Текст книги "ГУЛаг Палестины"
Автор книги: Лев Гунин
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Given the severe time limitation of a 12-minute segment, not to mention the public's
lack of interest in excessive detail, The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes will be forced to
overlook scores of lesser inaccuracies and biases, and will be forced to omit mention of
any defects that contain the least element of doubt. Rather, The Ugly Face of 60
Minutes will have no option but to outline only those major defects and errors
concerning which there is no dispute. Below is my listing of the points which – being
the most important and the least disputable – are ones that The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes
should include.
Who did it?
The authorship of The Ugly Face of Freedom was Jewish. The Ugly Face of 60
Minutes should start by acknowledging that The Ugly Face of Freedom was not just an
attack upon Ukrainians and upon the nation of Ukraine, but that it was a Jewish attack.
You will be able to convince your viewers of this merely by disclosing that every last
person bearing responsibility for the story, from the very top of the chain of command
to the very bottom, was Jewish:
(1) Laurence Tisch, Chairman and CEO of CBS
(2) Eric Ober, President of CBS News
(3) Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes
(4) Jeffrey Fager, Producer of The Ugly Face of Freedom
(5) Morley Safer, Program Host
(6) Simon Wiesenthal, one of the two featured program witnesses
(7) Yaakov Bleich, the other of the two featured program witnesses
Moreover, The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should acknowledge that it was unethical for CBS
to run a story on Ukraine without acknowledging its conflict of interest – the conflict
being that it is an integral part of Jewish culture to nourish fear and hatred of
Ukrainians, and yet 60 Minutes which was owned and operated by Jews undertook to
broadcast what purported to be an objective, investigative-journalism story on Ukraine.
If, to imagine a comparable case, CBS management jointly owned a chicken-packing plant
that had been cited for sanitation violations, then it would be unethical for 60 Minutes
to run a story defending the plant without disclosing its ownership.
One of the authors of The Ugly Face of Freedom may have been a Gestapo
agent. Of all the individuals in the above list, I see no need to discuss
transgressions beyond those committed in creating the broadcast, except in one case
where it is of the highest relevance – and that is the case of Simon Wiesenthal whom you
bring forward to testify concerning Nazi collaboration when he himself appears to be a
Nazi collaborator of major proportions, possibly with the blood of many on his hands,
and possibly much of it Jewish blood. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose the
suspect nature of Wiesenthal's past, as for example the occasion on which Simon
Wiesenthal was allowed by his German captors to keep two pistols, or the occasion on
which other Jews were executed following their recapture after escaping, whereas Simon
Wiesenthal was relieved of work and put on double rations. This information is highly
relevant, as it suggests the possibility that Simon Wiesenthal used 60 Minutes to offer
false testimony concerning Nazi collaboration partly in order to conceal his own guilt.
What did they do?
The attempt on the part of CBS Jews steeped in a culture of hatred toward Ukrainians to
report on Ukraine resulted in outstanding distortions which can be corrected as follows:
(1) In the pre-German interval, Ukrainians did not kill Jews. The Ugly Face of 60
Minutes should disclose to its viewers that the Wiesenthal-Safer calumny – that prior to
the arrival of German forces, Ukrainians killed some five to six thousand Jews – is
without support.
(2) In the pre-German interval, Jews did kill Ukrainians. The Ugly Face of 60
Minutes should disclose that in the days prior to occupation by German forces, the
Jewish-dominated NKVD tortured and murdered Ukrainians by the thousands.
(3) The Yaakov Bleich stories cannot be substantiated. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes
should disclose that the Yaakov Bleich stories of elderly Jews being stabbed and left
for dead in two different locations in Ukraine cannot be substantiated.
(4) Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian patriot. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should
balance negative Stepan Bandera coverage by disclosing that Bandera was arrested by the
Germans in the first days of their invasion of Ukraine, spent most of the war in German
captivity, lost two brothers in Auschwitz, and upon release from German captivity toward
the end of the war, devoted his efforts to fighting the Germans.
(5) Symon Petliura protected Jews from anti-Ukrainian provocateurs. The Ugly
Face of 60 Minutes should balance negative Symon Petliura coverage by quoting his own
words, as for example this excerpt from his Army Order No. 131: "I most positively order
that all those who are instigating you to pogroms be thrust out of the army, and as
traitors to the fatherland be handed over to the court. Let the court punish them
according to their crimes by giving them the severest lawful penalty."
(6) The Galicia Division was an anti-Bolshevik combat unit. The Ugly Face of 60
Minutes should disclose that the Galicia Division was not part of the SS, but only of
the Waffen-SS, and so was a combat unit; that there were a total of 38 Waffen-SS
divisions comprised of several nationalities, including four Dutch divisions, two
Belgian, as well as French, Norwegian, and Russian; and that the Galicia Division did
not "march off to fight for Hitler," but rather marched off to fight against the
Bolshevik re-occupation of Western Ukraine.
(7) The Holocaust story has been adulterated. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should
disclose that the history of the Holocaust has been adulterated by the admixture of
fantasies concocted by unprincipled opportunists – Jerzy Kosinski being the most widely
known example, and the Wiesenthal-Safer calumny providing the instance closest to home.
(8) CBS stone-walled. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that 60 Minutes
illegally destroyed the 16,000 pieces of mail which protested The Ugly Face of Freedom,
and that 60 Minutes also delayed for five years (and maybe a little bit longer) before
informing its viewers of the defects in the original broadcast.
(9) Mistranslation. Conceding for present purposes that 60 Minutes was not clearly in
the wrong to always translate Zhyd as Kike, nevertheless The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes
should disclose that when the editor of Za Vilnu Ukrainu used the word Yevrei, 60
Minutes was obligated to translate that as Jew, and was clearly in the wrong to have
translated it as Kike.
(10) Ukrainian sacrifices to save Jews. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should tear up
its picture of unrelieved Ukrainian hostility to Jews by disclosing that a large number
of Ukrainians risked their lives, and gave their lives, to save Jews, and that no
comparable reciprocity has ever been observed from the Jewish side. The case of
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky hiding large numbers of Jews on church property could be
featured in this context, as could the Ukrainian Bodnar's saving the life of Simon
Wiesenthal.
(11) The chief Ukrainian roles during WW II were those of victim and of victor.
The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should tear up its picture of unrelieved Ukrainian sympathy
for Nazism by disclosing that Ukrainians were among the foremost victims of the Nazis,
suffering losses much greater than Jewish losses, and were in the forefront of the
battle which defeated the Nazis.
Why did they do it?
Jews have motives for calumniating Ukraine. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should
finally inform its viewers of Jewish motives for calumniating Ukrainians and Ukraine,
among these being the following:
(1) Brain drain. Magnified and incited Ukrainian anti-Semitism is needed in order to
increase the brain drain from Ukraine to Israel.
(2) Image of the Jew as victim. Inculcating the image of Jews as victims of the
Nazis, and Ukrainians as the leading collaborators of the Nazis, serves to crowd out,
and give the appearance of implausibility to, a series of other images: that Ukrainians
were leading victims of the Nazis, that Ukrainians played a leading role in the defeat
of the Nazis, that Jews collaborated with the Nazis more than Ukrainians did, that
Ukrainians risked their lives and gave their lives to save Jews, and that in today's
world, among the leading perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity are the
Israelis.
(3) The Lviv massacre. Promoting the false story of Ukrainians massacring Jews prior
to the arrival of the Germans is particularly useful in winning disbelief of the true
story that the Jewish-dominated NKVD massacred Ukrainians prior to the arrival of the
Germans.
(4) Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The Jewish calumniation of Ukrainians strengthens a frame
of mind that will more readily accept the Jewish revision of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky
uprising of 1648 from the accurate view that it was a rebellion against severe
Polish-Jewish oppression to the false view that it was a spontaneous outburst of
gratuitous and genocidal anti-Semitism.
(5) US aid. The Jewish calumniation of Ukrainians weakens competition for US aid, as by
discrediting Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma who was at the time of the 60 Minutes
broadcast paying an official visit to the US.
(6) Group cohesion. The incitement of fear and hatred in Jews increases popular
support for, and the flow of private donations to, Jewish leaders. A focus is needed
for that fear and hatred. At the moment, Ukrainians have been chosen to be that focus.
Most of the above assertions have been documented, sometimes at length, on the Ukrainian
Archive at www.ukar.org. If you would like me to direct your attention to documentation
concerning any particular assertion – whether that documentation is on the Ukrainian
Archive or elsewhere – please let me know and I will be happy to oblige.
Twelve minutes to restored credibility
I think you will have no trouble accomodating all of the above points into a single 60
Minutes segment. If you do, and if you broadcast that segment, you will turn your
currently failing grades for competence and integrity into high As, and you will lift
the status of 60 Minutes to a level never before reached in American journalism. If you
do not, you will credit 60 Minutes with the dubious achievement of having broadcast the
most concentrated segment of hate propaganda ever to make its appearance in the
mainstream media.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike
Wallace.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 821 hits since 28Oct99
Morley Safer Letter 17 28Oct99 CBS must produce its evidence
"At the end of June 1941 the NKVD massacred 10,000 prisoners in Lviv."
Nicolas Werth
In connection with the photograph below, the caption referring to "hundreds of bodies"
at Vinnytsia may be somewhat of an underestimate, as other sources give higher counts,
as for example in a Chronology of Major Events, opposite the date 13-17 July, 1943, the
following entry: "An international medical commission with representation from neutral
powers examines the graves of 9,439 victims of NKVD shootings (1937-8) in Vinnytsia"
(Yury Boshyk, Ukraine during World War II: History and its aftermath, Canadian Institute
of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton, 1986, p. 257).
October 28, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
Jews massacred Ukrainians in pre-German Lviv
One cannot read the history of the 1941 German invasion of Ukraine without endlessly
bumping into accounts of the massacre of Ukrainians by the retreating Jewish-dominated
NKVD. In reinforcement of the many quotations which I brought to your attention in my
letter to you of 04Jul99, I presently enclose the chapter-long statement of Alfred M. de
Zayas, and I add below the briefer statement of Nicolas Werth:
The rapid German advance in the first months of the war forced the NKVD
to evacuate several prisons, labor colonies, and camps that would
otherwise have fallen into enemy hands. Between July and December
1941, 210 colonies, 135 prisons, and 27 camps, containing nearly
750,000 prisoners, were transferred to the east. Summarizing "gulag
activity in the Great Patriotic War," the Gulag chief, Ivan Nasedkin,
claimed that "on the whole, the evacuation of the camps was quite well
organized." He went on to add, however, that "because of the shortage
of transport, most of the prisoners were evacuated on foot, over
distances that sometimes exceeded 600 miles." One can well imagine the
condition in which the prisoners arrived at their destinations. When
there was not enough time for a camp to be evacuated, as was often the
case in the opening weeks of the war, the prisoners were simply
executed. This was particularly the case in western Ukraine, where at
the end of June 1941 the NKVD massacred 10,000 prisoners in Lviv, 1,200
in the prison at Lutsk, 1,500 in Stanislwow, and 500 in Dubno. When
the Germans arrived, they discovered dozens of mass graves in the
regions of Lviv, Zhytomyr, and Vynnytsa. Using these "Judeo-Bolshevik
atrocities" as a pretext, the Nazi Sonderkommandos in their turn
immediately massacred tens of thousands of Jews.
Nicolas Werth in Stephane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of
Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge Massachusetts and London England, 1999, pp. 225-226.
The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny is a lie of Orwellian
proportions
Of course my reason for bringing these two additional accounts to your attention is to
underline the admission that journalistic ethics demands that you make – that your
23Oct94 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom got things exactly backwards. In the
days prior to German occupation, it was Jews who were killing Ukrainians by the
thousands. This is attested to by many. The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny that in the
days prior to German occupation, Lviv Ukrainians killed some five to six thousand Jews
is attested to only by Simon Wiesenthal and yourself.
CBS attempts to re-write history
One motive for CBS Jews to broadcast the Ugly Face of Freedom appears to be to re-write
a history that they find unflattering. The historical record shows that Communist rule
over Ukraine was largely a Jewish-inflicted oppression and carnage of which the Lviv
massacre constituted a single incident. The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny, then, gives the
impression of being, in part, an attempt to replace the accurate perception of Jews
killing Ukrainians – or more generally, Jews killing Slavs – with the false image of
Ukrainians killing Jews. However, the CBS effort was insufficient to erase from the
historical record that the essence of Ukrainian-Jewish relations is captured not by the
Ugly Face of Freedom, but by scenes such as the one below.
Vynnytsa, Ukraine, June 1943. Here trenches dating from 1937-38 were opened and hundreds of bodies exhumed.
The authorities had built a park and summer theater on the site. Similar trenches were discovered in Zhytomyr,
Kamenets-Podolski, and other areas. Such macabre discoveries continue even today. In 1997, 1,100 bodies were
exhumed in St. Petersburg, and another 9,000 were found in a mass grave in the forests of Karelia.
Stephane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge Massachusetts and London England, 1999, between pp. 202 and 203.
It's time for CBS to produce its evidence.
If you have evidence which demonstrates that the Wiesenthal-Safer accusation is true, I
invite you to break your five-year silence by placing it beside the evidence that I have
adduced so that comparisons can be made and the truth can be discovered. Send me your
evidence, and I will publish it on the Ukrainian Archive web site the same day, and web
visitors will be able to judge for themselves who is right. If you have no evidence on
your side, I invite you to break your five-year silence by withdrawing the
Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny.
If you continue to remain silent, the public will continue to judge not only that you
were in the wrong, but that you lack the integrity to admit it as well.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike
Wallace.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 653 hits since 05Apr00
Morley Safer Letter 18 05Apr00 Flip side of French drinking
"In 1991, Morley Safer's '60 Minutes' report on the possible heart
protective effects of drinking red wine led to a 44 percent increase
in red wine sales among Americans." – David Jernigan
"While men in Sweden can expect to live 76.5 years on average, a
French man's average lifespan is 74.1 years." – Cardiologist
Michel de Lorgeril
April 05, 2000
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
The weight of scientific evidence contradicts
your French Paradox conclusions
My letter to you of 21Apr99 on the question "Does drinking wine promote longevity?"
demonstrated that your conclusion that drinking 3 to 5 glasses of wine per day promotes
longevity could be seen to be unwarranted from no more than the data that you adduced in
its support. Today, I was astonished to read literature published by the Marin
Institute indicating that research literature that you have failed to bring to public
attention, either in your two French Paradox broadcasts or afterward, reveals that the
bulk of the evidence points to conclusions opposite to the ones that you advocated.
Below, I reproduce excerpts which illustrate the nature of this evidence from two Marin
Institute articles:
The Flip Side of French Drinking
by Hilary Abramson (c) 2000 The Marin Institute
Johnny Carson [who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery last year] has some advice for
David Letterman [who is recovering from a quintuple bypass]:
"Drink more red wine."
That's the message Carson left for Letterman while he was in the hospital.
– Associated Press
One of the fathers of the "French Paradox" believes the time has come to "ban" the
expression his research team published in the mid '80s.
One of his countrymen, whose work helped make famous the paradox of having a high
saturated fat diet and lower than expected death rate from heart disease nearly a
decade ago on "60 Minutes," says that attributing a low rate of heart disease to
daily consumption of wine or other forms of alcohol is wrong.
A growing number of French health researchers have news for the rest of the world: It
is myth that the French are healthier than most everyone else because they drink. In
truth, the French are drowning in the grape and paying a hefty price for it.
"There is no scientific consensus today over the protective effect of alcohol," says
Dominique Gillot, France's secretary of state for health. "The link between the
quantity of alcohol consumed and increase of risk of diseases, particularly cancer,
is, on the other hand, scientifically validated."
The fact is that according to data from the world's largest study of heart disease,
conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) during the past decade in 21
countries with 10 million men and women, French heart disease statistics appear to
have been underestimated and the "French Paradox" overestimated. France's rate of
heart disease is actually similar to that of neighboring Italy, Spain, and southern
Germany – lower than many countries in the world, but hardly as remarkable as
reported in the 80s and early 90s.
The French drink one-and-a-half times more per capita than Americans and their death
rate from liver cirrhosis is more than one-and-a-half times greater than that in the
United States. According to WHO, France has the sixth highest adult per capita
alcohol consumption in the world. (The U.S. ranks 32nd.) Alcohol may be involved in
nearly half of the deaths from road accidents, half of all homicides, and one-quarter
of suicides, according to the French equivalent of the U.S. Institutes of Health.
And while coronary heart disease may be less pervasive in that country of 60 million
people than in many others, it is still the number one cause of death.
Within the past year, several other revelations have highlighted this
little-publicized, other side of French drinking:
According to the first French economic study of its kind, France is more like
the U.S. than Americans might realize in that alcohol also ranks first – above
tobacco – in its cost to society. Tobacco takes more of a toll than alcohol in
the rest of Europe, Canada and Australia.
The high premature death rate of French men is largely due to alcohol abuse. It
is nearly double the premature death rate of French women, and the magnitude of
the difference is the highest in Europe, according to the French government's
most recent report on health.
French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits
to wine and have increased their consumption five-fold since 1996 in part
because 12– to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a
new government "War Against Drugs" that includes alcohol.
[...]
The French Paradox. Even in English the expression sounded romantic to 33.7 million
Americans who first heard it in a report by Morley Safer on "60 Minutes" in November
1991. Although the French eat fatty foods and smoke more than Americans, said Safer,
"if you're a middle-aged American man, your chances of dying of a heart attack are
three times greater than a Frenchman of the same age. Obviously, they're doing
something right – something Americans are not doing... Now it's all but confirmed:
Alcohol – in particular red wine – reduces the risk of heart disease."
Within four weeks, U.S. sales of red wine rocketed by 44 percent. American Airlines
reported being unable to stock enough red wine to meet demand. By February 1992, a
Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of Americans were aware of research linking
moderate drinking to lower rates of heart disease. According to the poll, consumers
had returned to drinking levels not seen since the mid-'80s. Although beer remained
the preferred drink of Americans, wine preference increased from 22 to 27 percent.
Five months after the 1992 poll, "60 Minutes" re-broadcast the "French Paradox"
segment. Sales of red wine shot up 49 percent over the previous year. Safer was
honored in France with a special "communication" prize from LVMH Moet Hennessy-Louis
Vuitton.
During the next few years, the Wine Institute lobbied officials of the U.S.
Department of Health to reflect studies confirming the "60 Minutes" side of French
drinking in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which the industry subsequently used to
market wine as a health elixir. Food and Wines from France, which promotes Gallic
products overseas, placed full-page newspaper ads announcing that French consumption
of fatty food was counteracted by drinking French red wine.
"[Health] announcements are increasing consumption more than anything else," said
Stephanie Grubbs, marketing manager for Robert Mondavi Coastal, in Impact magazine in
1997. That same year, three out of four readers in the January Consumer Reports on
Health survey believed that moderate red wine consumption is more beneficial than
drinking beer or liquor.
Recently, the San Francisco-based Wine Institute helped some California wineries get
permission from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to add a label
referring consumers to the federal dietary guidelines to learn the "health effects"
of alcohol. But anyone who actually sent for the document would discover that the
government's advice on alcohol is mostly cautionary.
Inflamed by the belief that the wine industry was using the label to make it appear
that the government was suggesting Americans drink for their health, Senator Strom
Thurmond (R-SC), whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, recently won a battle
for the BATF to hold hearings on whether the "health effects" label can legally be
affixed to every wine bottle. They're scheduled to take place in a number of U.S.
cities in late spring.
Today the Wine Institute touts its product on its website with studies and press
releases. One quotes David Pittman, Ph.D., researcher at Washington University in
St. Louis: "In societies such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, where wine and
overall alcohol consumption is higher than in the United States, they just don't have
as many alcohol-related problems such as drunk driving and underage drinking."
That would be news to France.
The world view that the French are able to control their drinking habits is untrue,
according to Pierre Kopp, professor of economics at the Sorbonne. Kopp recently
released the first French study estimating the cost of legal (alcohol and tobacco)
and illegal drugs. Kopp estimates that alcohol costs France $18.5 billion (U.S.)
each year. Drinking is responsible for nearly 53 percent of overall social costs of
alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs, he reports. (Annual cost to the state is $14.3
billion for tobacco and $2 billion for illegal drugs.)
But even these high alcohol economic cost figures are underestimated, cautions the
researcher, because he left out alcohol-related crime and accidents, which comprise
some of the largest costs to society in the United States. Kopp focused on public
and private money spent on medical treatment, lost productivity, absenteeism,
uncollected taxes, unpaid health contributions, and preventive measures.
[...]
"Consumption is exceptionally high and the final bill is extremely heavy. Alcohol
accounted for 42,963 deaths in France in 1997."
[...]
When "60 Minutes" introduced the French Paradox to America, Morley Safer featured
only one French scientific authority – Serge Renaud, a trendsetter in alcohol
research who still maintains that "there is no doubt that a moderate intake of wine
(one to three glasses per day for a man) is associated with a 30– to 40-percent
reduction in mortality from all causes." In its first issue of the new millennium,
the prestigious British journal Lancet noted in a short profile of Renaud that his
enthusiasm for alcohol and the French Paradox is hardly unanimous today among his
French peers. In fact, at least two of the scientists instrumental in early French
Paradox research today disagree with Renaud's belief in the central role of alcohol
in a lower coronary heart disease rate.
[...]
What's new for both men is the MONICA Project established by centers around the world
to MONItor trends in Cardiovascular diseases and relate them to risk factor changes
over a 10-year period. Established in the early 1980s by WHO, its final data were
highlighted last September at the European Society of Cardiology in Barcelona. De
Lorgeril reported there that the WHO data were 75 to 90 percent higher than France's
statistics for coronary heart disease deaths.
The cardiologist said he scrutinized alcohol-related deaths and found that French
men, "who drink too much," have the highest rates of liver disease and – by far
more upper gastrointestinal cancer, and were more likely to die in accidents, by
suicide, or as a consequence of crime than men of other nationalities. While men in
Sweden can expect to live 76.5 years on average, a French man's average lifespan,
said de Lorgeril, is 74.1 years.
Dr. Ian Graham, a professor of epidemiology at Trinity College in Dublin, said that
de Lorgeril's statistics suggest that the lower rate of coronary deaths in France are
due "to competing causes of death" – many more French men might die early from
alcohol-related causes before they have the opportunity to die of heart disease.
[...]
In 1998, a pharmacist who is a director at the French counterpart of the U.S.
National Institute of Health handed then French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner a
report that had the effect of "a sort of a bomb." In what has become known as the
Roques Report, Bernard Roques classified drugs on the basis of their danger to the
public rather than their legal status. Based on scientific data, alcohol took first
place along with heroin and cocaine; tobacco took second place with amphetamines and
LSD; and marijuana was in the third, least dangerous group.
[...]
Written by Hilary Abramson; edited by James F. Mosher; copy edited by Pam Glenn
Copyright 2000 Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol Other Drug Problems
The original article from which the above excerpts were taken can be found on the
Marin Institute web site at www.marininstitute.org/NL2000.html.
Drink Like the French,
Die Like the French
by David Jernigan
The truth is finally starting to come out: If Americans drink alcohol like the
French, we will die like the French.
[...]
Nearly 43,000 French people die each year from alcohol-related causes, roughly the
equivalent of 200,000 American – double the number who currently die annually of
alcohol-related causes in the United States.
According to the World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Alcohol, the
French drink 54 percent more alcohol than Americans, and die of liver cirrhosis 57
percent more often.
Yes, fewer French people die of heart disease than would be expected given their
fatty diets. However, French men in particular die prematurely in disproportionate
numbers, and alcohol-related problems are often the cause.
In 1991, Morley Safer's "60 Minutes" report on the possible heart protective effects
of drinking red wine led to a 44 percent increase in red wine sales among Americans.
Assiduous lobbying by wine makers prompted the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for
the first time to make positive mention of alcohol consumption in its Dietary
Guidelines for Americans.
Now wineries want to label their products as health food. In 1999 several wineries
convinced the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to permit an
ambiguous label on wine bottles suggesting that people write the USDA to learn more
about the "health effects" of drinking alcohol.
Further pressure from the Wine Institute and complaints from Senator Strom Thurmond,
