Overdraft Practices Continue to Gut Bank Accounts and Haunt Customers

By Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, NY Times, Feb. 28, 2016:

Angelina Lemus was puzzled. She had no idea why every month as much as $96 was disappearing from her Citibank checking account.

Months later, Ms. Lemus finally figured out the mystery–or at least part of it. Citibank was taking out the money to pay a loan, with an interest rate of 18 percent, that was devised to cover the shortfall every time Ms. Lemus overdrew her checking account.

The problem was that Ms. Lemus, a home health care worker from Queens, said she never signed up for the line of credit and was unaware that she was borrowing from it every time her account dipped below zero.

In all, Ms. Lemus had amassed $3,400 in debt–a tangle of interest, principal and other fees that have damaged her credit.

Ms. Lemus is one of millions of Americans tripped up by overdraft practices, a murky corner of consumer banking that, despite a lot of hand-wringing in Washington, costly litigation and customer rancor, remains largely untouched by financial regulation.

In a push for transparency since the 2008 financial crisis, regulators require banks to clearly disclose and explain the terms of just about every financial product, including credit cards and mortgages. But overdraft practices still come with hidden costs and confusing terms, bank customers, lawyers and consumer advocates say.

Typically, banks charge customers $35 every time they spend more than the balance in their checking account. Those fees add up, haunting borrowers and cannibalizing already low bank balances. One mistake can push checking accounts into the red, generating multiple fees in a single day.

But other sometimes harmful practices are proliferating, too, like lines of credit that banks pitch as an alternative way to cover shortfalls in checking accounts but that can end up ensnaring customers like Ms. Lemus in a cycle of debt.

“It is such an insidious thing,” said Susan Shin, legal director of the New Economy Project, which works with community groups in New York.

It is by no means a new problem. In a series of class-action lawsuits beginning in 2009 against more than a dozen big banks, customers accused banks of hiding a practice known as reordering. The practice, the lawsuits revealed, involved deliberately processing large transactions like mortgage payments first before taking out smaller charges like a coffee–even if customers bought the coffee first. By arranging the order of transactions, the banks could maximize the number of overdrafts they charged. At the time, some banks defended the practice, arguing that it ensured large, important bills were covered.

The lawsuits resulted in the banks paying more than $1.1 billion in settlements. Among them was TD Bank, which agreed to pay $62 million.

Today, TD Bank is still reordering transactions and informs customers about the practice in the fine print of its checking account agreements.

“Their position is if we disclose it, we can get away with whatever the hell we want,” said Mark Mangan, a TD Bank customer from Bloomfield, N.J., who has been hit with as much as $140 in overdraft fees in a single day.

More than 11 percent of TD Bank’s total operating income came from overdraft fees and other consumer service fees during the first nine months of last year. That is roughly five times the industry average, according to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation data compiled by SNL Financial, a research firm.

The TD Bank spokeswoman said its overdraft fees accounted for a proportionally larger share of its operation than at other banks because TD is focused primarily on consumer banking, while many other financial companies have a wider range of businesses, like investment banking.

The total number of overdraft fees has declined since the financial crisis, but their persistence reflects a reality of the banking industry: Regulations have crimped profits from once-profitable activities like lending.

It turns out that overdraft fees are the banks’ version of cigarette smoking, a habit that is tough to break.

The nation’s big consumer banks collected about $11 billion in overdraft fees last year, which accounted for 8 percent of their profits, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Regulations, passed in 2010, require banks to give customers a choice of whether to incur overdraft fees or have a transaction declined.

But many customers end up confused by how overdrafts work. In their marketing materials, for example, banks present the choice of whether to sign up for overdraft as an offer of “overdraft protection”–a feature many customers thought would automatically deny transactions and shield them from incurring the fees at all. In reality, it is a service authorizing the banks to charge the overdraft fees. Navy Federal Credit Union, for example, brands its product OOPS, or “Optional Overdraft Protection Service.”

Mr. Mangan, who works as a technology consultant, says he is the first to acknowledge that when he bounces a check, he should pay a penalty. But, one day last May, he noticed that TD Bank Group had charged him a $35 overdraft fee even though his account still had money in it.

That afternoon, Mr. Mangan withdrew $20 in cash at a TD Bank A.T.M., leaving only a few dollars in his account. That night, TD Bank processed a $125 check that he had written days earlier. As a result, the bank charged him two fees: one for the bounced check and another for the $20 A.T.M. withdrawal.

“I had that money in my account. I have the slip to prove it,” Mr. Mangan said.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is hashing out rules that could limit reordering, according to people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it. Outlines of the rules are expected this year.

Still, the regulation is not a panacea, consumer advocates say. It will not address the lines of credit, which are considered loans. The credit lines are supposed to be less expensive than traditional overdrafts, and if customers pay off the loans quickly, the charges amount to only a few dollars.

But the costs can add up. KeyBank’s credit line, for example, carries a 15 percent interest rate, a $10 fee for every time customers overdraw their account, a $30 annual fee and $25 late fees.

Citigroup’s line of credit is called “Checking Plus,” which to Ms. Lemus, who primarily speaks Spanish, did not appear to be anything like a loan. When she first noticed the $96 withdrawals, Ms. Lemus was alarmed.

But what she learned was even more distressing: Every time she overdrew her checking account, Citigroup was lending her money at 18.25 percent to cover the shortfalls. There were other unusual features and charges associated with the loan. Citigroup extended the loan in $100 increments, even if she was short by only $35.

And in one month, Citigroup withdrew the loan payment two days after the due date the bank itself had set. For this, Citigroup collected an additional $25 for the late payment.

If she just made the minimum payment, it would take Ms. Lemus 13 years to pay off her credit line. The bank has been trying to collect the debt.

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Saeed Abedini: 10 Prisoners Came to Christ in First Year of Imprisonment

By Kevin Porter, Christian Post, February 27, 2016:

During his imprisonment and torture in an Iranian jail, Pastor Saeed Abedini continued to evangelize, helping to convert 10 inmates from Islam to Christianity during his first year in captivity, he said.

“Ten of the prisoners turned to Christ the first year, so the prison found out, the intelligent police found out, and they moved me to another prison where the situation was worse,” Abedini told CBN Thursday.

By relocating Abedini, his captors were unknowingly helping to spread the seeds of the Gospel. “Every time they changed my prison, it was a good time to evangelize,” said the pastor.

Prior to his tenth arrest in Iran in 2012, which resulted in his 3-year imprisonment, Abedeni sensed that trouble was looming. “I felt in my spirit that some threat was coming.”

Abedini, and those he helped to convert in prison, suffered for his evangelism. “Every people [sic] who became Christian with me, they start torturing them, separate me from them and the last two years they make me completely isolated,” he said.

At times, Abedini’s captors made it seem as though his execution was imminent, but in his heart he knew differently. “You know the first six months they always threaten me to death and they said, ‘For sure you’re going to be executed for what you did–you made 1,000 Muslim Christians’ … But every time that I prayed, [the] Holy Spirit put in my heart, ‘No, still I have some work to do for you.’”

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Who killed Swedish Prime Minister Olaf thirty years ago?

By Dennis Edwards:

Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme may very well have signed His own death warrant, when on the 29^th of September 1985 Swedish Customs Officials raided the Malmo offices of the arms-broker Karl-Erik Schmitz.[1]

It was thirty years ago from Sunday, on February 28, 1986, that the then charismatic Prime Minister of Sweden was gunned down, while walking home from a movie with his wife near to his home in Stockholm. Even though his security men were nearby, the death remains a mystery. 

As a result of the Custom raid, Palme was in possession of sensitive information in regards to activities of a secret international weapons cartel. The activities of the cartel had remained unknown for many years. Other government, military and business leaders privy to same information about the cartel that Palme had, who weren’t 100% on board to secrecy, had met the same fate as Palme, dying sudden violent deaths. 

At the time of his death, Palme was having an affair with Emma, the sister of one of the powerful Rothschild’s. Whether or not she was collecting information on Palme is not known, but she was never questioned by authorities after his death. We do know that the illegal arms cartel was working on both sides of the “Iron Curtain" and was making billions of dollars for their owners and may have been helping to supply the CIA and Mossad with their hidden illegal operation's budgets. 

Palme may have been assassinated because of his knowing, too much. In 1987 the head of Karl-Erik Schmitz said, "Everyone had kept this secret until the Swedish Customs went in like an elephant in a porcelain shop and destroyed it." Whether it was a blunder on Palme's part or not, he was held responsible.

Palme obvious had big enemies as he was quite vocal about his opposition to apartheid in South Africa. But he was also vocally pro Palestinian and compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jewish children.[2] Whether it was a South African who pulled the trigger or a Scandinavian, we do not know. One thing we can be sure, the powers that be behind the scenes were responsible for his death. We don’t know their names or telephone numbers, but we do know they are working for their spiritual Lord, the prince of darkness.

It is believed that Palme had worked to give Sweden a share in the illegal arms deals. His mistake was in allowing the Customs seizure, as now the cat would get out of the bag. Such a blunder could not go unpunished. Perhaps Emma was collecting data for the merchants of death and if Palme’s attitude, which may have been too independent, did not show sufficient repentance, a hit was ordered. Israel lost an opponent, as did South Africa, and other political figures around the world took notice and got themselves quickly in line.

[1] http://www.phoenixarchives.com/contact/1996/1196/111296.pdf
[2] http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/260876/sweden-no-friend-israel-joseph-puder

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I see my old battalion assigned to Helmand again and I wonder: What is the point?

By Stephen Carlson, Washington Post, February 27, 2016:

The Pentagon recently announced that an undisclosed number of U.S. soldiers will be sent to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan in a “force protection” role. It’s a minor story, perhaps, considering the overall number of troops deployed to Afghanistan is not expected to increase beyond 9,800 and the troops will replace a unit already there. But it’s a shift at the tail end of a war most Americans do not even remember is happening anymore. The war is over, President Barack Obama said. Who cares about a lousy transfer of what’s been reported to be about 500 U.S. troops?

The soldiers in question are with the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, which is the unit I served with during two tours in Afghanistan. And they are heading towards one of the deadliest battlefields NATO endured in its never-ending mission in Afghanistan. U.S. Marines and the British military, in particular, paid a terrible price against intransigent locals and Taliban fighting hard to hold onto what they consider their homeland.

Nearly a thousand coalition troops lost their lives in Helmand, including hundreds of U.S. Marines. Now, after declaring a specious victory and leaving Helmand to the tender mercies of a corrupt government and the Taliban, the Pentagon is worried about the province, after pulling out and declaring victory. What kind of farce is this supposed to be? And remember, we’re not entirely sure just how many troops are heading there, or exactly what they’ll be doing. “Force protection” covers so much ground that it could mean practically anything.

In a teleconference earlier this month from Afghanistan, Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, the deputy chief of staff for communications for the Operation Resolute mission, was vague in describing the mission.

“I’m not going to get into the details of the disposition of the particular units that are here, but I will say it is a normally scheduled unit rotation, and part of that unit will be operating in Helmand, and we are increasing the number of advisers that we have in Helmand province,” Shoffner said. “We’re also deploying soldiers, we’re positioning soldiers to provide force protection. And I’ll go as far as that.”

Obama was partly elected on the idea that he was going to end the wars that President Bush pushed us into. He partially succeeded. He accomplished most of his troop withdrawals, but now there has been an explosive revival of the Taliban in Afghanistan. It does not matter how much time passes, we still seem to be stuck in 2004. And now the Pentagon “surging” a few hundred troops back into Helmand province may be the greatest joke of all.

We might as well tattoo “We are here for appearances” on their foreheads. After 14 years, thousands of lives, and untold billions of dollars, now a battalion that had been deployed five times before and lost over a hundred lives is being held out as a fig leaf for a failed war. Soldiers from 10th Mountain have been in Afghanistan since the early days of Operation Anaconda in 2002. And it seems they will be there until the end, whenever that might be.

I served with 2-87 in the godforsaken mountains along the Pakistan border in Bermel in 2006 and again in 2009 to the volatile province of Wardak. Now I see my old battalion assigned to Helmand and wonder what is the point. What will a few hundred troops do now that tens of thousands of troops over many years could not before?

The Afghan National Army has been essentially rolled over by the Taliban in Helmand, among many other areas. The Afghan National Police are a grim, widely corrupt militia that includes child soldiers.

The town of Marjah in Helmand, where U.S. Marines paid a heavy price taking it from the Taliban following the troop surge, is now 90 percent controlled by the Taliban. Just last month, an American soldier was killed and two others wounded alongside heavy Afghan casualties there.

More than a hundred British soldiers lost their lives trying to secure the district of Sangin in Helmand. This endeavor they largely succeeded, but that is almost all gone now. The Afghan government controls a few government buildings and a couple small army outposts. The Taliban patrol the town’s center and own the countryside. On Feb. 6, the Afghan soldiers defending the government buildings suffered 9 dead, 7 wounded, and three captured. The day before, it was 4 dead and 7 wounded.

It is little more than a lopsided siege, and a single battalion of U.S. troops in a “non-combat” role are not going to reverse the collapse that is coming. By 2010 there were nearly 20,000 Marines in Helmand alongside thousands of British and other coalition troops, and it still took years to even moderately pacify the province.

A gradual disintegration is spreading across Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, 2015 saw over 11,000 civilian dead or wounded, the heaviest casualties suffered since the war began in 2001. Improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers, and hit-and-run attacks on soft targets are relatively cheap and easy for the Taliban, and they take a heavy toll on civilians simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Afghan government forces are not exactly noted for their precision firepower either. As in every war, it is the innocent who suffer the most.

U.S. Army Gen. John Campbell, the outgoing commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, testified to Congress on Feb. 4 that without changes “2016 is at risk of being no better, and possibly worse, than 2015.” He has recommended wider rules of engagement and more embedding with Afghan forces. These recommendations could have come from any testimony from the last 14 years.

It is clear that beyond some residual forces and already appropriated reconstruction and aid funds, the United States has essentially washed its hands of its Afghan venture. Troops, money, and occasionally blood, will continue to be spilled into Afghanistan for years to come, perhaps for decades, but it is difficult to see any scenario beyond a bloody, worsening deadlock that will only get worse by the year.

“Now more than ever,” Campbell said, “the United States should not waver on Afghanistan.”

We have already wavered, and 2-87’s deployment to Helmand is merely the window dressing trying to cover the mistakes of the past.

Stephen Carlson served two tours in Afghanistan as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. He lives in Austin, Texas.

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How Exercise May Lower Cancer Risk

By Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, February 24, 2016:

The relationship between exercise and cancer has long both intrigued and puzzled oncologists and exercise physiologists.

Exercise is strongly associated with lowered risks for many types of cancer. In epidemiological studies, people who regularly exercise generally prove to be much less likely to develop or die from the disease than people who do not. At the same time, exercise involves biological stress, which typically leads to a short-term increase in inflammation throughout the body. Inflammation can contribute to elevated risks for many cancers.

Now, a new study in mice may offer some clues into the exercise-cancer paradox. It suggests that exercise may change how the immune system deals with cancer by boosting adrenaline, certain immune cells and other chemicals that, together, can reduce the severity of cancer or fight it off altogether.

But mice, obviously, are not people, and it is impossible to know from this study whether a similar process occurs in humans, although exercise, particularly moderately intense exercise such as jogging, has been shown to increase adrenaline and the production of natural killer immune cells in people, Dr. Hojman said.

“So the mechanisms,” she said, that seemed to partially protect the running mice in this study from malignancies, “can also happen in people,” perhaps providing one more incentive, if we still need it, to get up and move.

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IMF warns the global economy is “highly vulnerable”

BBC, 25 February 2016

         The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said the global economy has weakened further and warned it was “highly vulnerable to adverse shocks”.

It said the weakening had come “amid increasing financial turbulence and falling asset prices”.

The IMF’s report comes before the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Shanghai later this week.

It said China’s slowdown was adding to global economic growth concerns.

China’s economy, the second-biggest in the world, is growing at the slowest rate in 25 years.

The IMF also noted any future prospects for global growth “could be derailed by market turbulence, the oil price crash and geopolitical conflicts”.

Comment by Dennis Edwards: 

We all understand that one day or another the financial system, even with all the maneuvering of the Federal Reserve Bank and the International Monetary Fund, could come tumbling down. Many highly accredited economists have written and spoken of the imminent financial crash. James Richards, in his compelling study on the internacional financial system's health, says quantitative easing has only prolonged the day of reckoning. 

In his book, The Death of Money, he proposes that it could very well be China's faulty financial practices, copying the West's bad example, that ultimately lead the world down the road to financial disaster. China's mistakes, coupled with the West's throwing money at their problems, will  lead to the final collapse of the dollar as an international reserve money. As a result the SDRs of the International Monetary Fund, a basket of currency with countries having buying rights internationally depending upon their real ability to pay, will become the bases of a new international financial system. 

America and other countries will not be able to send their problems abroad by printing more money. They printed money, or what they have called "quantitative easing," to save the bankers. But by doing so, they also wanted to cause inflation. By causing inflation, the national deficit, in real terms, goes down as the deficit is being paid with inflated money which has less real value. The economy, however, naturally wants to deflate. A deflation of the economy would be the true natural occurrence and would have occurred in 2008 had the government not implemented their inflationary printing of money through quantitative easing.

In Richard's opinion, all the financial maneuvering in the end won't save the sinking ship. The world is on the brink of a new international financial order and the Western nations are trying to maintain their dominance, while the BRICS and others want a more equal and fare share of the pie. Of course, to the Bible student, the financial crash could very well be the key event to further along the end-time prophecy scenario. 

The Bible predicts, after a short period of international peace, a new financial system will come into affect based on computerized money. Every man and woman will need to have a bio-chip implant in order to buy or sell. Thus will commence a period in history which Jesus called the Great Tribulation, consisting of wars and persecution of those who refuse to accept the new mandatory bio-chip implant. After three and a half years, the famous battle of Armageddon will take place in the Middle East and one third of the population of the world will die. Only the return of Christ to the planet will stop man from totally destroying humanity completely. 

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The US is selling weapons to nearly half the countries in the world

Samuel Oakford, VICE News, Feb. 24, 2016

The global trade in arms continued to grow over the last half decade, buoyed by an appetite for weapons in the Middle East.

Figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a monitoring group, showed that even as the total trade in weapons grew by 14 percent between 2011 and 2015, the two largest exporters, Russia and the US, managed to capture even greater portions of the pie.

American exports made up a full third of the global trade, up from 29 percent between 2006 and 2010.

According to a congressional report, US arms sales increased by more than a third in 2014 alone, to $36.2 billion from 26.7 the year prior. SIPRI reported that over the last five years, the US sold “major” weapons to at least 96 countries–just a hair under half the total number of UN member states.

Russia meanwhile captured a quarter of all exports in SIPRI’s most recent assessment, up from 22 percent in the previous reporting period.

In line with longstanding security alliances in the Gulf, the US sent nearly 10 percent of its total exports between 2011 and 2015 to Saudi Arabia, and a further 9.1 percent to the United Arab Emirates.

Both countries are members of the coalition that has intervened militarily in Yemen for nearly a year, largely with American-supplied aircraft and munitions. According to the Congressional Research Service, the US sold them more than $90 billion in armaments and weapons systems since 2010.

Overall, imports to the Middle East rose by 61 percent; Saudi Arabia and the UAE were the second and fourth-biggest global importers between 2011 and 2015. Elsewhere in the region, Qatar’s imports grew by 279 percent, while Egypt’s increased by 37. Weapons purchases by Iraq, which is battling Islamic State militants, rose 83 percent more during the past five years than between 2006 and 2011, continuing a steady flow that began following the US-led invasion of the country in 2003.

“Despite low oil prices, large deliveries of arms to the Middle East are scheduled to continue as part of contracts signed in the past five years,” said Pieter Wezeman, Senior Researcher at SIPRI, in a statement.

Russia sent nearly 40 percent of all its exports to India, followed by sales to China and Vietnam. The latter increased its spending on foreign arms by a whopping 699 percent, catapulting their rank among importers from 43rd to eighth over the past five years. Nearly all of the weapons delivered to Vietnam came from Russia, including 8 combat aircraft, 4 submarines and 4 “fast attack craft.” SIPRI assessed that Vietnam’s stepped-up purchasing reflected fears of Beijing’s growing power in Asia and territorial claims in the South China Sea that overlap with its own.

While China still only accounts for 5.9 percent of global arms exports, its share is growing faster than practically any other state. Between 2006 and 2015, its share of exports rose 88 percent. Most were destined for other Asian countries, including Pakistan. SIPRI noted that Beijing “is increasingly capable of producing its own advanced weapons and has become less dependent on arms imports,” which fell 25 percent in the recent reporting period.

But China, wrote researchers, “remains partly dependent on imports for some key weapons and components, including large transport aircraft and helicopters, and engines for aircraft, vehicles and ships.”

For the first time, China’s weapons exports exceeded those of France, long one of Europe’s top arms sellers. From 7.1 percent of global exports between 2011 and 2015, France captured 5.6 percent in the last five years. Germany’s share fell even further, from 11 percent to 4.7. The UK’s share increased marginally, from 4.1 percent to 4.5 percent. Arms imports to Europe, meanwhile, fell by 41 percent.

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On The Front Line With the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Battling Outside Aleppo

By Robert Fisk, The Independent, February 24, 2016:

We knew who they were the moment they approached us on the front line outside Aleppo. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards–no longer merely advisers but fighting troops alongside the Syrian army–emerged on the roadside in their grey-patterned camouflage fatigues, speaking good though not perfect Arabic but chatting happily in Persian when they knew we could understand them.

Why, they asked politely–they were courteous, but very suspicious in the first few minutes–were we filming this part of their line? A mortar exploded in a field to our right–sent over either by Isis or by Jabhat al-Nusra–and we had filmed its cloud of brown smoke as it drifted eastwards.

I told the Iranian commander, a tall, bespectacled and thoughtful man, that we were journalists. I got the impression that these men wanted to talk to us–which proved to be the case–but they were wary of us, as if we were dangerous aliens.

“When I heard that there was an English reporter asking for information in this area,” the man said, “I said to myself: ‘England is helping Isis and an English reporter is here asking for information’. The immediate thing in my mind was, ‘Where is this information going to go?’”

He apologised. We must not think he was hostile to us. “If you were in my place and you were fighting a harsh and brutal enemy like Isis in this location–and this is our front line–you would ask yourself this question: ‘What is the English reporter doing here–why should he be allowed here?’”

We explained that we were travelling with Syrian military personnel, and I showed the Iranian commander my press card–and he recognised my name and newspaper. There was much shaking of hands. The Independent was respected, he said. But he was still a very cautious man.

Down the dun-coloured road in front of us, across the flat plains to the south-east where the Nusra and Isis lines still held against the Syrian advance, there was an awful lot of rifle fire and the sound of bullets whizzing past the buildings. Outgoing, the Iranians assured us–I’m not sure I believed them, suspecting the fire was coming from their enemies–but the shooting continued throughout our strangely existential conversation.

“One of the problems of this place is that the enemy is very close,” the Iranian said, pointing through the dust haze. “You see those two silos over there? Well, that’s where Nusra are sitting right now and watching us at this moment. Any time, a mortar can arrive, you will be dead–and I will feel responsible, because in the last few hours I have already lost one man and had another wounded.” We were not there to die, I told the man. Reporters have to live to tell their tale.

He grinned at us. “We make a distinction between death and martyrdom,” he said. “In my view, because you are here and seeking the truth and bringing that truth to the world, if you die here in this spot, you are a martyr.”

The comment was intended to be kind. He was allowing a non-Muslim to become a martyr–which I had no intention of becoming. I told him how I had the very same conversation during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war in a trench opposite Saddam’s front line. A soldier then had told me of the pleasure he would experience in dying for Islam and I had told him it was my intention to live, that death held no joys for me. Never the twain shall meet, I said to myself.

The Iranian officer–and seven others had gathered round him in the hot afternoon, the crack and zip of bullets still breaking up our conversation–insisted that “to fight in the way of justice is martyrdom”. But then a team of Iranian military IT men arrived, serious, courteous, and wanted to look at our camera. They looked at the pictures of the mortar explosion and concluded that we were telling the truth–we were not spies. They were frightened that we had filmed their own strategic locations.

Then another younger man arrived, bearded but smiling broadly. “This is not the right place for you to be,” he said. “If you want to show the truth of what is happening, you should go to the north of Aleppo and you should see villages and how they’ve been destroyed and how those who rejected the rule of al-Nusra were treated. They have lost everything–their homes have been smashed–and even if the war was to end now, the clean-up and preparations to rebuild will take at least a decade. That’s how badly damaged everything is.”

I realised at that moment that this young man must have fought to retake the Shia villages of Nubl and Zahra with other Revolutionary Guard forces three weeks earlier. “You should understand the kind of suffering these people have gone through–that’s what you should be writing about,” he said. He looked at us to see if we understood, and I suspect that for him this was a holy as well as a military mission–which may not be quite the way to win a war. But there they were, the Iranians in Syria chatting away to us on the battlefield–the “real thing”, as journalists like to say–and we took our leave.

“We would like you to write the truth about this place,” the commander said. “And I’m sorry we can’t allow you to see our lines.” There were more smiles from yet more Iranians who had turned up on motor cycles and in Toyotas. And then the commander went to his vehicle and came back with a large box of Arab sweets and handed them to us. How very Iranian of him. England supports Isis, it seems, but he was ready to feed the English reporter on his front line. But please, no more pictures.

They are sending home Iranian bodies at the rate of 10 a week from Aleppo military airport. Quite a price.

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Making Sense of the Syria “Ceasefire” with Pepe Escobar

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We all know exercise makes you live longer. But this will actually get you off the couch.

By David Brown, Washington Post, February 22, 2016:

When someone dies in the intensive care unit, the first thing the nurse does is turn off the EKG monitor. That’s because the heart can go on depolarizing–writing its electrical signature on the screen, if not actually pumping blood–for many minutes after everything else stops. It’s creepy, but touching, too. The heart is the soldier who can’t bear to surrender until long after the battle is lost.

Because the heart is the last organ to die, it’s no surprise that medicine has expended much effort to get it to live longer. What’s surprising is that the best strategy is to work it harder, not go easy on it. The ceaselessly pumping organ is happiest if you test its limits in a controlled fashion on a regular basis.

In other words, if you exercise.

Exercise requires time and tolerance for discomfort, and you can’t store it up. For that reason, it lags behind other behaviors that doctors, the government and our consciences tell us to do (or not do). Only 50 percent of American adults get at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week, which is the current recommendation. Larger fractions of people aren’t obese (65 percent), get at least seven hours of sleep a night (65 percent) and don’t smoke (83 percent).

Nevertheless, there’s no getting around the benefits of exercise. The evidence keeps piling up.

Over the past two decades, research has shown that exercise reduces the risk of heart attack, helps control weight, decreases inflammation, lowers the risk of developing diabetes and certain cancers, increases the chances of survival after a heart attack, lifts mood, slows the decline of sexual performance and prolongs independent living in the very old.

“It’s really hard to find something that is not improved with exercise,” said Michael J. Blaha, a preventive cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a researcher in the field. “Everyone can benefit from it. Even at higher age, when you’re at increased risk of dying, exercise is able to add time to your life.”

Although many organs, and the body as a whole, are helped by exercise, the cardiovascular system–the heart and blood vessels–is helped the most.

Many people think exercise’s principal benefit operates through blood lipids, the compounds that contribute to artery-clogging atherosclerotic plaques. In fact, exercise alone has only a small effect on them. Total cholesterol, LDL (the dreaded “bad cholesterol”) and triglycerides go down a little, and HDL (“good cholesterol”) increases. However, the dramatic improvement in lipid profiles that many first-time exercisers report is more an effect of weight loss than exercise per se.

Instead, exercise’s action on the heart and the blood vessels is the sum of small benefits acting through many physiological pathways.

Exercise lowers blood pressure. It makes the body more sensitive to the action of insulin, which lowers blood glucose. It makes platelets–the mini-cells that trigger clots in strokes and heart attacks–less sticky, and increases the amount of clot-dissolving enzyme in the blood. It reduces some markers of body-wide inflammation, such as C-reactive protein. It slows the accumulation of calcium in arterial walls, a risk factor for heart attack. It increases the nitric oxide made by arteries, which allows them to expand and carry more blood when circumstances demand. Exercise also lowers the resting heart rate, which benefits the heart over the long run.

Studies in lab animals show that moderate-intensity exercise has measurable and even visible effects on the heart.

The body loses muscle mass with age, and the heart, being mostly muscle, isn’t spared. (A 70-year-old man has roughly 30 percent fewer heart muscle cells than a man in his 20s.) Exercise slows the process. It reduces the rate at which cells are lost both through wear and tear and through the programmed process of cell death called apoptosis. Aging rats forced to swim an hour a day have hearts far younger-looking–less thickened and scarred–than their sedentary brethren.

What it all adds up to is longer life.

But it isn’t an all-or-nothing relationship. Instead, the more a person exercises, the more the risk of heart attack and premature death goes down. Only at extreme and prolonged exercise do worrisome effects appear, and even then there’s no evidence that such behavior shortens life.

This “dose-response” relationship is apparent as soon as you get off the couch and do almost anything. It’s like a signing bonus.

A study of 221,000 Australians age 45 and older found that those who simply stood more than two hours a day had a death rate 10 percent lower than people who stood for less than two hours when followed over the course of four years. People on their feet for eight hours a day had a 24 percent lower death rate.

If you walk instead of stand, the payoff, not surprisingly, is bigger. A study of 1,239 Japanese men recruited at age 64 found that those who walked at least two hours a day had half the chance of dying over a 10-year period as those who walked less than 30 minutes a day.

In general, the greater a person’s exercise capacity, the lower the risk of dying. That became clear when researchers looked at the experience of 33,000 people (with an average age of 57) who took exercise stress tests at the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.

Treadmills measured the intensity of their exertion in METs (metabolic equivalent of task). A MET is the ratio of energy expended during an activity to energy expended while sitting motionless. Working at a computer is 1.5 METs. Bicycling at less than 10 mph requires 4 METs, and very brisk walking requires 5 METs; both fall into the category of moderate-intensity activity. Playing basketball is 8 METs, and running at a 10-minutes-per-mile pace is 10 METs. They are considered vigorous-intensity activities.

In the 10 years after the stress tests, 41 percent of men and 23 percent of women who didn’t achieve 6 METs had died. However, for those who achieved more than 12 METs, mortality was only 3 percent for the men and 1 percent for the women.

Fitness paid off, even among people unlucky enough to suffer heart attacks. A study published this month using the same group of patients found that the risk of dying in the month after a heart attack was 14 percent in the under-6-METs group but only 6 percent in the over-12-METs group.

“Your baseline fitness now predicts your survival of that first heart attack. That’s an important message,” said Blaha, one of the authors of the new study.

Exercise’s ability to reduce a person’s chances of dying from cardiovascular disease extends well beyond the weekly 150 minutes of moderate exercise (or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise) currently recommended for adults.

An analysis of data from studies in the United States, Europe and Taiwan found the mortality risk bottomed out when a person did nine hours of moderate exercise or 4.8 hours of vigorous aerobic exercise per week (roughly 3 ½ times the recommended amount). At that point, a person’s risk of cardiovascular death was half that of someone who didn’t exercise at all.

So that’s the good news. The bad news is that exercise isn’t enough. You also have to stop sitting around when you’re not exercising. It turns out that sedentary behavior–defined as anything that takes less than 1.5 METs of effort–increases the risk of cardiovascular disease even if a person gets enough exercise.

A study of AARP members who got at least seven hours a week of moderate-to-vigorous exercise found that over an eight-year period, people who watched at least seven hours of TV per day were twice as likely to die of heart disease as people who watched less than an hour. Other studies have found similar effects.

The average American spends more than half of all waking hours in sedentary behavior, principally commuting or sitting in front of a computer screen or television. There are no government guidelines on the matter, but some experts say 10,000 footsteps a day–the equivalent of five miles of walking–should be the goal. (That would more than satisfy the exercise recommendation if done briskly enough.)

Taking that many steps is virtually impossible in an indoor job, even with standing desks and walking meetings. Nevertheless, people can make headway with the help of devices that count steps and chart them by hour, day, month and year.

“Tracking what’s happening is half the battle in pretty much everything that involves changing behavior,” said Haitham M. Ahmed, another preventive cardiologist at Hopkins. He advises his patients to use pedometers on wristwatches or smartphones, calling wearable activity tracking “a big breakthrough.”

So, if you don’t have one yet, there’s probably another screen in your future to obsess over, perhaps to better effect than Twitter and Instagram.

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