Unreal, August 16, 2006
Eat the Document Commontary™ — the rebuttal: The "Unreal's Dilemma" Commontary™contained a number of erroneous details that I would like to address. First, I want to highlight that it is a priority of Whole Foods Market to only use products that meet our strict quality standards. When Whole Foods Market first opened its doors in 1980, we set out on a simple mission: to provide a more natural alternative to the conventional grocery options available at that time. That mission still rings true today. Now, I would like to address each item referenced within the article separately.First, the sale of prosciutto containing nitrates. Whole Foods Market standards for natural meat go far beyond what the USDA requires for labeling meat as "natural." Our meat is minimally processed with no artificial additives or preservatives. That includes offering meat such as prosciutto without nitrates. With the product in question, it does not contain (nor did it ever contain) nitrates.
Whole Foods Market does not support the use of the synthetic growth hormone rBGH in dairy production. Our private-label brands and all organic milk is from cows and not given synthetic growth hormones. However, because of the structure of the commodity milk market, it is not possible to guarantee that milks other than our private label and organic milks are from cows not given rBGH. We have been working on delivering a guaranteed rBGH-free Whole Foods Market milk that will be on our shelves August 30.
Next, the use of hydrogenated fats in tortilla wraps. We searched far and wide to find a tortilla supplier that does not use hydrogenated fats. The supplier we use runs special batches that are free of hydrogenated fats specifically for Whole Foods Market. However, this supplier once accidentally used labels that listed hydrogenated fats as an ingredient. This product never contained hydrogenated fats. Since this incident, we have committed to personally ensuring every wrap is labeled accurately. We hope this helps clear up any confusion and look forward to continuing to satisfy and delight you in our store!
Tee Ayer, team leader
Whole Foods Market, Brentwood
Feature, July 27, 2006
Heather James, St. Clair
How many people does it take to form a cadre? So good to see the 9/11 truth movement hit a free medium such as the Riverfront Times. Thanks for the article.
Is a "cadre" less than 500,000 or more than 100,000? The number of Missourians in the cadre you speak of falls into that range. And that's just Missourians. Truth is always good, always right. All we ask is to reopen the 9/11 investigation.
Cherie Lawrence, St. Louis
The silence of the contrails: I really appreciated your article "What If...." I found it quite strange that other "n" word, "new world order," was not mentioned.
There is one request I have of the Riverfront Times as a public forum: Have some government official seriously respond to the purpose of the plowing of the skies with these chemtrails. We know they are not routine — we know there is a reason. We know they cost billions worldwide. Are they to speed up global warming? Depopulate the earth? The media silence on this subject is deafening.
Robert Pujol, St. Louis
Ignorance is bliss: "What If..." describes those who question the official 9/11 story as "uninformed" but fails to provide any examples of how these "uncredible" people are wrong. Like the court jester Glenn Beck, Ben Westhoff avoids any discussion of the facts, which are too damning, and resorts to name calling. He makes note of the 9/11 skeptics who did not know any of the victims of those attacks as if that is evidence of their mendacity. Without really describing any of the arguments against the official story, Westhoff seems to offer a rebuttal by referring to a Popular Mechanics article penned by Michael Chertoff's much younger cousin Benjamin, whose rapid ascent to the upper offices of a national publication must surely make Westhoff green with envy.
Westhoff does readers a disservice by describing William Rodriguez as a "jet-setting conspiracy theorist" without disclosing that Rodriguez, personally decorated as a hero by President Bush at the White House, was the last one out of the burning North Tower because he made three trips inside and helped fifteen people escape before that tower collapsed. Rodriguez does not claim that he was "pulled from the wreckage" but that he dove underneath a fire truck as the falling debris rained down around him. I don't know how Westhoff spent his time working up this article, but he sure didn't waste any of it by researching those annoying things that the rest of us call facts.
Although Westhoff mentions the fact that the 47-story Building 7 wasn't hit by any plane, the fact that it spontaneously collapsed neatly into its own footprint doesn't seem to bother him. He curiously avoids any discussion of this mysterious phenomenon and the government's absence of any plausible explanation. The 9/11 Commission, like Westhoff, found it unremarkable that WTC 7 was the first steel-frame building in recorded history to collapse due to fire alone, because WTC 7 is not mentioned anywhere in their 500-plus-page report, not even in a footnote.
Maybe Westhoff thinks ignorance is bliss, or maybe he's gunning for a job at FOX so he can quit pretending to be a real journalist and join the ranks of the paid propagandists.
Lance Weber, Kansas City
Christian says wake up and smell the fascism: The smoking gun of 9/11 is the collapse of Building 7. This was the third building to collapse that day. Building 7 was not hit by a plane, yet it imploded in its own footprint the same way the twin towers did. This is proof there were explosives planted in the building. On 9/11 the air force was given the order to stand down because the CIA was running a simulation to gauge the emergency response of a plane striking a building. There are hundreds of other pieces of evidence the public is unaware of. Most people are afraid to do any serious research about 9/11 because they are afraid of the truth. 9/11 was a black operation carried out by the only ones who could carry it out: our own government.
America is now a classic police state. It is time to wake up and smell the fascism.
Christian Peper, Richmond Heights
Who you calling nut cases? Westhoff's story does your readers a great disservice. What the government wants us to believe is that Bush is a great leader in the war on terror, having made brave "Let's go get 'em" speeches in the days after 9/11. This is what the Republicans sold in getting him re-cheated into office in 2004, and this is what the Democrats have been failing to debate.
What we can see while sitting in our armchairs consuming mainstream media is this: During the summer of 2001, Dubya set a record for the most vacation taken by a "sitting" (!) president, out-relaxing even the aged and infirm Eisenhower and Reagan. During that time the CIA delivered memos to his office predicting that bin Laden and al-Qaeda would soon attack the mainland of the U.S. using passenger airplanes as weapons.
Westhoff's article suggests that those who oppose the administration's load-of-crap explanations are lunatic-fringe nut cases, albeit hard-working, dedicated lunatic-fringe nut cases. In fact, one can oppose the administration's view of the war on terror and the Bush-league presidency without indulging in conspiracy theory and having the difficulty of disproving videotapes of airplanes hitting buildings.
Fred Blumenthal, St. Louis
