I don't know if it'll do any good, but let's see his email harvested by a zillion bots for a change.
Good Day,
Well, it was, at least before the cable modem was hit by a power surge...
I am Dr.Mathias Heinz, the African Regional manager of Barclays Private Banking Sector, 322 Oxford Drive, Sandton-Johannesburg, South Africa. What I wish to relate to you will smack of unethical practice gee, I never suspected but I want you to understand something. On June 6, 1999, Mr. Dudley Roy a Panamas citizen and also an Oil merchant came to our Bank to engage in business discussions with our private banking Division. He told us that he had a financial portfolio of Forty Three Million Seven Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($43.7M), which he wished to have us turn over (invest) on his behalf. Based on the investment, we spun the money around which with accrued profit and interest Stood at over Fifty Seven Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($57.5M). In September 10th 2002, he asked that the money be Liquidated because he needed to make an urgent investment requiring cash Payments in Riyadh-Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Why does this sound like some sort of money laundering deal to me?
He directed that I liquidate the funds and Have it deposited with a Security firm in Cape Town, South Africa. I informed him that Barclays Bank would Have to make special arrangements to have this done and in order not to Circumvent due process; the bank would have to make a 9.5 % deduction from The funds to cater for banking and statutory charges.
This sounds a little steep to me, but I never deal with these sorts of amounts of money.
He complained about the charges but later came around when I explained to him the complexities of the task he was asking of us. I undertook all the processes and made sure I followed his precise Instructions to the letter and had the Funds deposited at the Cape town based Security Consultancy firm, Mr. Dudley Roy told me he wanted the money there in anticipation of his arrival from Moscow later that week. This was the last communication we had, this transpired around 25th October 2003.In June later year, we got a call from the security firm informing us about The inactivity of that particular portfolio. This was an astounding position as far as I was concerned; given the fact that I managed the private banking sector I was the only one Who knew about the deposit at Cape Town based Security Firm and I could not understand Why Mr. Dudley had not come forward to claim his deposit.
OK, he's coming from Russia, and going to Saudi Arabia.
I made futile efforts to locate Mr. Dudley no success, Four weeks later, information started to trickle in, apparently Mr. Dudley Roy was dead. A person who suited his description was declared dead in a Bomb blast in South of Baghdad-Iraq. While Iraq is between Russia and Saudi Arabia, AFAIK a commercial flight would probably go direct... so this guy was going from Russia to Saudi Arabia, and stopping in Baghdad along the way? Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering? We were soon able to identify the body and cause of death was confirmed. Wait a second: you were sought out to identify the body? I didn't think that was standard procedure, especially given the distance between South Africa and Iraq. The bank immediately launched an investigation into possible Surviving next of kin to alert about the situation and also to come forward to claim his estate. This bank has spent great amounts of money trying to track this mans family; they have investigated for months and have found no family. I'd suggest trying Panama, or any of the current or former British colonies in the Carribean region. The investigation has come to an end. And here's the suprise: My proposal; I am prepared to place you in a position to instruct Cape Town Based Security Firm to release the deposit to you as the closest surviving relation.
You're right; this DOES sound unethical to me. Maybe you should try looking harder for other relations. I can't believe I went out and bought a new router/modem so I could receive this.
Upon receipt of the deposit, I am prepared to share the money with you in half. That is: I will simply nominate you as the next of kin and have them Release the deposit to you. We share the proceeds 50/50. I would have gone ahead to ask the funds be released to me, but that would have drawn a straight line to me and my involvement in claiming the deposit, I assure you that I could have the deposit released to you within a few days. I will simply inform the bank of the final closing of the file relating to Mr. Dudley. I will then officially communicate with Cape Town based Security Firm and instruct them to release the deposit to you. I am aware of the consequences of this proposal. I ask that if you find no interest in this project that you should discard this mail. I ask that you do not be vindictive and destructive.
I'm not being vindictive or destructive. I'm just trying to help you find the real next of kin by posting this message to the internet.
If my offer is of no appeal to you, delete this message and forget I ever contacted you but if you are interested you should contact me on the above telephone number or the email.
Looking at the capitalization patterns, I doubt the writer was a native speaker of English or German; I don't know Dutch or Afrikaans, but I suspect they would be close to English or German in such matters.
Regards
Dr.Mathias Heinz
I hope that this post helps you, or at least helps Mr. Roy's relatives.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/21/2005 9:11:14 PM ||
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Keen observers of a sketch about a celebrity roast of Clint Eastwood might have noticed something peculiar about how the show's host, David Spade, was made up to look like Owen Wilson.
His nose looked like a penis. Not 'kind of like a penis'; it looked like a urologically-correct appendage, right down to what we believe is called the dorsal vein.
(with pic)
A large investigation is under way into how traffickers managed to smuggle drugs out of Belgium inside live cows. On Monday, the Belgian website of broadcaster RTL reported that traffickers had been hiding drugs in the uteruses of cattle. The cows were taken to Spain and France where the drugs were extracted before the animals went to slaughter. The public prosecutor's office confirmed that police were drawing straws carrying out further inquiries into the matter in the regions of Wetteren and Termonde. However, the judicial authorities declined to make any further comment.
#6
Steve, not to mention the cows habit of 'chewing its cud'. That is cows have a nasty habit of bringing their food up from one stomach, chewing it some more, and swallowing it down to another stomach.
A tornado tore through northern Bangladesh, killing at least 25 people, injuring nearly 500 and leaving many homeless, news reports said on Monday. The twister struck late Sunday, blowing away several thousand mostly thatched huts in dozens of farming villages in Gaibandha district, 190 kilometers (120 miles) north of capital Dhaka, Ittefaq and Janakantha dailies reported. Rescuers recovered 18 bodies from the debris of collapsed homes and trees, while seven injured people died en route to hospital, the reports said. The dead included women and children. Many of the injured were taken to hospitals.
The rest were left on the side of the road.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
Better keep the tigers away or they'll have another "rash" of maneaters in those parts.
South San Francisco got a taste of Dorothy's Kansas on Sunday when what authorities called a "probable tornado" whirled through town, ripping off roofs, pulling down power lines and breaking windows and then flinging the debris for blocks.
Firefighters who responded to dozens of calls from frantic residents during the rare twister at 3:40 p.m. said it was amazing that no one was injured.
"The floor began to shake and then all the people outside began to run indoors, yelling 'tornado,' " said Jorge Lozano, 20, who was working in the Ayar Produce store near downtown. "Then everything was blowing around in the store, pinatas, all of the stuff on the shelves. The windows blew out, and everyone was screaming. There was glass all over."
At least 40 buildings -- 20 homes and 20 businesses, including a fire station under construction -- were damaged as the swirling winds ran a wild 3-mile path across the city, from Westborough to the San Francisco Bay. The twister also uprooted towering trees, caused gas leaks and knocked out power to about 1,500 residents.
To recent arrivals, it might seem as if there are only two types of weather in Afghanistan: rain and the brief periods between rain.
But the new millennium hadn't delivered much in the way of precipitation to Afghanistan until this winter. Then the snow came. Then, with the warmer weather came steady rain.
"Traditionally, the rain season doesn't stop until the first part of May," said Air Force Capt. Laura Maddin, the officer in charge of the weather detachment at Bagram Air Base.
The weather already has caused massive problems across the country. Servicemembers made dozens of humanitarian missions during the winter, dropping food to those cut off by snow or blocked roads.
Spring, which started Sunday, isn't off to a good start either.
An Associated Press report Sunday said more than 200 were missing after days of torrential rains have sparked floods. The confirmed death toll from flooding stood at 24. That's in spite of a rescue effort by U.S. forces on Friday that saved at least dozens — and perhaps hundreds — of residents trapped by rising waters in western Afghanistan.
Much of the country's soil is composed of clay and doesn't absorb water quickly.
During the recent dry years, many people have moved into areas susceptible to flooding. U.S. bases, except for some muddy areas, have generally fared well.
Bagram Air Base, at an elevation of about 4,900 feet, has recorded 2.79 inches of rain so far in March and 3.92 inches in February — 1Âœ inches above average, Maddin said. And, with 10 days left in March, the total was just short of the monthly average. Bases at lower elevations have reported no major problems.
"There are some bases which are technically in a flood plain," said Lt. Col. Kevin Kille, civil-military operations officer for Combined/Joint Task Force-76. "But we don't see any danger at this point."
Kille, a planner for the Delaware Emergency Management Agency in his civilian life, and a team of other military experts spend a good deal of time planning for the worst.
"Essentially, we monitor the conditions for flooding and respond to their effects," he said.
Kille estimates that U.S. forces conduct some kind of humanitarian assistance every day. A lot of it lately has to do with the weather. But he said coalition forces only get involved in disaster operations when the Afghan government and United Nations can't handle a situation.
U.S. aid often involves providing air lift or ground transportation. Coalition members also meet with Afghan government officials during their regular disaster planning meetings. Kille, who has taught U.S. disaster relief methods in five foreign countries, said he'd like to do the same in Afghanistan.
Flooding and mudslides can pose another danger in a country rife with land mines. Weather might be able to put them in places once thought safe.
"That concern does exist," said Maj. Chris Doniec, engineer planner for CJTF-76. "But I don't think it makes Afghanistan any more dangerous than it already is."
Doniec said trying to figure out how many land mines might be shifted by flooding and mudslides is an impossible task. But he thinks it's likely that at least some have moved into areas once thought cleared.
"Four inches of water, if it's moving fast enough, will knock a person off his feet," he said. "So it'll certainly move a land mine."
Doniec said there's also the possibility that mud could cover land mines that once could be easily seen — and avoided.
So while those on base mind their steps trying to avoid mud puddles, servicemembers throughout the country are told to always pay attention to their surroundings — whether it's raining or not.
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
03/21/2005 9:50:00 AM ||
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#1
There goes that darned unilateral US. Going in and saving lives when the UN hasn't even made reservations at the five-star hotels yet.
#2
Oh no, not the Dread Afghan Rainy Season! If only Bush had signed the Protocols of Kyoto..
Posted by: Steve ||
03/21/2005 12:49 Comments ||
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Heh. And, of course, you know that the US Military won't be able to take it. We'll be defeated by the Dread Afghan Rainy Season - just as we were by the Dread Afghan Winter and the Dread Afghan Summer. We're, uh, er, they're doomed!
A Saudi man was executed Monday for murdering a compatriot and having illicit sex with women by using sorcery to trick them, the Interior Ministry said. Zayed bin Ali bin Saleh al-Thabiti al-Maliki was executed in Taif, a city in western Saudi Arabia, bringing the number of people beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year to 29. Al-Maliki was convicted of murdering and robbing Majri bin Mubarak bin Dakhil al-Aklabi and deceiving women through acts of sorcery to make them have sex with him. The Interior Ministry provided no further details.
#2
"Ahmed, come look at these bottles he has in the bathroom..."
"Okay, what we have here... Aqua di Selva, Aqua Quorum, Aquaman, Aramis, Aramis Ice, Aramis Life, Avatar, Azzaro ... Love potions!"
"Yea, I though he is a sorcerer!"
The case of a Saudi writer who was sentenced by a Shariah court in Riyadh to 275 lashes and four months imprisonment after being accused of being "corrupt" by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, has returned to the Ministry of Culture and Information yesterday after the intervention of the ministry, Arab News has learned.
The case is the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia. Dr. Ali Al-Mizeini, an Arabic language professor at King Saud University, was charged by the commission with allegedly questioning the religious institution's abilities and knowledge in an article written by him in Al-Watan newspaper. The commission was represented in court by another professor at the university, Abdullah Al-Barak from the Islamic Culture Department. The accusers demanded that Dr. Al-Mizeini be tried according to Shariah for his writings. Dr. Al-Mizeini was later summoned to a court hearing.
Dr. Al-Barak argued that his suit against Al-Mizeini was a private matter and that he relied on a regulation from the Ministry of Justice dated Oct. 16, 2004, after some persons complained about several articles published in the media. The regulation issued by the minister of justice states that "whatever offends Shariah or Islamic ethics or contradicts anything in the Qur'an or Sunnah (the Prophet's sayings) or is an accusation of a person toward another which demands a religious punishment of lashes or imprisonment according to the nature of the crime is a matter that concerns public courts." The regulation continues: "Public courts or primary courts which are given cases that deal with offenses concerning moral issues or attacks on Shariah that demand religious punishment should not transfer it to other concerned lawful bodies to look into it" Judge Suleiman Al-Fantooh of the Shariah court sentenced him to a four-month jail term and 275 lashes.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
ABDULLAH AL BARAK
Learned Elders of Islam
SULEIMAN AL FANTUH
Learned Elders of Islam
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
So it's hard core Salafist behind all this crap and they know they do not have any jurisdiction what so ever. Ain't Theocratic Monarchy grand.
#2
There was an article in WaPo last week that said Saudi authors are getting bolder in their writings. More stories and poems about the oppression in their own society. The Bush Doctrine is having its effect in the Magic Kingdom too...
The less pupils use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and maths, the largest study of its kind says today.
The findings raise questions over the Government's decision, announced by Gordon Brown in the Budget last week, to spend another £1.5 billion on school computers, in addition to the £2.5 billion it has already spent.
Mr Brown said: "The teaching and educational revolution is no longer blackboards and chalk, it is computers and electronic whiteboards."
However, the study, published by the Royal Economic Society, said: "Despite numerous claims by politicians and software vendors to the contrary, the evidence so far suggests that computer use in schools does not seem to contribute substantially to students' learning of basic skills such as maths or reading."
Indeed, the more pupils used computers, the worse they performed, said Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Wossmann of Munich University.
Their report also noted that being able to use a computer at work - one of the justifications for devoting so much teaching time to ICT (information and communications technology) - had no greater impact on employability or wage levels than being able to use a telephone or a pencil.
The researchers analysed the achievements and home backgrounds of 100,000 15-year-olds in 31 countries taking part in the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) study in 2000 for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Pisa, to the British and many other governments' satisfaction, claimed that the more pupils used computers the better they did. It even suggested those with more than one computer at home were a year ahead of those who had none.
The study found this conclusion "highly misleading" because computer availability at home is linked to other family-background characteristics, in the same way computer availability at school is strongly linked to availability of other resources.
Once those influences were eliminated, the relationship between use of computers and performance in maths and literacy tests was reduced to zero, showing how "careless interpretations can lead to patently false conclusions".
The more access pupils had to computers at home, the lower they scored in tests, partly because they diverted attention from homework.
Pupils tended to do worse in schools generously equipped with computers, apparently because computerised instruction replaced more effective forms of teaching.
The Government says computers are the key to "personalised learning" and computers should be "embedded" in the teaching of every subject.
Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, has said: "We must move the thinking about ICT from being an add-on to being an integral part of the way we teach and learn."
Posted by: tipper ||
03/21/2005 9:44:10 AM ||
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#1
And students dropping pianos on their feet proved to be an ineffective way for them to learn to play the piano. Bill Gates is right. Our schools are taught using 19th century methods, and need to be completely redesigned. Just incorporating computers into the existing model is ridiculous. The biggest problem is that 90% of student time is wasted. A curriculum based on "the three R's" is insane: students should be taught five times as many subjects as they are now. Mastery of "the three R's" should be complete by the 3rd grade. Students should be provided an individually designed education that continually evaluates their performance, reviews skill retention, and lets them have "knowledge surges" based on their interests, as far as they want to go. Only computers can do this. Computers can follow the individual's ebb and flow of learning, so students are not held back by their slowest peer. Multi-lingual education coexists with whatever else a student is learning, as does continual vocabulary and grammer enhancement. Memory and reading skills are also integral. Another advantage is that such a computer controlled education would be transferrable to any school, a tremendous boon to transient students of which there are millions. And all of this would be in a *typical* school with an average budget. Not, as has been done in past, in a new school with unlimited funds, top teachers and motivated parents.
#2
BigEric, age 4 does Dogz-5, and Sim-City on the computer.
My wife does reading, and I do adding and subtracting one-on-one. No computer as teacher. It is the best way, and you can see the progress. Very rewarding.
Computers can be used to write reports, etc, but you learn better with the human interaction, especially at a young age...
#3
Argue all day, guys. There is no "right" answer because every child is different. That is why schools should be different and students and parents should have a choice. It's the marketplace that has been proven to evaluate products and services best whenever it has been tried. Competition, give it a chance.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/21/2005 12:02 Comments ||
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Turns out that kids who use computers at home are also more likely to have books, a live-in father and be read to. Hummmmm..... maybe it's not computers that make the difference. Don't quote me tho... kidz and computers are me meal ticket.
#6
With all due respect, Anonymoose, nothing beats a good book for teaching reading, and nothing beats pencil, paper, a few manipulatives, and lots of hands-on practice for teaching math. Double and treble and quadruple recipes for fraction drill. Makes math taste good. Warning to parents: let the kids share the goodies with the neighbors or you'll be carrying your math assignments on your hips for 30 years.
For spelling, see Rudginski's "How to Teach Spelling." It explains the six basic syllable patterns, which go a long way toward organizing English phonics. English is 83% regular, so despite its spelling oddities a student has better than a 4/5 chance of getting a word right if he knows the rules. I've used it to teach English to a Colombian and two Argentines, as well as my kids and a few other people's kids.
Computer programs are OK for drill; the Quarter Mile Math program gives my youngest daughter a fun way to practice multiplication tables--beats flash cards. The Anonymoose Model works ONCE STUDENTS HAVE THE BASICS NAILED DOWN.
Unfortunately the schools have this one-size fits all approach. So a little wiggly boy, who may not be mentally ready to read until he's 9, gets jammed like a square peg into a round hole situation. Kids who don't get the basics immediately get pushed into situations beyond their skill level and are made to feel like they're the ones at fault.
I have home schooled our three daughters for at least five years of their school careers. The TV is in the basement--crummy reception except for one channel, and no cable--and we use videos to great benefit. Our eldest daughter got into UW Madison on the basis of her ACT scores, the science classes she took at the high school, and my reading list, which was quite formidable. During her sophomore year, and #2 daughter's 7th grade year, we studied Europe. We mapped all the countries, kept news files, used lots of films, read classic plays, and researched NATO among other things. We spent 6 weeks and 7 films on the Balkans alone.
#2 daughter spent a very intense semester in 8th grade studying the middle east, and is entering UW this fall to major in international relations. When she entered high school in the fall of 2001, she was the only student in the 1700 member student body on Sept 11 who had any idea what was happening, from where, and why.
Police today called for forced marriage to be made a specific criminal offence.
Currently, families who compel their children to marry can be charged only with offences like assault or kidnap. Officers were set to tell a London conference today that in the past two years nearly 500 people have asked for help to avoid being forced into marriages. Metropolitan Police research suggests a link between forced marriage and honour killings and officers say a specific offence would make prosecutions easier. Honour killings are when people are murdered because they are deemed to have shamed their families and can happen when someone refuses to marry a partner chosen for them.
Now, who do you suppose would do a thing like that?
Police say making forced marriages illegal would send a clear message that this is not acceptable in the UK.
Figures to be revealed at today's conference show that 492 cases have been reported to police forces in England and Wales over the past two years. Last year, Government officials said a special unit within the Foreign Office had dealt with almost 1000 cases of forced marriage since it was set up in 2000. It had also rescued and repatriated to the UK 70 young people a year from overseas.
Although the issue is often assumed to affect only women, 15 per cent of cases identified by officials involved men and boys.
Last year, the Government revealed they were considering plans to make forcing someone to marry against their will a crime. The Home Office is consulting on a specific offence to help young people coerced into relationships. Other plans include raising the minimum age that a foreigner can enter the UK as a spouse from 16 to 18. Almost 1000 cases of suspected forced marriages have been dealt with since 2000, mainly involving links to south Asian countries.
The Home and Foreign Offices established a joint forced marriage unit to combat the problem, which focuses on preventative action through professionals such as teachers, police officers or social workers.
Posted by: tipper ||
03/21/2005 9:34:52 AM ||
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Why doesn't the Home Office just bureaucratically declare forced marriages as falling under the old anti-slavery laws and hammer the families for trafficing in the trade? Oh, wait, that wouldn't be PC, respecting someone else's culture in the middle of England.
Britain may have overtaken Germany to become the biggest net contributor to the EU, the Treasury has admitted. The news comes as the Chancellor prepares for a meeting with his fellow EU finance ministers on Wednesday and Thursday this week, where he is expected to have a serious row. Mr Brown believes that Britain is effectively bankrolling the EU, a situation compounded by its lax accounting system.
According to the Treasury's Red Book, there was a surprise increase of £1.7billion in Britain's payments to EU in the past few months, taking our total net contribution to the EU to £4.3billion. Figures for Germany's contribution have yet to be published, but a Treasury spokesman said that if it were the same as the £4.1billion last year, "the UK's net contribution would be greater than Germany's if the £1.7billion were added".
More detailed figures will not be published until next month. But, in the meantime, the rise in the cost of Britain's membership of the EU threatens to have serious political ramifications. The Treasury is already forecasting a near doubling to £5.1billion in our net contributions by 2008 and any further increase could add to the fiscal deficit and fuel Tory claims that tax rises are inevitable if Labour wins a third term. Thanks for that, Tony. At least we don't have to worry about how our taxes are wasted when you simply pass the money to other countries...
This week, EU finance ministers hope to hammer out the EU's budget. The Commission wants a big increase in order to pay for enlargement and the Chancellor faces a fierce fight to retain Britain's rebate, worth £3.6billion last year. The rebate was granted in 1984 when Britain was one of the poorer countries in the EU, but it is now one of the richest. Stephen Timms, one of the Chancellor's junior ministers, said last week the rebate is "not negotiable and fully justified." He also released a table in a Parliamentary answer, showing Britain gets less out of the EU than any other nation, a situation he described as "unfair".
The Government is committed to holding a referendum on the EU Constitution. The escalating net cost of membership is likely to be a serious setback for Tony Blair as he campaigns for a Yes vote. Although public opinion in the UK is fairly Eurosceptic in general, not enough people regard the EU issue as sufficiently serious to have their General Election voting significantly swayed by it. They prefer to vote on closer-to-home stuff, failing to appreciate that a whole lot of provincial issues could be transformed by our throwing off the bureaucratic shackles of EU membership and stopping allowing ourselves to be the cash cow for less productive, less competitive nations. So rampant EUrophiles and instinctive wealth-redistributionists like Blair are allowed to sell the country down the river while reassuring voters by throwing the money he isn't sending overseas at the anachronism that is the NHS; and opposition politicians lack the motivation to get up and do something radical and long overdue - i.e. unplug the umbilical before we're sucked dry.
The Treasury hopes the sudden rise in Britain's net contributions is temporary, has been caused by a delay in payments from the EU's structural funds and will be clawed back in future years. But a contributory factor is Britain's terms of membership. Three quarters of all the UK's customs revenue goes to Brussels, and as Britain has some of the biggest entry points to the EU, such as Heathrow airport, payments are escalating.
Mr Brown is also angry at the chaos in the EU's accounts, which have not been signed off by the auditors for 10 years in a row. As a result, nobody is certain how much Britain is contributing to the EU. The Office for National Statistics said it was £3.3billion in 2003, £300m lower than the Treasury; and the EU itself says in its accounts Britain contributed £1.8billion that year.
Posted by: Bulldog ||
03/21/2005 4:28:19 AM ||
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#1
The achilles heel of socialism is that it can never pay for itself, and must sponge off of someone outside the system. When a country becomes thoroughly socialist, it becomes utterly dependent on the charity of other nations. The end result is Bangladesh: other countries pay it to keep it impoverished.
#2
Brittain has some good hotels and lots of good Indian and continental restaurants. Couldn't they make their payments in kind? Just host a few hundred beaurocrats?
#3
I wonder how much longer the English will stay with the EU. From what I have seen of the British character, they don't suffer fools greatly and the EU is filled with fools...
#4
"From what I have seen of the British character, they don't suffer fools greatly" Maybe Bulldog can give us a rundown on the political parties in Britain again? They seem to "suffer" as many fools there as we do over in the States . ..
Posted by: James ||
03/21/2005 16:37 Comments ||
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#5
I wonder how much longer the English will stay with the EU.
They first applied in '63... and Europe turned them down.
So they applied again in '67... and Europe turned them down.
And so they applied again in '73... and Europe finally let them in.
At which point the Brits decided the eeevil Europe had twisted their arms and forced them to join.
#8
No one in their right mind would say the EU "evolved" -- it's more a matter of bureaucratic entropy.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/21/2005 20:53 Comments ||
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#9
Britain should bail before the black hole debts of the Euro-welfare states drag them down - Lilliputians tying down their betters
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 20:54 Comments ||
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#10
#8ÃÂ No one in their right mind would say the EU "evolved"
That is correct. The accurate term is metastasized.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/21/2005 21:03 Comments ||
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#11
Aris, the UK joined an economic union. At the time, Britain had lost an empire and had yet to find a role. Socialism was at its high point, everyone seemed to be a member of a regional grouping, and the USA was pre-occupied with Asia in general and Vietnam in particular. The Common Market (as it was known then) was viewed as the only option available. The world is very different today. At I think at some point the UK will leave the EU but it will require a disruptive event to trigger it.
#12
Tom... entropy? I asked my Thermodymanics professor to define entropy in terms we sophomore engineers could understand, and he said, "Well, some say it is the 'randomness of the universe', but really, it's this term in the equation, right here."
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/21/2005 22:41 Comments ||
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#13
Bobby, ... and from an engineer's POV, he was really absolutely correct! LOL!
#14
Technically, it's the amount of information about the current state of the system that cannot be obtained from knowing the initial state of the system.
Or is it the amount of information about the initial state that can't be obtained from the current knowledge of the state of the system?
I forget.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/21/2005 22:53 Comments ||
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#15
Thanks Phil - I'll be diggin up my 1969 notes from Thermo to see if your definition fits.... (snicker)
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/21/2005 22:58 Comments ||
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#16
Phil, as you an see here, "but really, it's this term in the equation, right here", may be the best definition. ;-)
U.N. troops and ex-soldiers from Haiti's disbanded army fought two gunbattles on Sunday, leaving two peacekeepers and at least two former soldiers dead in the deadliest day for the 10-month-old U.N. mission, officials said.
The Sri Lankan and Nepalese soldiers who died were the first peacekeepers killed in clashes since the U.N. force arrived in June 2004 to try and stabilize the impoverished, volatile nation, officials said.
The Sri Lankan was killed and three other peacekeepers wounded in a raid on a police station occupied by armed ex-soldiers in Petit-Goave, about 45 miles west of Port-au-Prince, U.N. spokesman Toussaint Kongo-Doudou said. Two ex-soldiers died and 10 others were wounded.
The U.N. troops entered Petit-Goave before dawn. Using a loudspeaker, the Brazilian commander of U.N. troops in Haiti, Lt. Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, tried for 20 minutes to get the former soldiers to surrender peacefully when they opened fire on U.N. troops, Kongo-Doudou said.
"We wanted to resolve this peacefully, but our troops received a hostile response from the insurgents and so they responded with force," he said.
Gerard Nelson, a Petit-Goave resident, was sleeping about a block from the police station when he was awoken by gunfire and ran outside. "There were bullets bouncing off the walls. People on the street were running to get out the way. It sounded like a war," Nelson said.
Later Sunday, a group of Nepalese soldiers driving to the central town of Hinche exchanged gunfire with another group of former soldiers, U.N. spokesman Damian Onses-Cardona said. The ex-soldiers killed one peacekeeper and stole a vehicle. It wasn't clear if the ex-soldiers suffered casualties.
The clashes were the first major confrontation between the 7,400-strong U.N. force and former members of Haiti's disbanded army, who helped oust former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a 1991 coup and again in an armed rebellion a year ago.
U.N. forces detained 35 ex-soldiers following Sunday's gunbattle at the police station, Kongo-Doudou said.
The soldiers, many well into their 50s with fading uniforms and aging rifles, have bucked calls by the interim government and the U.N. force to disarm.
Aristide disbanded the army in 1995, four years after he was ousted. The 1991-1994 coup regime is blamed for the murders, maimings and torture of thousands of Aristide supporters, and today's former soldiers include convicted murderers.
The government plans to pay $29 million to about 6,000 former soldiers. There are no official estimates on how many took up arms last year, but estimates range from several hundred to 2,000.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
03/21/2005 12:28:42 AM ||
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Two soldiers serving with UN forces in Haiti—one from Sri Lanka and one from Nepal—were killed Sunday during security operations, officials said. The deceased Sri Lankan soldier was supporting 200 UN stabilization force (MINUSTAH) troops who took back control of a police station in Petit-Goave, 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Port-au-Prince, on Sunday. A spokesman for the MINUSTAH, Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, said the Sri Lankan soldier's death was the first of a UN soldier in Haiti since the force deployed here at the end of June 2004. He did not identify either man.
Three other UN soldiers were wounded in taking control of the police station. Thirty-five former Haitian soldiers was also captured, Kongo-Doudou said. Former Haitian soldiers had used the police station as their headquarters since taking control of the city on August 30. Before launching the assault on the makeshift headquarters, UN soldiers attempted to negotiate a peaceful end to the occupation led by Brazilian General Augusto Ribeiro Heleno, commander of the Un troops. Haitian police spokesman Gessie Cameau-Coicou told AFP that the operation was conducted in concert with Haitian police. The soldier from Nepal was gunned down and another was wounded while on patrol in central Haitiby former Haitian soldiers, MINUSTAH said.
Doesn't the Nepalese soldier have something better to do at home, like killing Maoists?
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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Probably was a Maoist, that's why he got sent overseas, where he couldn't get into any trouble.
...It is China's economic transformation that has given it the capability to become a military power. Its rapidly modernizing military is another aspect that India should be worrying about. China's military may or may not be able to take on the US in the next few years but it will surely become the most dominant force in Asia. As China becomes more reliant on imported oil for its rapidly growing industrial economy, China will develop and exercise military power projection capabilities to protect the shipping that transports oil from the Persian Gulf to China. The capability to project power would require access to advanced naval bases along the sea lines of communication and forces capable of gaining and sustaining naval and air superiority.
China's assistance to Burma in constructing and improving port facilities on two islands in the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea is the first step to securing military base privileges in the Indian Ocean. This can be used as a listening post to gather intelligence on Indian naval operations and as a forward base for future Chinese naval operations in the Indian Ocean. China's increasing naval presence in the Indian Ocean is occurring at the same time as the Indian naval expansion has come to a standstill and this can have great strategic consequences as India's traditional geographic advantages in the Indian Ocean are increasingly at risk with deepening Chinese involvement in Burma.
China has also been actively occupying islands, reefs, and islets throughout the highly disputed South China Sea, occasionally resulting in skirmishes with rival claimants. Though not of any direct strategic consequence for India, this shows that China is serious about making its military presence felt in Asia and would like to be taken seriously...
On its part, India seems to have lost the battle over Tibet to China, despite the fact that Tibet constitutes China's only truly fundamental vulnerability vis-Ã -vis India. India has failed to limit China's military use of Tibet despite its great implications for Indian security, even as Tibet has become a platform for the projection of Chinese military power. India's tacit support to Dalai Lama's government-in-exile has failed to have much of an impact either on China or on the international community. Today even Dalai Lama seems ready to talk to the Chinese as he realizes that in a few years Tibet might get overwhelmed with the Han population and Tibetans themselves might become a minority.
China remains the only major power in the world that refuses to discuss nuclear issues with India for fear that this might imply a de facto recognition of India's status as a nuclear power. It continues to insist on the sanctity of the UN resolution 1172 which calls for India (and Pakistan) to give up its nuclear weapons program and joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state. China also remains unenthusiastic about a change in the UN Security Council architecture that might give India Security Council's permanent membership...
It might be a blow to its self-esteem but it needs to be recognized by India that China has played its strategic cards rather well vis-Ã -vis India. There were even reports as recent as late last year that the Chinese troops have intruded into the Indian territory along a stretch of the unfenced border with Arunachal Pradesh. If recent reports are to be believed after a two-decade gap, China has resumed the supply of weapons to various insurgent groups fighting in northeastern India. China seems to be getting successful in hemming India in from both, the eastern and the western flanks.
Even as China has solved most of its border disputes with other countries, it is reluctant to move ahead with India on border issues. And the fact that we are even discussing border issues with China is seen by India as a great concession. India remains satisfied with the "positive" and "satisfactory" Joint Working Group negotiations on the boundary issue. No results of any substance have been forthcoming so far even as the talks continue endlessly and the momentum of the talks itself seems to have flagged. In fact, China has indirectly stated its non-negotiable positions on the Sino-Indian boundary dispute. A recent article in the Chinese foreign ministry sponsored journal, International Studies, Cheng Ruisheng, an advisor to the Chinese foreign ministry, claims that India illegally occupies 90,000 sq. km of Chinese territory in the eastern sector, 33,000 sq. km of Chinese territory in the western sector, and 2,000 sq. km of Chinese territory in the middle sector. With such a negotiating stance of China, it is difficult to see how this boundary issue can be resolved in the near future...
Posted by: Anonymoose ||
03/21/2005 10:37:43 AM ||
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Yup...that's why there's an "Indian claim" and a "Chinese line of control" on the map. Little border war thingy.
Also, China originally armed Pakistan with nuclear weapons in order to counterbalance India. And Pakistan has been busily selling them to anyone with cash. Yippee.
#2
WHere China is concerned, India = HK = Singapore = Macao = DIego Garcia = Guam-WESTPAC. etc. > control of the Straits of Malaccas and the bulk of Internat/East-West trade in the Pacific thru East Africa-Indian Ocean-Suez, besides of course access to both ME and Indonesian oil. "String of Pearls/ Turtles of War" [island bases] strategy and Is a key reason why China is also warning Australia about assisting alleged US "Imperialism"!? The USA and Western Democracies-Capitalism must make all the concessions, not the Failed Left's Mackinder's World Island. i.e. Communist [Fascist] Asia - A Fascist is still a Fascist, but thanx to the Clintons a Communist is now a Fascist who's still a Communist, ala Fascist = aka De-Regulated/Competitive Communist-Socialist.
Consternation gripped the government of President Jacques Chirac on Monday after a second poll in four days showed a majority of the French public rejecting the EU constitution at a referendum in ten weeks. The Ipsos survey in Le Figaro newspaper showed 52 percent preparing to vote "no" on May 29, with 48 percent for the "yes" - a spectacular leap of 12 points in just two weeks. It confirmed the findings of Friday's poll in Le Parisien newspaper, which put opposition to the constitution at 51 percent. That was the first time the "no" vote had led in the polls and it sent a shockwave through France's political establishment. Both surveys found that the main factor boosting the "no" camp was the conversion of many Socialist party voters. The rise in "no" supporters coincided with a wave of strikes and demonstrations in France, and rejection of the constitution is now the majority position on the country's political left.
The figures were disastrous news for President Jacques Chirac, who has put his political weight behind the EU constitution, and showed the difficulties of mobilising support for a document that few members of the public pretend to understand clearly. They were also an embarrassment for the opposition Socialist party (PS) which is officially campaigning for the constitution but is riven by a deep internal split. The rise in support for the "no" campaign was being watched with anxiety in Brussels, where insiders warned that a rejection of the constitution by so important a country as France would be a disastrous setback for the European Union. "If France votes no, the constitution is dead," said Daniel Keohane of the Centre for European Reform. "The momentum is on the 'no' side. It's going to be difficult to regain and it's worrying." The EU constitution is meant to streamline decision-making in the expanding bloc but must be ratified in all 25 member states before it can come into effect. The French former president of the European Commission Jacques Delors warned that a "no" vote would cause a "political cataclysm" in France. "And in Europe it will open up a very serious crisis which will slow down European construction - at the expense of French interests," he said.
Several factors were being put forward as explanations for the surge of the "no" camp in France - including the unpopularity of Chirac's centre-right government, fears over Turkish entry into the EU, and the recent focus on a controversial proposal to liberalise EU service industries. Described by former Socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius as a "foretaste of the European constitution," the so-called Bolkestein directive would make it possible for service-providers such as architects or accountants to operate across the 25 members. But opponents say it would lead to "social dumping" as business and jobs relocate to the low-cost economies of eastern Europe. Spotting the political danger, Chirac has himself condemned the directive - but the issue has played strongly into the hands of his opponents. Chirac is haunted by fears that voters will use the EU referendum as an opportunity to punish his government - at a time when growing unemployment, falling disposable incomes and record profits for top companies have combined to build a mood of popular discontent. "This momentum for the 'no' camp is an illustration of very high levels of social and economic anxiety among the French. In many social groups there is a real fear that their impoverishment will become permanent," said Pierre Giacometti, the director of the Ipsos polling institute.
Adding to Chirac's concern is the memory of the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht treaty which was won by just a whisker after the "yes" vote fell sharply in the campaign. And the president also knows that many left-wingers resent having been made to vote for him against far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the May second round of the 2002 election, and will jump at the chance to make his life difficult exactly three years later.
Posted by: Steve ||
03/21/2005 12:31:20 PM ||
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Consternation gripped the government of President Jacques Chirac on Monday after a second poll in four days showed a majority of the French public rejecting the EU constitution at a referendum in ten weeks.
No biggie, they'll figure out some other way to roll it past the masses....
#2
They already have. The French Constitutiuon has been modified (without referendum) in order to make it comfiormant to the Amsterdam treaty. The Amsterdam traty makes any European legislation, even derivative one, superior to any national legislation, Constitutions included.
Senior allies of Jacques Chirac, including four former government ministers, are among almost 50 people who go on trial in Paris today accused of involvement in one of the worst corruption scandals in French history. Charged with rigging public works contracts in order to finance the country's major political parties, their testimony threatens to "dynamite" the country's political establishment and heap embarrassment on the French president.
At the centre of the scandal are Michel Giraud, the former RPR president of the Paris area's regional council, and Michel Roussin, Mr Chirac's cabinet secretary during his stint as mayor of Paris and when prime minister in the 1980s, when the fund-collection operation was allegedly at its zenith. While Mr Chirac is not personally cited in the investigation, embarrassing questions will no doubt be raised over his awareness of the set-up as Paris mayor. Will those in court "tell all the truth, and give the names of those responsible [for the kickbacks]... at the risk of dynamiting French political life?" asked l'Express magazine.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Bulldog ||
03/21/2005 4:11:51 AM ||
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Chirac is a crook. Anyone who thinks all this political corruption could have taken place without his consent, knowledge and participation is simple minded. This is one of the things that is so aggravating about the man. He trys to come off holier than thou, yet is by all apperances, just a second rate, dishonest crook.
The landmark ruling was made by cronies involved and related to his political party. Remember in the Total ELF Fina scandals his name was prominent . That is what this "ruling" decended from, massive looting of the state controled petroleum giant.
As I have said previously Chirac must stay in office or face prosecution and ruin. He has no option other than this and will do or say anything to stay elected.
A senior Bosnian Serb general indicted for genocide in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica will surrender this week at the U.N. war crimes tribunal, the Serbian government said Sunday. Vinko Pandurevic, a top fugitive since the end of the 1992-95 war in neighboring Bosnia, was to travel to the Netherlands on Wednesday to give himself up to the U.N. court at The Hague, the government said in a statement. He will be the 10th Serb war crimes suspect to give himself up to the tribunal since October. Belgrade has been under intense international pressure to extradite about a dozen suspects still at large before the European Union issues a report in April, on whether the Balkan country could one day begin membership negotiations. Pandurevic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb army's so-called Zvornik Brigade, was ``persuaded to surrender voluntarily during talks with Serbian Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic,'' the Serb government statement said. The Serbian government quoted Pandurevic as saying his decision to surrender was a result of a ``desire to help his nation,'' and that it was in the ``best interest of the state'' for him to go.
He must have a heart condition or something; he'll get better care at The Hague's country club prison while waiting the next ten years for Carla del Ponte to prosecute him.
Under wartime military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb troops, including Pandurevic's brigade, stormed the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, then a U.N.-protected area, in July 1995. The onslaught was followed by summary executions of Muslim men and boys in what became Europe's worst carnage since World War II. Later Sunday, in footage aired on private BK Television in Belgrade, Pandurevic said he felt morally responsible for the Srebrenica atrocities taking place, but that he neither knew of the crimes nor was in a position to prevent them. `Truth will prevail,'' Pandurevic said, adding that he was innocent of the charges.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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I think the premise is absurd, but I also thought this was a cute story
Examining the political map of America, as I am obliged to do as I write the chapters of "The Almanac of American Politics 2006," reveals a previously unidentified segment of the American electorate, one which has been growing for some years now but has reached a critical mass and become a major force in one of our two great political parties: the trustfunder left.
Who are the trustfunders? People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want. The "nomadic affluent," as demographic analyst Joel Kotkin calls them.
These people tend to be very liberal politically. Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt. At the elite private or public high schools they attend, and even more at their colleges and universities, they are propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization, and the virtues of environmentalism and pacifism. Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism.
Their loyalties, as Samuel Huntington explains in "Who Are We?," are not national, but transnational -- they are citizens of the world with contempt for those who feel chills up their spines when they hear "The Star Spangled Banner." They are taught to have contempt for the economic contribution they make to their country as investors and to feel guilty if they make no other contribution. Their penance is that they must vote left. Their pennace, our pleasure.
Where can you find trustfunders? Not scattered randomly around the country, but heavily concentrated in certain areas. Places with kicky restaurants, places tolerant of alternative lifestyles, places with lots of art galleries and organic food stores and Starbucks competitors. The heaviest concentration is in the San Francisco Bay area, which, Kotkin says, has the largest percentage of trustfunders of any major metro area in the country.
The Bay area stands out in stark relief on the political map. It voted 70 percent to 29 percent for John Kerry in 2004, up from the 64 percent to 30 percent margin it cast for Al Gore in 2000. Without the Bay area's 1.15 million-vote margin for Kerry, California would have come within 82,000 votes of voting for George W. Bush.
Trustfunders stand out even more vividly when you look at the political map of the Rocky Mountain states. In Idaho and Wyoming, each state's wealthiest county was also the only county to vote for John Kerry: Blaine County, Idaho (Sun Valley), where Kerry stayed at his wife's imported Cotswold farmhouse on his much photographed skiing and snowboarding vacation, and Teton County, Wyo. (Jackson Hole), where Dick Cheney has a house and where Bill Clinton took a pre-election holiday after his pollster Dick Morris reported that a trip to the mountains focus-grouped better than Martha's Vineyard.
Speaking of Martha's Vineyard, it voted 73 percent for Kerry, and nearby Nantucket, where Kerry's wife has another house, voted 63 percent for him -- indeed, Nantucket was one of only three of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties that did not vote for George W. Bush. Massachusetts Catholics gave their fellow Massachusetts Catholic Kerry only 51 percent of their votes, but he won 77 percent in Boston, 85 percent in Cambridge, and 69 percent and 73 percent in trustfunder-heavy Hampshire and Berkshire Counties in the western mountains. Meanwhile, in places like Oklahoma, counties which never vote republican, went for Bush 80 percent.
Where Democrats had a good year in 2004 they owed much to trustfunders. In Colorado, they captured a Senate and a House seat and both houses of the legislature. Their political base in that state is increasingly not the oppressed proletariat of Denver, but the trustfunder-heavy counties that contain Aspen (68 percent for Kerry), Telluride (72 percent) and Boulder (66 percent).
You can see the trustfunders' imprint as well in New York. In 56 of the state's 62 counties, the Republican popular vote margin increased or the Democratic margin fell between 2000 and 2004. Five of the six counties that moved away from George W. Bush are trustfunder havens: New York (Manhattan), Ulster (Woodstock), Columbia (trendy Hudson River country), Otsego (Cooperstown) and Tompkins (Cornell University).
The political map shows the trustfunders' impact. So, I suspect, would an analysis of the sources of the vast amounts of money that flowed in through the Internet first to Howard Dean and then to John Kerry and to outfits like moveon.org.
The good news for Democrats is that they have found a new source of votes and money. The bad news is that an important part of their core constituency has the characteristic that the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ascribed to the press, "power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."
Posted by: badanov ||
03/21/2005 8:00:33 AM ||
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So, basically, the story here is something we've known for a long time: the Democrats are the party of the rich.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/21/2005 9:08 Comments ||
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I would say the Democrats are the party of the idle rich. People who start up a business and make it successful are usually (though not always) more conservative. The ones I know are all Republicans (except a few Perotistas).
A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies." The patient wasn't dead, according to the doctor who showed the letter to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. But there are many Canadians who claim the long wait for the test and the frigid formality of the letter are indicative of a health system badly in need of emergency care.
That Dummycrats say we should be emulating...
Americans who flock to Canada for cheap flu shots often come away impressed at the free and first-class medical care available to Canadians, rich or poor. But tell that to hospital administrators constantly having to cut staff for lack of funds, or to the mother whose teenager was advised she would have to wait up to three years for surgery to repair a torn knee ligament. "It's like somebody's telling you that you can buy this car, and you've paid for the car, but you can't have it right now," said Jane Pelton. Rather than leave daughter Emily in pain and a knee brace, the Ottawa family opted to pay $3,300 for arthroscopic surgery at a private clinic in Vancouver, with no help from the government. "Every day we're paying for health care, yet when we go to access it, it's just not there," said Pelton.
The average Canadian family pays about 48 percent of its income in taxes each year, partly to fund the health care system. Rates vary from province to province, but Ontario, the most populous, spends roughly 40 percent of every tax dollar on health care, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The system is going broke, says the federation, which campaigns for tax reform and private enterprise in health care. It calculates that at present rates, Ontario will be spending 85 percent of its budget on health care by 2035. "We can't afford a state monopoly on health care anymore," says Tasha Kheiriddin, Ontario director of the federation. "We have to examine private alternatives as well."
Which means you should also examine private alternatives instead. If it doesn't work under load, it probably won't work all that well even with reduced load.
The federal government and virtually every province acknowledge there's a crisis: a lack of physicians and nurses, state-of-the-art equipment and funding. In Ontario, more than 10,000 nurses and hospital workers are facing layoffs over the next two years unless the provincial government boosts funding, says the Ontario Hospital Association, which represents health care providers in the province.
My heart bleeds. We're hurting for nurses here. We're importing them from all over the world.
In 1984 Parliament passed the Canada Health Act, which affirmed the federal government's commitment to provide mostly free health care to all, including the 200,000 immigrants arriving each year. The system is called Medicare (no relation to Medicare in the United States). Despite the financial burden, Canadians value their Medicare as a marker of egalitarianism and independent identity that sets their country apart from the United States, where some 45 million Americans lack health insurance.
If you love it that much, then by all means keep it. There.
Raisa Deber, a professor of health policy at the University of Toronto, believes Canada's system is one of the world's fairest. "Canadians are very proud of the fact that if they need care, they will get care," she said. Of the United States, she said: "I don't understand how they got to this worship of markets, to the extent that they're perfectly happy that some people don't get the health care that they need."
We were just talking about the form letter apologizing if the patient had already died. People seldom go without required medical care in the U.S. The hospitals end up getting screwed for the expense and passing it on to the rest of us.
Canada does not have fully nationalized health care; its doctors are in private practice and send their bills to the government for reimbursement. "That doctor doesn't have to worry about how you're going to pay the bill," said Deber. "He knows that his bill will be paid, so there's absolutely nothing to stop any doctor from treating anyone." Deber acknowledges problems in the system, but believes most Canadians get the care they need. She said the federal government should attach more strings to its annual lump-sum allocations to the provinces so that tax dollars are better spent on preventive care and improvements in working conditions for health-care professionals.
In Alberta, a conservative province where pressure for private clinics and insurance is strong, a nonprofit organization called Friends of Medicare has sprung to the system's defense. It points up the inequities in U.S. health care and calls the Canada's "the most moral and the most cost-effective health care system there is in the world." "Is your sick grandchild more deserving of help than your neighbor's grandchild?" It asks.
Yes, says Dr. Brian Day, if that grandchild needs urgent care and can't get it at a government-funded hospital. Day, an English-born arthroscopic surgeon, founded Cambie Surgery Center in Vancouver, British Columbia — another province where private surgeries are making inroads. He is also former president of the Arthroscopy Association of North America in Orlando, Fla. He says he got so frustrated at the long delays to book surgeries at the public hospitals in Vancouver that he built his own private clinic. A leading advocate for reform, he testified last June before the Supreme Court in a landmark appeal against a Quebec ruling upholding limits on private care and insurance. George Zeliotis told the court he suffered pain and became addicted to painkillers during a yearlong wait for hip replacement surgery, and should have been allowed to pay for faster service. His physician, Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, said his patient's constitutional rights were violated because Quebec couldn't provide the care he needed, but didn't offer him the option of getting it privately. A ruling on the case is expected any time.
If Zeliotis had been from the United States, China or neighboring Ontario_ anywhere, in fact, except Quebec — he could have bought treatment in a private Quebec clinic. That's one way the system discourages the spread of private medicine — by limiting it to nonresidents. But it can have curious results, says Day. He tells of a patient who was informed by Ontario officials that since Ontario couldn't help him, they would spend $35,000 to send him to the United States for surgery. Day said his Vancouver clinic could have done it for $12,000 but the Ontario officials "do not philosophically support sending an individual to a nongovernment clinic in Canada."
Canadians can buy insurance for dental and eye care, physical and chiropractic therapy, long-term nursing and prescriptions, among other services. But according to experts on both sides of the debate, Canada and North Korea are the only countries with laws banning the purchase of insurance for hospitalization or surgery. Meanwhile, the average wait for surgical or specialist treatment is nearly 18 weeks, up from 9.3 weeks in 1993, according to the Fraser Institute, a right-wing public policy think tank in Vancouver. A Fraser study last year said the average wait for an orthopedic surgeon was more than nine months.
Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberal government has pledged $33.3 billion in new funding to improve health in all provinces and territories over the next 10 years. But critics aren't impressed. "It won't make a difference," said Sally C. Pipes, a Canadian who heads the conservative Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. "They need to break the system down, or open the system up to competition." Pipes is a big supporter of the Bush administration proposal to allow Americans to divert some of their payroll taxes into medical savings accounts. She claims the two-tiered system feared by Canadian liberals already exists because those with connections jump to the head of the medical queue and those who can afford it can get treated in the United States. "These are not wealthy people; these are people who are in pain," said Pipes.
Another watershed lawsuit was filed last year against 12 Quebec hospitals on behalf of 10,000 breast-cancer patients in Quebec who had to wait more than eight weeks for radiation therapy during a period dating to October 1997. One woman went to Turkey for treatment. Another, Johanne Lavoie, was among several sent to the United States. Diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 1999, she traveled every week with her 5-year-old son to Vermont, a four-hour bus ride. "It was an inhuman thing to live through," Lavoie told Toronto's Globe and Mail. "This is the first time someone has decided to attack the source of problems — the waiting list," said Montreal attorney Michel Savonitto, who is representing the cancer victims. "We're lucky to have the system we do in Canada," he told the court. "But if we want to supply proper care and commit to doing it, then we can't do it halfway."
An estimated 4 million of Canada's 33 million people don't have family physicians and more than 1 million are on waiting lists for treatment, according to the Canadian Medical Association. Meanwhile, some 200 physicians head to the United States each year, attracted by lower taxes and better working conditions. Canada has 2.1 physicians per 1,000 people, while Belgium has 3.9, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked France's health system as the best, followed by Italy, Spain, Oman and Australia. Canada came in 30th and the United States 37th.
Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is pushing what he calls "the third way" — a fusion of Canadian Medicare and the system in France and many other nations, where residents can supplement their government-funded health care with private insurance and services. But some Canadians worry even partial privatization would be damaging. "My concern is that the private clinics would only serve to further drain the scarce physician resources that we already have," said Dr. Saralaine Johnstone, a 31-year-old family physician in Geraldton, a papermill hamlet in northern Ontario. "We first need to guarantee that everybody has access to quality health care," she said, "and we just don't have that."
#1
Funny how the only person who could be found to be quoted on how good the Canadian Health Care System is was an academic,not someone who actually works in Heath Care System.
A couple of yrs ago,the whole of Canada had less than a dozen MRIs,while a local mall in Clearwater(FL.)had one that for @$100 you could walk up and get an MRI done.
Mark Steyn had a column @yr ago,where he was relating story of patient w/SARS was left in waiting area of Quebec(I believe)hospital,then put into non-quarantined,non-private room. At least 4 other patients and relatives then caught SARS and died.
Much of problems w/US health care is incredible ease of trial lawyers in getting lawsuits filed against doctors and hospitals. Insurance rates are closing clinics and practices at an astonishing rate.
One thing to keep in mind when the press gets its shorts(polite version) in a wad because so many millions of Americans don't have health insurance. The group w/lowest health coverage percentage and the largest in sheer numbers,is single males in their twenties. This also,suprisingly enough,is the group that needs and uses the lowest amount of health care. And in another shocker,this is the group all the mandated health care proponents want to force to enroll in health care plans,because the selfish b******s won't voluntarily sign up for plans they don't use.
Posted by: Stephen ||
03/21/2005 21:37 Comments ||
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Much of problems w/US health care is incredible ease of trial lawyers in getting lawsuits filed against doctors and hospitals. Insurance rates are closing clinics and practices at an astonishing rate.
You can extend this thought to most parts of our economy. Large organizations will routinely settle frivolous suits of all sorts because it's cheaper to pay off the plaintiffs than litigate the issues. And God forbid a sympathetic jury (read "nearly any jury") be allowed to hear the case as the verdict in any generic David v. Goliath is highly unlikely to come down in Goliath's favor. Jurors rarely recognize that they themselves will pay the stunningly large awards they routinely hand out.
In more bad news for Sen. John Kerry, "Hanoi" Jane Fonda is once again stepping into the media spotlight, promoting her new book, "My Life So Far," and explaining that Kerry lost the election because he came across as "a wimp" and a "girlie man." Fonda bankrolled Kerry's anti-war protests during the 1970s, and last year she tried to help him by registering as many women as possible in her "Vaginas Vote" campaign.
Don't get me wrong: I really like vaginas. But let's face it, most women don't keep their brains there.
In a preview of what's to come as her book tour hits the TV talk show circuit, Fonda discussed her life and times last month at the "Girls For A Change" conference held at Montana State University. She began by explaining that she'd spent the last five years working on her memoir, and insisted that her own life story is universal. Even someone who's wealthy, privileged, famous and white can be hurt by the hierarchy's rules in profound ways, Fonda explained. (oh, MAN! I *can't* WAIT to read THAT!)
Before too long the former actress got around to the subject of Kerry's defeat. In quotes picked up by Bozeman, Montana's Daily Chronicle, she complained: "Men who show compassion or try to make peace are ridiculed as 'girlie men' or, like John Kerry, as wimps." It's all a part of the patriarchal society we live in, she said, where American boys learn as early as age 5 that they have to earn a place in the hierarchy by being "real men" - not sissies who express emotion. "We have to feel true empathy for boys," she urged. "Males have the power, but at what cost." The former Hollywood radical urged girls to be more assertive, saying: "Get mad. It's not the way it has to be. Don't succumb, don't take it sitting down." The solution, she said, is for girls to realize it's society and not their own flaws that makes them feel anxious and inadequate.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/21/2005 12:41:46 AM ||
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It's all the fault of MEN!. If men were women everything would be just fine. Personally, I believe young boys are naturally agressive. I don't think it is a product of "society". It's in our chromosomes.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/21/2005 7:24 Comments ||
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#2
D'ja enjoy all that, folks?
Another vagina monologue.
Now please stay tuned for a word from one of our sponsors while we think about a way to pull Fnda's head out of her vagina.
#3
Fonda bankrolled Kerryâs anti-war protests during the 1970s, and last year she tried to help him by registering as many women as possible in her "Vaginas Vote" campaign.
...I never knew the little devils could vote.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/21/2005 7:48 Comments ||
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#4
In more ways than one, Mike. If you haven't figured that out yet, boy are you screwed!
#5
As funny as this goofy, cunnicentric dingaling and her Voting Vaginas might be, there's a serious downside: Hanoi Jane's only slightly goofier than the asshole the Dems put forward for president last year, and he came within just a few million votes of winning.
I don't know about you, but to me that's frightening.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
03/21/2005 8:00 Comments ||
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#6
I don't think she's just a few million votes short. I welcome her candidacy against Hillary in the primaries -- may the worst candidate win the primary.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/21/2005 8:08 Comments ||
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#7
In another news Jane Fonda declared "John Kerry is a limp dick. I checked it personally"
#8
JFM- Lol! Limp dick says it all. Mind you Janie said it was because Kerry came across as a wimp, not that he is a wimp. According to her, wimps are good, but the patriarchal society says they're bad.
#11
Couldn't understand the Vagina Monologues - too muffled
*rimshot*
i'm here all week! Try the veal
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 9:55 Comments ||
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#12
Her campaign didn't work, lol! I guess shooting ping pong balls across the room, blowing smoke rings, etc doesn't quite constitute voting, at least not yet, anyway. Of course, neither does writing your name in the snow...
#13
Frank - now that was just plain awful! Dot - I have the sneeking suspicion that you've been to the same 'shows' as I have. Can you say Okinawa? Sure you can. . .
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/21/2005 12:37 Comments ||
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#16
Glereper -
ROTFLMAO!!!
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/21/2005 13:07 Comments ||
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#17
Doc - Bangkok, bro. Patpong I (neung). Only the wymyns like the "shows" over there. Of course the Euro wymyns are usually too chickenshit to go by themselves so they try to draft nice guys at the hotel they're staying in, like yours truly, to "escort" them, lol! Put up with that shit twice - and then vowed never again, post-show BJ or not, lol! When the hawker tries to shove his little laminated card in your face, you just say "Mai ow, kahp kuhn kahp" (not want, thanks) and they'll leave you alone. I don't know the game on Okinawa, heh.
#18
"Get mad. Itâs not the way it has to be. Donât succumb, donât take it sitting down."
Yes, but someone like Condoleeza Rice is considered "inauthentic", in Janey's small mind, even though at this day, she is the most powerful woman in America...
#19
RC - please post a 'NSFW' notice next time ok? One could get labeled 'insensitive' for the URL alone by the monitors....
Doesn't Jane have a anti-aircraft gun in Iran to sit in or something? Or maybe she can convince Zaq in Iraq to ler her behead a few innocent civilians -- just for old times sake....
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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#1
"possibly for a White House run" POSSIBLY????
And the senator says, proudly, "I've always been a praying person." Besides praying that Slick Willy would get his, um, Willie caught in Mr. Zipper, what else have you prayed for, Hilly?
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/21/2005 0:12 Comments ||
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#2
Uh oh, swerving right!
Everybody duck!
BTW, it's an obvious spelling error: it's "preying", methinks
That should read "Hillary *talks* right". So did Jimmy Carter. And John Kerry. It's not what they say that matters - it's what they've said - and done - over most of their lifetime.
#4
Just remember: if all it took to stay was NOT deporting a five-year-old kid to Cuba, Bill and Hillary's people were unable to pull through. They may be "conservative," but not the sorts of conservatives we want or need.
We need another liberal like Bush.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/21/2005 1:17 Comments ||
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Hmmm, I can't recall the FAA regs for flying brooms, minimums, CAT spacing, etc. Got any idea, AP?
#6
Clinton goes right, Dean goes left. My, my, an interesting practical display of political physics. It will be entertaining to watch at least. I believe the phrase 'A house divided can not stand' is the most likely outcome.
#7
Why? Sen. Clinton could make the party platform the Communist Manifesto and have it reported in the press as "Democrats move to the center."
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
03/21/2005 8:40 Comments ||
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#8
somebody will step up to her left, and force her to move left in the primaries. She's unelectable to most Americans - we're not like her limousine liberal harridans in NY
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 9:52 Comments ||
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#9
Like alot of our elected representatives, she is simply an opportunist and hypocrit who uses people to get the office and then proceeds to forget them and get on with the task of self-promotion. She and her peers need to be slapped down and returned to whence they came. I don't think she actually believes in much of anything beyond her own advancement first and foremost. But that's par for the course isn't it?! Hopefully, our two party system can produce better choices than what was served up in 2004!
We, the sane people of America, had the best choice in 2004 we could possibly have hoped for - President Bush.
If you want to wank off regards the stunning lack of Dhimmidonk candidates, fine, but it doesn't have fuck all to do with the Pubs - they had a no-shit Great President to offer, and America snarfed him up for 4 more years. Piss off.
#11
.Com. - Enough said. Hope you are correct regarding the Great Prez. History will judge, right? Don't suppose we could ask for more. Obviously you've been po'd. I ain't. Calm down for a moment and put the safety back on that keyboard. You read alot more into the words than need be. Jumping at shadows rarely yields good results.
#12
Tkatrollin - Dunno WTF that's supposed to mean, but this is the second BS post of yours today.
As for putting the "safety" on, lol, that isn't the problem...
Either you're a lazy poster who doesn't really think about what he's posting - or you're trolling. You posted that claptrap. I just pointed out what it is.
Pray tell, where was I amiss? You painted Bush with the same lameness as Kerry - and yes, I take offense at that as it's obviously untrue. Kerry and his dissolving party deserve the trip to irrelevance they're working so hard toward. President Bush has done the job.
Don't wag your finger at me for calling a spade a spade. Edit your posts better if that was not what you meant to say.
#19
Tkat: I don't think she actually believes in much of anything beyond her own advancement first and foremost.
She believes the major tenets of liberalism, but will say conservative-sounding things to get elected. Hillary's statements (like Lieberman's) are well to the right of her actual votes. Her 2003 Senate voting record scored her a 95% rating with Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a liberal lobbying group. By comparison, Lincoln Chafee, the most liberal Republican in the Senate, scored 65% on the ADA scale.
#21
http://clinton.senate.gov/~clinton/speeches/2005314533.html
Here is a speech the Hildabeast recently gave to the Kaiser Family Foundation in which she totally ignores the positive results of the study Generation M: Media in the Lives of Kids 8 to 18. The study found there is virtually no overall effect of media on childrens'behavior. She seems to be telling parents that they are not raising their children the way she would and that's a bad thing. Exposing our children to so much of this unchecked media," she said, "is a kind of contagion," a "silent epidemic" that threatens "long-term public health damage to many, many children and therefore to society."
The study found no evidence of declining grades or neglect of reading due to TV watching. "It does not appear that spending time with media takes away from the time children spend in other pursuits," Kaiser reports. "Indeed, those young people who spend the most time watching TV...also reported spending more time with their parents than any other group."
She also failed to mention that the three most popular TV choices were situation comedies when she stated "the content [of kids' entertainment] is overwhelmingly, astoundingly violent,"
"I hope we can do more to educate parents on media literacy," said Clinton, who also wants to give them "guidance in using the filtering technologies." The village is determined to help you raise your child whether you like it or not.
Make no mistake, Hillary Clinton is a leftie who thinks she and the Government know more about how to raise your child than you do and if she has her way she and Congress will do just that.
http://www.kff.org/entmedia/7251.cfm The links are to Senator Clinton's speech and to the Kaise Family Foundation study.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/21/2005 13:05 Comments ||
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"The village is determined to help you raise your child whether you like it or not."
Lol - well put, DB... but she only represents the insane moonbat part of town.
#23
She's an advocate of indoctrination early preschool education.....see how easy it is to spin?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 13:32 Comments ||
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#24
Back in 92-93 I read a speech that she gave about the "politics of meaning." It sounded really familiar, and then I remembered: "The Port Huron Manifesto," the founding document of the SDS. She is a true believer of the new left's pov. If we elect her, we deserve what we get. The 60's are alive and well with Hillary.
Fred, this notice is appended to the bottom of the article at the link:
AFP text, photos, graphics and logos shall not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium. AFP shall not be held liable for any delays, inaccuracies, errors or omissions in any AFP content, or for any actions taken in consequence.
Right. Burn after reading.
I think I'll just pluck out my eyes instead.
Are we allowed to laugh at them?
At my eyes? No. At AFP? Absolutely!
Hundreds of activists appealed for a global tax on water and the creation of a "world water parliament" to protect its distribution, at the closing of the Alternative World Water Forum on Sunday. The two-day forum's goal is to "promote the creation of a world public service for water" through a series of concrete aqueducts measures, said Bastienne Joerchel of a Swiss charity group. The forum proposed introducing a one-cent tax on water worldwide, which would avoid having to use private funding for the distribution of water.
Hokay. They have no official standing — they're simply "activists," which is another word for moonbats. Who's going to impose the tax? What's the collection mechanism? What're the penalties for not paying? A worldwide tax implies a world government, which to my knowledge we don't yet have, and if we're lucky we'll never have. On the other hand, a few of them did manage to get their names in the paper, though only in an AFP article, which the rest of the world's forbidden to read under penalty of strongly worded letters and possible nuisance lawsuits...
And try to get Jose the poor campesino in some suckhole in South America to pay the tax. Oh right, he wouldn't pay, he'd be exempt, as would the rest of the world except the US ...
A global water parliament - expected to hold its first meeting in Brussels next year - would establish the rules to assure the equitable distribution of the vital resource.
Who won the elections for the global water parliament, by the way?
About 1,200 people from around the globe and 150 non-governmental organisations participated in the forum that opened Friday, including the former Portuguese president Mario Soares, co-chairman of the meeting held ahead of Tuesday's World Water Day. The United Nations will launch on Tuesday its global campaign called "Water for life," which aims to cut by half the number of people worldwide who do not have access to drinking water by 2015.
That would imply that they're going to do away with all those inconvenient deserts, I'd guess. Or were they going to relocate the Tuaregs and similar folk who prefer dry climates?
They're going to tow icebergs into the desert using Greenpeace ships supervised by Euro-born UN diplomats.
The forum also adopted an action plan for the recognition of water as a human right, its use for the common good, and called for public financing and democratic control of the resource.
Adopting an action plan implies you've got an executive to execute the plan. Either that, or you had too much wine with lunch...
Doesn't their call for 'democratic' control sound a little strange, coming from these people?
Riccardo Petrella, a professor at Lugano University in Switzerland, called for water to be excluded from the negotiations at the World Trade Organisation on the liberalisation of services, and said the World Bank should stop requiring the privatisation of water as a condition for granting loans.
We can guess at the political orientation of the participants in the forum. It sounds an awful lot like they're suffering from delusions of adequacy...
They'd rather talk about how to deliver water than actually build an aqueduct to deliver water.
Posted by: phil_b ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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I already *pay* a water tax, every month. If I fail, I get no more water! Who's the dude between Chico and Harpo? That's Karl on the end, right? You seldom see him in the movies, anymore .....
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/21/2005 0:16 Comments ||
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#2
Global Water Parliament. Tax. Public Financing. Democratic Control. Good Plan. Musta mebbe spent 20-30 minutes brainstorming this out. Everybody prolly got wet when the clouds of doubt burst. Did they pay their rain tax? Huh?
Y'know, this is really smart. Almost everybody needs water.
BTW, "one cent" - So, um, is that like an American cent, Canadian cent, Ozzie cent, Skunk scent, what?
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/21/2005 0:35 Comments ||
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#4
That is the normal Marx Brother. Can't remember his name but he was "normal" and a blood brother.
Yea I pay a "tax" too and my water company is actually a public utility district. It issues bonds and such just like all public agencies. You can run for a seat on the water districts board of directors. I wonder why this won't work everywhere? Oh I forgot, they are asshats and ignoramuses that's why. If I don't pay my bill for my metered water my water gets shut off. My state has no problem with this and it's a liberal moonbat infested place. They don't consider my water a individual right.
#5
There is also a Gummo Marx. On another note, water is a right, it just may not be potable. May be contaminated, too saline, etc etc.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/21/2005 0:39 Comments ||
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I especially liked would establish the rules to assure the equitable distribution of the vital resource. So they are going to rules on where and how much it rains.
#7
Right. It should rain according to the needs of each jursidiction, based on the abilities of each rainfall event. (From each according to his abilities, to each .... never mind.)
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/21/2005 0:45 Comments ||
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#8
Getting water to flow uphill under it's own unassisted power by legistalion would be a neat trick too.
These assclowns have not met the L.A. Department of Water and power :D They have no idea of money and power behind the incumbent water providers in the part of the world. People get killed over less than this when dealing with them.
#9
I'd worry first about an adequate sewage system before worrying about delivering water to everyone. Ask the South Americans.
Posted by: Rafael ||
03/21/2005 1:03 Comments ||
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#10
You're allowed to excerpt copyrighted material regardless of any disclaimers to the contrary. Reproducing the whole thing verbatim is verboten, though.
#12
Let me be the first to offer them all some water. In the form of a little "yellow rain".
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/21/2005 7:20 Comments ||
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I think that every person that considers themselves an "activist" should have their entire income taxed to support the causes they espouse. C'mon, guys and gals. Put your money where your mouth is. It's "for the children".
#14
equitable distribution WTF?
How the hell are they going to distribute water equitably throughout the world? Drain the Great Lakes and pipe it over to Asia? This is just kooky moonbatism.
Actually, it's not so much availability of water, but availability of potable water that's an issue.
#17
Everyone pays a one cent tax. That means that each of the 6 billion or so people coughs up one cent. That would amount to about $60 billion. Enough for some righteous catering, hotel rooms, hot babes, first class air fare, and incidentals, including trips to spas. That will take care of the tranzis administrators for a long time.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/21/2005 11:54 Comments ||
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#18
If they combine their business with the climate change ministry, they will get even MORE for their our money.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/21/2005 11:55 Comments ||
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#19
key requirement to join the world water parliament: hydroencephalopathy
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 12:25 Comments ||
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#20
That means that each of the 6 billion or so people coughs up one cent. That would amount to about $60 billion.
Yep, there's no guarantee that any tax levied on water use would actually go toward water-related projects. (this is not to be taken as any sort of endorsement that such a tax is needed)
#24
CF LOL you got a point, except that I think they would decree the $60 Million and the US/UK/etc. would have to pay for everyone. It's for the children doncha know?
Hey, BAR, what daya mean not much to show for it? Do you know how many gourmet buffets you can get for $60 mill?
#25
We are hater ducts and must have hand delivered bottles of Terrier, else we will make war on thy pipe lines and cause small earthqueakes amonsts the sensitive set. Ifn that don't work we have an army of betty crockercrats and we will use them.
Whoa! Damn.... is my main man JM taging betty crockercrats? Ima off to technorati!
Posted by: Bug ti King ||
03/21/2005 15:32 Comments ||
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#26
A tax on water? The World Water Parliment? Is this a news item or a review of the movie "Tank Girl"?
Why do current events keep turning into ScrappleFace parodies? Scott Ott must be involved in this, but I'm not sure how exactly. Note: When they make Rantburg: The Movie, Malcolm McDowell would be great in the role of Fred.
Myanmar's military government blamed exiled dissidents for two small bomb blasts in the capital, Yangon, and suggested more "destructive acts" may be planned, state media said on Sunday. Nobody was wounded in the explosion at a bus terminal on Thursday night or in a second blast early Saturday at the Panorama Hotel in central Yangon. "The government has received information that since early January exiled saboteurs active on the borders are hatching plots to step up their destructive acts in Myanmar," the state-owned Myanma Ahlin daily newspaper said in a report. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the newspaper named several exiled opposition groups accused by the junta of "recruiting, training and sending saboteurs". They included the National League for Democracy (Liberated Areas), a splinter group from the main NLD led by democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been confined by the junta since May 2003 despite international calls for her release. The newspaper also named the All Burma Students Democratic Front, the Free Trade Union of Burma, the Burma Communist Party and the Vigorous Burmese Students Warriors.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/21/2005 00:00:00 AM ||
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NEW YORK, March 8 /PRNewswire/ -- When it comes to sex and politics, Democrats are the more liberal, right? Not so fast. PLAYGIRL editor-in-chief Michele Zipp explores the fun side of "down and dirty" politics and examines sexuality on both sides of the aisle. In the process she comes to a realization about herself and reveals for the first time she's now a Republican.
"Siding with the GOP when you live in the bluest state around is almost like wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey at a New York Yankees' home game," says Zipp in the April issue of PLAYGIRL. "I cannot tell you how many times a person assumed I voted for John Kerry in 2004. Most of the time, I don't have the heart to tell them, or the energy to discuss my reasons for going red this election year. But this is PLAYGIRL magazine so it's about time I was the one who bared what's underneath." How could a member of the media who produces adult entertainment for women, advocating sexual exploration, fulfillment and adventure possibly side with conservatives from the red states? Zipp spells it out. "Those on the right are presumed to be all about power and greed -- two really sexy traits in the bedroom. They want it, they want it now, and they'll do anything to get it. And I'm not talking about some pansy-assed victory, I'm talking about full on jackpot, satisfaction for all."
"The Democrats of the Sixties were all about making love and not war while a war-loving Republican is a man who would fight, bleed, sacrifice, and die for his country. Could you imagine what that very same man would do for his wife in the bedroom?" asks Zipp. She takes on sexual politics with insight, conviction and a refreshing new spin. Michele seems an "inauthenic" woman to me, yessiree...
Posted by: BigEd ||
03/21/2005 11:11:35 AM ||
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{OOPS FRED}
Messed up on this.... Hat Tip to drudge with his flash that I subsequently added...
If there is a way to combine these two, please do so... Thanks "BigEd"
#4
DrudgeFlash:
PLAYGIRL editor-in-chief Michele Zipp has been stripped of her duties after she revealed how she voted Republican in the 2004 election.
Zipp, in an e-mail, claims she was fired after an onslaught of liberal backlash.
"Hello Drudge,
"After your coverage of my article about coming out and voting Republican, I did receive many letters of support from fellow Republican voters, but it was not without repercussions. Criticism from the liberal left ensued. A few days after the onslaught of liberal backlash, I was released from my duties at Playgirl magazine.
"After underlings expressed their disinterest of working for an outed Republican editor, I have a strong suspicion that my position was no longer valued by Playgirl executives. I also received a phone call from a leading official from Playgirl magazine, in which he stated with a laugh, "I wouldn't have hired you if I knew you were a Republican.
"I just wanted to let you know of the fear the liberal left has about a woman with power possessing Republican views."
Developing...
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 11:51 Comments ||
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While I'm not thrilled with how she characterizes the right ("power and greed" -- sorry, but I see more money grubbing and power-mongering on the left), I don't think it's out of the question for her to be fired for announcing she voted Republican.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/21/2005 12:36 Comments ||
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#7
She needs some documentation or something here to prove this allegation. Much as I'd like to believe her, I'd need just as much proof if someone claimed they were being fired for being a Democrat.
Posted by: Dar ||
03/21/2005 12:36 Comments ||
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#8
Dar and TGA,
The problem is that unless she had a tape recorder on (which would have been illegal) there will be no proof since the PG folk won't admit it.
This is just like the case where a black is told he is fired/or not hired for being black, but the conversation is private and the public excuse will be something else.
Let's see what the public excuse turns out to be, hmmm? My bet is that it will be phony but hard to prove. (e.g. she's no longer a team player)
#9
AlanC - Not necessarily illegal on the taping thing. It depends on what state she was in when she got the call. You're just assuming she was in Massachusetts. Other states have different laws.
#10
DB, I assumed she was in NYC which I believe has such a law. Don't know about CA but I know that it seemed to be a trend in Blue States back when Wee Willie's Winkie was in the news and Tripp's taping of Monica was the subject.
#12
Dismissing someone for being a Republican does not subject the employer for liability in tort (there may a contract with the employer). They can brag about firing her for being a Republican. That, alone, won't get them sued.
Bush signs bill aimed at keeping brain-damaged woman alive
By Lesley Clark, Erika Bolstad and Martin Merzer
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Lawyers stood ready at a Florida courthouse and nurses stood ready at Terri Schiavo's bedside early Monday as Congress approved and President Bush swiftly signed a bill that could prolong her life.
The climactic vote ended in the House of Representatives at 12:32 a.m. EST, and the measure was sent to Bush, who signed it within an hour. The final House vote was 203-58.
Schiavo's father, Bob Schindler, emerged from a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., and said he told his daughter of the rapid-fire developments. ``You had to wake the president up to save your life,'' he told her.
As of 2 a.m. EST Monday, though much remained uncertain, it appeared possible that the severely brain-damaged Florida woman could be reconnected to life support overnight or later Monday.
``We hope to get you some water,'' family attorney David Gibbs said he told Schiavo, in her third day without nutrition at the hospice. ``We hope to get you some dinner later on.''
About 20 miles away in Tampa, family lawyers waited to file a federal lawsuit and judges were alerted for a possible overnight hearing.
And so, a right-to-live, right-to-die case that has galvanized national attention seemed poised to open another chapter.
The Senate approved the measure on an unchallenged voice vote during a rare Palm Sunday session that came amid charges of cynical political maneuvering. Only three members were on the floor and the bill's prime sponsor, Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, served as presiding officer.
On the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans confronted initial Democratic opposition during the day but began debating the issue at 9 p.m.
``She has a right to her day in court,'' Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, said during the debate.
He attacked what he called ``a relentless effort to end her life by her estranged husband.''
Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a Florida Democrat, spoke passionately against the measure.
``We're not God and we're not Terri Schiavo, her sister, her husband or her brother or any relation,'' she said. ``We are thumbing our nose at the Constitution if we do this tonight.''
Nevertheless, passage was so likely that Bush rushed back to Washington from his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
``Time is not on Terri Schiavo's side,'' said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Now 41, Schiavo has relied on a tube for food and water since 1990.
Doctors and her husband, Michael Schiavo, say she is in a persistent vegetative state. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, and their supporters strenuously dispute that assessment.
The feeding tube was removed Friday after the Schindlers lost the latest in a long series of lawsuits in state court.
The extraordinary congressional measure - entitled ``Relief of the Parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo ''- would allow them to file suit in federal court, asking a judge to conduct a new review of the evidence, without regard to Florida law or past rulings.
The bill's supporters maintain that a federal judge would order the restoration of life support as the case embarks on a new legal journey - though the measure does not specifically call for that and federal courts could rule it unconstitutional.
In Pinellas Park, near Clearwater, Schiavo's parents told their daughter's hospice to be ready to have her hospitalized at a moment's notice so the feeding tube could be reconnected.
``We simply want to give Terri the chance she deserves,'' said her brother, Bobby Schindler, 40, a Tampa science teacher. ``We simply want to bring her home.''
Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo, who wants to remove life support and allow his wife to die, and his supporters expressed fresh anger over the legislative, political and media drama now swirling around the case.
They say they are following Terri Schiavo's wishes in this regard.
``These politicians are out of their minds,'' said Brian Schiavo of Sarasota, Michael's brother.
``Anybody who thinks she talks and responds, they need to have their mental health evaluated because I just spent the whole day with her. She just lays there.''
The parents acknowledged, meanwhile, that the proposed federal law could end up being a mere stop-gap solution.
In response, supporters plan to protest Monday in front of the governor's office in Tallahassee, and Schiavo's mother and sister plan to lobby the state Senate on Tuesday.
Though a state law passed on her behalf in 2003 was struck down by state courts, they want a new state law that would permanently restore nutrition to Schiavo and remove her husband as her guardian.
Gibbs, the attorney for Schiavo's parents, said he would attempt to file a lawsuit at Tampa's federal courthouse as soon as the law was signed - night or day.
``The worst possible scenario would be for the President and Congress to pass this and for Terri to pass away in the night before the court opens,'' Gibbs said.
Earlier Sunday, in Pinellas Park, a representative of the Schindler family said a letter was faxed to the Hospice House Woodside, asking employees to finalize preparations for taking Schiavo to a hospital so a nutrition tube could be reconnected.
Bob Schindler said he and his wife visited their daughter Sunday and she seemed to be doing well. He also thanked about 50 supporters who spent the day outside the hospice. Some held signs shaped like spoons that read, ``Please feed Terri.''
At one point, her mother, Mary Schindler, pleaded with Congress to act. ``Please, congressmen, don't use this bill for your personal agenda,'' she said.
But those Democrats opposed to the bill said it was the Republicans who were exploiting the issue for their political benefit.
The Washington Post published a memo it said had been circulated to GOP senators. ``This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important,'' the memo reportedly said.
It appeared to target Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida's top Democrat, saying, ``This is a great political issue because Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.''
Democrats said the memo revealed their opponents' real motivation.
``We're making a medical decision about which we know nothing,'' said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
``We should not be making decisions because we're trying to please someone politically.''
Congressional Republicans sought to distance themselves from the memo and denied any political motivation.
``There's no politics here,'' said Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican.
``I've been working on the culture of life for 32 years, and whether the public is for or against it, it's all about protecting the weak and defenseless.''
#6
Anyone else remember how up-in-arms the Loony Libs were over a memo from Rumsfeld giving permission to switch Khalid Sheik Mohammed to a cold-food diet? Somehow this was proof that the administration was torturing people...
And yet, suddenly, the same people (by and large) and their political allies want to STARVE someone to death, and have even gone so far as to blather about how "peaceful" and "gentle" a death by dehydration and starvation is.
So, as far as I can tell, for the American Left:
o Be responsible for the murder of 3,000 men, women, and children in the largest single incident of terrorism in history: the US government must keep you alive and COMFORTABLE.
o Be an inconvenience to someone: you have to die.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/21/2005 9:29 Comments ||
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Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
03/21/2005 9:50 Comments ||
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#8
Terry Schiavo is NOT in a persistent vegetative state.
She interacts occasionally with her environment. There's direct and compelling evidence of that. That fact alone means that she is not in PVS.
Further, she's never had a proper medical work-up for PVS. The chief expert for the husband is well known to be a full-fledged member of the forced euthanasia movement. He's a professional testifier in the court system and he has, to say the least, a suspect reputation. His claims that Terri has PVS shouldn't be taken without clear verification, and that hasn't been done.
She's never had a brain MRI scan. She's never had a brain PET scan. Both are clearly needed to make a diagnosis of PVS in 2005. I say that as an internist.
If Michael Schiavo starved his dog to death, he'd be brought up on cruelty charges.
The whole euthanasia movement is wrong, wrong, wrong, and their desire is to make it happen in this country under the guise of a "right to die". You might have a right to die, but you 1) don't have a right to involve me as a physicians and 2) you can't start killing others whom you think have "a life not worth living." These people are dangerously wrong, and they have to be stopped.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2005 11:22 Comments ||
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#9
Isn't the bottom line of all this that the "husband" never brought up her desire not to be kept alive until SEVEN YEARS AFTER HER ILLNESS?
This not only does not pass the smell test, this is like driving past a dairy farm on a foggy morning!
The judge and "husband" can have doctors they know will give the "right answer" in briefs, and everybody thinks they are very cozy, but, owing to the events of 2000, the Florida state courts have shown they are leftist pre-judgingly corrupt, and are being watched.
#10
I've been waiting to hear what you had to say about this, Doc. Given that they will have to starve her to death for her to die was all I needed to hear to know that hubby's a complete asshole.
#11
Old man Schiavo is after the insurance money to help his new life along, as I understand it. Has the insurance company said what they will do?
Life insurance companies want you to live as long as possible so that they can receive and keep the premiums for as long as possible before making the payout. If they allow Mr. Schiavo to collect, they are setting precedent that they will payout on euthanasia. This could accelerate a lot of deaths.
The insurance company has a financial incentive to file a wrongful death suit against Mr. Schiavo, preventing him from collecting on the policy because he caused her death, particularly given what Dr. White stated above. Anybody know who the insurer is?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/21/2005 11:50 Comments ||
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#12
SOME THING JUST DON'T NEED VISUALS
HAT TIP DRUDGE :
President Bush was asleep, came out in hallway, signed Schiavo bill and went back to bed
Mon Mar 21 2005 13:03:56 ET
Q Can you go over what went on last night, in terms of the President signing the bill and how it went down?
MR. McCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE: Sure. I guess the bill -- the House passed it shortly after midnight, and then the President signed it at 1:11 a.m., in the morning. The Staff Secretary, Brett Kavanaugh, walked the legislation over to the residence for the President to sign. He came outside his bedroom and signed it in the residence.
Q Had he been asleep?
MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, he was woken up after it was passed, when it was ready to be signed.
Q I heard you describe it earlier, he came out of his bedroom and literally signed it standing up in the hall; is that how it went/
MR. McCLELLAN: That's correct, yes. He was just standing in the hall in the residence an signed the legislation then.
Q Was he wearing --
Q Is it safe to assume he wasn't wearing a suit and tie at the time? (Laughter.)
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going into that much detail. Yes, he cleaned up, put on his suit -- (laughter.)
END
1:11 AM : The Prez in a robe with his reading glasses signing legislation...Some things are best left to the minds eye {snicker}
#15
Mojo, I do recall something about "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness", and we're talking about Terri Schiavo's life.
She is NOT been demonstrated to be in an irreversible PVS. Until that's been proven, this is forced euthanasia.
Oh, that's too big and fancy a word, a blue state word -- this is murder. There, that's better.
And the state has a responsibility to stop murder, not abet it.
This mashes on one of my hot buttons. Euthanasia, assisted suicide, whatever you want to call it, is wrong, wrong, wrong. These people have to be stopped. Terri Schiavo has a right to live.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/21/2005 14:26 Comments ||
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#16
Key word, guys: State
Murder is a state crime, not federal. The US Congress has no buisness in the mess. State legislature? Maybe, even probably, but it's my understanding that Congress is trying to overrule the state court(s) in this case...
#17
Key words: Denial of civil right to live without due process of law. Fourteenth amendment. It's a federal case. The same way the FBI gets into KKK murders.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
03/21/2005 14:59 Comments ||
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#18
Anyone else listening to Hannity?
Is his "big news" rumor have to do with this?
mojo : Mrs. D has it right! 14th Amendment issue!
Did anyone else hear Rushie talk about the nurse from the late 90s? "Husband" was acting evilly?
.."When's she goona die? I'm gonna be rich!"
#19
I've never heard this previously from a doc Dr. White. I may be forced to change my mind. There's tons of BS and stylin on both sides of this.... but if you say so, I'm with ya.
#20
Here are the people who voted against Terri Schiavo.
If there is any truth to the rumor about the husband was involved in her condition, then they should all resign. And if they do not resign, massive amounts of money should be put into their districts to defeat them...
#22
mojo: Calling this situation a "nasty family squabble" is nothing more than media slant / hype/ deconstructionist/ reductionistic lingo. This isn't a "squabble," it's a test case between justice for disabled people, and those who want to define human worth on the basis of unconsitutional elitist definitions of "viability" and "quality of life." I wouldn't be surprised if insurance companies are largely behind it (follow the money).
The Sean Hannity show featured a Noble Prize nominated physician who spent 10 hours with Teri Shiavo, and he insisted that Teri is not in a coma of any kind (the definition of Persistant Vegetative State - PVS). He insists that she is alert, conscious, and vocalizes in a variety of ways in reponse to others--proof of her attempts to interact with her world. She lists to see who is in the room because she can't see farther than about 18 inches from her face. When someone enters her field of vision, she responds directly. At this point she can eat and drink on her own, but there is a court order preventing it. The physician reported that her husband has denied even the most rudimentary rehabilitative care she needed before and needs now, and has refused to even allow antibiotics to be administered when she has developed uriniary tract and other infections. (What a great guy.)
Additionally, there are affidavits from LPNs indicating that the husband would ask them "Is the bitch dead yet?" and "When is the bitch going to die?" Evidently, he would be upset whenever she improved, and was happy if there was a decline in her recovery. Whenever she was placed in a nursing home, and the staff suggested or began therapy with her, the husband would yank her out of the facility and put her into another one.
Further the physician said that she could still learn to walk, talk, and return home to "enjoy going out to restaurants and movies. "
This is what's going on, Ship. The media is bullshitting about as much, or more, as they do about the Iraq situation. Big surprise? Nope.
About the Florida Courts vs. Congress. A great example of checks and balances in action. Congress is reigning in the out of control legislative branch, which is their right. My opinion is that it's about time.
#24
This is an easy call: A federal court can intervene if there is "state action". Here a judge (1) ordered the tube removed, and (2) denied a request of the parents that they try to give her food or water by mouth. Under those rules, all the babies in the country would die.
Ask the question this way: Why can't someone just shoot her? If starving her is cool, then why wait so long? She has to die, according to the judge's order!
Finally, this statute merely gives her the same standing as a criminal defendant, i.e., the right to petition a federal court to review a state court decision.
#25
BigEd--yeah, I meant judicial branch. I was listening to talk radio at the same time, and they were talking about "legislature, legislature, legislature," so I accidentally transposed. Oops! Thanks for catching it. Ha! : - )
#26
Having been married for three decades, I can still remember that our wedding vows stated, "in sickness and in health till death do us part," it DID NOT read, "until I can put you to death as I part."
Posted by: Captain America ||
03/21/2005 19:31 Comments ||
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#27
Michael Schiavvo is the only one who claims to know Terri's desire to die. He has shown himself to be less than pond scum, even quitting visitation for her parents while the state kills her. I sincerely wish he and Terri could trade places. He doesn't have her best interests in mind and therefor has NO place as her guardian/executor
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/21/2005 19:53 Comments ||
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#28
Yet another brick in the validation of the "Democrats are the new Nazis" argument.
#29
There was a lot of confusion (not making excuses) on Terri's condition. From what I can find she is brain damaged but NOT brain dead. That's a HUGE distinction in my mind. To allow a brain damaged person to literally starve to death is a cruel option indeed. Good job congress! Funny how the only life that the left really cares about are criminals and terrorists.
#30
There was a lot of confusion (not making excuses) on Terri's condition. From what I can find she is brain damaged but NOT brain dead. That's a HUGE distinction in my mind. To allow a brain damaged person to literally starve to death is a cruel option indeed. Good job congress! Funny how the only life that the left really cares about are criminals and terrorists.
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.
A large investigation is under way into how traffickers managed to smuggle drugs out of Belgium inside live cows. On Monday, the Belgian website of broadcaster RTL reported that traffickers had been hiding drugs in the uteruses of cattle. The cows were taken to Spain and France where the drugs were extracted before the animals went to slaughter. The public prosecutor's office confirmed that police were 
A tornado tore through northern Bangladesh, killing at least 25 people, injuring nearly 500 and leaving many homeless, news reports said on Monday. The twister struck late Sunday, blowing away several thousand mostly thatched huts in dozens of farming villages in Gaibandha district, 190 kilometers (120 miles) north of capital Dhaka, Ittefaq and Janakantha dailies reported. Rescuers recovered 18 bodies from the debris of collapsed homes and trees, while seven injured people died en route to hospital, the reports said. The dead included women and children. Many of the injured were taken to hospitals.
A Saudi man was executed Monday for murdering a compatriot and having illicit sex with women by using sorcery to trick them, the Interior Ministry said. 
The case of a Saudi writer who was sentenced by a Shariah court in Riyadh to 275 lashes and four months imprisonment after being accused of being "corrupt" by members of the 
The less pupils use computers at school and at home, the better they do in international tests of literacy and maths, the largest study of its kind says today.
Two soldiers serving with UN forces in Haiti—one from Sri Lanka and one from Nepal—were killed Sunday during security operations, officials said. The deceased Sri Lankan soldier was supporting 200 UN stabilization force (MINUSTAH) troops who took back control of a police station in Petit-Goave, 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Port-au-Prince, on Sunday. A spokesman for the MINUSTAH, Toussaint Kongo-Doudou, said the Sri Lankan soldier's death was the first of a UN soldier in Haiti since the force deployed here at the end of June 2004. He did not identify either man.
Consternation gripped the government of President 
Senior allies of Jacques Chirac, including four former government ministers, are among almost 50 people who go on trial in Paris today accused of involvement in one of the worst corruption scandals in French history. Charged with rigging public works contracts in order to finance the country's major political parties, their testimony threatens to "dynamite" the country's political establishment and heap embarrassment on the French president. 
A senior Bosnian Serb general indicted for genocide in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica will surrender this week at the U.N. war crimes tribunal, the Serbian government said Sunday. Vinko Pandurevic, a top fugitive since the end of the 1992-95 war in neighboring Bosnia, was to travel to the Netherlands on Wednesday to give himself up to the U.N. court at The Hague, the government said in a statement. He will be the 10th Serb war crimes suspect to give himself up to the tribunal since October. Belgrade has been under intense international pressure to extradite about a dozen suspects still at large before the European Union issues a report in April, on whether the Balkan country could one day begin membership negotiations. Pandurevic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb army's so-called Zvornik Brigade, was ``persuaded to surrender voluntarily during talks with Serbian Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic,'' the Serb government statement said. The Serbian government quoted Pandurevic as saying his decision to surrender was a result of a ``desire to help his nation,'' and that it was in the ``best interest of the state'' for him to go.
A letter from the Moncton Hospital to a New Brunswick heart patient in need of an electrocardiogram said the appointment would be in three months. It added: "If the person named on this computer-generated letter is deceased, please accept our sincere apologies." The patient wasn't dead, according to the doctor who showed the letter to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. But there are many Canadians who claim the long wait for the test and the frigid formality of the letter are indicative of a health system badly in need of emergency care. 
In more bad news for Sen. John Kerry, "Hanoi" 
Myanmar's military government blamed exiled dissidents for two small bomb blasts in the capital, Yangon, and suggested more "destructive acts" may be planned, state media said on Sunday. Nobody was wounded in the explosion at a bus terminal on Thursday night or in a second blast early Saturday at the Panorama Hotel in central Yangon. "The government has received information that since early January exiled saboteurs active on the borders are hatching plots to step up their destructive acts in Myanmar," the state-owned Myanma Ahlin daily newspaper said in a report. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the newspaper named several exiled opposition groups accused by the junta of "recruiting, training and sending saboteurs". They included the National League for Democracy (Liberated Areas), a splinter group from the main NLD led by democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been confined by the junta since May 2003 despite international calls for her release. The newspaper also named the All Burma Students Democratic Front, the Free Trade Union of Burma, the Burma Communist Party and the Vigorous Burmese Students Warriors.
