Junk food as 'Addictive as Drugs'/Why Junk Food is Addictive

"When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found that the rats on unlimited junk food needed more and more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets."

Junk food is almost as addictive as heroin, scientists have found.

28 Oct 2009
A diet of burgers, chips, sausages and cake will programme your brain into craving even more foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat, according to new research.

Over the years these junk foods can become a substitute for happiness and will lead bingers to become addicted.

Dr Paul Kenny, a neuroscientist, carried out the research which shows how dangerous high fat and high sugar foods can be to our health .

“You lose control. It’s the hallmark of addiction,” he said.

The researchers believe it is one of the first studies to suggest brains may react in the same way to junk food as they do to drugs.

“This is the most complete evidence to date that suggests obesity and drug addiction have common neuro-biological foundations,” said Paul Johnson, Dr Kenny’s work colleague.

Dr Kenny, who began his research at Guy’s Hospital, London, but now works at Florida’s Scripps Research Institute, divided rats into three groups for his research, due to be published in teh US soon.

One got normal amounts of healthy food to eat. Another lot was given restricted amounts of junk food and the third group was given unlimited amounts of junk, including cheesecake, fatty meat products, and cheap sponge cakes and chocolate snacks.

There were no adverse effects on the first two groups, but the rats who ate as much junk food as they wanted quickly became very fat and started bingeing.

When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found that the rats on unlimited junk food needed more and more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6451119/Junk-food-as-addictive-as-drugs.html
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"The right combination of tastes triggers a greater number of neurons, getting them to fire more. ... The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to look for even more food. ... "

Why junk food really is addictive

Ice cream and chocolate bars are addictive because the mix of ingredients in them activates our "bliss point", according to Professor David Kessler, a leading scientist.

By Ben Leach
Telegraph
29 Jun 2009

Snacks, cereals and ready meals can trigger the brain in the same way as tobacco, according to the former head of America's food standards watchdog.

Professor Kessler, ex-commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), claims that manufacturers have created combinations of fat, sugar and salt that are so tasty many people cannot stop eating them even when full.

Living near fast food restaurants 'increases obesity risk' He argues that manufacturers are seeking to trigger a "bliss point" when people eat certain products, leaving them hungry for more.

"It is time to stop blaming individuals for being overweight or obese," he said. "The real problem is we have created a world where food is always available and where that food is designed to make you want to eat more of it. For millions of people, modern food is simply impossible to resist."

While at the FDA, Prof Kessler was well known for his criticism of the tobacco industry, which he accused of manipulating cigarettes to make them even more addictive.

In a new book, The End of Overeating, he suggests precise combinations of fat, sugar, salt and texture have been used by foods manufacturers to make products "hyper-palatable".

Heinz tomato ketchup and Starbucks white chocolate mocha Frappuccino are cited as examples of the thousands of modern foods that have been engineered to stimulate feelings of pleasure.

"The right combination of tastes triggers a greater number of neurons, getting them to fire more," he said. "The message to eat becomes stronger, motivating the eater to look for even more food."

"Many of us have what's called a 'bliss point' – the point at which we get the greatest pleasure from sugar, fat or salt. As more sugar [and fat or salt] is added, food becomes more pleasurable until we reach the bliss point, after which it becomes too sweet and the pleasure drops off."

Prof Kessler, who ran the FDA from 1990 to 1997 and is now professor of paediatrics, epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, added that at the optimum point, food stimulates many people's appetites instead of suppressing it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/5673512/Why-junk-food-really-is-addictive.html

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Did Texan Help Nazi Goring Cheat the Hangman?

by BARTEE HAILE
www.dibollfreepress.com
10-28-09

The Oct. 28, 1946 issue of Time magazine posed the question the whole world was asking: “How did Hermann Goring kill himself?”

How the last surviving member of the Nazi “Big Four” took his life mere minutes before he was scheduled to hang for his monstrous crimes was not, in fact, the issue. By the end of October, everyone knew he had swallowed a lethal dose of cyanide. The burning question was how did Adolph Hitler’s wouldbe successor get his hands on the poison while under 24-hour surveillance in the most secure prison on the planet?

Even though Hermann Wilhelm Goring was one of the most infamous villains of the twentieth century, younger readers may benefit from a brief introduction. As a fighter pilot in World War I, he shot down 22 enemy aircraft, won the “Blue Max” and was the last commander of “The Red Baron,” Manfred von Richthofen. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922, built the Luftwaffe into the most formidable air force in the world and played a vital part in Hitler’s twin policies of aggression and genocide.

With the Russians hot on his heels, Goring gladly surrendered to the U.S. Army on May 9, 1945. American officers gave him a shamefully warm reception eating, drinking and singing late into the night with the war criminal. Their disgraceful behavior brought a stern reprimand from an outraged Gen. Eisenhower.

With Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler all dead by their own hand, Goring was the lone Nazi leader left alive to face the music. Twenty-one other high-ranking defendants joined him in the dock at Nuremberg for the trial of the century, which began on Nov. 21, 1945.

To Goring, who always loved being the center of attention, the courtroom was just another stage. Throughout the ten months of the historic tribunal, he seemed to be having a wonderful time and rarely acted like a man on trial for his life.

The verdicts announced on Oct. 1, 1946 brought Goring crashing back to earth. He was not among the three defendants acquitted nor even the seven given prison sentences of ten years to life. The “reichmarshall” would hang along with 11 others.

Late on the night of Oct. 15, guards went to fetch Goring for his last meal and final preparations. They found him lying in bed on his back in his death throes with two envelopes on his stomach. One contained a cartridge with a removable cap and the other four suicide letters.

A quartet of ranking officers, including the prison commandant, cleared the cell and debated the merits of hanging Goring anyway. They finally discarded the wild idea after agreeing that the truth was bound to get out. There was no alternative but to have the body taken to the execution chamber, where the assembled witnesses could see for themselves that Hermann Goring was dead.

The official inquiry into the sensational suicide was a sham. Goring’s assertion that he had brought the cyanide into the prison with him and succeeded in hiding it for nearly a year was accepted without question. That dubious version of events conveniently let prison personnel from the commandant down to the guards off the hook.

Theories about what actually happened were a dime a dozen. Goring hid the cyanide capsule in a tiny incision in his abdomen or back, in his navel, in a tooth, in his pipe stem or in a book. His wife passed the poison to him with her goodbye kiss. He faked imminent death so the German doctor could come to his bedside and administer the poison.

The hard-pressed prison authorities and their superiors counted on it all blowing over and it did. After all, Goring was no more and that was what really mattered.

Then in 1978 Ben E. Swearingen, a public-school administrator living in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, added to his collection of WWII memorabilia the brass cartridge that once contained the cyanide capsule. He knew at first glance that it was much too big for Goring’s navel or anyplace else on his person.

Swearingen remembered a conversation with the widow of an Army lieutenant on duty at the Nuremberg prison during the trial. She had in her possession an inscribed silver wristwatch, gold fountain pen and cigarette case Hermann Goring had given to his friend Jack G. Wheelis, whom he called “the great Texas hunter.”

The former Mrs. Wheelis added, almost as an afterthought, “They thought my husband gave Goring the poison.”

A seven-year investigation convinced the amateur historian that Wheelis, the officer in charge of the prison property room, allowed his Nazi pal access to his personal belongings on the eve of his execution. And that was how Goring got his hands on the cyanide.

Swearingen presented his findings in the book The Mystery of Hermann Goering’s Suicide published in 1985. Historian and biographer Joseph E. Persico reached the same conclusion nine years later in Nuremberg – Infamy on Trial that was made into a television mini-series.

“Secession & Civil War” – brand new “Best of This Week in Texas History” collection available for $10.95 plus $3.25 postage and handling from Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX.

http://www.dibollfreepress.com/news/2009-10-28/Local_History/Did_Texan_help_Nazi_Goring_cheat_the_hangman.html

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Risks and Returns: Exploiting the Immigrant Detention Industry

By Michelle Chen, RaceWire
www.southernstudies.org
October 27, 2009

Last winter, a remote Texas prison convulsed in a cry of outrage, voicing the desperation of the immigration system's silenced captives. Two recent articles in the Boston Review and Texas Observer reflect on violent uprisings at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos last December and January. Tom Barry and Forrest Wilder describe a system of calculated lawlessness in the heart of Dixie.

The clash was driven by detainees' protests about inhumane conditions, particularly poor medical care and overcrowding. The catalyst was the death of Jesus Galindo, an epileptic who had been isolated in solitary confinement. Immigrant detention has become a political flashpoint for the Obama administration amid reports of abuse and miserably inadequate healthcare.

Although the White House recently pledged to improve detention conditions, there's been little real questioning of the economic underpinnings of the system. The Pecos rebellion illustrated the consequences of marrying America's prison-industrial complex with zero-tolerance immigration enforcement.

As he toured various "prison towns" along the U.S.-Mexico border, Barry observed that "all the prisons I saw had two common features: they were managed and operated by private-prison corporations--including two of the world's largest, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO [which runs Reeves]--and they were located in remote, rural areas, invariably described by locals as being 'in the middle of nowhere.'"

The industry, he says, capitalizes on towns hungering for economic development.

The prison industry introduces the governments of desperate communities to what some call "backdoor financing": project revenue bonds in the tens of millions of dollars that suddenly make them feel like economic players....

The full cost of the public-private immigrant prisons that now litter the Southwest and elsewhere is not yet known. Most counties and municipalities are still ten to fifteen years away from paying off the bonds.

The private detention sector works much like the crooked lenders who drove the country into financial crisis, building facilities as "speculative" ventures.

Though business slumped during the 1990s, CCA struck gold with the Bush administration's anti-immigrant crackdowns. Reporting on the Hutto family detention center, Margaret Talbot wrote in the New Yorker, "When immigration detention started its precipitate climb following 9/11, private prison companies eagerly offered their empty beds, and the industry was revitalized."

Wilder describes how the detention boom-bust cycle works in a cash-strapped Texas town:

In the mid-1980s, with the regional economy devastated by the Texas oil bust, local business and government leaders decided to move into a recession-proof industry that was exploding in an increasingly criminalized America: prisons. In 1986, the county built a 300-bed prison. The prison filled rapidly with federal inmates, pumping revenue into the county's budget and adding decent-paying jobs to the local work force. By 2002, Reeves had 2,000 beds. In 2003, the county completed construction on a $39 million, 960-bed unit only to find that the feds had no interest....

While the prison sat empty, payments on the bonds, reduced to junk status, were coming due. On the verge of default, county officials begged the Bush administration to send prisoners and hired Randy DeLay, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's brother, to lobby in Washington, D.C. That's when Wackenhut Corrections Corp., now GEO Group, rode to the rescue. In November 2003, GEO agreed to take over management of the whole 3,000-bed prison complex and soon struck a deal with the Bureau of Prisons to fill the new unit.

Now cut to winter 2008. Jesus Galindo, a 32-year-old Mexican American who was caught crossing the border illegally, desperately needed careful treatment for his epilepsy, Wilder reports. Instead, he got locked up in solitary and spiraled toward his death. An autopsy traced the death to his epilepsy and noted signs of medical neglect.

According to a report by the National Immigration Forum, it's unclear exactly how many private entities are working under Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but prison corporations are well fed by federal largess.

The $1.7 billion budget for "Custody Operations" provides ICE with funding to maintain its current detention capacity of 33,400 people in over 500 facilities on any given night, including operational expenses....

The two largest private prison companies in the U.S. each receive over ten percent of their revenue directly from ICE, which pays an average per diem fee of $87.99 for every immigrant detainee.

All this despite the Obama administration's acknowledgement that most detainees pose no real public danger. Many could in fact be monitored safely outside prison at a far lower cost to taxpayers. Nonetheless, ICE pushed privatization as a revenue-boosting scheme in its initial budget proposal for fiscal year 2010.

Even in the midst of a recession, the detention market is looking bullish. Just as Homeland Security announced its detention reform initiatives earlier this month, Business of Detention project reported, CCA unveiled a brand new 500-bed facility in Gainesville, Georgia.

A company spokesperson boasted, "Our positive impact, for more than a decade, on the State of Georgia is considerable, in terms of bringing strong careers to hard-working Georgians and much needed taxes and local dollars."

Profit-driven immigrant detention is just one facet of a much larger epidemic that is destroying poor communities of color across the country. Yet Pecos is an especially striking display of the cruel economics of mass incarceration.

The detainees, as well as those running their prisons, have more in common than they probably know. As economic desperation propels migrants to seek work across the border, impoverished American communities, which are conditioned to dehumanize immigrant workers, gravitate toward a prison business underwritten by draconian federal laws.

And so the machine whirs on, muffling the cries of immigrants like Galindo. Once they're inside, it seems, no one has to listen anymore.

This post originally appeared in RaceWire, the blog of Colorlines magazine, and at Working In These Times.

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/10/risks-and-returns-exploiting-the-immigrant-detention-industry.html

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Karzai Brother 'on CIA Payroll'/"Plausible" Denial from Karzai Contradicted by Congressional Officials, who have Known about CIA Ties "for Some Time"

Look what those warped, brain-damaged, tinfoil-fringe conspiracy theorists at the NY Times are saying now: " ... Ahmed Wali Karzai, a suspected participant in Afghanistan's booming illegal opium trade, has taken payments for much of the past eight years ... " We sober, objective news reporters at The Blacklist don't buy into wild conspiracy theores propagated by the "mainstream" media, but we elite, informed professionals have known of these allegations for years, and no one cared so only casually reported on CIA/drugs - too pedestrian. Yawn. When you get down to it, everybody already knows - old story - so we'll let the naive ignoramuses of the media-at-large catch up. We'll just get back to assassinations made to look like suicides, mass-murdering coup plots and such, and leave the common, work-a-day CIA drug trafficking conspiracy theories to drooling "mainstream" media Bozos engaged in a perennial search of a clue. - AC

Al Jazeera
October 28, 2009

The brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has been receiving regular payments from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The New York Times has reported.

The newspaper, quoting current and former US officials, said on Wednesday that Ahmed Wali Karzai, a suspected participant in Afghanistan's booming illegal opium trade, has taken payments for much of the past eight years that the US has been in the country.

It said Karzai gets paid for a variety of services that include helping in recruiting an Afghan armed force that operates at the CIA's direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, where he has a home.

But the newspaper added that Karzai said in an interview that he only co-operated with US civilian and military officials, and did not engage in the drug trade, or receive payments from the CIA.

Significant questions

The Times said the financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Karzai raise significant questions about Washington's war strategy in Afghanistan, which is currently under review at the White House.

The US has stationed troops in the country since 2001 as it attempts to defeat Taliban fighters there.
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"If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves" - Major-General Michael T Flynn, senior US military intelligence official in Afghanistan
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The newspaper report comes amid deepening concern about growing US troop deaths in Afghanistan, with October going down as the deadliest month since the soldiers were deployed.

The Times quoted Major-General Michael T Flynn, the senior US military intelligence official in Afghanistan, as saying: "If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves."

The ties to Karzai have created deep divisions within the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, according to the newspaper.

The Times says that critics say the relationship complicates Washington's increasingly tense ties with Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as a US puppet.

The CIA's practices, the newspaper reported, also suggest that the US is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

'Unauthorised operation'

Several US officials the newspaper interviewed said the relationship between Ahmed Wali Karzai and the CIA is wide ranging.

The officials said he helps the CIA to operate the Kandahar Strike Force, an armed group that is used for raids against suspected Taliban fighters.

On at least one occasion, the newspaper reported, the officials said the strike force had been accused of mounting an unauthorised operation against an official of the Afghan government.

The president's brother is also paid for allowing the CIA and US Special Operations soldiers to rent a large compound outside the city - the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's founder - The Times said.

The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force.

The newspaper quoted a senior US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying: "He's our landlord."

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, told The Times: "No intelligence organisation worth the name would ever entertain these kind of allegations."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/200910284315982690.html
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"Plausible" Denial is the CIA's Primary Tactic for Dealing with Exposure

Karzai brother denies CIA payments
CBC News
October 28, 2009

"Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, has been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years, according to the New York Times. (Allauddin Khan/Associated Press)The brother of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday denied a report that he received regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency. ... "

BUT ...

"The CIA ties to Karzai — who for months has been suspected of being part of Afghanistan's illegal opium trade — are reported to have created divisions in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. ... The Associated Press said a U.S. congressional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the accuracy of the details in the Times story, saying that some members of Congress have known about the link between Karzai and the CIA 'for some time.' ... "

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/10/28/afghanistan-ahmed-karzai-cia-payments.html

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Ex-Sullivan & Cromwell Associate, Under Investigation for Insider Trading, Commits Suicide

By Mark Hamblett
New York Law Journal
October 28, 2009

An attorney who killed himself in Canada on Monday had leaked insider information while an associate with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York in the 1990s and as a partner in Dorsey & Whitney's Toronto office from 2004 to 2008, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Attorney Gil I. Cornblum, 39, whose body was found below a bridge in Toronto at 7:16 a.m. on Monday, sent his former law school classmate Stanko J. Grmovsek, 40, material, non-public information on some 40 mergers and acquisitions that he learned about while on the job at both law firms. All told, the two men made $10 million on the scheme, according to the SEC.

Mr. Grmovsek, a self-employed business consultant, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in a criminal information in Toronto yesterday morning and was then flown to New York, where he waived indictment and pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in the form of insider trading before Southern District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald.

Mr. Gromvsek is likely to be sentenced to a prison term of between three years and one month to three tears and 10 months by Judge Buchwald, but only after he is sentenced in Canada.

The SEC complaint filed late yesterday said the conspiracy between the two began in 1994 as Mr. Cornblum fed Mr. Grmovsek information on "at least two mergers involving Canadian Companies." The SEC action arrived at the clerk's office in the Southern District having already settled.

Mr. Cornblum worked as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York from March 1996 through June 1998. During that time, the SEC said, "Cornblum tipped Grmovsek with material, non-public information on at least 15 pending transactions on which Sullivan was working."

The two close friends, who went to Osgoode Hall School of Law in Toronto and at one point were roommates, took a five-year break in their conspiracy, and then started up again in 2004, sharing information on more than 20 pending transactions Mr. Cornblum learned of while a partner at Dorsey & Whitney between April 2005 and May 2008, when he was fired by the firm. Dorsey & Whitney fired him after he was accused by the Ontario Securities Commission in connection with the insider trading scheme.

Yesterday, with attorney Paul Calli of Carlton Fields in Miami, by his side, Mr. Grmovsek told Judge Buchwald that he split the profits, which the SEC said amounted to $10 million, with Mr. Cornblum.

The SEC complaint details how in the early days of the scheme, Mr. Grmovsek would make "wake-up calls" to Mr. Cornblum at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. so he could get to Sullivan & Cromwell to search for information before other employees arrived.

In the second phase of the conspiracy, when Mr. Cornblum was at Dorsey & Whitney, the SEC alleges he had worked on three of the transactions handled by the firm and learned of the others through file searches of Dorsey's electronic database system, through conversations with other lawyers and through conflict checks.

Mr. Grmovsek, a resident of Woodbridge, Ontario, was released on $100,000 personal recognizance bond and allowed to return to Canada, where he is expected to be sentenced quickly.

Raymond Lohier, chief of the Southern District's securities and commodities fraud task force, is handling the prosecution.

http://www.nylj.com/nylawyer/news/09/10/102809l.html?hbxlogin=1

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Canada: Ignatieff Brushes off Idea of Inquiry into Mob Scandal

"Quebec ... has been rocked by reports construction companies working together to drive up the price tag on public-works projects, funding political parties with cash, and sharing their profits with the Mafia. ... "

October 27, 2009
The Canadian Press
www.cbc.ca

Michael Ignatieff has become the latest politician to brush off calls for a public inquiry into an alleged an corruption scheme in Quebec involving politicians, construction companies and the Mafia.

The federal Liberal leader said Tuesday that the Quebec government has done a good job appointing a special police unit to investigate allegations of a massive scam, and Ottawa should only step in if there's evidence of federal involvement.

With government spending billions on the most expensive construction program in Canadian history, organized-crime experts say criminal collusion exists in many places where the Mafia operates.

But it's Quebec that has been rocked by reports construction companies working together to drive up the price tag on public-works projects, funding political parties with cash, and sharing their profits with the Mafia.

'Nobody in Canada wants to address the corporate side of organized crime — that the Mafia invests money in legitimate business, are funding political campaigns of candidates.'

A recent poll suggested overwhelming support in the province for an inquiry, and opposition politicians at the provincial and municipal levels have demanded one.

But the federal Liberals have joined the governing Conservatives, the mayor of Montreal and the Quebec provincial government in rebuffing talk of an inquiry.

"This is a matter that the Quebec government is handling well, and it's a matter for police authorities, and they're handling it well," Ignatieff told reporters during a stop in Montreal.

"Should there be federal implications, at that point we can get federal authorities involved, but at the moment, I think the government of [Premier Jean]Charest is doing its homework."

Organize crime entrenched in society

Antonio Nicaso, an expert on the Italian mob, believes Canada has no interest in fighting organized crime, in part, because it's afraid of how entrenched it's become in legitimate society — something Nicaso said is particularly true in Quebec.

"Nobody in Canada wants to address the corporate side of organized crime — that the Mafia invests money in legitimate business, are funding political campaigns of candidates," Nicaso said in an interview.

"I don't think that's something that we want to uncover."

Scott Hennig of the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation supports calls from the Parti Québécois for a public inquiry but believes federal politicians are justified in staying out of what appears, so far, to be a strictly local matter.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has said there's been no evidence of federal stimulus money winding up with the Mob. However, he cautioned that Ottawa doesn't dish out the bucks to construction companies itself.

Infrastructure cash is transferred through federal-provincial arrangements with municipalities that are subject to provincial laws for tendering, he said.

So far, only opposition politicians in Quebec have demanded an inquiry.

The Parti Québécois is expected to present a non-confidence motion against the governing Liberals over the corruption scandal. Since the Liberals hold a majority in the legislature, the motion appears doomed to fail.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2009/10/27/cp-ignatieff-construction-inquiry.html

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New Book: Merchants of Deception - An Insider's Chilling Look at the Worldwide, Multi-Billion Dollar Conspiracy of Lies that is Amway

" ... nearly 99% of all investors suffer financial loss - and sometimes ruin - while Amway generates billions in 'revenues.' ... this financial scam is carried out publicly in well orchestrated recruitment rallies attended by thousands of hopefuls. They are urged to continue in Amway by high-profile Republican politicians, famous motivational speakers and Christian religious leaders, and the crafted presentation of a business hoax audaciously and guilefully portrayed as a legal and viable business model. ... "

www.exchangemagazine.com

Montoursville, PA - Merchants of Deception, a new book released yesterday, offers detailed revelations of a Main Street Ponzi that seems to dwarf Bernard' Madoff's Wall Street fraud in scale and audacity. While much attention is directed at financial investment scams, whistleblower Eric Scheibeler reveals how the very same model of "endless chain" investments is carried out by the Amway Corporation and its high level distributors. He shows that, just as Bernard Madoff escaped scrutiny disguised by high-powered credentials and the camouflage of a legitimate "hedge fund," Amway operates in plain sight as a successful "direct selling company."

As it was ultimately revealed that Madoff had no revenue source other than new investors, Scheibeler shows how Amway's "business model" includes almost no retail sales revenue, just a continuous enrollment of "salespeople" whose personal investments in product purchases and marketing materials provide Amway and its top recruiters with billions ill-gotten revenues. The large-scale losses caused by the fraudulent and unsustainable Ponzi scheme are borne by million or more "losers" who "fail" and quit the scheme each year, only to be replaced by new hopefuls.

Continuous defrauding of new investors enables the Amway scheme to thrive, as the documentation seems to clearly support that nearly 99% of all investors suffer financial loss - and sometimes ruin - while Amway generates billions in "revenues."

As a high level former insider and whistleblower, Scheibeler shows how this financial scam is carried out publicly in well orchestrated recruitment rallies attended by thousands of hopefuls. They are urged to continue in Amway by high-profile Republican politicians, famous motivational speakers and Christian religious leaders, and the crafted presentation of a business hoax audaciously and guilefully portrayed as a legal and viable business model. The plan is fraudulently proclaimed from the stage as a beacon of hope for millions of consumers weakened and desperate from the housing collapse, declining wages, shrinking income and unemployment.

Scheibeler shows how the multibillion dollar fraud is then spread virally, out of sight of the media, in the privacy of homes, between friends and family members, inspired by the false story of the "greatest income opportunity in the world" and the last best hope of the American Dream.

The euphoria and belief of victims are based upon Amway high level leaders' fraudulent promise that each new investor can find wealth and security by recruiting other investors, all of whom can do the same, in a chain that will expand forever.

While the false hopes in the endless chain plan may be seen as merely a popular delusion, Scheibeler's insider account reveals that the catastrophic consequences of the fraud are perfectly understood by the perpetrators at the top of the Amway sales chain and within the company. The blatant deception and the illegality of making the false income claims are also well known to them, Scheibeler charges. This calculated strategy of fraud is protected with an aggressive force of lawyers that sue detractors or whistle-blowers and a powerful lobbying force in Washington to stave off regulation or investigation Amway victim testimonials from over 30 nations. Many of these alleged losses range from small to tens of thousands of dollars, bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce and multiple suicides. Cult expert and licensed family therapist Steve Hassan has had to do cult interventions for well indoctrinated distributors, as detailed in Merchants of Deception. The author has consulted with the UK government, law enforcement in India and class action law firms when they took action against the Amway scheme.

The purposeful execution of this massive fraud is fully revealed in Scheibeler's own story of what transpired when he presented his realization of the fraud to the company and announced intentions to expose it. Scheibeler was sued, defamed by Amway and/or company distributors.

An individual (not an Amway employee) told Scheibeler told what gun specifically would be used to "take him out" if he made trouble. Even Scheibeler's wife and young son were threatened anonymously on the telephone. Unlike others who were forced into submission or shamed into silence, Eric Scheibeler fought back and stood up to the intimidation. The book Merchants of Deception has been described as "Erin Brockovich on steroids."

"Mr. Scheibeler's book is a chilling portrayal of the process by which intelligent people can persist for years in pursuing the Amway dream while making no money. It is all the more significant because he earned his way to one of the highest distributor levels in the Company . . .

I learned of similar experiences from ex-distributors when I interviewed them for the State of Wisconsin's Amway litigation in the early 80's. Such conditioning may explain why the tax returns (obtained for this litigation) of all active Wisconsin Direct Distributors, the company's top 1%, showed an average net income of minus $900. Why did these men and women persist . .. under these economic circumstances? Eric Scheibeler's book answers this question for those whose minds are clear enough to read its pages."

- BRUCE A. CRAIG, retired Assistant Attorney General,
Wisconsin Department of Justice - Office of Consumer Protection
(This statement is my own and not that of the State of Wisconsin.)

This economy has driven the industry of "business opportunity" to epidemic levels. If you or anyone you care for has been recruited into Nikken, Nuskin, Mannatech, ACN, Herbalife, Tahitian Noni, Morinda, Market America, Arbonne, NSA, Symmetry, Quixtar or any multi level marketing business, this book is a must read.

Merchants of Deception - An Insider's Chilling look at the worldwide, multi-billion dollar conspiracy of lies that is Amway and its motivational organizations.

High level whistle blower and former federal auditor reveals documentation on loss rates for the vast majority of all who are induced to invest in "their own Amway Business". Victims have responded with detailed testimonials of large losses, bankruptcy, foreclosure, divorce and suicides while the owners create billions in net worth, buy the Orlando Magic and name the Amway Arena in Orlando.

http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2009/week44/Tuesday/102702.htm

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