Mo' (About) Money

Just in case that last post didn't get you thinking about the real state of the economy, here's a couple of more articles to provide some additional food for thought.

The Devil and Alan Greenspan

If Americans have to learn the hard way that they cannot surf the wave of the world's savings forever, it will be a painful but beneficial lesson. If Asians learn that they cannot avoid risk by placing their savings in America, it is worth the cost, although it may be substantial. The fate of 3 billion Asians is the risk to the world economy, and it is delusional to think that it can be insured. Asians must find the means to invest in their own future and buy their own risk. Who started the global credit crisis? I don't mean to wax mystical over mundane issues in the markets, but I think that the devil did. He is just doing his job.

Why The Dollar is a 98-lb Weakling

Currencies rise and fall over time because countries really do get richer and poorer. Dig something valuable up from under the ground, or devise products or services that people value, and your money will be worth more. Let your industries fall behind, or allow inflation to debase the value of your money, and its global standing will decline.

The puzzle is that there's no real evidence that the economic prospects of Western Europe have suddenly improved 40% compared with the U.S. This makes it tempting to assign the dollar's drop to the customary moodiness of currency markets, in which traders make guesses about the future and inevitably get things wrong for years on end.

Why haven't these countries' currencies been gaining on the dollar? Because their governments won't let them. China's dollar peg, established in the mid-1990s, is often portrayed in the U.S. as a mercantilist attempt to sell more stuff here (if the Chinese yuan is cheap relative to the dollar, imports from China are cheaper too). But there's much more to it than that: by reining in the often pointless fluctuations of currency markets, countries can bring stability and encourage trade.

That's what the U.S. and the world's other big economies did during the 25 years after World War II. Up to now they've been content to recycle most of them (dollars) by buying Treasury bills and other U.S. securities. The U.S. has enjoyed the low interest rates that have resulted, while China, the Gulf States and Japan haven't wanted to face the consequence that by selling dollars, they would decrease the value of their remaining dollar holdings.

This is an arrangement that can't go on forever. It should unravel; that's the way of economic change and progress. But there's no plan in place to make it happen in an orderly fashion. The fear that the ensuing adjustment might be even more chaotic than in the 1970s probably explains most of the dollar's recent decline. It's not that we Americans have gotten a lot poorer. It's that we might be about to.

Bling, Bling

Dollar Crunch Puts Gold Centre Stage

The dominoes are toppling. What began as a credit crunch has turned into a dollar crunch. We are witnessing a run on the world's paramount reserve currency, an event that occurs twice a century or so, and never with a benign outcome.

The US dollar has fallen through parity against the Canadian dollar and plummeted to all-time lows against a basket of currencies. This is dangerous. None of the mature economic blocs seems able to take the strain, let alone step in to restore order. Ultimately, Europe and Japan are in worse shape than the US. A mood of sauve qui peut is taking hold.

Is this what gold is sniffing as it breaks out against all currencies, smashing through €500 an ounce against the euro, and vaulting to a 28-year high of $743 against the dollar?

"Central banks have been forced to choose between global recession or sacrificing control of gold, and have chosen the perceived lesser of two evils," said Citigroup in a fresh report. This could take gold to $1,000 an ounce, or higher."

Until now, the euro has served as the "anti-dollar", the default choice for Asians and petrodollar powers wary of US assets. This cannot last. Eurogroup chair, Jean-Claude Juncker, has stopped pretending that all is well. "We have begun to have great concern about the exchange rate of the euro," he said.

Europe will not let America export its day of reckoning to the rest of the world. It will counter with its own devaluation.

No doubt Ben Bernanke will use all means to avert disaster, including the "printing press" he invoked in November 2002. By this he meant that the Fed could inject unlimited stimulus by purchasing as many bonds and assets as it wants. He believes the Fed could have avoided the Depression if it had been more creative in 1931. Even so, I am not sure that the Bernanke Fed will move fast enough, given fears of moral hazard, or, indeed, whether the rate cuts on offer are enough to head off an insolvency crisis. The chart of S&P 500 looks eerily similar to October 1987, the last time a tumbling US dollar set off a crash.

Large parts of the global credit system are still shut. The $2.2 trillion market for commercial paper has shrunk by $368bn over the past seven weeks as lenders refuse to roll over loans. The $2.5 trillion market for "structured finance" remains frozen.

We wait to see what happens as "teaser rates" on some $1.5 trillion of mortgages jump with a venomous kick in coming months. The Fed should have thought about this three years ago when rates were 1pc. It is too late now.

But You Already Knew That

Study: Racism plays role in black infant mortality rates

For decades, health experts have tried to determine why African-American babies are twice as likely to die as white infants. A new series of studies from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' Health Policy Institute, along with a small but growing number of neonatalogists nationwide, suggests that the stressful effects of racism play a role.

"That's the elephant in the room," said Michael Lu, an obstetrician-gynecologist and professor at the University of California at Los Angeles who studies disparities in infant health. "When we're studying racial disparities, for decades people have looked at stress and infant mortality without looking at the reasons for the stress."

The Writings On The Wall

Israel’s Chief Diplomat Meets Arab Counterparts In Backroom Talks

While the Iranian president was busy stealing the limelight at this year’s United Nations General Assembly, Israel’s foreign minister was quietly carrying out a new strategy of normalizing relations with Muslim countries in a series of backroom meetings. During her weeklong stay in the United States, Tzipi Livni made her case at the U.N. as well as in a series of meetings with representatives from a host of Middle Eastern and North African countries that currently do not maintain formal ties with Israel.

“As the parties take the risks for peace, we look to the international community and to the Arab and Muslim world to offer support, not to stipulate conditions,” Livni said Monday in her speech at the General Assembly.

During the week, she shuttled between meetings with the Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamed bin Khalifa al-Thani, and with ministers from Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt and Mauritania. She also participated in a meeting attended by the secretary general of Oman’s foreign ministry hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The event celebrated 10 years of a joint desalination project in Oman, the only remaining active cooperation program out of the many joint groups that were established after the Oslo Accords.

The flurry of activity comes in advance of an American-sponsored peace conference set for next month. American officials announced this week that the conference would take place in Annapolis, Md.

Why does Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin come to mind after reading this?

Mene: God has numbered your kingdom and finished it.

Tekel: You have been weighted in the balances and found wanting.

Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

Hey! I didn’t say it!

- Daniel 5:25-28!

I'll Be Reading This

The slaves, he said, "never gave up. They never accepted the reality of slavery. So this is not a book about victimhood. "Without their resistance, the middle-class abolitionist movement in England and New England wouldn't have gotten anywhere. That's a very important thing to remember."

With so much revisionist history underway regarding American slavery, it's good to see that the reality hasn't escaped everyone. More excerpts are below, but check out the entire review.

The Thinkers: Pitt Prof's new book an entree to excesses of slave trade

In many ways, Marcus Rediker believes, the African slave trade actually created the black and white races. Before the slave trade to North America took hold strongly in the 1700s, the University of Pittsburgh history professor said, most Africans thought of themselves as members of different tribes and language groups.

Slave rebellions on board the ships were extremely common, and the way that the ships were designed acknowledged that fact. The frequency of slave uprisings is a fairly recent discovery in historical research, Dr. Rediker said, and helps explain two common features on slave ships -- the netting that surrounded the deck, and the "barricado" -- a wooden wall that was built midway along the top deck. The netting was there to prevent slaves from leaping overboard, although many of them still managed to do so. The barricado gave the crew protection if the slaves started to rebel, and had holes in it through which they could fire muskets at the insurgents. The protective measures proved that "even though the slaves were in dire circumstances, they never gave up. They kept fighting even though there was no real chance of winning. In many cases, even if they managed to rise up and kill the crew, they couldn't sail the ships."

Slave resistance took other forms, too.

The refusal to eat was so common, he wrote, that "the Atlantic slave trade was, in many senses, a 400-year hunger strike" In other cases, he said, "the goal was not to capture the ship but to commit mass suicide to get off that ship." One reason slaves were willing to throw themselves overboard, even when many could not swim, was the traditional West African religious belief that when they died, they would be transported back to their homeland to live in an ideal Africa. It was called "going home to Guinea," the common term for the African coast.

"Many captains developed specific practices of terror to try to overcome that belief," Dr. Rediker said. "One captain said, 'If they think they're going home to Guinea, I want to make sure they understand they're not going home in the bodies they inhabited.' "

That captain would pick out a victim, he said, "and sever the limbs of the person, and he would throw those limbs into the areas where the people who were still in chains were forced to live, and would use the dismemberment of corpses as terror to control those who were still on board the ship."

In other cases, captains used a tactic that relied on one of the slave ship's constant companions -- sharks. He tied a rope under her armpits and lowered her into the water, Goldsmith wrote, "and when the poor creature was thus plunged in, and about halfway down, she was heard to give a terrible shriek, which at first was ascribed to her fears of drowning; but soon after, the water appearing red all around her, she was drawn up, and it was found that a shark, which had followed the ship, had bit her off from the middle."

Despite such brutal tactics, slave rebellions never died off, and that is a major reason why the abolition movement against the slave trade finally succeeded 200 years ago, in 1807 in Great Britain and a year later in the United States.

Jena, O.J., and the Jailing of Black America

A thoughtful Op-Ed from last weeks New York Times that puts the Jena situation into perspective. Or it should anyway.

Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America

America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation.

May I Introduce...

First of all, I'd like to start by thanking God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit and The Head-Brother-In-Charge that turned me on to your blog and invited me to join and express my opinions from time to time.

Second. I'd like to make it plain that I am not one of the accomplished academics sitting comfortably back on a pile of degrees and accolades studying the world through a polished telescope fine tuned by years and years of lectures, white papers, and standardized education that ensured once the proper principles were applied, we are guaranteed to come up with all of the right answers. I cannot even be easily categorized or classified as a Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Conservative, Anti-American, Anti-Communist, Religions Zealot, Radical or Rebel. (Even though I can be a little of all of these when I feel the situation calls for it.)

But, what I am is a Researcher. Every weekend, I make it a point to dig deeply into the stories behind the headlines around the world then follow the trail of untrained "common sense" until my viewpoint of the truth emerges and takes form. My research categorizes the news into Politics, Economics, Entertainment and Social Injustice. But, when you drill down to the core of the matter, all of these categories are one and the same: Who's doing right and who's doing wrong no matter what they're doing.

My goal is total enlightenment based on a thorough examination and understanding of the forces at work to disturb our opportunities for world peace and justice. (To me, the term "Terrorist" is relative.) My objective is to present the unedited information as it appeared in print from around the world. (Although I can't help putting a biblical "spin" on a story every once in my introductions. After all, I'm sure you'll soon be able to discern that there's a Higher Force at work anyway.)

Third. I'm very thick-skinned. I'm secure enough in who I am that I don't feel the need to always be right or even well liked. Once the facts hit the table, if they totally discredit all other opinions and alternative views....that's the truth. Period. Plus, the news I plan to present does not originate with me. I am only The Messenger. So, you can take it or leave it. I will never argue about whether or not it is accurate or biased. My aim is just to ensure that you don't miss the story. Sometimes, they're a matter of life or death.

My pursuit is to instigate the type of honest dialog needed to arrive at The Truth. Once we get there, that's all that's needed. Then, and only then, can we expand into how to get some things figured out and maybe even...fixed.

Fourth. I feel that where I am or where I'm from is irrelevant. I don't even think it matters whether I'm young or old. Male or female. Black or purple. When I present my research, I try to remove all personality from it and present only what the press is saying is going on around this world. Because, let's face it, the whole world is The Ghetto anyway. Your view of it pretty much depends on the altitude of your vantage point. (Six degrees of separation between the whole. Three degrees of separation between the "hoods". No matter whom you are or where you live on this planet.) The struggle continues.

Finally, all that said, I look forward to bringing whatever I can to this group. My mission is to ensure that the real issues behind the headlines are explored. Not the manufactured, diversionary politics and "spin" that usually hits the evening news. Let's take a hard look at what's really going on and try to draw our own patterns and come to our own conclusions. Am I the only one that's sick and tired of other people who don't have a clue of what my world is really like telling me how I should feel about those issues that most affect me? (As I said, my search is for truth and enlightenment.)

Now. This is where my stories begin. Just call me...Isaiah Too.

The Jena 6 - Afrosphere in Action

A year ago, this might not have been possible. But with the advent of the Afrosphere, a "spontaneous" protest in support of the 6 accused in Jena, LA drew tens of thousands of people from around the country.

This after the story had been basically ignored by the mainstream media (with the notable exception of the Chicago Tribune's Howard Witt) for months, and is still apparently being ignored by the so-called progressive blogs.

Unfortunately, I was only able to be there in spirit today, so there's not much I can say that captures the essence of this moment better than some of the other members of the Afrosphere, so here are some links to their sites.

http://dallassouthblog.com/

Demonstrators descend on Jena, Court to Weigh Bells Detention Monday

My heart is in Jena

http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/

Jena - GrassRoots Black Internet Activism

I know there's a whole lot more people out there on top of this, but that's enough to get you started. I've said it over an over again, but it bears repeating; this thing is powerful y'all. Let's keep it moving.

That's Just Nasty

I've seen it happen often enough to know it true, but this is still kind of unsettling. Via the Dallas Morning News:

One-third of men didn't bother to wash after using the bathroom, compared with 12 percent of women, said the researchers who spy on people in public restrooms. They reported their latest findings Monday at a meeting of infectious disease scientists. Two years ago, the last time the survey was done, only one-quarter of men didn't wash, compared with 10 percent of women.

The latest study was based on observations last month of more than 6,000 people in four big cities.

Wait, it get's worse.

Men really strike out when it comes to handwashing at sporting events, the study found. Only 57 per cent of the guys were observed washing their hands at Turner Field in Atlanta (the lowest figure at any of the locales). On the other hand, women hit a home run: 95 per cent were observed cleaning their hands at the same location.

Like your Momma always told you, and as stated in the article;

Frequent hand washing is the single best thing people can do to avoid getting sick, from colds and the flu to germs lurking in food, doctors say.

For all y'all out there using the bathroom and running out without washing up, here's the proper procedure.

• Remove all rings and wet your hands with warm running water.
• Put a small amount of liquid soap in the palm of one hand. Bar soaps are not as hygienic as liquid soaps because they stay moist and attract germs. If a bar soap is the only option it should be stored on a rack so that the bar doesn't sit in water.
• Rub your hands together for 20 seconds so you produce lather. Make sure you scrub between your fingers, under your fingernails and the backs of your hands.
• Rinse your hands well with clean running water for at least 10 seconds. Try not to handle the faucets once your hands are clean. Use a paper towel to turn off the water.
• Dry your hands with a single use paper towel. If you use a hand towel be sure to change it daily. During cold and flu season you may want to give each family member his or her own hand towel.
• Use hand lotion to put moisture back into your skin if your hands are dry.
• Model good handwashing technique to your children. Have them sing a song like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" while rubbing their hands together to teach them the amount of time it takes to clean their hands properly.

But y'all already know that, right? It makes me think that from here on out everybody from the CEO on down is getting a pound from me.

Food for Thought

This weekend with the help of my very sweet husband I challenged myself to eat totally raw for one day, nothing cooked or processed.

The next day, I went out with a friend for a semi-unhealthy breakfast. After I guzzled down a bunch of food that I don't usually eat, I was left feeling tired and sluggish. So what do I do when I need a bit of an energy boost? I drink a V8.

No! No! Not the kind in the store thats full of salt and has had most of the life cooked out of it, but the homemade kind you receive all of your nutrients from. Here's my recipe.



2 large tomatoes
2 medium-sized carrots
1/4 small beet (wash well)
2 cups of spinach
1/4 head fresh cabbage
1/4 red bell pepper
1/4 green bell pepper
2 stalks celery
1/4 sweet onion
1/2 clove garlic or less if you don't care for garlic
Half of a Kale leaf (a little goes a long way so be careful)
Salt to taste

Run all the vegetables through your juicer, add salt to taste, and then sit back and enjoy the healthiest vegetable juice blend around.

After I drank half of a cup of this stuff I was my ol' energetic self.

Remember guys eating healthy shouldn't be a diet, but a lifestyle change, so take it one day at a time. And look out for my next post, it will have some real MEAT to it.

Until Next Time

A healthy lifestyle begins with what you eat.....

Okay guys this is just a little something short and sweet.

Many people may not know this, but often when we cook our healthy veggies and fruits we lose a good amount of nutrients because high heat can cause some vitamins to breakdown, including Vitamin C and the B Vitamins . So here are just a couple of ways to preserve your vitamins in a yummy sorta way.

In my house what I'll often do is create our own salad dressing by juicing many veggies, and herbs such as garlic, celery, cucumbers, a cup of rice wine vinegar, a 1/4 of olive oil, and maybe a dash of salt and pepper. Then I add milled flax seeds ( which is a great source of fiber and omega 3 oils), a spoon full of sesame seeds, and voila! Salad dressing.

Juicing is an excellent way to receive all of your veggies for the day, and you don't even have to toss out the left over pulp because it can always be used in soups.

Now let's discuss just how cool a smoothie can be. For breakfast or dinner we often drink smoothies. You can add a ton of fruits and veggies into a smoothie without losing all of your nutrients. For example, juice a few carrots and use that for the base of your smoothie. Next add plain vanilla yogurt, a good amount of crushed ice , maybe some milk, either strawberries, peaches, or blue berries, a bit of agave nectar or honey, and now you have a totally healthy drink item.

Check out these sites for some other ideas.

http://www.rawfoodlife.com/
http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=70
http://nov55.com/hea/food.html

Until Next Time

Controversy?

From Jack and Jill Politics:

It is just too ironic that BET is being taken to task by the likes of CNN over THIS video. And the host, Tony Harris, needs to check himself. Brotha's been watching Bill O'Reilly too much. In the real world, the right people are probably getting the message of "Read a Book" but I can't help but be frustrated at the massive distraction that shows like this CNN farce are to the real work that needs to be done which is to reclaim the images and messages of our people from those who have sold us self-destruction in the name of profits.

I agree. I watched CNN's segment regarding this video and thought it was actually pretty outrageous for several reasons.

First, the set for the story equated the creation and airing of this video on BET in the same vein as Sesame Street, the Electric Company, and the Schoolhouse Rock series.

Second, CNN managed to find a group of parents who were all completely outraged about the video, yet must not have been able to find anyone with an opposing point of view.

Third, Tony Harris. Damn.

The aptly described Bill O'Reilly wannabe went into every commercial break saying that the "controversy" regarding this video was next up on the show, only to come back with something completely different. I'm glad he was able to put aside his faux outrage long enough to lead tease every segment with this, finally airing the story near the end of the broadcast.

From the moment I saw the Read A Book video I got the point that it was satire aimed at the rap music industry and it amazes me that this is even registering on the controversy scale. And if you've ever watched MTV's Cribs or any show of that type, you know that a lot of these rappers do need to read a MF'ing book. Among the Bentleys and SubZero refrigerators and all the other bling, there's never a bookshelf anywhere in site. I haven't seen one yet anyway.

If you watch the rest of the videos played on BET with real live people in them and no redeeming message to speak of, I think it would be fairly easy to find one worthy of this type of "outrage." But this? C'mon y'all. This whole "controversy" is just so much BS to keep you bogged down in so that you don't have time to pay attention to the real issues of the day.

Judge for yourself, the Read A Book video is here: http://therealready.blogspot.com/2007/07/reading-is-fundamental.html.

Crabs. Bucket.

The man who started the MLK Grande Parade, which became a glitzier, for-profit alternative to the longtime nonprofit grass-roots procession celebrating the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, has been ordered to pay $110,000 for violating an agreement between the two parades and lying during a trial this summer.

The groups, which have held rival parades since 1996, reached an agreement for a joint 2006 parade. The payment from Stamps' group was meant to compensate the Black Heritage Society for abandoning its plans and working itself into the MLK Grande Parade. Read more...

Living here in Houston I have to say it's beyond ridiculous that there are two MLK Parades on the same day, following the same route, within a couple of hours of each other every year. Worse, the civic community and the public basically have to choose sides when determining which parade to participate in or attend, turning an otherwise simple decision into a political one. I wonder what Dr. King would have to say about this nonsense?

Why-Fi?

Municipal Wi-Fi projects were sprouting like mushrooms the past couple of years, but it looks like the bubble may have burst. From SmartMobs:

San Francisco’s city-wide WiFi has stalled out, and Chicago’s is meeting a similar fate. St. Louis has hit a big snag. Lompoc’s network growth is far lower than it should be. Even Toledo is cooling it. Earthlink, a major player in this field, has been losing customers and spending hugely, and is now cutting jobs and restructuring itself. Is American city-wide WiFi in a crisis?

I talked about the Houston project earlier this year, and it's ambitious goals:

For example, Houston just signed a deal with Earthlink to throw up a network covering the 600 square miles of the city within the next two years. An aspect of the plan calls for up to 40,000 subsidized subscriptions to be provided to low-income users annually.

But now following on the imploding heels of equally ambitious projects in San Francisco and Chicago, Houston's public/private project may be on the ropes too, at least in it's current form.

Houston was counting on EarthLink to invest about $50 million to build a Wi-Fi network there, but those high hopes are now fading. The city recently notified EarthLink that it will fine the company $5 million for missing its contractual deadlines. The payment will give EarthLink more time to consider whether it wants to abandon the Houston project or find other partners willing to help defray the costs. Read more...

A full scale network covering the city of Houston has at minimum been set back a few paces, but at least the city has an extra $5 million in the bank for its trouble. That's not the case everywhere. These projects all held a a lot of promise, and have promised a lot, particularly as relates to their impact on poor people otherwise unable to afford broadband and reap the benefits of participating in an online world. But so far the jury is still out regarding their performance on both the civic and commercial side.

Looking at what has been accomplished within the Afrosphere alone over the past few months, I'm definitely a believer in the power of connected citizens. However these recent events show that the floor's still open on how to bring that connectivity to the masses. With internet access, and particularly broadband, having become a near necessity in so many people's lives, my question is will there be a replacement for the municipal projects? Does there need to be?

What's In Your Skillet?

If I had to take one guess at the kitchen item that all households have I would say cookware. We may not even have toilet paper but we will have a pot or a pan under the sink. Which leads to the bigger question: "What materials are your pots and pans made from?" And while I can't speak for everyone, I feel I can safely say that the majority of the cookware being sold has a Teflon-covered, non-stick coating on the inside of the pan.

So I'm sure you're saying "And... what's the big deal? It's being sold in stores all across America so it must be safe." Well, after pondering the question and a lot of research, I'm here to tell you that it's not according to many. Now some of us may think that just because you purchased your pot from Bed, Bath, and Beyond and not the Dollar Store that you're safe. Wrong! It doesn't matter if you spent $1.00 or $100 the end result is non-stick has made it into your home cabinets.

So let's get right to the matter at hand.

Teflon-coated aluminum contains perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a synthetic chemical used in its production. After 3-5 quick minutes of cooking at 680 degrees these non-stick pans release at least six toxic gasses, including two carcinogens, two global pollutants and MFA, an airborne chemical deadly to humans even in low doses. Also note that aluminum is strongly suspected as one of the factors contributing to Alzheimer's disease, which by the way is just one of many problems that the government now acknowledges.

Chemicals used in non-stick- and stain-resistant products are also reaching children in the womb and may be tied to "small decreases" in the size and weight of newborns, according to two studies by Johns Hopkins University researchers. According to findings from the University's School of Public Health & Organic Consumers Organization there has been a growing wave of scientific investigations, triggered by concerns over the discovery that perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoate acids, called PFOA, are present in human and animal blood around the globe. Dupont, one of the major producers of Teflon-coated cookware was sued back in 2005 on the basis that:

"DuPont has known for over 20 years that the Teflon product and the PFOA chemical it contains causes cancer in laboratory animals," Kluger said. "I don't have to prove that it causes cancer. I only have to prove that DuPont lied in a massive attempt to continue selling their product."

That case has apparently been settled as far as the EPA is concerned, but the class-action suits are apparently proceeding. While Dupont will likely be made to pay, the real losers have been us. And it's not just cookware, Teflon is in in everything it seems including;

Airplane parts, exteriors and coatings
Anti-wrinkle creams and treatments (eg, skin injections)
Auto engine parts
Camping equipment and outdoor clothing - eg, Goretex
Carpets and rugs
Clothing for adults, children and infants
Computer chips
Curling irons/ hair straighteners
Dental floss
Electrical insulation
Fast food container linings
Firefighting foam
Furniture - sofas, chairs, beds
Gardening equipment and patio furniture
Hair dryers
Hosiery
House paint, interior and exterior
Kitchen utensils and gadgets
Irons and ironing board covers
Leatherwear
Lightbulbs
Luggage
Medicine containers
Nail polish and hardener
Pesticides
Pet bedding, leashes, collars and harnesses
Prosthetic devices and reconstructive surgery
Razor blades and shaving foam/ gel
Soft furnishings
Solar panel coatings
Spectacles with scratch-resistant lenses
Stain repellents
Surgical instruments
Umbrellas, rainwear

So with all the available information and lawsuits settled and pending, I would have to say I'm tossing out the Teflon non-stick cookware, and buying some emamel coated cast iron, glass or stainless steel.