint, Wegapitiya asked the CID to investigate and arrest the persons responsible for leaking Mobitel’s information to outsiders. Our website has been exposing the corrupt deeds by Rubasinghe, including the abuse of office to promote Rajapaksa at the presidential election and the spending of millions of rupees of public money on his campaign, and proved the charges against him with email and other evidence. Rubasinghe has become alarmed by those exposures.

The SLT chairman had put off an executive committee meeting scheduled for 4.00 pm and sent Wegapitiya to the CID in order to hunt down workers who fight for justice, instead of expelling Rubasinghe and other corrupt officials.

SLT CEO Dileepa Jayasundara, who returned from Canada on January 08, took Rajapaksa’s friend Wegapitiya to wish minister of telecommunication Mangala Samaraweera on his birthday on the 21st of last month, reports say.

Banks hit by record $5.7bn fine for rigging forex markets

Barclays, RBS, Citi, JP Morgan and UBS forced to pay out after US Department of Justice investigation into collusion by traders in several countries

 Major banks have been fined for rigging forex markets. Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters

Jill Treanor-Wednesday 20 May 2015

The reputation of the banking industry took another hammering on Wednesday as the fines imposed on major banks – including Barclays and bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland – for rigging foreign exchange markets topped £6.3bn.

The US Department of Justice accused the industry of “breathtaking flagrancy” as, along with other regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, it imposed a record $5.7bn (£3.7bn) of punishments on six banks. The new fines followed£2.6bn of penalties announced in November for manipulation of the £3.5tn a day currency markets.

Barclays was fined £1.5bn by five regulators, including a record £284m by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA will hand its fine to the chancellor, George Osborne. Yet Barclays’ stock market value rose by £1.5bn as a result of a 3% rise in its share price amid relief the fine was not even larger. RBS’s shares also rose 1.8%. The increases came even though the regulators said there could be more fines to come.

An unprecedented series of guilty pleas was extracted by the US DoJ from four of the banks: Barclays, RBS, Citigroup and JP Morgan. Swiss bank UBS was granted immunity for being the first to report the manipulation of the foreign exchange markets, although it was forced to admit to wrongdoing in other offences. Bank of America was fined by the Federal Reserve.

Announcing the fines, Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general, said bank traders had exhibited “breathtaking flagrancy” in setting up a group they called “the cartel” to manipulate the market between 2007 and the end of 2013.

“The penalty these banks will now pay is fitting considering the long-running and egregious nature of their anticompetitive conduct. It is commensurate with the pervasive harm done. And it should deter competitors in the future from chasing profits without regard to fairness, to the law, or to the public welfare,” she said.

The banks, which have been hit by billions of pounds of Libor fines in the last three years and admit they face further penalties for rigging other markets such as metals, faced a torrent of criticism.

“This sort of practice strikes at the heart of business ethics and is yet another blow to the integrity of the banks. Our pension funds invest billions of pounds in the financial markets and if they are being cheated in this way, it affects every one of us,” said Mark Taylor, dean of Warwick Business School and a former foreign exchange trader.

Andrew McCabe, FBI assistant director, said: “These resolutions make clear that the US government will not tolerate criminal behaviour in any sector of the financial markets.”

Campaigners for a tax on financial transactions at the Robin Hood Tax campaign, said: “These colossal fines are a shocking reminder that for too long our banks have had a rotten core. In what other sector would we tolerate the frequency and severity of such damaging behaviour?”

Barclays was ordered to fire eight staff as part of a deal with the New York department of financial services – including a global head of trading – although other individuals are also expected to leave. Benjamin Lawsky, who is stepping down as the head of the New York DFS, said Barclays “engaged in a brazen ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ scheme to rip off their clients”.

The FCA said Barclays engaged in collusive behaviour with rivals and used chat rooms to manipulate rates secretly. In one chat room, a trader described himself and his fellow participants as “the three musketeers” and said “we all die together”.

Georgina Philippou, the FCA’s acting director of enforcement and market oversight, said of the Barclays fines: “This is another example of a firm allowing unacceptable practices to flourish on the trading floor.”

Top bankers lined up to offer apologies and their frustrations. Antony Jenkins, appointed to run Barclays in the wake of the 2012 Libor rigging scandal, said: “I share the frustration of shareholders and colleagues that some individuals have once more brought our company and industry into disrepute.”

As RBS was fined £430m – on top of the £400m of penalties announced in November – boss Ross McEwan said: “The serious misconduct that lies at the heart of today’s announcements has no place in the bank that I am building. Pleading guilty for such wrongdoing is another stark reminder of how badly this bank lost its way and how important it is for us to regain trust.”

RBS, which is 79% owned by taxpayers, warned it could still face further action and has fired three people and suspended two more.

Citigroup was fined £770m, while JP Morgan, the biggest bank in the US – which has paid fines totalling more than £26bn since 2009 – was fined another £572m. Its boss, Jamie Dimon, said: “The conduct described in the government’s pleadings is a great disappointment to us. We demand and expect better of our people. The lesson here is that the conduct of a small group of employees, or of even a single employee, can reflect badly on all of us, and have significant ramifications for the entire firm.”

Barclays also became the first bank to be fined for fixing another benchmark, known as the ISDAfix. It is paying £74m to the US regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

U.S. reveals what Osama bin Laden had in his private library

On May 3, 2011, residents gather outside the compound where al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. (Anjum Naveed/AP)

By Greg Miller-May 20

Osama bin Laden kept an extensive library of English-language books in the compound where he was killed in 2011, a collection whose titles appear to reflect the al-Qaeda leader’s constant search for U.S. vulnerabilities and insights into troubled American military campaigns from Vietnam to the wars that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bin Laden’s bookshelf included “Imperial Hubris,” a critical account of U.S. counterterrorism programs by the former head of the CIA unit that was responsible for tracking the al-Qaeda leader. Other books included a copy of “Obama’s Wars” by Bob Woodward, a history of the Federal Reserve, and — in perhaps an indirect acknowledgment of al-Qaeda’s struggle to survive CIA drone strikes — a book on “antiaircraft weapons and techniques for guerrilla forces.”

[Chomsky, Woodward and 9/11 conspiracy theories: Bin Laden’s English-language bookshelf]

The list of books was part of a broader collection of materials from bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan that was declassified and released on Wednesday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In a statement, the DNI described the materials as a “sizeable tranche of documents recovered during the raid on the compound used to hide Usama bin Ladin,” and said U.S. agencies are “reviewing hundreds more documents in the near future for possible declassification and release.”

The newly declassified stack includes letters bin Laden appears to have sent to al-Qaeda lieutenants including Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who served as the terrorist network’s top operational planner and was killed in a 2011 drone strike.

[Documents found in the Osama bin Laden compound]

There was also a mix of religious texts, think tank studies, software manuals and news articles — all part of a trove of materials gathered by Navy SEALs in the aftermath of the raid in which bin Laden was killed.

The U.S. government has previously released hundreds of files found on bin Laden’s computers in the Abbottabad compound, but the contents of the al-Qaeda leader’s collection of English-language books was not previously disclosed.

U.S. officials said that they believe bin Laden could understand and read at least a basic level of English. His collection was dominated by non-fiction volumes on subjects as varied as ballot tampering in U.S. elections and the scale of U.S. assistance to Pakistan.

He kept a copy of a book, “America’s Strategic Blunders,” whose title might also serve as a theme of bin Laden’s broader interests. His other books included “Killing Hope: U.S. military and CIA Interventions since World War II” and “The New Pearl Harbor,” a book about the Bush administration’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

One of the odder entries in the collection is “A Brief Guide to Understanding Islam.”

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Nuclear Umbrella

By failing to help South Korea and Japan with small threats, the United States is casting doubts on its biggest commitment in the region.

BY VAN JACKSON-MAY 18, 2015

Pyongyang’s provocative and erratic behavior is starting to unnerve South Korea. “Many people are alarmed by the North’s recent provocative acts and as they learn of an extreme reign of terror within North Korea,” South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on May 15 — two days before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Seoul to show the United States’ “ironclad commitment” to South Korean security. In the last month, Pyongyang announced the successful test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, reportedly executed its defense minister for disobedience to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and fired shells near a sea border disputed between the two countries. South Korea and Japan, two of the most likely targets for North Korean violence, are U.S. allies and protected by its nuclear umbrella. But as Park’s comments imply, that may offer little comfort: U.S. extended deterrence is not curbing its ally’s fears.

Since the early days of the Cold War, the United States has promised to deter and retaliate against a nuclear attack on select allies in Europe and Asia — in other words, the United States extends to them the capabilities it fields to protect the American public from nuclear attack. In Asia, the U.S. nuclear umbrella is reserved for only its close allies Australia, Japan, and South Korea — as it should be. Promises of nuclear retaliation on behalf of others shouldn’t be made lightly. When the United States promises to defend allies against the greatest type of destruction imaginable — while at the same time upholding defense treaty commitments against non-nuclear attack — this should assure close allies of their security. This is good for the United States because an assured ally is less likely to launch fear-based preventive strikes against adversaries; also, an assured ally also has no need to pursue its own nuclear weapons arsenal. If U.S. extended deterrence commitments work as intended, the confidence they provide to friends is just as important as the caution they should induce in would-be adversaries, like North Korea.

But while U.S. extended deterrence commitments to Japan and South Korea are the ultimate promise, it is a promise for the least-likely situation. And meanwhile, whether because of political expediency or the low stakes involved, the United States has played a marginal role in dealing with the smaller threats these two countries face: for Japan, Chinese harassment in waters around contested islands in the East China Sea; and for South Korea, conventional attacks by North Korea. The result? By failing to adequately tackle small-scale challenges with or on behalf of Tokyo and Seoul, the United States has cast doubt about its nuclear umbrella for those two countries.

This in turn reflects an unstated paradox: the strongest form of U.S. commitment doesn’t address the much weaker quotidian challenges actually facing its allies. Consequently, Seoul and Tokyo look to Washington and see its credibility eroding. Frank Sinatra once sang that if he could make it in New York, he “could make it anywhere.” This logic, dubbed the “Sinatra test,” suggests that those who can survive a hard test can survive an easy one. But when it comes U.S. extended deterrence, allies see the opposite: if the United States can’t handle the small threats, then how can it handle the big ones, like nuclear attacks?

Consider what happened in 2010, when North Korea torpedoed the South Korean frigate Cheonan, killing 46 seamen, and then followed up that provocation in November of the same year by shelling the Yeonpyeong Islands, killing four South Koreans and injuring 19 others. Officials in Washington urged restraint, and prevented South Korean retaliation. The response was telling: Politicians in Seoul, in a move that signaled their doubt over the reliability of U.S. commitments, called for the redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons on Korean soil (all U.S. nuclear weapons had been removed from South Korea in 1991). And because the United States is not planning to redeploy its nuclear weapons, several senior South Korean politicians have called for the country to develop their own bomb — concluding that if the U.S. nuclear umbrella couldn’t protect their country, they would have to rely on their own nuclear capability.

Consider also what’s happened over the last five years to Japan, a top U.S. ally. China has repeatedly confronted Japan over the Diaoyu islands Tokyo claims (and calls the Senkaku). Beijing has asserted its claims with novel and aggressive moves that fall just under the threshold for retaliation — using water cannons, fishing vessels, reconnaissance drones, and military ships nominally designated as Coast Guard vessels to harass Japanese vessels. And consider, for example, Japan’s response to the unarmed Chinese reconnaissance drones Beijing has frequently dispatched into contested airspace over the last few years. In each case, Japan alone has scrambled fighter aircraft or sent maritime vessels in response. The more Japan does alone, the more it doubts the strength of the partnership. The U.S. commitment to protect Japan against existential threats risks being eroded by its irrelevance in protecting Japan from the primary — though relatively small — danger it faces today. As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bolsters Japan’s military, Japan’s departure from a long history of buck-passing its security burden to the United States only makes sense as a response to feeling more threatened and lacking confidence in U.S. reliability.

Of course, in these cases Japan and South Korea (not to mention much of the rest of the world) would have been discomfited if the United States threatened nuclear retaliation — and that illustrates the problem.Extended deterrence is a blunt instrument: good for some things, like deterring nuclear attack, but not for others, like deterring provocations or low-intensity conflict.

The United States has known this for a long time. One of the lessons of the Cold War was that nukes aren’t good for much — other than deterring other nukes. President Dwight Eisenhower’s doctrine of “massive retaliation” — promising nuclear retaliation against Soviet aggression — served many purposes, but non-nuclear deterrence or crisis management was not one of them. During the Korean War, U.S. nuclear threats failed to end the protracted conflict. In repeated crises with China in the 1950s, U.S. nuclear threats not only failed to prevent China from shelling and seizing Taiwanese-held islands, but boxed Washington into a path where some U.S. officials advocated nuclear attacks on China for the sake of strategically insignificant and militarily Taiwanese indefensible islands. These problems had to do with the credibility of proportionality: nobody believed big threats made over small issues. A nuclear umbrella, in other words, was too blunt an instrument to credibly wield as a coercive tool on the battlefield or as a means of preventing small-scale attacks against an ally.

Rather than drawing greater attention to the U.S. nuclear deterrent, the United States should devise long-term policies that help South Korea and Japan deal with North Korean provocations and Chinese coercion respectively — small-scale but significant problems. The United States should launch strategic consultations with South Korea and Japan to compare notes on global and regional trends (which includes small-scale coercion), and how they affect national threat perceptions, mission priorities, and military weapons investments. Though far less sexy than nukes, elevating cooperation with South Korea and Japan to strategy and policy planning consultations might go a long way toward shoring up their confidence.

None of this means that the United States should jettison its extended deterrence commitments — they reduce the arms racing that allies might otherwise engage in, and have alleviated the need for allies to launch preventive strikes out of misplaced fear or insecurity. U.S. extended deterrence has also helped reinforce the global norm against nuclear proliferation by helping maintain compliance to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; there would probably be more nuclear states in a world without U.S. extended deterrence commitments.

But extended deterrence commitments are likely to have diminishing returns over time. If allies can’t trust U.S. extended deterrence to deal with their needs today, why would they trust the U.S. ability to deal with their needs tomorrow, like protecting against a nuclear-armed North Korea?

Photo credit: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images

With nuclear deal in sight, Iran drives harder bargain in Indian trade talks

A worker walks atop a tanker wagon to check the freight level at an oil terminal on the outskirts of Kolkata November 27, 2013.-REUTERS/RUPAK DE CHOWDHURI/FILES

 BY NIDHI VERMA- Wed May 20, 2015

Iranian trade negotiators have become more assertive with Indian counterparts as hopes rise of international sanctions on Tehran easing later this year, sources said, and Indian companies fear they may lose business as more countries bid for projects.

The push back from the Iranians came as a surprise to India, which has enjoyed special dispensation from Tehran as one of only a handful of countries willing to do business with it while it faced Western economic sanctions.

Under a tentative framework agreement reached between six major powers and Tehran in April, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activity in return for sanctions relief. A final deal could be reached by June 30.

That prospect appears to have emboldened Iran, said sources familiar with trade negotiations with India, including in its handling of a sizeable deal to import railway tracks.

The $233 million contract, signed last October, was for India's State Trading Corp (STC) to facilitate exports of rail tracks from SAIL Ltd and Jindal Steel and Power Ltd to Iran's railways.

But Iran told Indian negotiators that it had offers from other countries, including Turkey, to supply the equipment at a cheaper cost, the sources said.

Last month, New Delhi sent trade secretary Rajeev Kher to persuade Tehran to adhere to the original terms, but he came back "empty handed", according to one of the sources.

"They are no longer the same Iranians that came to us last year for signing the deal," the source said. "They were polite this time, but had an upper hand in the negotiations."

India has cut the value of the deal by about 7 percent to $217 million, the sources said. They added that they worry the Iranians may seek further cuts, and could split the order with other countries.

STC chairman Rahim Khaleel declined to comment. Kher, Iran Rail, SAIL and Jindal Steel did not respond to requests for comment.

It was not immediately clear whether other countries that trade with Iran have seen a similar hardening in Tehran's stance. Oil refinery sources in Japan said they had not seen any change yet.

"WAIT YOUR TURN"

Iran said it wanted to renegotiate the rail contract, because the euro had declined against the dollar and steel and iron ore prices had fallen significantly since the deal was first struck in 2014.

Indian negotiators said price and currency risks were incorporated into the original agreement, but they had to give in, the sources said.

It was a large order for the Indians and the spectre of competition from other suppliers loomed large, they added.

"Earlier they were standing in line to offer us deals," one source said. Now, they ask the Indians to "wait in line and wait your turn."

The supply contract is expected to kick off within six months, and, under the renewed terms, India will supply 250,000 tonnes of rails to Iran over 18 months through STC.

The shift in Iran's stance has also been visible in the vital energy sector.

The National Iranian Oil Company has told Indian refiners, for example, that it would withdraw some of the discounts and free shipping it had been offering them on crude sales to maintain its oil output, oil industry sources said.

The sources added that the state oil firm anticipated ramping up exports once the nuclear deal was finalised, after which there would be many more buyers for its crude.

In 2013, the then Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi visited India to offer development rights for a gas field on a production sharing basis, after getting special permission from parliament on a deal that would normally contravene Iranian law.

India did not sign the deal for the Farzad B gas field, as international sanctions barred investment in Iran's hydrocarbon sector, an Iranian diplomat said.

Now, Tehran has withdrawn the offer, according to Iranian media. Iran plans to auction the field instead, one report said.

(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori in TOKYO; Parisa Hafezi in ANKARA; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Mike Collett-White)

Senior Vatican official offered bribe to child sex abuse victim, inquiry hears

David Ridsdale tells Australian inquiry that in 1993 he informed Cardinal George Pell about being abused and was offered money to buy his silence

 Cardinal George Pell celebrates mass in Sydney in 2014 before leaving for his new position at the Vatican. Photograph: Jane Dempster/AAP

Oliver Milman in Sydney andStephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome-

Wednesday 20 May 2015

A senior Vatican official, who is also Australia’s highest ranking cleric, has been accused of attempting to bribe a victim of child sex abuse to keep quiet about the molestation he suffered from a paedophile Catholic priest.

Senior Vatican Official Offered Bribe to Child Sex Abuse Victim, Inquiry Hears by Thavam Ratna

Police investigate 1,400 child sexual abuse suspects

WEDNESDAY 20 MAY 2015

More than 1,400 suspects have been investigated by police probing historic child sex abuse allegations against VIPs including politicians, celebrities and institutions.

The figures were revealed by Operation Hydrant, a group set up by the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) to explore links between child sexual abuse committed by "prominent public persons".

Norfolk Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the NPCC's lead on child protection, said: "The referrals are increasing on an almost daily basis. The numbers I refer to today are a snapshot in time."

Ian McFadyen, a survivor of child sexual abuse, said that the numbers would come as little surprise to other survivors. "Everyone has said we've seen the tip of the iceberg, I'm saying we haven't even got in the boat to go to the iceberg."

He told Channel 4 News that he felt the timing of the police's announcement was likely to be a plea to the Home Secretary Theresa May for the resources to handle the cases. "The number of cases is mind-blowing, as is the fact that the number has been released. Is this about Theresa May and money? I am ever the sceptic but the police are going to be swamped by this."

Mr Mcfadyen said that those officers who have experience of dealing with cases of child sexual abuse need to be given dedicated roles in order to pass their specialist knowledge on.

'Unprecedented increase'

Out of the 1,433 suspects identified by police on Wednesday, 216 are now dead.

Mr Bailey said that out of these 1,433 suspects, 666 relate to institutions and 357 separate institutions have been identified by the operation.

He said 261 are classified as people of public prominence, of these 135 come from the world of TV, film or radio, 76 are listed as politicians, 43 from the music industry and seven are from sport.

Mr Bailey said: "We are seeing an unprecedented increase in the number of reports that are coming forward. That has brought about a step change in the way the service has had to deal with it."

He said it is projected that police will receive around 116,000 reports of historic child sex abuse by the end of 2015 - an increase of 71% from 2012.

He added: "There is no doubt (Jimmy) Savile has had an effect on us. We are getting dealing with more and more allegations."

Rohingya migrant: ‘We went on the boat to look for a Muslim country’

A sick migrant is helped by friends to board a truck that is taking them to a local hospital upon arrival in Simpang Tiga, Aceh province, Indonesia Wednesday. Pic: AP.

By AP News May 20, 2015

Migrants from Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh who were rescued by Indonesian fishermen after being stranded at sea for months say all they wanted was to go to a Muslim country.

Rohingya Migrant ‘We Went on the Boat to Look for a Muslim Country’ by Thavam Ratna

Food inspectors order recall batch of Maggi noodles from shops across country over excess lead

The FDA in Uttar Pradesh said high lead content was found during routine tests on two dozen packets of instant noodles, manufactured by Nestle in India

May 20, 2015

NEW DELHI: Food inspectors have ordered Nestle India to recall a batch of Maggi noodles from shops across the country, saying the product contained dangerous levels of lead.

The Food Safety and Drug Administration (FDA) in Uttar Pradesh said high lead content was found during routine tests on two dozen packets of instant noodles, manufactured by Nestle in India

Two FDA officials said all the packets of instant noodles tested in the state-run laboratory were contaminated. They found a lead concentration of 17.2 parts per million (ppm), nearly seven times the permissible limit. The FDA officials said the acceptable limit of lead ranges between 0.01 ppm and 2.5 ppm.

READ ALSO

'Maggi' under regulatory scanner for lead, MSG beyond permissible limit

The scientists also found high levels of added monosodium glutamate (MSG), a taste enhancer, in the noodles.

"Maggi instant noodles contained dangerous amount of lead and MSG. We had to immediately issue orders against the company," D.G. Srivastava, deputy inspector general of the FDA in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.

Nestle India, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestle SA, said it had strict safety and quality controls in place for all raw materials used to make Maggi noodles.

"We do not add MSG to Maggi Noodles, and glutamate, if present, may come from naturally occurring sources. We are surprised with the content supposedly found in the sample as we monitor the lead content regularly as a part of the regulatory requirements," it said.


File picture of a Nestle logo printed by a 3D printer during a display for the inauguration of the system technology centre for the design, development and deployment of their products in Orbe March 25, 2013. (Reuters photo)

A company spokesman confirmed Uttar Pradesh had ordered it to withdraw the batch dating back to March 2014, but added the items concerned had either already been consumed or were beyond the sell-by date, making the recall difficult.

Srivastava said his team collected more than two dozen packs of instant noodles from stores across the state and tested each pack separately before making the findings public.

"Our experts conducted several tests and each time the results were shocking," he told Reuters, adding they had approached federal food inspectors in New Delhi to launch a wider investigation of the noodles.

Is your deodorant drugging you through the armpits daily with this neurotoxin?

SEPTEMBER 1, 2014 BY ANYA V

As the temperature rises in the body, thousands of sweat glands begin to bead up, preparing to cool the body down. The average person possesses about 2.6 millions sweat glands — a built in thermostat. This system is made up of eccrine glands and apocrine glands.

Eccrine glands are the most numerous, harbored in places like the forehead, hands, and feet. These glands are activated at birth and do not secrete proteins or fatty acids.

The sweat coming from both types of glands does not have an odor. Body odor comes from bacteria living on the skin. The bacteria metabolize the proteins and fatty acids secreted from the eccrine glands, ultimately producing an odor. That odor can be influenced by the type of bacteria living on the skin and the kind of food a person eats.

This often unpleasant odor is the reason why deodorants and antiperspirants have become a popular body care product today. Many people have their favorite brand but are unaware that many antiperspirants are actually drugs that change the physiology of the body. These antiperspirants contain an active ingredient that is scientifically validated to accelerate brain aging and cause Alzheimer’s disease. This drug is often rubbed into the sweat glands and taken up into the body.

Deodorants versus antiperspirants

Deodorants work by killing the bacteria that live on the skin. They are often scented to provide consumers with a pleasant fragrance. Commercial deodorants often contain hormone-disrupting chemical fragrances that absorb into the skin and disrupt the endocrine system. Natural deodorants use plant-based essential oils as an alternative to the chemicals. Many of these essentials oils give the naturaldeodorant more power, because they possess antibacterial properties that help drive away the bacteria in the sweat glands that cause the actual stink.

Antiperspirants, on the other hand, work in a much different way. Antiperspirants work by blocking the sweat glands, stopping the secretion of proteins and fatty acids. Most antiperspirants are made with aluminum salts like aluminum chloride, aluminum chlorohydrate or aluminum zirconium compounds. Since antiperspirants change the physiology of the body, they are actually considered an over-the-counter drug in the US and are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Every antiperspirant sold in the US has a Drug Identification Number (DIN), denoted on the label.

Chronic aluminum exposure and neurotoxicity

In 1986, aluminum was first recognized as a neurotoxin in the USA. The US EPA has established a safe range for aluminum salts in public drinking water, which is 0.05 to 0.2 milligrams per liter.

In a 2010 publication of Neurotoxicology, researchers from the Department of Medicine at the University of California showed how extended exposure to aluminum salts causes neurotoxicity. In an animal model, aluminum was given at low levels to determine acceleration of brain aging. They found out that aluminum salts can increase levels of glial activation, inflammatory cytokines and amyloid precursor proteins within the brain. These increases are all indicative of accelerated brain aging. The aluminum salts effectively increased brain inflammation that is also present in Alzheimer’s patients.

Remarkably, aluminum salts like aluminum zirconium are marketed as the active ingredient in many commercial antiperspirants. Aluminum zirconium makes up 15 percent or more of most commercial antiperspirants! The label often warn consumers that the product can cause kidney damage too. Here’s an example antiperspirant label here.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.controlyourimpact.com

http://water.epa.gov

http://science.naturalnews.com

About the author:
Lance Johnson is a passionate learner, researcher, writer, and entre-health-leader. He and his wife have launched a clean products movement from the ground up atwww.allnaturalfreespirit.com.

The Johnson’s are inspired by natural healing and the lifestyle changes that have awoken their spirit and given them quality of life.

Stay updated and discuss ideas exclusively with Lance on their FB community page at https://www.facebook.com/allnaturalfreespirit?ref=hl

The Walk of Shame

By Frances Harrison-May 18, 2015

When the door was unlocked she scrambled out of the room so fast she left her underwear behind. The Sri Lankan soldiers stood about watching outside  – jeering and abusing her. Head bowed, hair dishevelled, she found herself unable to do up her buttons. Her dress was soaked in blood from where they’d burned and slashed her body, in addition to raping her. It was a walk of shame back into the camp.

Her fellow Tamils instantly knew what had happened but nobody spoke of it. All they could do was give her hungry child water until she’d composed herself enough to breastfeed again.

The soldiers had dragged her out, tortured her and threatened to kill her children if she didn’t stop screaming and trying to resist. She knew what was coming. She’d seen it happen to a young girl the day before. Another mother was told if she didn’t come to be raped they’d take her young daughter instead of her. During the fighting, mothers instinctively shielded their fragile children with their bodies against flying shards of metal. Now in peace they had to go, knowing they would be raped, just to save their children.

Bystanders don’t speak of it. Not just out of respect for the victim but also because they were passive observers, they feel guilty they did nothing to stop it, didn’t even raise a feeble protest. Not that there was anything they could have done while guarded by armed soldiers.

The perpetrators though are brazen about their crimes, filming rapes on mobile phones, photographing the victims naked. They are confident they will never be caught and more than that – they intend to inflict collective shame and humiliation on the whole community. At one level they are raping the Tamil motherland as well as individuals.

It’s of course not just women. War crimes investigators have been shocked by the extent of male rape in post-war Sri Lanka. The victims are timid and fragile, often skinny young men who look more like teenage kids than adults. Some have been detained and abused on multiple occasions starting at a young age.  With great difficulty they recount brutal sexual assaults they are unable ever to tell their families about. One young man was abducted in a white van.

After weeks of sexual and physical abuse his father bribed him out of the army camp where he was being tortured and took him immediately to Mannar to hide before getting on a boat to India. His dad bought some creams from the pharmacy and cleaned his torture wounds applying the creams, weeping as he did it that he’d been unable to protect his precious child. The son lay on the bed in pain, not telling his father about the sexual abuse because he wanted to protect someone he loved from the whole horrible truth.

It was a scene of great tenderness after terrible brutality and cruelty but there was also a permanent barrier placed between the parent and child that they would never be able to remove. Soon the son was away, alone in a foreign country where he didn’t speak the language, terrified even to phone home lest it cause problems for his family. More barriers erected even across continents. Who do you turn to in trouble but your family – even that relationship has been degraded by the torturers.

Another torture survivor described being dropped off for the exchange in a deserted jungle area. His uncle handed over a bag of money. They drove off to a safe house, stopping only so his uncle could examine his wounds in the headlight of the vehicle. That’s how much time there was to make sure he was alright. Nobody goes to a doctor because it’s too dangerous. Men who have been branded all over their backs with hot metal rods describe the pain of sitting in airplane seat for hours on end, flying to safety. They can’t lean back in the seat.

Six years after the end of the war in Sri Lanka I could not have imagined such victims would still be emerging abroad. When I wrote a book of survivors’ stories from the end of the war in 2009 many people said they struggled with the horror and could only bear to read one chapter at a time. I now know it was the lite version of the war. Those people I interviewed in 2011 had escaped relatively quickly. Now there are people who’ve suffered not just months of displacement, bereavement, injury, starvation and trauma but years of detention, torture and sexual abuse, in “rehabilitation camps” and then on top of that white van abductions after they have been ‘rehabilitated’, only to restart their cycle of detention, repeated and prolonged torture and sexual abuse, yet again. Their suffering is quite literally indescribable.

They arrive abroad and some go straight from the airport to the detention centre, never stepping foot in the country outdoors. Being locked up again is traumatic. They suffer flashbacks and wake up at night screaming because they think they’re back in Sri Lanka in the torture cell.

Many are men who leave their wives and children behind in the Vanni. They live in limbo waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, constantly worrying about their families being threatened by the security forces and always in fear of being rejected and sent back to Sri Lanka for more ‘rehabilitation’.

Reprisals and threats against family members left at home in Sri Lanka are common. One man described how his wife was detained by the security forces and gang raped because they couldn’t find him. He returned home and saw her ripped clothes, the bite and scratch marks on her breasts. He took her to hospital where she was put in intensive care. After that first day he and his wife never discussed it again. Another barrier erected in their marriage.

For all the wedges driven between people, there are many strong Tamil women who overcome the personal trauma and the social stigma of rape with the help of loving men who support them. Several I know have recently married and had babies. They’ve decided the best way to defeat their torturers is to try to be happy again. That requires extraordinary individual courage but be under no illusion that it implies forgiveness or reconciliation. It’s hard to imagine someone in this situation would not harbour deep-seated anger and hatred for those who still deny their attempted mental and physical obliteration.  Reconciliation has to be about a lot more than which language you use to sing the national anthem.

(Frances Harrison is a former BBC Colombo Correspondent who has been documenting torture and sexual violence in post-war Sri Lanka and wrote a book about the survivors of the final phase of the civil war, Still Counting the Dead, Portobello, London 2012.)