The Middle East Struggles with an Influx of Counterfeit Medicines
DAMASCUS -- A recent seizure of counterfeit drugs and the shutdown of the ring that provided them shows how Syria is stepping up its response to a problem that remains widespread in the Middle East.
The Muslim Middle East, anyway.
Piled up in huge plastic bags, the haul netted millions of dollars worth of breast cancer, leukemia and other medicines, along with tens of thousands of anticoagulant pills that purported to treat heart attacks and other diseases. At least 65 people were detained; it couldn't be learned if they were charged. A trial date hasn't yet been set.
All were fakes with no medicinal value, copies of legitimate medicines made by Novartis AG, Sanofi-Aventis SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Roche Holding AG and Pfizer Inc.
The bust, which also seized equipment used to make and package fake drugs, stopped one ring's lucrative trade of counterfeits to Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt, according to pharmaceutical-company managers and a Syrian official familiar with the investigation. Pfizer, Bristol-Myers, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis confirmed the Syrian seizures. A spokeswoman for Roche confirmed cases of counterfeiting in the Middle East but didn't provide further details.
Smuggling of drugs remains a widespread and dangerous problem. Figures from the World Health Organization show it can reach 35% of all drugs in the Middle East, compared to less than 1% in the U.S. and Western Europe. One confiscated shipment by the Syrian ring to Egypt contained counterfeit copies of one brand of a leukemia drugs with a street value of over $4 million -- equivalent to 50% of the annual sales of the brand.
Distributors not only sold the fake life-saving drugs to private pharmacies but also moved deep into the public heath-care system, particularly in Iraq. A huge plastic bag seen amid the Damascus counterfeit haul contained hundreds of boxes of a treatment for mouth ulcers, all bearing the logo of the Iraqi health ministry, witnesses say.
A great proportion of the fake drugs smuggled by the network to Egypt and Syria came from China, according to Syrian Health Minister Reda Saed, Some time around 2007, the ring started making its own fake drugs, using technology mostly imported from China, the Syrian officials and the pharmaceutical-company managers said. Many of the ingredients--such as huge drums of generic painkiller paracetamol (known as acetaminophen in the U.S.) --also came from China.
I believe you're thinking of the scandal in Iran because of the "Made in Israel" drugs, phil_b, but the entire country heaved a sigh of relief when they turned out to be Chinese fakes, saving a major politician's skin.
#5
CNN PM > seems SYRYUH'S "fake pharmaceuticals/drugs" arm reaches into AFRICA, where it provides badly needed local jobs. Workers don't seem to care that they are produc fakes.
#4
So why not just carry a Tec-9 or a Mac-10? They are both cheap and cheerful. Or a good, old fashioned machine pistol, if you want something that looks like a pistol but fires full auto.
#7
Guns are NOISY. An axe can take out anything smaller than a grizzly, without making any noise. Crossbows and axe-handles are quiet and effective, also. Dealing with grizzlies or some three-time loser, however, I'd prefer something a tad bit more useful, like a 155MM howitzer - or at least a MA-deuce.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
02/16/2010 19:54 Comments ||
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Thousands of entrepreneurs and celebrities face huge tax bills after a British businessman based in the Seychelles lost a long-running court battle over his residency yesterday.
The Court of Appeal ruled that Robert Gaines-Cooper was liable to pay UK tax despite spending less than 91 days a year in the country because England had remained the centre of gravity of his life and interests'.
#1
It is synonymous with curry and trendy bars, nightclubs and art venues. Now a plan to mark the entry points to London's cosmopolitan Brick Lane with giant arches in the shape of headscarves or hijabs has been condemned as offensive to Muslim women and a waste of £1.85m of public funds.
#2
Muslims, and muslim women, offended by the glorification of the hijab as a symbol of oppression, is a step in the right direction. The responses of neighbourhood residents are very valid and reasonable. Finally seeing some moderate muslims?
The rantings of the sculpture spokesperson are price. just try and follow her logic without crashing.
An anti-whaling activist from New Zealand is in custody on a Japanese vessel and will be taken to Japan to face charges after secretly boarding the ship as part of a protest, officials said Tuesday.
Peter Bethune, a member of the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd activist group, jumped aboard the Shonan Maru 2 from a Jet Ski on Monday with the stated goal of making a citizen's arrest of the ship's captain and presenting him with a $3 million bill for the destruction of a protest ship last month.
The Japanese government has decided to bring Bethune to Japan for questioning, Fisheries Agency official Osamu Ishikawa said. He will be charged with trespassing and assault and tried under Japanese law, Ishikawa said.
He said officials were working out the details of how to transport Bethune to Japan -- whether to keep him on the vessel, which will be at sea for a few more weeks, or to drop him off in a port call and fly him back. Keep him in the hold. Better yet, the bilges ...
The brazen boarding was the latest escalation of a campaign by Sea Shepherd to hamper Japanese whaling activities.
Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research, which sponsors the whale hunt, said Bethune used a knife to cut the vessel's protective net to enable his boarding and that he told whalers he then threw the knife into the sea. The crew treated him for a cut on his thumb he received while boarding, the institute said. Use the sepsis paste ...
Under Japanese law, intruding on a Japanese vessel without legitimate reasons can bring a prison term of up to three years and a fine up to 100,000 yen (US$1,100).
Bethune was being held in the brig a room by himself with guards posted outside, Fisheries Ministry official Toshinori Uoya said.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said it seemed Bethune's intention was to be detained aboard the whaling ship, but his country nevertheless had an obligation to try to help him and was seeking cooperation from Japanese diplomats. Why? International law applies. You don't need to help him, you just need to protect your interests.
McCully met Japan's ambassador Tuesday, and New Zealand's top diplomat in Japan met senior officials there Monday.
Sea Shepherd said Bethune demanded the cost of replacing the Ady Gil, an activist ship he captained that was destroyed in a collision with the Shonan Maru 2 last month, and the surrender of the whaling ship's captain on attempted murder charges.
The Ady Gil sank after the collision, though there were only minor injuries.
Japan has six whaling ships in Antarctic waters under its scientific whaling program, an allowed exception to the International Whaling Commission's 1986 ban on commercial whaling. It hunts hundreds of mostly minke whales, which are not an endangered species. Whale meat not used for study is sold for consumption in Japan, which critics say is the real reason for the hunts.
The Sea Shepherd sends vessels to confront the fleet each year, trying to block the whalers from firing harpoons and dangling ropes in the water to try to snarl the Japanese ships' propellers. The whalers have responded by firing water cannons and sonar devices meant to disorient the activists.
Posted by: john frum ||
02/16/2010 09:36 ||
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Sure hope he likes fish-head soup
Posted by: john frum ||
02/16/2010 9:46 Comments ||
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#4
Well.. I'm in Japanese prison Lord
Japanese prison got me down
Said I'm in Japanese prison Lord
Don't belong here... my eyes are round
-Japanese Prison Blues sung by "Eric Cartman"
Posted by: john frum ||
02/16/2010 10:16 Comments ||
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#5
Drop him off on one of the unihabited Kerguelen Islands with a knife and blanket. After a week he'll kill for a whaleburger.
#6
Maybe he can be in the live action sequel to 'The Story of Ricky', one of the all time great bulldada movies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnhLtB3n25c
The best prison, monster, martial arts, ultraviolence, drugs, sadism, spoiled fat boy, and downright Nietzschean movie ever made. Except in this case, "That which kills you makes you stronger."
#9
I've eaten whale. It's OK but Beef steaks are better.
What does the meat taste like? Beef?
Posted by: john frum ||
02/16/2010 14:08 Comments ||
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#10
He said officials were working out the details of how to transport Bethune to Japan -- whether to keep him on the vessel, which will be at sea for a few more weeks, or to drop him off in a port call and fly him back.
Spain's intelligence services are investigating the role of investors and media in debt market turbulence over the last few weeks, El Pais reported on Sunday.
Citing unnamed sources, El Pais said the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) was looking into "speculative attacks" on Spain following the Greek debt crisis. "The (CNI's) Economic Intelligence division...is investigating whether investors' attacks and the aggressiveness of some Anglo-Saxon media are driven by market forces and challenges facing the Spanish economy, or whether there is something more behind this campaign," El Pais said. Officials at the CNI were not available for comment.
The report comes days after Public Works Minister Jose Blanco protested "somewhat murky manoeuvres" were behind financial market pressure on Spain. "None of what is happening in the world, including the editorials of foreign newspapers, is coincidental or innocent," Blanco said.
Economists have cast doubt on forecasts that Spain's economy will grow by some 3 percent by 2012, on which the government has based predictions it will cut back on its gaping budget deficit.
Some economists have said Spain's deficit could be more of a threat than Greece to the euro, the common currency of 16 European countries.
Spain's deficit has soared to 11.4 percent of its gross domestic product amid its deepest recession in decades, but the government has pledged to cut the gap back to a eurozone limit of 3 percent by 2013 by cutting 50 billion euros in spending.
Markets doubt that Spain will be able to cut back drastically on spending with unemployment running at 20 percent and a big slice of the budget in the hands of fiercely independent regional governments.
Underscoring those doubts, the premium demanded by investors for buying Spanish rather than German government bonds ES10YT=RR has risen in recent weeks and the cost of insuring Spanish bonds against default by the government has also risen.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2010 00:00 ||
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"None of what is happening in the world, including the editorials of foreign newspapers, is coincidental or innocent," Blanco said.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
#5
Soros should possibly be in jail for a number of reasons, particularly his shady UN related deals. However, his speculating on the currency markets is not one of them.
#8
I thought Soros *was* a Juice, grom. Of sorts. Which is part of why the whole group-identity thing sucks. There's all sorts in your average large-scale group.
Are the Socialists still in charge of Spain? I've lost track, to be honest. Iberia isn't really at the front of my list of important topics normally.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/16/2010 12:09 Comments ||
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#9
Iberia isn't really at the front of my list of important topics normally. Same here. However, a default in Greek or Spanish sovereign debt will most likely cause a crisis for the US Treasury.
Kroft: And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
Soros: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that thats when my character was made.
Kroft: In what way?
Soros: That one should think ahead. One should understand thatand anticipate events and when, when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was aa very personal threat of evil.
Kroft: My understanding is that you went went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.
Soros: Yes, thats right. Yes.
Kroft: I mean, thatsthat sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
Soros: Not, not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you dont you dont see the connection. But it wasit created nono problem at all.
Kroft: No feeling of guilt?
Soros: No.
Kroft: For example, that, Im Jewish, and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be these, I should be there. None of that?
Soros: Well, of course, ... I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldnt be there, because that waswell, actually, in a funny way, its just like in the marketsthat is I werent thereof course, I wasnt doing it, but somebody else wouldwouldwould be taking it away anyhow. And it was thewhether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So theI had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.
Peretzs conclusion:
So this is the psychodrama that has been visited on American liberalism. We learn Soros never has nightmares. Had he been tried in a de-Nazification process for having been a young cog in the Hitlerite wheel, he would have felt that, since other people would have confiscated the same Jewish property and delivered the same deportation notices to the same doomed Jews, it was as if he hadnt done it himself. He sleeps well ....
#12
I read his autobiography. My take is he is amoral, and that is his personality makeup. He mimics normal emotions but doesn't feel them. He accounts of his life in Hungary were boring, and IRRC, almost devoid of emotion. Life reading a dry manuascript, not a chain of harrowing events. Eerie.
#13
The question is whether it was caused by his experiences, or is just 'who he is'.
Glenmore, everything I've read says that the experience of the Holocaust made people more intensely themselves, whatever their inborn nature... including those with some sort of flaw that led them to crack under the pressure. Soros is a psychopath. Under normal conditions he would perhaps merely have grown up to torment his wife and employees instead of chosen portions of the world.
[Iran Press TV Latest] As Ukraine's premier prepares to contest the results of a February 7 run-off vote, Moscow extends an invitation to the country's president-elect Viktor Yanukovich.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's invitation on Monday comes as Yanukovich said he had placed the question of replacing his main election rival, Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, at the top his new coalition's priorities.
He can not veto the parliamentary coalition's choice, but must approve it.
Tymoshenko, who lost the election by a margin of 3.5%, has refused calls to admit defeat and resign, and her camp said Monday they were preparing evidence to back their allegations of mass election fraud.
Although a vote of no-confidence in parliament can push her out, she would continue to stay on as acting prime minister until a replacement is found.
Yanukovich, who was officially announced as the country's new chosen leader by Ukraine's main election commission on Sunday, is widely seen as pro-Russian.
One of his first unveiled plans, following victory in the polls, was to suggest a possibility of extending the permission for Russia's Sevastopol Naval Fleet to stay beyond scheduled withdrawal in 2017.
International observers, including the OSCE, said the election was free and fair.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2010 00:00 ||
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wasnt this guy poisoned last time he went officially to Moscow? Was some time ago.
#2
From memory: Yanukovich and Putin were suspected of instigating the Dioxin poisoning of current president Victor Yushchenko. The actual poisoner was suspected to be a (newly elected) Yanukovich supported secret police general who had invited Yushchenko to a bury the hatchet meeting and fed him dioxin soup.
Posted by: ed ||
02/16/2010 14:43 Comments ||
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#3
Yanukovich was the "winner" of the election about 4-5 years ago. Even congratulated by Putin as the victor.
He was overturned by popular protest by Yushchenko, who by all accounts, was poisoned by dioxin by agents of Russia before the election. The rebellion against the results was called the "Orange Revolution."
And if I remember right, I read on Rantburg that the CIA had funded an op where the paid for vast amounts of vodka that ran into Yanukovich's supporters who were planning to crack heads at the Orange protests in Kiev. LULZ.
Fact is, The Ukraine is split. Half Ukrainian and Western leaning, and half Eastern and Russian leaning - Stalin's legacy on the country. There's an incredible amount of corruption on both sides. Nuance in American foreign policy is needed. There are no black hats and white hats here.
#2
that is a hard one to figure... bet is is because the Utopian plan didn't quite turn out right, so they just need more money and more time to expand it enough that it will
Posted by: abu do you love ||
02/16/2010 3:19 Comments ||
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#3
19% unemployment!
We always think we have it bad here.
We don't usually realize how good we've got it compared to the rest of the world.
As authorities searched for clues into what could have sent a University of Alabama neurobiology professor on an alleged killing spree, friends and family yesterday described Braintree native Amy Bishop as an awkward introvert on the brink of losing her teaching job.
Bishop's husband, James Anderson, told the Herald his wife had been fighting the university for over a year about a tenure denial, and several months ago received a final decision. She was upset, but not overly emotional, approaching her appeal like a game of chess,' he said.
Police in Huntsville, Ala., charged Bishop, 44, with capital murder after she allegedly opened fire on six colleagues at a faculty meeting Friday, killing three. Afterward, she calmly called her husband and asked him to pick her up as if nothing had happened, said police Chief Henry Reyes.
She was an oddball - just not very sociable,' said Sylvia Fluckiger, a former lab technician who worked with Bishop in 1993.
Bishop acknowledged at the time being questioned in the bombing attempt of a Harvard medical doctor evaluating her on doctorate work, a professor with whom Bishop was known to quarrel, Fluckiger said.
Reyes confirmed he is working with the FBI to learn more about why Bishop was a suspect in the attempted bombing of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, who received a double-pipe bomb in the mail on Dec. 19, 1993. He ran from his Newton home with his wife, escaping without injury. The bomb never exploded.
She was quite cavalier about it,' Fluckiger said of Bishop's description of her interview with police. She said Bishop grinned' as she described being asked by cops whether she'd ever taken stamps off an envelope and fastened them onto something else. I cannot tell you what the grin meant,' Fluckiger said.
Seven years prior, Bishop shot her brother to death in Braintree in an incident that was ruled an accident at the time.
But Braintree police Chief Paul Frazier has raised questions about the handling of the case, and officials are investigating missing records in the 1986 death of 18-year-old Seth Bishop.
A classmate of Seth Bishop's recalled yesterday that the boy, who was painfully shy,' never talked about his older, only sibling.
It was as if he was a complete stranger in her life. It seemed like a dysfunctional family. We just accepted them as being odd,' said the classmate, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity.
Amy Bishop, he said, wasn't mean because she wasn't someone you could get close to. She wasn't an attractive girl, she didn't have friends. She didn't work at having friends. I think people probably, over time, learned to leave her alone.'
The Bishop household, he said, was anything but a home . . . It was just a really dreary, dark place where there wasn't a lot of love.'
Meanwhile, in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Anderson said he was searching for the trigger' to his wife's breakdown, and that he wondered whether an e-mail message - potentially in the form of a final tenure denial - might have upset her, because university higher-ups were known to send nastygrams' on Fridays.
A family source said Bishop, a mother of four children - the youngest a third-grade boy - was a far-left political extremist who was obsessed' with President Obama to the point of being off-putting.
But Mercedes Paz, a Brookline biochemist who also oversaw Bishop's work in 1993, described her as a friend and a likable woman.
She was a very good person,' said Paz, 81. She was respectful and she did what she was supposed to do. I never saw anything that could make me think she was violent.'
The header on Drudge was: "REPORT: Alabama shooter is 'far-left political extremist who was 'obsessed' with President Obama'... "...not sure where the 'report' is, but this shooter genuinely does not fit the mold of a 'right-winger'. So...
Question for Janet Napalitano (who is likely having this blog scanned for 'chatter'): Are you now prepared to amend your idiotic document titled 'Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment'?
Are you so idiotic to dismiss that extremists & frustrated radicals on YOUR side of the aisle might be as dangerous as those you portray in that very, very biased report? Sadly, it will likely take a much more tragic occurance for these leftist politicians to acknowledge their 'profiling' of political enemies blinds them to the reality of radicalism, extremism and, lest we not forget, simple 'emotional instability'. BITE ME, Janet.
#1
not even FoxNews has pointed out the 'far left' aspect of this yet (as far as I know) and you can be sure the WaPo, NYTimes, etc. will do everything possible to avoid reporting it
this would be a good idea except that if Dr B had been a Tea Party fan, it would lead the news for a week
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/16/2010 13:59 Comments ||
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#2
you can be sure the WaPo, NYTimes, etc. will do everything possible to avoid reporting it
Centrists? You wish. Keep on deluding yourself, fool. The more energy you spend dreaming up arguments like this the less energy you can waste destroying this country with your ignorant, wandering logic. Editor's note: John P. Avlon is senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of the new book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America."
(CNN) -- She was caught red-handed. The surreal scene of Sarah Palin referring to notes written on her palm during a Q&A session after her speech at the National Tea Party convention has validated skeptics even as it's been dismissed by her supporters. She looked at her hand unflinchingly. She knew people would be aware of it. She also knew sane people wouldn't care.
This disconnect is a real problem for Palin and the Republican Party. Palin's presidential hopes are already confronting the fact that she is the most polarizing figure in American politics. Disconnect? I don't think so. I'm kinda enjoying watching you and your kind thrash yourselves to death because you can't figure it out or don't want to because you think your readers are fools enough to follow you over that cliff you don't seem to recognize.
She is queen of the conservative populists, and to her supporters she can do no wrong. She is despised by Democrats. But -- and here's the biggest hurdle -- she is disliked and distrusted by Independents and centrists. Actually, I just want her elected to office so I can see more of her. Maybe I could get her to revive the "Fireside Chat", too. Better yet, maybe the "Bedtime Nightgown Chat". Or the "Poolside Chat". Or the "Tanning Bed Chat". Or the "Bicycle Ride" chat. I suppose I'd better lay off now so I stand a better chance of coming back in a better form in my next life.
Or more quickly than expected exiting this one, my dear.
Palin's "Palm-gate" incident matters because it validates the doubts deeply held by Sarah skeptics in the center of the American electorate. Palm-gate? Please don't tell me that you are at the bottom of your shallow barrel already.
I was in the room when she gave her speech at Nashville's Opryland Hotel. It was well-written and rapturously received by the Tea Party crowd. It was part campaign speech and part state of the union address, focusing on foreign policy for the first 15 minutes -- a subject rarely discussed inside the Tea Party movement -- before she got to the red meat of deficits and debt. I guess she should have avoided those topics because they are a bit harsh on liberal self-esteem?
It had a string of her patented folksy and sarcastic one-liners, such as "How's that hopey-changey thing working for ya?" It brought the house down. And then there was the one-liner that would haunt her a few minutes later: a dig at President Obama as "a charismatic guy with a teleprompter." It might haunt you, but Sarah probably just thinks you are a desperate fool who would rather do anything except change the liberal agenda.
Ironically, Palin is a charismatic gal who could have used a teleprompter that night. It would have helped her avoid looking down at her text half the time, and it would have slowed her delivery to the pace she used in her devastatingly effective 2008 convention address. Note to all Dems: Don't look at the texts of your speeches from now on or you will no longer be fit for office.
But she presumably avoided a teleprompter in part to use that one line -- and the audience loved it. When it came time for the post-speech question-and-answer session, no one announced that she had been given the questions in advance. It wouldn't have sounded very populist. Presumably? Whose presumption?
But that's the only explanation for why she had written notes on her hand. That such a stunt would get a kid kicked out of a junior high classroom isn't the point -- the real problem is the question that prompted the note-taking. Yeah. Feeding her the questions beforehand or filtering them so only approved questions get to her is certainly not the way to do things. If you are some kind of liberal who doesn't get what this meeting is all about. Are you telling me you are that foolish? You need to be out of a job until you understand these things. BTW, do I remember certain Democrats filtering town hall meetings that were supposedly "open to the public" in just such a fashion? These Tea Party meetings are one thing, but town halls are another. Shame on whoever corrupts a town hall meeting as was done by the Dems.
Palin was asked to recommend the top three things Republicans should do when they retake Congress. The follow-up was the first three things she would do if elected president. The first ought to be to put our best and brightest geneticists to work trying to figure out what is wrong with the liberal brain these days.
She wrote on her hand the following notes: "energy"; "budget cuts" ("budget" was then crossed out and replaced with "tax" -- presumably because a call for budget cuts would require sticky specifics); and "lift American spirits" -- the last being a call for more reliance on God in our politics. Could you explain what you mean by that last sentence, rudderless one?
The questions would have been softballs even if she hadn't seen them in advance. The answers are so boilerplate that a candidate for city council wouldn't need prompting. You wouldn't be referring to the ludicrous idea of Obumble going in without his loyal sidekick Prompto, would you?
That Palin believed she needed to write them down is the political equivalent of reminding yourself to breathe. The gap between Palin's scripted surgical strikes in her speech and the need to rely on notes for a simple question she saw in advance validates the doubts that nonconservatives have long had about her. Gee. She winged the whole thing and stumbled on a few words written on her hand. You are running so scared you left reason behind.
A poll taken toward the end of the 2008 campaign found that 47 percent of centrists said her selection made them less likely to vote for John McCain as president. A July 2009 Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 58 percent of independent voters did not believe that she understood complex issues. Well, she'll be off McCain's leash in 2012. And way more people watch Fox than the rest of the cable news networks combined. We'll see how this scenario plays out.
Palin's Palm-gate only compounds these problems. No one should doubt Palin's appeal to the conservative base -- she is beloved beyond reason, seen as the embodiment of God and Country, the "real America" antidote to the multicultural elitism some Tea Partiers associate with Obama. And NASCAR fans go gaga over her, too. But they are just another drooling subculture that you and other libs probably will agree are safe to ignore.
Any mistakes she makes between now and the nomination will be dismissed by her supporters as the liberal media playing "gotcha" politics. No other prospective GOP candidate for 2012 can match her fans' enthusiasm, and she will be the biggest draw on the 2010 midterm election circuit. You mean like Dems play "gotcha" with Lott, but dismiss it with Reid?
That's enough to win the pivotal first Iowa caucus and possibly the 2012 nomination. But in an America where independents outnumber Republicans or Democrats, fielding a presidential candidate with negative crossover appeal is a path to electoral disaster. Disaster according to you, anyway. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Avlon. And lovingly placed on a pedestal by CNN for its tiny audience to read in order to feel better about their perspective.
#8
She is queen of the conservative populists, and to her supporters she can do no wrong.
Actually, I thought she was a quitter for resigning last summer. I'm still not too happy about that, to be honest. But really, when her opponents have the miserable gall to refer to a middle-aged female politician giving a serious speech as a "gal", it's hard to not get my back up about the whole thing.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/16/2010 12:04 Comments ||
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#2
There are some very deep underlying psychologies to male facial hair, and the lack thereof. By 3,000 B.C., shaving was already well known in more urban societies, and in ancient Egypt, nobody could even enter the great temple at Karnak, from priest to Pharoah, from the 12th Century B.C., unless their entire body had been shaved of all hair.
As a rule, infants tend to shy away from facial hair, perhaps fearing masculine faces, yet tend to reflect the facial appearance of their fathers, to be more attractive to their fathers. Paradoxical.
Even in the modern era in the US, facial hair was alternatively required and prohibited with strong social sanctions as late as World War I, and to some extent still exists, more as fashion than for conformity reasons.
It has even been noted that women tend to be more attracted to "masculine men" as they approach the most fertile part of their menstrual cycle, but with the use of birth control pills, they tend to be more attracted to less masculine men throughout the month.
Males also vary considerably in their levels of testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, and other androgen that regulate hair growth. During time of conflict, they assume that masculine appearance is related to fighting ability, so a bigger beard, for example, means a better fighter.
#1
I have a nice key that will unlock my F150's cab and even turn the ignition on. However, it can't start the vehicle. The cited system doesn't work for transponder-type keys, which most Ford vehicles have needed for over 10 years. If a car thief really wants your vehicle, he will simply tow it away.
#2
Tow lift bar on the back, grab it in a hurry and pull round the block, then pull it the rest of the way up onto the flat bed. 30 seconds is all they need if they really want it - repo guys do it all the time.
Weather stations which produced data pointing towards man-made global warming may have been compromised by local conditions, a new report suggests.
The findings are set to cast further doubt on evidence put forward by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which claims the science supporting rising temperatures is unequivocal.
The report co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate sceptic, shows photographs of weather stations near heat-generating equipment which could be distorting their readings.
Some are next to air-conditioning units or on waste-treatment plants, while one sits alongside a waste incinerator. A weather station at Rome airport was found to catch the hot exhaust fumes emitted by taxiing jets.
Rising temperatures around the stations, which have been in use for 150 years, could also have been caused by urbanisation, the study claimed. One weather station at Manchester airport, which was built when the surrounding land was mainly fields, is now surrounded by heated buildings.
The IPCC used data from the weather stations to back up claims that greenhouse gases had already caused a 0.7C rise in temperature, and gave warnings that further warming of up to 6C by 2100 could have devastating effects on civilisation and wildlife.
But the panel has been mired in controversy since the leaking of emails from the climate change unit at The University of East Anglia, which appeared to show that data used to bolster the IPCC's claims had been manipulated.
Four major errors have also been uncovered in the second of the panel's four reports on the state of global climate change, published in 2007.
Most embarrasing for the IPCC was the inaccurate claim that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 - hundreds of years earlier than other studies suggest - which was not backed up by any research.
The damaging new findings by Mr Watts, whose study has not been peer reviewed, are backed by Professor John Christy, a former lead author on the IPCC who specialises in atmospheric science at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
Prof Christy has published research papers examining the effects of local factors on weather stations in California, Alabama and east Africa, which he believes drastically undermine the reliability of global temperature records.
"The story is the same for each one. The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the local weather stations, such as land development," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
"The damaging new findings by Mr Watts, whose study has not been peer reviewed"
Hard to get a "peer review" when you are kept out of the publications by the warmists.
Some of the locations (surrounded by parking lots, right next to an airport tarmac, 9 feet from an air-conditioner outlet....) makes you wonder if any if the data collected is worth anything. It can't help but to be skewered.
#4
Indeed, gorb. And we got it from posted links to Mr. Watts' site, which some Rantburgers follow. Our weather professionals have shared their own pithy observations over the years as well.
/Rantburg: sometimes scooping the MSM by days, sometimes by years. ;-)
#6
I mentioned Watts to my meteo-PhD boss last night, and he scurried back to his office to show me an early-Eighties vintage report he had co-authored, wherein he and a ton of grad students did something similar to what Watts is doing now, back in the days before the Stevenson shelters were replaced by the electronic doo-hickeys. His conclusions (and data!) was pretty much similar to what Watts is finding now - the vast majority of stations have always been crap - affected by creeping UHI, poorly sited, badly maintained, indifferently monitored.
The boss blamed "Reagan-era cuts" for a lot of it, though. He said that they used to send guys out periodically to do maintenance on the weather stations, until that got cut. A lot of the people the stations nominally belonged to thought that the grad students showing up to evaluate their stations were the long-overdue maintenance guys, who never were going to come again.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
02/16/2010 12:16 Comments ||
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#7
The fact that this is considered "new" is the biggest fraud.
The only thing new in this fraud is the motives of those involved has now been revealed:
excerpt from Follow the money: BBC exposed in biggest climate racket on planet
Despite the string of calamities that have befallen the UN since the Climategate scandal first broke last November, the UNEP FI consortium is feverishly demanding that governments impose higher fuel duties and caps on carbon emissions that will encourage scarcity and demand. Thus this profit-chasing unholy alliance of conspirators will still be able to cream off some of the loot for their green pension scams. The losers in the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time are western taxpayers and Third World poor who will likely suffer starvation and disease due to the increased costs of food and essential medicines.
The chairman of IIGCC and BBC head of pensions investment Peter Dunscombe said:
The credibility of emissions trading schemes would be greatly improved with a robust price signal as well as clear and frequent communication from the regulator on trading data and improved transparency over direct government participation in schemes.
Yes, you did read that correctly: IIGCC chairman and BBC head of pensions investment Peter Dunscombe
The BBC is in the chair of this carbon trading driven investment scheme. Now you know why the BBCs thought police have been censoring climate skeptics shamelessly for years.
UKIPs Member of the European Parliament, Godfrey Bloom was vilified by the warmist press for refusing to back down from his attack on the BBC in the UKs fine Daily Telegraph, in which he said:
The BBC has blocked skeptics of climate change for four years now, no debate is allowed on the BBC. It is biased reporting and it is censorship.....Those British organizations tied into IIGCC who may have a conflict of interest when they communicate with you include the following:
Baptist Union of Great Britain
Bedfordshire Pension Fund
BT Pension Scheme
Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church
Corporation of London Pension Fund
Environment Agency Pension Fund
Greater Manchester Pension Fund
Kent County Council
London Borough of Hounslow Pension Fund
London Borough of Islington Pension Fund
London Borough of Newham Pension Fund
London Pensions Fund Authority
Merseyside Pension Fund
Roman Catholic Diocese of Plymouth
Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford
South Yorkshire Pensions Authority
The Church Commissioners for England
The Church in Wales
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth
United Reform Church
Universities Superannuation Scheme
West Midlands Metropolitan Authorities Pension Fund
West Yorkshire Pension Fund
THE Khmer Rouge 'First Lady' has threatened her fellow former regime leaders and prison guards at least 70 times while detained at Cambodia's UN-backed genocide court, a prosecutor said on Monday.
The allegation was made as the former minister of social affairs, Ieng Thirith, 78, appealed for her release before she is tried for crimes against humanity and genocide for her role in the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge government. She is one of five top regime figures detained at the court, which was set up to try leaders of the movement which killed up to two million people through starvation, overwork, torture and execution.
'She regularly and violently, on at least 70 occasions, threatened co-detainees at the detention facility and also threatened guards at the detention facility,' prosecutor Vincent de Wilde told judges. The prosecutor argued that if Ieng Thirith was released before her trial, expected to begin next year, she could 'instil fear in victims and potential witnesses'.
In her previous appeal last year, Ieng Thirith said in a tirade that those who called her a murderer 'will be cursed to the seventh level of hell", blaming atrocities on Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea and prison chief Duch. Nuon Chea and Duch are being held with Ieng Thirith in the jail at the court along with her husband, former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, and the regime's head of state, Khieu Samphan.
The bespectacled Ieng Thirith sat with her arms folded during most of Monday's hearing, delegating her lawyers to plead on her behalf. Her defence team said her outburst last year showed she was 'very vulnerable' and asked prosecutors 'not to make any inflammatory statements'.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. Final arguments in the court's first trial, that of Duch, real name Kaing Guek Eav, ended in November and a verdict is expected after April this year.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/16/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Too big to fit in a single seat, he had purchased two seats, but on standby, only one seat was available at the earlier time.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/16/2010 7:09 Comments ||
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#2
Commercial aircraft seem something of a production throwback. What with computer aided design, you would think that "designer aircraft" would be much more viable.
For example, why not have some aircraft on popular routes that have some special seating for obese people?
And nobody has come up with a more efficient design for a prone medical transport, than just a single layer of cots. Two or more times as many people could be put on such flights with some careful design--saving lives in a mass casualty situation.
#4
He was flying Southwest which competes with the bus company not other airlines. If he wasn't so cheap thrifty given that he's someone of 'note', he certainly should have taken a premium carrier who would been more than accommodating based upon the size of his pocketbook not his girth.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Weather stations which produced data pointing towards man-made global warming may have been compromised by local conditions, a new report suggests. 
