Archives: Oct. to Nov. 2005

Since leaving Washington, DC, I have been working with my business partner with a mentoring leadership program we are developing. Today we launched a critical element in the program by pre-selling his third book, "Leadership in the REAL World."

The book gives the foundation about what it means to be a Real World Leader. Instead of basing the definition of leadership on theoretical concepts or hypothetical scenarios, Ken goes into the common workplace and addresses issues such as being promoted to a leadership position and your team is the co-workers you used to work with on a level playing field. Or being a younger person taking over a team in which the average team member is nearly twice your age. Or vice versa.

The program consists of a free newsletter, many teleseminars and an online 12-month course coming up next spring which is specifically designed for those wanting to develop into a stronger leader and move up in the corporate world. For more information, simply visit RealWorldLeader.com and join the mailing list and claim your copy of the book.

See, flavor is pretty much broken down to six or seven main tastes, such as sweet, bitter, blend and so forth. That's not many combinations considering the endless amount of choices we have in a grocery store. Our nose, though, makes most of the difference in how something tastes. Flavor combined with how something smells completely affects the way we taste it.

Our eyes chip in as well. A study was done where people ate steak and fries under colored lights. Under these lights, the food appeared to be their normal colors. No one seemed to notice a difference in the taste. If it was Porterhouse, they probably enjoyed it. When they saw that the steak was blue and the fries were green, some got sick.

So when companies are attempting to acheive a particular taste, they affect the way it smells and looks. That is done with artificial flavorings and colorings. For example, check out what's in a Burger King strawberry milk shake:

amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

To protect the secret formulas, get this, the FDA says these companies don't have to tell us what's in the food, or, well, chemical formulas. So, some items may contain up to a thousand different chemical ingredients to achieve the flavor of, say, pepperoni. The companies who engineer these artificial flavorings and colors also create the scents for cleaning products, perfumes and air fresheners. And they use the same ingredients just in different quantities. The strawberry flavored milkshake is virtually the same thing as the strawberry Glade plugin.

An excerpt from Eric Schlosser's book, "Fast Food Nation," goes into more than enough detail to get an idea that the scene in Matrix when Neo was presented with a plate of "real food," they weren't kidding.

Isn't it amazing how sometimes people provoke the very process that leads to them getting caught doing something they weren't supposed to be doing? In relationships a common occurence is when a girl asks her significant other what he did last night with the boys. Then the significant other answers with something like, "Well, we started at the bar, Georgie met these girls and wanted to go by their place. I didn't want to, but I didn't want to be the party pooper, so we ended up going there, but I swear I didn't do anything."

Okay, it wasn't an exact analogy of what's going on with President Georgie, but the irony of the indictments is that the Administration started it. Joe Wilson was doing his job; he pissed off some executive branch members; they started talking about his wife; and we now wait to see if justice is going to do its job. The Administration was humming. They brainwashed the entire country of WMDs and the obligation of America to fight for Iraqi's civil rights. Huh?

Whatever they did, they had us all convinced. Well, most of us. One person, Joe, took the time out just to point out a few flaws in the story. All the Bushies had to do was weather a storm. Instead, they created a mini-headache within the Wilson family thinking he'll go away. And now, special prosecutor Fitzgerald is pointing a mean finger at Scooter for his role, but it has come out that everyone had their hands on it. Dick and Karl, Georgie's two best friends, are in the bullseye, but thus far remain free.

The point I may be making is that they drew attention to their propoganda machine by calling out Valerie Plame being a CIA agent more than Joe Wilson did by saying the Bushies were lying. Just because Joe found no proof didn't mean there was no WMDs. But having to go above and beyond the typical reaction to his letter to the New York Times, the adminstration kind of drew attention to their true intentions.

The fifth and final report has been issued about the Oil-For-Food [OFF] Scandal by former Fed Head Honcho Paul Volcker and his team. Apparently after all the noise it created in the beginning, the media is keeping a lid on this can of trash. You have to wonder what the media's true intentions are sometimes or if they're simply afraid they'll be Dan Rathered if they do pull a Joe Wilson stunt.

Let's begin with an article in the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, about a company that is guilty for participating in the scandal. The company, called Midway Trading, is not only an American company, and not only gave the Saddam regime over $400,000 in illegal money, these risk-takers are based just down the street from the very administration whose theme of the decade was to eliminate such activity to prevent Saddam from growing in power. Based in Reston, Virginia, no one can seem to figure out who runs the company.

Taking it back overseas, you would think it was in the administration's best interest to figure out who was cheating the system and call them out to help show why some of the world's leading countries aren't participating with bringing down Saddam. If we could just show that France, Russia and China all had their hands in the cookie jar. And L. Paul Bremer was the Administration's man in Iraq to help make sure that happened. But then why in the world would he actually work against the plan? The claim is to in a sense, lead by example. *chuckle*

If you've never heard of the Carlyle Group, well, you're not supposed to. Wikipedia has a little entry about them. Check out the people associate with them. Better yet, get the book "Iron Triangle," which goes into great details of the Carlyle Group's business dealings and see how it just so happens to coincide with world events.

Well, the Carlyle Group had two companies suspected of conducting shady business with Saddam. You have to see the list of people associated with the Carlyle Group to realize how crazy it is that they would have any dealing with Saddam. I mean, Georgie was a member of the board of one of the Carlyle Group's companies. His daddy still is on the team. With Colin Powell. And former prime ministers of South Korea (Park Tae Joon), Philippines (Fidel Ramos), Britain (John Major); former premier of Thailand (Anand Panyarachun); former Secretary of State James Baker; former SEC boss Arthur Levitt; former Secretaries of Defense Frank Carlucci and William Perry (yes, John Kerry's William Perry); former chairman of the FCC (William Kennard); not to mention some bin Ladens until Osama messed that arrangement up. Is that not a mini-world government or what?

Moving on. The biggest financiers of the OFF scandal (of over $7 BILLION!) was American born and bred, Bayoil. David Chalmer, president of Bayoil, had a front company called Italtech he formed with former associate Augusto Giangrandi. He helped arrange over $200,000,000 in weapons (not of mass destruction though) to Saddam.

Oscar Wyatt, an American-made success story, also dealt with public enemy number two (Saddam is behind Osama of course). He paid over $7 million in so-called surcharges to help get his hands on a half billion dollars worth of oil that helped him in his success story.

Goodness, the list goes on and on. I have to get back to my life, but I'm curious to see if there will ever be an outrage in the fact that we had our hands in the OFF scandal, we also helped keep some of it out of the public (the parts about us having our hands in it), we went to war to expose this corruption (only to find us in it, too), we used corruption to push for the war and now look...

To make the war happen, some in the administration have ruined their careers and/or credibility. And since they got the war, the light is being shined on the fact we participated in the Oil-For-Food scandals, too.

There were no WMDs as Joe Wilson reported. The Iraqi people's civil rights are now available, but the price may be their life - though we are running the show. The Iranians aren't having less of an influence in Iraq, which we've been attempting to accomplish since Reagan. They have less power, water and communications than before the war. And as far as oil, well, prices have surged, and I doubt the oil companies are losing money.

October was a long month. I can't believe I didn't use any time to post much since the first day (of October), especially considering how much has been going on. I mean, before I posted anything about Harriet Mier, she quit. Tom Delay's boat has been steadily sinking. Bill Frist has done a good job keeping his drama out of mainstream media. Karl Rove and The Dick have been dodging bullets. Scooter caught one in the dome though. President Bush just nominated what the right-wingers wanted in a Supreme Court justice in Samuel Alito. Did he really argue that Congress could not enact a ban on the possession of machine guns?

Halloween is upon us but the ghouls have been running around here for several years now. As I prepare to head back to Washington, DC, in a month, I'll be making posting a daily routine again. Until then, make sure you're paying attention.

I had this conversation with a few friends of mine about technology that can manipulate the weather. There have been conspiracies running around about Katrina and Ivan (last year) were results of weather-altering technologies. Even when President Bush was speaking about the destruction after Katrina, he described the results as something from a terrible weapon.

A friend of mine found an 18-page document from the UN dated several decades ago banning the use of weather-changing weapons. In March Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas of course, suggested to Congress forming an organization to study weather-altering technologies. The Russians supposedly had technology to do such a thing more than a decade ago when it was selling it as an option to clear away smoggy atmospheric conditions.

Anyway, a short note on Wilma: It is the strongest, most intense Atlantic hurricane in terms of barometric pressure and the most rapidly strengthening on record. What if mankind started this unconventional style of warfare because fighting toe-to-toe (especially against our war machine) is too costly, in terms of money and human beings? Could whoever is playing Red Rover and sent Katrina and Wilma over seem to be getting at their aim and their ability to control its strength at will.

Recently I watched two more movies which receive high marks from me. A few weeks ago I watched The Constant Gardner which focused on pharmaceutical companies testing experimental drugs in Kenya. The movie has a complex story line, a little romance story and lots of villains. It receives four and a half fingers out of five.

The other movie I just watched the other day stars an actor who has done some movies I didn't care about. But, Nicolas Cage does a great job portraying an arms dealer who benefits from the conflicts and wars of the 80s to now. The movie, Lord of War receives four fingers out of five. My expectations were low, considering I didn't even know what the movie was about, but afterwards, it had my mind buzzing as far as how real the story line is and if anyone would even care if it was true.

Both of these movies will be added to my DVD collection as soon as they are released. They address issues that today's media pretends doesn't exist or is too intimidated to cover. The amount of reality in the movies aren't obvious, but in the world we live in today, these movies may just be a mirror of today's society.