Bless This Bottled Water

Bless This Bottled Water

Forget Evian or Vitaminwater. The latest beverage trend: 'Holy Water.'

By Lisa Miller

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:24 PM ET Dec 8, 2007

You need only go back to the first chapter of Genesis to see how elemental water is to the observance of faith: "And the Spirit of God," the Bible says, "moved upon the face of the waters." In the Torah, water is used to ordain priests and to purify the sons of Aaron before they enter the temple. In the New Testament, John baptizes Jesus with water from the Jordan River. Observant Muslims wash hands and feet before they pray, orthodox Jewish women take ritual baths once a month—and every Christian denomination still uses water as part of its sacred rites. Mormons, when they take the weekly sacrament, drink water instead of wine.

So it's not surprising that a few savvy marketers would seize on this universal symbol of purity for financial gain. Inspired, perhaps, by vitamin and energy waters, a number of new companies have begun making more explicit claims: their water doesn't just promote good health, it actually makes you good. Holy Drinking Water, produced by a California-based company called Wayne Enterprises, is blessed in the warehouse by an Anglican or Roman Catholic priest (after a thorough background check). Like a crucifix or a rosary, a bottle of Holy Drinking Water is a daily reminder to be kind to others, says Brian Germann, Wayne's CEO. Another company makes Liquid OM, superpurified bottled water containing vibrations that promote a positive outlook. Invented by Kenny Mazursky, a sound therapist in Chicago, the water purportedly possesses an energy field that Mazursky makes by striking a giant gong and Tibetan bowls in its vicinity. He says the good energy can be felt not just after you drink the water but before, when you're holding the bottle.

The most recent entry in this niche is Spiritual Water. It's purified municipal water, sold with 10 different Christian labels. The Virgin Mary bottle, for example, has the Hail Mary prayer printed on the back in English and Spanish. Spiritual Water helps people to "stay focused, believe in yourself and believe in God," says Elicko Taieb, the Florida-based company's founder who was formerly in the pest-control business. All three companies give a portion of their profits to charity.

This small band of feel-good entrepreneurs may face objections from a surprising quarter. Some religious believers, also convinced of the elemental importance of water, are campaigning against its ubiquitous sale and packaging on the grounds that the practice is neither ethical nor good for the environment. "Water is life," says Sister Mary Zirbes, a nun in the Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls, Minn. "It really should not be a commodity to be bought." The Franciscan Sisters, together with a community of Benedictine nuns nearby, have launched a letter-writing campaign against the largest producers of bottled water and they've designed coasters to encourage people to drink glasses, not bottles, of water from the tap. The Vineyard church in Boise, Idaho, sells slim reusable plastic bottles in its bookstore, and it has placed water stations throughout the church. "In a world where a billion people have no reliable source of drinking water, where 3,000 children die every day of waterborne diseases, let's be clear: bottled water is not a sin, but it sure is a choice," says Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals. "Spending $15 billion a year on bottled water is a testimony to our conspicuous consumption, our culture of indulgence." Taieb calmly refutes the implication that his Spiritual Water is bad for the planet. People put fewer of his bottles in the trash, he says, because they don't want to discard images of Jesus or Mary. Instead, they refill them with other beverages. Obviously, even do-gooders can disagree. Some believe that water is life, while others believe that water is their livelihood.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/74380

Greenspan Says Odds of Recession in U.S. Are `Clearly Rising'

Vivien Lou Chen
Bloomberg
Friday December 14, 2007

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the risk of a U.S. recession is increasing and that economic growth is ``getting close to stall speed.''

While it's too soon to say a recession is coming, ``the odds are clearly rising,'' he said in an interview with National Public Radio yesterday. Excerpts of the conversation were published on the network's Web site.

The U.S. economic expansion, which began in 2001, is cooling after a third-quarter surge as the housing slump enters its third year and consumer spending slows. Martin Feldstein, head of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is responsible for dating U.S. economic cycles, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers are among those also raising the prospect of a downturn.

Greenspan, 81, left the Fed in January last year after almost two decades at the helm of the world's most powerful central bank. He has returned to his role as a private sector economic forecaster, speaking at conferences and to groups of bankers and investors. On Nov. 7, he told a conference in Sao Paolo that the chances of a recession were ``less than 50-50.''

Predictions that the six-year expansion is coming to an end have been countered by Allan Meltzer, professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Meltzer's case was strengthened yesterday by a Commerce Department report showing retail sales rose 1.2 percent in November, twice as much as economists anticipated.

Meltzer's Outlook

``We should still see reasonable sales growth and no recession,'' Meltzer, also a Fed historian, said in a telephone interview after the report. ``It's quite reasonable to expect high energy prices will slow business investment and, eventually, consumer spending, but people are working, the unemployment rate is low and Christmas is Christmas.''

Greenspan defended his record as a policy maker in a Wall Street Journal editorial on Dec. 12, saying that lowering the Fed's target interest rate to 1 percent in 2003 didn't have a major impact on demand for homes with adjustable-rate mortgages. Meltzer said later the same day that the former chairman ``lets himself off much too easy.''

Full article here.

Countdown: Giuliani Making Millions From Data Mining Company

You Tube
Friday December 14, 2007

Olbermann discusses with Arianna Huffington the millions Rudy Giuliani has made by more unsavory business tactics. His connections with terrorist countries, indicted aides and now his willingness to violate American's privacy rights lobbying (possibly illegal) for a data mining company come to light.

Principal Tells Teachers To Dumb-Down Standards

Andrew Kirtzman
CBS
Friday December 14, 2007

Have teachers at an East Harlem school been ordered to lower their standards because many students there are poor?

That's the impression some got from their principal's memo.

And now City Hall has stepped in.

The weather was gloomy Thursday outside Central Park East High School, but the talk was about a controversial memo from the school's principal.

"I don't think he thinks we're dumb," 12th grader Crystal Scarlett said. "He just thinks we can do much better than we're doing."

But not everyone agreed.

Last month, Principal Bennett Lieberman sent off a stern memo to teachers.

"If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional."

Was he ordering teachers to dumb down their classes?

The memo continued:

"Most of our students come from the lowest third percentile in academic achievement, have difficult home lives, and struggle with life in general. They DO NOT have a similar upbringing nor a similar school experience to our experiences growing up."

Some students took offense.

"That's not the way to pass," 12th grader Richard Palacios said. "That's not the way to get your education, so you're basically cheating yourself."

Full article here.