Margot's News & Views

A Message from Ghana

2011-02-17T19:02:00.000-08:00

THE CAPUTO FAMILY ASSOCIATION

We have received this message from
Brother Emmanuel from Ghana who is in
charge of refugee and street children.
Noble Dynasty support this group, unfortunately we
have no fund to assist. Any help
is appreciated.To:

Brother Emmanuel

-------Original Message-------

From: Ecumenical Catholic Church Of Christ Missions West Africa

Date: 17/02/2011 01:20:13 p.m.

To: salcaputo@email.it

Subject: We Request your Prayers Brothers and
Sisters Brother Emmanuel OSM

Ref: We Request your Prayers Brothers
and Sisters:

February 13, 2011, Sunday Morning at 6 A.M. African
time while prepare for special service, unexpectedly
we saw 2 tucks of polices entered
the Refuges Camp where we have EOCCC
Mission is and started shooting at the
Refugees and 6 persons is killed and
many is wounded and while sixty (60)plus
refugees was arrested and taken to an
unknown place. Prevalently we had spent 48
hours indoor and they are still arresting
Refugees.

We had completely run out of food
and water is run out, we can
not go out or come in. We
absolutely need prayers for us for these
suffering and Innocent kids.

In the hands of Mercy,

Bro. Emmanuel OSM

EOCCC MISSION –Ghana– West Africa

+233-243-021848

Fwd: Ghanaian Police Opened Fire on Liberian
Refugees, Five Reported …

Ghana News :: Police deny indiscriminate shooting at Buduburam …

Feb 14, 2011 … Police deny indiscriminate shooting at Buduburam Refugee camp. … One refugee was killed in the violence. … Source: Joy News/Ghana …

http://news.myjoyonline.com/news/201102/61053.asp – Cached

Conflicting Accounts of Ghanaian Police Raid on Refugee Camp …

Feb 14, 2011 … Ghanaian police Sunday raided the Buduburam Refugee Camp outside the … five Liberian refugees were killed by police and many more wounded. …

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Conflicting-Accounts-of-Ghanaian-Police-Raid-on… – Cached

Police deny indiscriminate shooting at Buduburam Refugee camp …

Police deny indiscriminate shooting at Buduburam Refugee camp. The police service have denied claims … One refugee was killed in the violence. … Other sites of Modern Ghana Media Group Modern Ghana, The Nigerian Voice, Nigeria Films …

http://www.modernghana.com/news/316236/1/police-deny-indiscriminate-shooting-at-buduburam-… – Cached

Operation We Care for Liberia: Statement on Liberian Refugee ...

… shot dead by Ghanaian police at the Buduburam Refugee Settlement outside …

http://www.modernghana.com/news2/316393/1/operation-we-care-for-liberia-statement-on-liber…

Operation We Care for Liberia Statement on Liberian Refugee …

Feb 15, 2011 … According to modernghana.com, five Liberian refugees have reportedly been shot dead by Ghanaian police at the Buduburam Refugee Settlement …

http://www.limany.org/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D933:operati…

Police deny indiscriminate shooting at Buduburam Refugee camp …

Feb 14, 2011 … GhanaReview International – The Leading Ghanaian News Agency … deployed to quell violence at the Buduburam Refugee camp yesterday opened fire … killed in the violence. It took the intervention of the police to calm …

http://www.ghanareview.com/Restyle/index2.php%3Fclass%3Dall%26date%3D2011-02-14%26id%3D464… – Cached

Buduburam Refugees Clash with Police | Liberian Observer

Feb 15, 2011 … A leadership crisis erupted at the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana yesterday, with some residents of the camp clashing with Ghanaian …

http://www.liberianobserver.com/node/10531 – Cached

The Inquirer Online : How Buduburam Violence Started

How Buduburam Violence Started. The girl who was killed in Ghana … Our source said the refugees attempt to prevent the police from carrying those arrested …

http://www.theinquirer.com.lr/story.php%3Frecord_id%3D3680%26sub%3D14

Ghanaian Police Opened Fire on Liberian Refugees, Five Reported …

Feb 13, 2011 … An eyewitness account from the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana told The New Dispensation this evening that the Ghanaian police stormed the …

http://thenewdispensation.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/ghanian-police-opened-fire-on-liberian-… – Cached

Inside Liberia with Bernard Gbayee Goah

Feb 14, 2011 … To see Liberians brutalized and killed under the very nose of President … We lastly condemn the Ghanaian police action at Buduburam because … use of force on Liberian refugees by Ghana police and military have the …

http://bernardgoah.blogspot.com/ - Cached

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Federal Reserve welcomes a Brave New Economy

2011-01-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.mybudget360.com/federal-reserve-brave-new-economy-fed-spvs-debt-audit-federal-reserve-wall-street-shadow-aid/

Federal Reserve welcomes a Brave New Economy – how the Fed is robbing the public in open daylight. Maiden Lane Special Purpose Vehicles purchased toxic mortgages like option ARMs and commercial real estate.

The global economy seems to be facing a Brave New World envisioned by Aldous Huxley where the world is operating under a command economy and all citizens are psychologically conditioned from to birth to value consumption. The Federal Reserve is the ultimate spend more than you earn machine. It is amazing that a few hours after the US national public debt crossed the $14 trillion threshold (yes, we crossed this line on the last day of the year) that this euphoria is setting in only because people spent money during the holiday season. “Ending is better than mending” is a platitude repeated in Brave New World. It would seem that with credit cards burning holes in wallets many went ahead and spent money they did not have this holiday season. The conditioning has been strong and has provided substantial distraction from the bigger heist committed by the Federal Reserve.

The Fed doesn’t even attempt to hide the fact that they are bailing out some of the worst toxic waste in the market. This was accomplished through many archaic mechanisms including the oddly named Maiden Lane Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV). Take for example Maiden Lane II:

Source: New York Fed
The above is from a report conducted in April of 2010. You would think that this data would be hard to find but the Fed and Wall Street is starting to come to the conclusion that they can simply create complicated names with weird acronyms and most of the public will be consumed with spending instead of mending. Just look at the above closely. This Maiden Lane is full of option ARMs, subprime, and junk Alt-A loans. This is the waste found in the financial sewers of Wall Street and here it is sitting on the balance sheet of our central bank. Not only is it sitting there, this data is publicly available and is a clear indication that the Fed has bailed out many banking institutions through shadow methods. They simply shifted junk from one entity onto the backs of the American taxpayer. It is interesting that BlackRock Financial Management is the manager of this SPV:

“BlackRock Financial Management, Inc. (the “Investment Manager” or “BlackRock”) manages the investment portfolio of the LLC under a multi-year contract with FRBNY that includes provisions governing termination. BNYM provides administrative services and has been appointed to serve as collateral agent under multi-year contracts with FRBNY that include provisions governing termination.”

In other words, you have banks shifting junk from one garbage can to another and letting the excess expenses run off and pollute the average American either through dilution of their currency or creeping inflation. This is not the only Maiden Lane out there. We have others that are heavily leveraged with commercial real estate debt:

More toxic mortgage waste that was bailed out with no Congressional approval. This Maiden Lane is specifically setup for the Bear Stearns fiasco. Maiden Lane II was focused on waste run off from the AIG debacle. In the end the Federal Reserve is the waste management solution for the banking industry using the American taxpayer as the filter to wash off the financial sewage of Wall Street and their years of bad gambles. They do not even bother to hide this since this is all accessible from the New York Fed website. Of course what they do hide is the larger trillions of dollars that are currently sitting on their balance sheet.
While much of this junk sits in ruin the stock market seems to have forgotten about this and is bursting upwards and has taken a pill of soma:

Source: Bloomberg
The above is the TED spread which reflects the difference in interest rates between interbank loans and short-term US government debt. A lower TED spread reflects lower credit risk in the economy and as you can see during the crisis months the spread went to 465 basis points. Today it stands at 16.69 which is lower than the days prior to the economic crisis and when the stock market peaked! In other words, forget about the European debt problems or the $14 trillion in US national debt or the fact that many states are facing bankruptcy. Things are looking up just because people shopped a bit during the holidays with credit cards. Keep taking that financial soma.
The amount of bad debt banks have is still incredible. Look at the amount of negative equity in the US still looming in the ether:

The banking system is largely insolvent and the FDIC is trying to put out a forest fire with an eye dropper. As long as people can collectively pretend things are fine then the system can go on for a bit longer. This is why the Fed can publish data like the above which frankly is outrageous and outright robbery yet nothing is done about it. Our politicians need to protect the financial interest of the people yet with so much money tied up in the political arena the interests of Wall Street are first and foremost. That is why we have 17 percent unemployment and underemployment and 43 million Americans on food stamps. At the same time Disneyland over the holidays set a park record for attendance. Just like the questionable assets in these SPVs, the Fed and Wall Street are trying to figure out another method of putting the horrible employment and wage stats of average Americans into a SPV so the media can keep feeding the public a line that all is well.

http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/

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alternative news, alternative world news, world news

2011-01-04T10:51:00.000-08:00

alternative news, alternative world news, world news

Pentagon in $9.1bn fraud case in Iraq

2011-01-04T09:02:00.001-08:00

Tue Jan 4, 2011 2:35PM

Iraq’s Supreme Audit Court says the US Ministry of Defense has failed to account for the USD 9.1 billion misspent discretionary funds during Iraq’s occupation.

Iraq Oil Field

The Pentagon received USD 9.1 billion back in 2004 from the US–led occupation authority funds set up to benefit Iraqi people with assets seized from the previous regime of Saddam Hussein.

According to Iraqi newspaper al–Bayanat al–Jadidah, this recent release follows the 2010 finding of USD 8.7 billion in Iraq funds not accounted for.

The sum had been allocated for reconstruction projects in Iraq, the auditing office said.

An Iraqi auditing official said the audit’s president has twice failed to send its representatives to attend the audit’s international meetings.

The audit found that defense agencies receiving the money had failed to set up required treasury accounts and managing organizations for the funds.

ZH/ZHD/AKM

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BIG BROTHER: The Police State Mentality in the Electronic Age

2011-01-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

This article is about the freedom vs mass government surveillance systems.

You will be able to read the article (with links) by clicking on

http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1132

or,

by going to Dr. Tremblay's new book site “The Code for Global Ethics” for the article without links:

http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/

The book “The Code for Global Ethics” can be ordered:

See it on Amazon USA;

See it on Amazon Canada;

See it on Amazon UK;

or, in Australia.

Also, please note that professor Tremblay's book can be purchased in French

on Amazon.ca:

on Amazon Canada;

I enclose the article as an attachment.

Greetings and Happy New Year.

Carole JEAN

Editor of Dr. R. Tremblay's work

bigpictureworld@yahoo.com

BOOK

http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/

________________________________________

To unsubscribe, please send an email with the word "unsubscribe" to: bigpictureworld@yahoo.com

N.B.:For further educational research only.

__________________________________

Cher éditeur,

Même si le blogue "Big Picture World" est avant tout destiné à un public américain, vous pouvez prendre connaissance d'un article du professeur Tremblay, en langue anglaise, lequel porte sur la montée de la mentalité de l'état policier aux États-Unis. L'article s'intitule "BIG BROTHER: La mentalité de l'état policier à l'ère électronique."

Vous pouvez en prendre connaissance en cliquant sur le site suivant: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1132

ou,

en visitant le site du nouveau livre du professeur Tremblay aux États-Unis:

http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/

Vous avez pleine liberté de reproduire ou de traduire ce texte.

Veuillez aussi prendre note que le dernier livre du professeur Tremblay “Le Code pour une éthique globale” est maintenant disponible chez:

Amazon Canada;

et chez Amazon France:

http://www.amazon.fr/Code-pour-une-Ethique-Globale/dp/2895781737/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1235229636&sr=11-1

Bien à vous,

Carole JEAN,

Éditrice

bigpictureworld@yahoo.com

http://www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/

_______________________

Si vous désirez ne plus recevoir ce rappel, simplement insrire le mot "désabonner" et envoyer à:

bigpictureworld@yahoo.com

_______________________________________________________

N.B.: Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay's commentaries are copyrighted and may be republished, reposted, or emailed providing the person or organization doing so does not charge for subscriptions or advertising and that the column is copied intact and that full credit is given and that the author's web site address is included.

Editors or Publishers of commercial publications charging for subscriptions or advertising who want to run an article must contact Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. at bigpictureworld@yahoo.com to obtain permission.

Radio or television Talk Show Hosts interested in scheduling an interview with Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay should contact him directly at: rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. When responding, please include your name, city and state. And, unless otherwise requested, all respondents will be added to the World Geopolitics Blog address list.

Please visit the author's web site at http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/.

_________________

ARTICLE

http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1132

Article # 1132

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

BIG BROTHER: The Police State Mentality in the Electronic Age

by Rodrigue Tremblay [http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/author.html]

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), American inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat, and statesman (1775)

“Americans used to roar like lions for liberty; now we bleat like sheep for security.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898 –1993), American Christian preacher and author

"A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. ...At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration."

George Orwell (1903-1950) (Eric Arthur Blair), (book: 1984)

“Since information gives power, access to personal files can lead to unreasonable pressures, even blackmail, especially against those with the least resources, people who depend upon public programs, for example. Big Brother isn't a camera. Big Brother is a computer.”

C.J. Howard, political novel “Cybercash”

In 2049, when the 100th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell political novel “1984” will be celebrated, it will be recalled that the immediate post September 11, 2001 period marked the beginning of a gradual decline in personal liberty and freedom, especially in the United States but also elsewhere, and the emergence of a great information-obsessed Leviathan. Freedom rarely disappears in one fell swoop. Its disappearance is rather the end result of a thousand encroachments.

Pushed to the extreme and without clear democratic oversight, it becomes the mark of a totalitarian state, when authorities feel that they never have enough information on the people. It is because information is power and state bureaucrats and politicians naturally like to be in control; on the one hand, releasing as little information about their own actions through an imposed secrecy, and on the other, accumulating as much information as possible about the citizens.

And today, modern governments have all the tools to transform their country into a creeping police state, more so now then ever before, in this electronic age. They have access to information technology that previous full-fledged “police state” governments could only have dreamed about.

Nowadays, with super computers and revolutionary new models to gather information and build databases, governments, i.e. bureaucrats and politicians, are in a position as never before to accumulate and correlate tremendous amounts of personal information on their citizens, from public (federal, state and local) as well as from a plethora of private sources. Government intelligence on each and every citizen is thus rendered much easier and, I would add, much more frightening. Indeed, the potential for abuse is enormous.

In 2002, for example, retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter proposed that the U.S. government create a tracking and monitoring system called "Total Information Awareness", in order for the U.S. government to gather information in a preventive way about individuals from widely varied sources, including tax records, telephone calling records, credit card charges, banking transactions, airline or ship reservations, and various biometric databases, without taking into consideration civil liberties or a citizens' right to privacy, the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974, or without having to request search warrants and without having to give prior notice to the persons involved. —The pretext was to allow the government to thwart possible terrorist activity, thus creating an unlimited appetite for information.

Well, there are clear signs that this massive data mining system on individuals is now solidly in place and is in full operation and can be expected to grow over time. George Orwell must be turning in his grave.

First, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s network of fusion centers, launched in 2003, has allowed the government to centralize a host of previously disparate information about Americans and foreigners alike, whether related to personal and business records, drivers licenses, local taxes, local infractions, police records, etc., through a host of coordinated information-sharing networks. (N.B.: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established on November 25, 2002 and is the domestic equivalent of the Department of Defense.)

Secondly, central provisions of the USA Patriot Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, allow the government to operate roving wire taps, search any individual’s business, personal, and even library records upon presentation of a national security letter, and spy on so-called "lone wolf" suspects, i.e., foreign nationals who have no known links to groups designated as terrorist. On this, the current Obama administration, by extending those provisions, is scarcely different from the previous Bush administration.

Thirdly, since passports and tight intelligence screening have been made a requirement for most international travel by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, since January 1, 2008, every individual traveling in and out of the United States has all his or her whereabouts and movements recorded so the government knows at all times his or her address and the places he or she has traveled to and from.

For instance, U.S. Transportation Security Administration's recent decision to use full-body airport X-ray scanners and full body groping at airports is another example where so-called security procedures are applied blindly and indiscriminately. There is more to come, since it has been announced that such invasive intelligence screening is coming to hotels and shopping malls, as well as to trains, buses and ports, etc.

These are some of the main features of the new government apparatus to gather information on people. There are many others. —Take for instance the requirement, since 2002, that all American high schools must give Pentagon military recruiters the names and contact information of all their juniors and seniors. Failure to comply on their part may result in the loss of government funding.

The logical next step for the U.S. government would be to follow a recent Italy's lead and outlaw outright the use of cash for most transactions, except for small ones, thus providing the government even more minute information about an individual's income, purchases and displacements. Nothing will escape the watching eye of the government in the electronic age. People will be filed, photographed and corralled.

Indeed, the way mass government surveillance systems are growing, by year 2020, chances are good that Americans will be living in a “Brave New World”!

—CYBER BIG BROTHER would know it all and it will be watching you.

_______________________________________________

Rodrigue Tremblay

is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Montreal

and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book "The Code for Global Ethics" at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

The book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, has just been released by Prometheus Books.

Please visit the book site at:

www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

See it on Amazon USA:

See it on Amazon Canada:

See it on Amazon UK:

or, in Australia at:

Please ask your favorite bookstore and your local library to order

the book: The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles,

by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721.

*****The French version of the book is also now available. See:

www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/

or on Amazon Canada

_____________________________________

Posted, Tuesday, January 4, 2011, at 5:30 am

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information and education purposes only and is not intended in any way as personal advice of any sort.

____________________________________

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ZORIAH - A PHOTOJOURNALIST AND WAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S BLOG

2011-01-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

The Best TEDtalks & Ideas Worth Spreading

ZORIAH - zoriah.net blog

Posted: 01 Jan 2011 08:04 PM PST

I wanted to put together a list of what I believe are the best, top, number one, most interesting TED Talks of all time. There are so many great TEDtalks it is really hard to choose favorites, but below are just a few of mine.
Over the past several years I have found few things more inspiring than the ideas expressed in TED Talks. For those of you who may not have heard of TEDTalks, here is a bit more info:
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a series of conferences designed to make "ideas worth spreading" available for the general public to experience. Basically they gather together some of the greatest and most inspiring people on the planet and give them 18 minutes to express their ideas in lectures. These lectures are then put on the internet for the world to hear and see. There is plenty more information on the net about how and why it was started so I wont go into it in detail here.
I will say that it is incredible to me the amount of knowledge one can gain (for free) just by watching these wonderful lectures and presentations. To have this wealth of knowledge available to us is truly a gift and for those of you who have not had a chance to fall in love with TED, I hope this post will get you on your way.
I am making this post on New Years Day because we talk about New Years Resolutions and if these TED talks cant inspire you to come up with a few, maybe nothing can. I would also like to encourage people to not limit their resolutions to just new years. We always need to push ourselves to be better and this is something we need to do year round, not just on one day and maybe a couple weeks following.
I have written a tiny bit about each talk below the title but most of them you just need to watch to get the full experience. They all contain so many wonderful and inspirational ideas and thoughts, it is hard to sum them up and absolutely no way I could do it as eloquently as the speakers themselves do.

If there are TED talks that you love or that have inspired you, please post links to them in the comments section. I would love for this to become a long list of some of the best of the over 800 TED Talks. I also look forward to watching your favorite TED Talks myself. I will add more of my favorites in separate posts every couple of months.
Matt Ridley - When Ideas Have Sex
A wonderful lecture on how we use our "collective brain."

Ken Robinson - Schools Kill Creativity
"If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original."

Ken Robinson - Bring on The Learning Revolution!
Making the case for schools to become more personalized and less standardized, letting children's natural talents shine through.

Dan Gilbert - Why Are We Happy
Synthetic vs Natural Happiness...very interesting.

Benjamin Zander - Music, Vision, Passion and Shining Eyes
"I will never say anything that could not stand as the last thing I ever say."

Dave Eggers - Once Upon a School
An inspiring story about normal people thinking outside the box and helping children learn in a unique way.

Rory Sutherland - Life Lessons From an Ad Man

A change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as a change in real value. A new way of looking at life.

Jonathan Harris - Collecting Stories
For all of us that love stories and searching for new and effective ways of telling them.

Sheena Lyengar - The Art of Choosing
A wonderful lecture about how we make and feel about our choices.

James Nachtwey - Searing Photos of War
The great photojournalist and war photographer presents and talks about his images.

Hans Rosling - The Best Stats You've Ever Seen
An interesting way of looking at the developing world.

Dean Kamen - A New Prosthetic Arm
A short piece on the development of a new technology.

James H Kunstler - Disecting Suburbia
This scathing commentary on suburban america is such a wonderful series of observations and one of the reasons I get depressed in the vast majority of areas in the US. One of my favorite wake up calls.

Majora Carter - Greening The Ghetto
A reminder that you don't have to go far to find poverty and injustice but also the inspiration that these things can be reversed.

Malcolm Gladwell - Spaghetti Sauce
Although it is interesting throughout, the real pay off is the final sentence :)

Theo Jansen - Creating Creatures
Nothing is more amazing than human creativity!

Ursus Wehrli - Tidying Up Art
A funny, utilitarian view on art and organization :) The comments on order and chaos are really nice.

Jill Bolte Taylor - Stroke of Insight
A pretty amazing story of a brain scientist's experience and analysis of her own stroke

Joshua Klein - The Intelligence of Crows
One mans quest to prove an idiot at a party wrong :)

Nellie McKay - Singing "Mother of Pearl" and "If I Had You"
I am sure there are some, but I don't know how anyone could not this...so good.

Nathaniel Kahn - My Architect
The part in Bangladesh is wonderful for anyone who loves architecture...and people.

Moshe Safdie - Building Uniqueness
Some of the best architecture of this time!!!

Please don't forget to post links to your favorite TED Talks in the comments section below and feel free to comment on the talks I have included in this post.

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A TEACHING FOR MEN: A Hole in Your Fence

2011-01-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father

gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his
temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.
The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the
next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number
of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered
it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence.
Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all. He
told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now
pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.
The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his
father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by
the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “You have done
well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will
never be the same.”
When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one.
You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. It won’t matter
how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound is still there.
A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.
Friends are very rare jewels, indeed. They make you smile and
encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words
of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us. Please forgive me if I have ever left a hole in your fence.
- author unknown (to me)

Submitted by Luc Majno
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Top 10 Soft Skills to Master in 2011

2010-12-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

Source Article

Listen to the Podcast
Soft skills is a term relating to a cluster of personal attributes that characterize relationships with other people, such as social graces, communication, cooperation, honesty, respect, responsibility, friendliness, and optimism.
Because companies are becoming more process and system driven and because job competition has increased at all levels, there has never been a time when soft skills offer more value to the market than they do today.
As a growing number of people with similar talents and education compete for the same jobs, promotions, and clients, soft skills become the differentiating factor separating one person from another. The little things you’ve been learning about in this blog now matter more than ever.
In writing this post I made a list of my top 50 soft skills; I then slowly and painful reduced that list to my top 10. As you read each skill, I challenge you to look in the mirror of truth and do an honest evaluation.
If you have the desire to improve a specific skill, click the title link and learn more about that skill and the benefits of mastering it. Make 2011 the year you take your people skills to a new level.

1. The Art of Listening. If your family, friends, and colleagues were asked to rank your listening skills, what would they say? Do you interrupt? Do you try to control the conversation? Do you ask questions showing a genuine interest in what people are saying?

Being an attentive listener is one of the most important skills you can master, especially in this fast-paced world where everyone wants to talk and few have the patience to listen. Be intentional this next year to listen more and talk less.

2. Cell Phone Etiquette. A friend told me about his colleague, a Realtor, who landed a $6,900,000 listing. As he was leaving the seller’s home, he causally asked why he had been selected over the other four Realtors. The seller said, “You were the only one who did not check your cell phone during the appointment.” The Realtor ended up selling the home, earning over $300K.

Cell phone addiction is out of control. This next year, challenge yourself to show respect when using your phone, both at work and at home.

3. Show More Respect. People’s tolerance for being disrespected is as low as I have ever seen it. The days of advancing careers by stepping on the toes of co-workers are over. People deserve to be treated with respect and are now demanding it.

Look for the little things you can do in 2011 to show more respect to others. This includes the teller at the bank. Treat people as human beings and not as pawns on your chess board. As you treat others with greater respect, they will admire you and so will the people who witness your actions.

4. Authenticity. Because many people are less trusting than they have ever been and others are tired of being around people who are not genuine and real, there is a powerful trend towards authenticity.

Being authentic is when you are not trying to impress others nor are you acting like someone you are not. The authenticity I am referring to makes people comfortable, relaxed, and enjoy your presence.

5. Show Interest in Others. How frequently do people show a genuine interest in you, your ideas, or interests? When was the last time a friend called you (without an agenda) just to see how you are doing? If your life is like mine, it doesn’t happen frequently.

In 2011 slow down and show an interest in those whose relationship you value. As you do, you will stand out from all the superficial relationships as someone who cares about others.

6. Verbal Communication. According to a new research report by Kelly Services the traits individuals identify as the most important in creating their personal brands were their verbal communication skills. This includes such things as being friendly, clear, concise, confident, humble, and positive in the way you speak with others.

How you communicate with others verbally plays a defining role in how you are viewed. Think before you speak in 2011 and take pride in the way you interact with others.

7. Become More Responsible. As the speed of life has accelerated, so has the number of people are who are neglecting to do the things that are expected of them, including being late for appointments, failing to return calls and emails, and not completing projects on time.

Being responsible also includes admitting when you have made a mistake and accepting responsibility for your actions and decisions. Let 2011 be the year that you stop making excuses and start doing the little things that are expected of you.

8. Make Your Appearance an Asset. Very few things are more powerful in creating your brand than the visual imprint you make in people’s minds. When you take pride in your appearance, it makes you look good, it helps you feel good, and it increases your influence with others.

I have learned that, when it comes to appearance, it’s all about the little things. From the way your hair is combed, to the style of clothes you wear and the shine on your shoes—it all makes an impression on others. Step up your appearance in 2011.

9. Control Your Emotional Energy. Most of what I hear going on today is negative. It’s like the recession has given everyone a free pass to find fault with everything. Whining and complaining have become a part of most conversations.

Leaders and employers know they can’t build a business when their people are focused on negative issues. It only takes one negative person to impact the atmosphere of an entire office; therefore, they are hiring and rewarding people who have a positive influence in their work environment.

Remember, where your attention goes, so goes your energy and attitude. Make 2011 the year you start focusing on positives and avoid the complainers who are dragging you down.

10. Your Email Brand. Every email you send makes a small, but noticeable impression on others. The accumulation of these impressions forms your brand. Think about your goals and consider the person you need to become to achieve your goals. I encourage you to read the Email Tips Report and focus on improving your email brand in 2011.

George Gurney, a leader in the employment industry since 1976, said, “When it comes to job offers, the soft skills determine who gets the job. After many years of recruiting, I know for a fact that when all the candidates’ work experience, education, and hard skills are equal, the candidate with the best soft skills will win! . . . Soft skills can be best defined as the quality of a person’s charisma. ”
Let me challenge you to take inventory of your own soft skills. Make note of those you need to develop into strong and winning assets and make a New Year’s resolution to work on those in 2011.
Improving your soft skills will have a positive impact on every part of your life.
Click here to visit the site and/or comment on this post.
About the Author: Todd Smith is a successful entrepreneur of 30 years and founder of Little Things Matter. To receive Todd’s lessons, subscribe here. All Todd’s lessons are also available on iTunes as downloadable podcasts. (Todd’s podcasts are ranked #27 in America’s top 100 podcasts and #1 in the personal and development field.)
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Year-End Flurry of Food Recalls, Illness

2010-12-29T08:58:00.000-08:00

Sprouts, Parsley, Cilantro, Pastry, Cheese in Separate Recalls

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD

Dec. 28, 2010 -- A nationwide recall of curly parsley and cilantro is the latest in a year-end flurry of food warnings and outbreaks of food-borne illness.
In the two most serious of these outbreaks:

At least 89 people in 15 states fell ill with salmonella infections after eating contaminated Alfalfa Sprouts and Spicy Sprouts from Tiny Greens Organic Farm of Urbana, Ill. Many of those who fell ill reported eating sandwiches at Jimmy John's restaurants.
100 people became ill after eating pastries made by Rolf's Patisserie, a gourmet European bakery in Lincolnwood, Ill. Various desserts were shipped wholesale and repackaged by other retailers. Whole Foods has recalled gingerbread houses and a wide range of pastries, pot pies, and quiche originally made by Rolf's.

Parsley/Cilantro Recall -- Salmonella

In the latest recall, J&D Produce of Edinburg, Texas, has recalled its Little Bear brand curly parsley and cilantro. Tests of the products in Quebec, Canada and in Detroit detected salmonella contamination.
The items were packed from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6. According to the Associated Press, the company is also recalling other produce that came through its production lines on these dates: arugula, leeks, collards, curly mustard, gold beets, kale, green Swiss chard, plain mustard, plain parsley, kohlrabi, rainbow Swiss chard, mint, methi leaf, beets, daikon, red Swiss chard, turnips, turnip greens, and dill.
No known illnesses have yet been associated with this recall. J&D promises a full refund of any affected product.

Alfalfa Sprouts -- Salmonella

On Dec. 27, the FDA warned consumers not to eat Alfalfa Sprouts and Spicy Sprouts (a mix of alfalfa, radish, and clover sprouts) from Tiny Greens Organic Farm.
The preliminary results of a CDC/FDA investigation link many of the illnesses to sandwiches from Jimmy John's restaurant outlets. About half of the 89 cases reported as of Dec. 21 were in Illinois residents who ate at Jimmy John's. The restaurant has stopped putting sprouts on its sandwiches.
The sprouts were also distributed in 4-ounce and 5-pound containers to farmers markets, restaurants, and groceries in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and possibly other states in the Midwest.
Illnesses from salmonella with the same DNA fingerprint as the outbreak strain have been identified in Connecticut, Washington D.C., Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Pastries -- Staph Toxin

On Christmas Eve, the Lincolnwood, Ill., bakery Rolf's Patisserie recalled products made after Nov. 1, 2010.
The products include tiramisu, cakes, cobblers, decorated cookies, tarts, pastries, and pies (including pot pies). Because these foods are sold wholesale, they may be repackaged by retailers under various labels.
The foods contain toxins produced by Staphylococcus aureus. Poisoning occurs from ingesting these toxins, not from Staph infection. Illness onset is usually within one to six hours after eating the contaminated food. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. Severe cases are rare but may include headache, muscle cramps, and changes in blood pressure and pulse rate.

Pastries -- Staph Toxin continued...

Whole Foods has removed the foods from its shelves. Included in the Rolf's recall are pre-assembled gingerbread houses sold in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin.
Also included in the recall are the following products sold by Whole Foods in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin:
Items sold in Bakery:

UPC Code	Product Desc	Item Size	Unit of Measure
23691600000	WFM 6 IN CHERRY CRUMB PIE	12	OUNCES
23600700000	WFM 6 INCH APPLE PIE	20	OUNCES
23692300000	WFM 6IN APPLECRAN CRMB PIE	19	OUNCES
23693100000	WFM 9 IN HOUSE KEY LIME PIE	34	OUNCES
23654800000	WFM 9 INCH CHOC SILK PIE	48	OUNCES
23691800000	WFM 9IN APPCHDR CRUMB/DBL PIE	34	OUNCES
23692200000	WFM 9IN APPLCRAN CRUMB/DBL PIE	37	OUNCES
23659200000	WFM 9IN BANANA DULCE D LCH PIE	52	OUNCES
23650700000	WFM 9IN BLACKBERRY CHRRY PIE	60	OUNCES
23659800000	WFM 9IN BOSTON CREME PIE	40	OUNCES
23691500000	WFM 9IN CHERRY CRUMB/DBL PIE	40	OUNCES
23659600000	WFM 9IN COOKIES AND CREAM PIE	42	OUNCES
23650000000	WFM 9IN CRML APPLE CHSCAKE PIE	44	OUNCES
23690900000	WFM 9IN PEACH CRUMB/DBL PIE	37	OUNCES
23650500000	WFM 9IN RASP PCH CRUMB/DBL PIE	60	OUNCES
23611000000	WFM CAKE CHOC MOUSSE 8IN 58OZ	58	OUNCES
23182200000	WFM CHOC FLOURLESS CAKE 6IN	24	OUNCES
23610800000	WFM CHOC FLOURLESS CAKE 8IN	32	OUNCES
UPC Code	Product Desc	Item Size	Unit of Measure
23629500000	WFM LEMON MERINGUE PIE 9 INCH	1133	GRAMS
23184200000	WFM MINI CARAMEL TART 1OZ	1	OUNCES
23615900000	WFM MINI CHOC FRESH FRUIT TART	1	OUNCES
23173400000	WFM MINI CHOC GANACHE TART 1OZ	1	OUNCES
23129700000	WFM MINI CHOC RASPBERRY TART	1	OUNCES
23648700000	WFM MINI CHOCOLATE MOUSSE TART	1	OUNCES
23152700000	WFM MINI FRESH FRUIT TART 1OZ	1	OUNCES
23658200000	WFM MINI GERMAN CHOC TART	1	OUNCES
23121200000	WFM MINI KEY LIME TART	1	OUNCES
23618600000	WFM MINI LEMON MERINGUE TART	1	OUNCES
23185400000	WFM MINI LEMON TART 1OZ	1	OUNCES
23619600000	WFM MINI MERINGUE TART	1	OUNCES
23651200000	WFM MINI ROCKY ROAD TART	1	OUNCES
23167600000	WFM STRAWBERRY & CREAM PIE 9IN	24	OUNCES
23621700000	WFM APPLE PIE 9 INCH 1/2	22	OUNCES
23621800000	WFM 9IN CHOCOLATE SILK PIE 1/2	24	OUNCES
23614300000	WFM TIRAMISU CAKE 6IN 22OZ	16	OUNCES
23167100000	WFM PUMPKIN ANGEL FOOD CAKE	16	OUNCES
23187900000	WFM LEMON CREAM PIE 9 IN	40	OUNCES
23605700000	WFM MINI COCONUT TART	1	OUNCES
23612900000	WFM TIRAMISU CUP 6OZ	6	OUNCES
23625000000	WFM CRANBERRY WLNT UPSIDE CAKE	19	OUNCES
23642700000	WFM TRES LECHES CUP	6	OUNCES
23660100000	WFM 9IN CRML APPLE WALNT PIE	44	OUNCES
23669000000	WFM CREME BRULEE	5	OUNCES
23671700000	WFM 9 INCH IN HOUSE PUMPKIN PIE	32	OUNCES
23695700000	WFM YULE LOG	27	OUNCES

Pastries -- Staph Toxin continued...

Items sold in Prepared Foods:

UPC Code	Product Desc	Unit of Measure
23773800000	CHICKEN POT PIE 9INCH SPECIAL	26 OUNCES
23851300000	BEEF & MUSHROOM POT PIE 9IN	26 OUNCES
23853500000	CURRY CHICKEN POT PIE LARGE	26 OUNCES
23856300000	FAMILY SIZE TURKEY POT PIE	16 OUNCES
23923600000	TOFU POT PIE 9 IN	26 OUNCES
23928400000	CHICKEN POT PIE 9IN	26 OUNCES
23928500000	VEGETABLE POT PIE 9 IN	26 OUNCES
9948280244	CHICKEN POT PIE LARGE	26 OUNCES
9948280320	TURKEY POT PIE LARGE	26 OUNCES
23785900000	CORN PEPPPER QUICHE WHOLE	12 OUNCES
23788900000	SMSALMONLEEKGOATQUICHESLICE	BY POUND
23789300000	SMSALMON LEEK GOAT CHS QUICHE	BY POUND
23789400000	SPINACH MUSH QUICHE SLICE	BY POUND
23807900000	MUSHROOM QUICHE SLICE	BY POUND
UPC Code	Product Desc	Unit of Measure
23808100000	SPINACH QUICHE SLICE	BY POUND
23808200000	SPINACH QUICHE WHOLE	12 OUNCES
23808300000	WFM BROC CHEDDAR QUICHE SLICE	BY POUND
23808400000	BROCCOLI CHEDD QUICHE 9 IN	12 OUNCES
23949900000	WFM QUICHE TOMATO BASIL SLICE	BY POUND
23950200000	WFM QUICHE LORRAINE SLICE	BY POUND
23950300000	QUICHE LORRAINE 9 IN	12 OUNCES
23950700000	LEEK GOAT CHEESE QUICHE SLICE	BY POUND
23967800000	TOMATO BASIL QUICHE 9IN	12 OUNCES
9948280061	QUICHE BROCCOLI CHEDDAR	12 OUNCES
9948280063	QUICHE LORRAINE 9	12 OUNCES
9948280065	QUICHE TOM BASIL 9	12 OUNCES
75452	CATERING QUICHE LORRAINE	12 OUNCES
75453	CATERING QUICHE BROCCOLI CHDDR	12 OUNCES
75454	QUICHE TOMATO BASIL	12 OUNCES
76009	QUICHE SPIN AND MUSHROOM	12 OUNCES
72418	QUICHE LEEK AND GOAT CHEESE	12 OUNCES

Soft Cheese Recall -- E. Coli

On Dec. 17, Sally Jackson Cheese of Oroville, Wash., recalled soft, raw milk cheeses made from cow, goat, and sheep milk. The cheeses were distributed nationwide.
The cow and sheep cheeses are wrapped in chestnut leaves, while the goat cheese is wrapped in grape leaves. They may have an outer wrapping of waxed paper.
The cheeses may have been the source of E. coli O157:H7 infections reported by Washington State and Oregon health authorities.
Whole Foods Market carried some of these cheeses. Some carry the Sally Jackson label, but others were simply wrapped in clear plastic and sold with a Whole Foods Market scale label.
E. coli o157:H7 infection can be dangerous. It causes diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Although most healthy adults recover, the infection can cause kidney failure. Consumers who develop symptoms of E. coli infection should immediately seek medical care.

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Golden, The Outdoor Sportsman's Paradise

2010-12-28T12:41:00.000-08:00

By Margot B

Golden is a village of 10,000 population situated in the confluence of the
British Columbia and Kicking Horse rivers in a long deep valley between
the Rocky and Purcell Mountain ranges in eastern BC, at an elevation of
790 m [2591 ft] located at the heart of six mountainous national parks:
Yoho, Banff, Jasper, Kootenay Glacier and Mount Revelstoke. Yoho
National Park, the 'adopted' park of the community, is a half-hour drive
east of Golden. From May to September mountain biking, hang/paragliding, bungee jumping, and snowboarding are popular, and of course skiing during the winter.

Winter Activities:
Tobogganing, skating, or Nordic skiing through rolling windy trails
through woods. Downhill Skiing, Snowboarding, Heli-Skiing, Cat Skiing,
Snow mobiling, Dog Sledding, and Ice Climbing from mid-November to
the End of March.

Summer Activities:
Pilots from all over the world flock to the Mount 7 flying site to paraglide
and hang-glide. Horseback Riding, hiking, mountain biking, golfing,
fishing, and air tours. World class white water rafting, ATVing,
motocross, and rock climbing attract international thrill seekers.
Bird and wildlife viewing, slow floats, wetland scenic forest tours.

Boating and angling are common activities at recreation sites. Most
sites allow car top boat launching only. That means you can hand-launch
only canoes, kayaks and boats small enough to be carried on top of
your car. Trailered boats can be launched safely and conveniently from
those sites with ramp facilities. In most cases, the ramps are suitable
only for small and medium-sized boats.

A plane or helicopter ride will show you the Selkirk, Purcell and
Rocky Mountain ranges and their glaciers. You can even land on a
glacier for a closer look. Air tours are available year-round.

For local history there's the Golden Museum where you can learn about
the important role that Swiss Mountain Guides played in the birth of
Canadian mountaineering traditions. Or at Ray's Antique & Collectable
Museum you can browse through some old farm equipment and antique
tools. Take a guided hike way, way back [some 515 million years]
and visit the fossils of the renowned Yoho Burgess Shale or, if art is
your scene, there are many local art shops.

Tours:
Cruise the numerous small mountain roads. Tour season is [weather
permitting] from May to October.

Bird / Wildlife Watching:
The Rocky Mountain Trench is a major migratory path, and a
great diversity of birds also settles in the Columbia Valley. 265
transient and resident species have been counted in Golden so far.
Reflection Lake, the Edelweiss slough and Moberly Marsh are favourite
birding spots. You can do bird watching year-round, although there are
more species during migration in spring [April to June]
and fall [September to October].

Canoe / Kayak Tours:
At the Columbia River you can view birds of prey, herons and ducks.
Paddle the Blaeberry River for more action. The Kicking Horse River is the
place to be for great whitewater action. For very experienced kayakers
the lower canyon with its class IV rapids is ideal. Season: May to October.

Climbing:
In 1912 six Swiss Mountain Guides and their families moved permanently
to Golden. Canadian Pacific Rail had hired them as professional
mountain guides for the many tourists who wanted to explore the Canadian
Rocky Mountains. Today there are many ACMG certified mountain
guides who live and work in Golden and the mountains around.
Golden attracts climbers from all over the world.

Cross-Country Skiing:
Track-set trails are just minutes from town at the Golden Golf Course.
More challenging trails can be found at Dawn Mountain Nordic Trail
System at the base of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort. Many more
tracks set by XC-enthusiasts can be found in the Blaeberry and Columbia
Valley. The season is from December to April.

Cycling:
Golden is the centre for the 'Golden Triangle' Tour where you cross the
Continental Divide twice. You can go at your own pace or book a package
with one of the tour companies.

Dog Sledding:
Season lasts from late November to April.

Downhill (Alpine) & Cat Skiing / Snowboarding:
The new Kicking Horse Mountain Resort is being developed into a 250-
acre resort, encompassing 4005 acres of ski and snowboarding terrain,
with views of the Canadian Rockies. The new gondola rises to the
summit of the Dogtooth Mountain Range at an elevation of 7705
feet [2350 meters] where the new Eagle’s Eye Restaurant is located.
The excellent snow conditions will include a vertical drop of 4,133
feet [1260 meters] from the top lift, making it the second highest in
Canada. Ski season is from early December to the end of April.

Freshwater Fishing / Ice Fishing / Heli-Fishing:
The area's fishing opportunities are endless, ranging from early and
late rainbow trout, small cut-throat trout in alpine lakes to char in
the river and giant ling [turbot] and Dolly Varden in the hydro
reservoir. Guides can take you to the type of fishing you prefer and
provide all the equipment from boats to heli-fishing. One of the more
popular lake areas is south of Golden, near Parson and Brisco. Many
of the lower lakes open early in May, and more fishing can be found
at higher elevations as summer arrives.

A popular lake is Mitten Lake. Also excellent are the Cleland and
Jade Lakes, and to the west, the Blackwater Lake. Stocked rainbow
trout up to 24-inches can be caught in these areas. North/northwest of
Golden are the Susan and Jeb Lakes in the area of the Big Bend Highway
and are usually open by early July. These two lakes are renowned for
their Brook trout. Anglers should note that the waters to the north remain
cooler longer in the summer and often provide a more vigorous fish than
the lethargic ones of the southern waters. Many of the higher alpine lakes,
which open at various times later in the summer offer exciting and
picturesque fly and spin- cast opportunities. The more popular areas
include Gorman, Quartz and Silent Lakes - and all trailheads are
within 25 minutes of town. Hike-in distances range from several
kilometres to much longer.

For river fishing, the Columbia opens early in the spring providing
Rainbows and Char. With a red and white spoon or a wet fly you'll likely
nab one. Also available in the Columbia are Dolly Varden, Whitefish and
Kokanee. Creeks and streams open officially on June 14. and a lightweight
fly rod is recommended. In the Glacier and Yoho National Parks is superb
fishing but you must have a special permit aside from your regular license to
encourage catch and release in these areas.

Golfing:
The Golden Golf & Country Club is rated one of the top 10 is B.C., the
75th best course in Canada by Score magazine, with Golf Digest rating it
three-and-a-half stars. Whether you play pro or beginner there are complete
facilities and services at the 18-hole championship course. The
season is from mid April to October. The course ranges from 5,380 yards
to 6,818 yards long. One hole, the 11th, has such a fine setting that
wedding parties have utilized the spot for photographs. It is a par 4,
running 385 yards downhill from an elevated tee, with Holt Creek
running beside it. This course features a pro shop, which can completely
outfit all golfing needs. As well, there is a full-service restaurant,
lounge and outdoor patio.

Hangliding ~ Paragliding:
The Mount 7 hangliding site is one of the top ten sites in the world.
Mount 7 is year after year the site of National and International
Championships. If a novice you can take a tandem-flight with an
experienced instructor. The season is [weather permitting] from
May to October.

Heli-Hiking / Skiing:
The birthplace area of the sport and one of the best in the world.
Daily to weekly packages.

Hiking and Hiking Guides:
Take a stroll along the dike of the Kicking Horse River or along the
numerous trails to the alpine on your own or join a group at one
of the remote alpine lodges accessible by helicopter or a guided
tour to the world heritage site of the Yoho Burgess-Shale.

The day-hike trail at Gorman Lake is the most popular. Mammal
Activities and sightings of bear, muskrat, fox, and many others
are not uncommon just strolling in the woods. Some areas are
known to shelter abundant wildlife.

Back- country camping sites:
The lake affords excellent fly-fishing. You can find marmots and
pikas along talus slopes and goats on the cliffs above. The hike is
three kilometres in length, ending at the lake, and takes about 90-
minutes.

The Moonraker Trails at Canyon Creek are popular for hiking as
well as biking and horseback riding. There are some 45-kilometres
of loop trails stretching from the Cedar Lake area to Canyon
Creek. This is only minutes from town but home to wild mountain
goats and bears.

The Mummery Glacier Trail is three-kilometres in length through
old-growth cedar and hemlock and spectacular views of the glacier
for which it is named. After a short trek up an old creek bed and
across the creek by bridge you'll arrive at the immense moraines
left by the glacier. The trail ends at one of these moraines, near the
top where there is a view of the glacier and waterfalls above - but
look out for calving ice off the glacier! The Quartz Lake Trail west
of town is a five -kilometre hike and is recommended for the area's
pristine beauty.

The recent elimination of the Ministry of Forests' recreation program,
may have lead to the dismantling of signs, toilets, and picnic tables
at some recreation sites, but you may find a guidebook at Golden's
bookstore.

Horseback ~ Trail Riding:
You will find specially trained horses for the beginner to the expert.
Tours range from short rides to multiple day excursions. Riding
season is from mid-June to October.

Hunting / Guide Outfitters:
Although most people like to go hunting with their cameras, some take
a rifle and want to come back with a trophy. The BC Government
allows hunting of black bears, mountain goats and other animals within
limited quotas and led by certified guide outfitters. Hunting seasons
vary depending on species.

Mountain Biking:
With 7,700 feet of vertical terrain enthusiasts can ride the mountains
themselves or with guides, which are available at Kicking Horse
Mountain Resort where they launch their rides down the mountain.
For the price of a day's lift ticket you can bike down 4200 vertical feet,
accessed by the gondola. Mount 7 is the location of the legendary
Mount 7 Psychosis downhill race offering some 12 kilometres of
downhill drops, steeps and technical woodwork playgrounds. People
can pedal to the top, with several jump-off trails at three, five and six-
kilometres. Shuttling via truck 15-kilometres to the top is a popular
option.

Mountain biking cross-country:
Golden has an in-town trail system as well as a 45-kilometre trail
system on the west bank of the Columbia River along the Canyon
Creek trail along the narrow deep canyon, which is a steep climb up
with a long, rolling descent. Motocross racing comes to Golden in
late May.

Mountain Climbing:
Golden has been well known for its mountain climbing since the end
of the 19th century with the coming of the Swiss Guides to the Selkirk
and Rocky Mountains. Local climbers have developed several areas
around Golden over the last decades. The most popular area is Jubilee
Mountain near Spillimacheen, 45 minutes south of town. It offers over
70 climbs, mostly sport [bolted] ranging from 5.8 to 5.12. Another
popular area that is easer with low-angle climbs is up the Mount 7
road at the 6-kilometre parking lot, with most of the climbs slab in
nature with a handful of short, pumpy climbs. Difficulty ranges from
5.6 to 5.11, some bolted and some mixed. A 60-metre rope is
recommended for top-roping the longer routes.

A new climbing area is in the Kicking Horse Canyon, 10-kilometres
east of Golden called 'The Glen' after nearby Glenogle Creek. This is
a quartzite area and will provide a wide range of climbing, from slab to
severely overhanging and difficult routes. Another short, quartzite crag
is up the forest service road on the west side of the Columbia River near
Nicholson [five-kilometres south of Golden]. This is a steep sport
climbing wall with approximately 10 climbs from 5.10 to 5.11 plus.

Snowmobiling is popular with routes too numerous to mention.

Whitewater Rafting:
The Kicking Horse River originates from icy glaciers at the western
boundary of Yoho National Park and runs along 20-kilometres, has class
three and four rapids careening through a canyon and right into Golden.
There are roughly a dozen rafting companies in the canyon. These attract
thousands of visitors from May to September each year. Rafting begins
at the upper canyon through the first set of Class IV rapids known as
Shotgun and Portage followed by a dozen Class III rapids. It continues
into the lower canyon where Class IV rapids, Double Trouble, Riptide,
and the Nozzle spread over three-kilometres. Many guiding companies
offer a variety of trips from one-day to multi-day raft outings and even
heli-rafting, which takes advantage of other nearby rivers, one being the
Blaeberry River.

Flat-water excursions:
Available through the Columbia Valley Wetlands, a popular kayaking and
canoeing destination.

Before you leave Golden, the new pedestrian bridge is a must-see. This
was completed in the fall of 2001 by volunteer timber framers from
Golden, Europe, and the United States. Because of the high waters in
the fall, the installation of the bridge didn't occur until October 25, with
the help of Sterling Cranes from Calgary, which took three full days,
inching along and out onto a temporary footing, and finally onto the far
shore where it was fitted into its concrete abutments. The bridge is 150-
feet-long, with a 210,000-pound burr arch structure. The cost of the
bridge is estimated to be $250,000Science Articles, but considering the volunteer time
and the donated materials its value would be over twice that amount.

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Prayer, You ask?

2010-12-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

1. Bless Yourself
The Journey begins Here
Take a moment to give Thanks
Thanks for your Health and your Life.

2. Bless the Earth
Thank Her for all Her Offerings
Thank Her for sustaining you
Thank Her for Teaching you so much openly
Thank Her for Who She Is

3. Bless the Sky
the One who Watches over you
the One who creates (tries to) Balance in your Life
The One who Allows us to Exist

Is this not enough to be thankful for?

Luc Majno

The Empire Has No Clothes (Updated Edition)

2010-12-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Buy The Empire Has No Clothes (Updated Edition) for $13.50 (softcover)

U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed
By Ivan Eland

Highlights | Synopsis | About the Author

Highlights

The U.S. maintains more than 700 military bases worldwide, spanning an area that dwarfs the great empires of world history. Although many leaders today support a policy of foreign interventionism, extensive military engagement around the world is a policy at odds with principles of the republic’s founders—and at odds with the economic, political, and security interests of the American people.
The U.S. has military dominance but no longer the economic dominance to match; it accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s military spending but only about 30 percent of global GDP. The U.S. is so dominant today only because other empires declined as a result of losing wars (Germany and Japan) or becoming overextended abroad relative to their frail economies (Britain, France, and the Soviet Union). If the U.S. stays the course, America’s economic dominance and political influence will likely decline.
Why is the U.S. disproportionately attacked by terrorists? Although the president, other highlevel policymakers, the foreign policy elite, the media, and even large segments of the public are in a state of denial, the key factor is obvious to the rest of the world: the interventionist U.S. foreign policy in support of the informal American global empire. The U.S. has received unfavorable ratings from people in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries around the world, not because of its political and economic freedoms or its culture, but because of its policies—particularly toward the Middle East.
Small government conservatives who favor military adventurism should check their history and rethink their assumptions. Increases in nondefense spending have been lower during administrations in which warfare was sporadic or nonexistent (Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton) than during the three administrations in which major long-term wars were being fought. Like prior wars, Bush II’s “War on Terror” has led to increases in both defense spending and nondefense spending (which has increased more during the wartime presidency of George W. Bush than during any comparable period since the wartime administration of Lyndon Johnson).
Knowing that popular support for military actions unrelated to American security is fragile, U.S. policymakers resort to “war on the cheap.” This strategy has resulted in the use of military tactics that increase casualties among civilians in the nation being helped. The use of heavy U.S. air and ground firepower results in the moral equivalent of killing people to save them. Thus, military interventions for humanitarian purposes usually achieve the opposite result and are morally questionable.
Heavy-handed U.S. military intervention to facilitate social work almost always fails because of the onset of mission creep (e.g., in Lebanon and Somalia), the creation of enemies as a result of taking sides in local disputes or using excessive force (e.g., in Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq), the exacerbation of original problems (e.g., ethnic cleansing in Kosovo), or the loss of public support at home (e.g., in Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq).
In a post–Cold War world, taking into account only the security of American citizens, their property, and U.S. territory, the benefits of an interventionist foreign policy have declined and the costs have escalated dramatically. Americans continue to pay excessive taxes to defend countries that are rich enough to defend themselves or to occupy conquered countries in the world’s backwaters (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan). Their sons and daughters are killed on remote foreign battlefields for reasons even more remote from U.S. vital interests.

Synopsis
Most Americans don’t think of their government as an empire, but in fact the United States has been steadily expanding its control of overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth century. Nor do most Americans think that the global U.S. military presence threatens their security or economic interests or that it hinders the democratic aspirations of citizens of other countries; many Americans consider U.S. interventionism progressive or, at worst, benign.
Unfortunately, a great chasm lies between common perception and reality, according to defense policy expert Ivan Eland (Senior Fellow and Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty). In The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed, Dr. Eland argues against both conservative and liberal proponents of American empire, making the case that U.S. military interventionism harms the interests of Americans politically, economically, and militarily. His thesis—that the U.S. and probably the world would be more free, secure, and prosperous if the U.S. government reduced its military involvement overseas, much as the nation’s founders had urged—is certain to garner intense interest from those who recognize the need for a thoroughgoing examination of U.S. foreign and national security policy.
“The fuzzy criteria that the U.S. government uses to determine whether and where American forces should intervene indicate that American foreign policy is askew,” writes Eland in the book’s introduction. “Unlike the empires of old, which limited their military interventions to certain parts of the world, the United States is trying to police the entire globe. This book offers an alternative vision of a more restrained U.S. foreign policy that is more focused, more achievable, less costly, and a lot less dangerous.”
The Origins and Nature of the U.S. Empire
Although U.S. imperial stirrings began with a colonial foray in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and in the Caribbean and Central America in the early 1900s, the global American empire did not explode onto the world scene until 1950, Eland explains. Only during the Cold War did America finally abandon its traditional foreign policy of acting as an offshore balancer of power in favor of Pax Americana—a worldwide network of alliances, forward-deployed military forces at bases scattered around the globe, and a policy of direct and indirect intervention in the affairs of many other nations. If the purpose of Pax Americana were simply to fight the spread of communism, it would have been dismantled after the demise of the Soviet Union. Instead, the American empire grew larger after the Cold War ended.
Unlike the Roman and British empires, the American empire for the most part is not one of territorial conquest (although the U.S. occupation of foreign territories is happening with increasing frequency). The United States exerts more control over its allies’ foreign policy than over their domestic affairs. Furthermore, the empires of old gained resources, markets, and tax revenue from their territories. The United States gets none of those things from its allies and client states (U.S. allies even refuse to fully open their markets to U.S. exports and investment). Instead, it gets a bill—in blood and treasure—for the defense of nations that are now rich enough to defend themselves.
Why Conservatives Should Be Against Empire
Conservatives should oppose an American empire, because war is the primary cause of Big Government—including the growth of nondefense spending—which in turn requires increased taxes. Hostile relations with other nations also breed protectionism and controls on financial flows, thus undermining the principles of free trade. Bloated government, high taxes, and restricted international commerce slow economic growth, undermining the prosperity and well-being of American society. Over time, lower U.S. economic growth rates could cause the United States to fall into relative decline, as happened to the overextended, overtaxed British Empire in the last century.
Conservatives worry about the nation’s security, but the U.S. does not need an empire to ensure it; America has two great oceans as moats, weak and friendly neighbors, and the most potent nuclear arsenal on Earth.
Why Liberals Should Be Against Empire
Liberals should oppose an empire, Eland argues, because many of the so-called “humanitarian” military interventions of the United States often have unhumanitarian consequences. The abysmal track record of attempts to bring democracy and free markets to countries coercively shows that such interventions usually fail to restructure fractured and violent societies. In the long term, violations of nations’ sovereignties—even for humanitarian ends—undermine international norms against cross-border aggression and encourage separatist groups to revolt. Over time, therefore, more people are likely to be killed than saved by U.S. interventions into failed states. Instead of placing the lives of U.S. soldiers between two opposing sides not yet ready to make peace, the international community should focus on helping nations in which all parties to a conflict are exhausted by war and are ready to stop fighting.
“Humanitarian” military interventionism, Eland argues, also faces strong moral objections: If a military intervention is unnecessary, then killing innocent civilians even accidentally is immoral. Furthermore, foreign wars erode civil liberties at home. Finally, many vested interests—including the arms industry—turn war fervor into corporate welfare. Humanitarian rationales for military intervention are often employed to cloak motives of realpolitik.
Why All Americans Should Be Against Empire
Perhaps the most compelling reason for all Americans to oppose a U.S. empire, according to Eland, is that the empire is destroying the republic. An imperial foreign policy has led to an imperial presidency that is much more powerful than the founders intended. In recent years, the overextended U.S. empire has threatened the American homeland and the civil liberties of Americans—both through “blowback” (the dangerous backlash against prior policies) and the enormous expansion of domestic federal power, including broader police surveillance and detention powers.
As much as some would like to use U.S. military power to restructure failed states, this is likely to be an unsuccessful and dangerous undertaking. Bitter civil wars—ethnic and otherwise—breed terrorism. The United States is hated worldwide for its interference in the affairs of other nations and peoples, and the attacks on September 11 were only the most obvious instances of blowback from U.S. foreign policy. Because intelligence is imperfect and America—the largest truly open society in the world—is very vulnerable to terrorism, improved homeland security can go only so far in protecting Americans from future catastrophic terrorist attacks. A better solution is to white out the bull’s-eye painted on America by dismantling its empire and scrapping its interventionist foreign policy.
With the demise of America’s chief rival, the Soviet Union, the benefits of Pax Americana and profligate military interventions worldwide have declined dramatically. With the advent of catastrophic terrorism, the costs of such an activist foreign policy have increased precipitously. Thus, the quest for empire is a foreign policy but not a security policy.
An Appropriate Foreign Policy for the Modern Age
The republic’s founders realized that America’s geographical remoteness vis-à-vis other nation-states allowed it the luxury of distancing itself from entangling alliances and foreign quarrels, defining its vital interests narrowly, and adopting a policy of military restraint. In an age of catastrophic terrorism, the founders’ original foreign policy is more relevant than ever. Profligate intervention overseas is not needed for security against other nation-states and only leads to blowback from the one threat that is difficult to deter—terrorism. In short, the U.S. empire lessens American prosperity, power, security and moral standing. It also erodes the founding principles of the American Constitution.
Americans have ignored the economic, political and security costs of the burgeoning empire at great peril. Public debate about the U.S. role in the world has finally begun in earnest, and The Empire Has No Clothes delivers penetrating arguments, exposing the imperial motives behind an interventionist foreign policy, questioning the historical assumptions on which it is based, and advocating a return to the founders’ vision of military restraint overseas.
“In short, the U.S. empire lessens American prosperity, power, security and moral standing,” Eland writes. “It also erodes the founding principles of the American Constitution.”

About the Author
Ivan Eland is recognized as one of the leading experts in U.S. defense studies and foreign policy. He is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute. He resides in Washington, D.C.

Buy The Empire Has No Clothes (Updated Edition) for $13.50 (softcover)

Margot's News & Views: Preparing Your Sea Craft for Winter

2010-12-26T17:47:00.000-08:00

Margot's News & Views: Preparing Your Sea Craft for Winter: "Organizing Routine Maintenance: The high priority tasks to organize are seaworthiness and safety. The first jobs are almost always the ..."

Preparing Your Sea Craft for Winter

2010-12-26T17:46:00.000-08:00

Organizing Routine Maintenance:

The high priority tasks to organize are seaworthiness and safety. The first jobs are almost always the same and must be done as soon as possible after the boat is hauled out.

First check the bottom. This is easier when the hull is still wet. Scrub with an old broom dipped in sand and gravel, then hose off the loosened debris. A high-pressure water hose is ideal for this, but be careful to not wash away paint and wood fibres.

All boats, particularly those with varnished or painted topsides need to be covered and the awning should be properly secured so as not to work loose. Then clean the topsides and apply a coat of boat polishing wax for protection during the winter.

For boats riding at the moorings, place a marker at the hull. This will give you a reference point to determine the amount of bilge water.

Check the exterior for lifted varnish and exposed wood. Bare wood should be varnished with a thick varnish. Brush on or apply with a rag, working well into the grain.
Arrange an awning, with the help of a friend to watch the props for the first few minutes and to warn you if they move.

Many boat owners consider that a dry winter berth is unnecessary and haul out on alternate year, especially those who own fibreglass boats. A mud berth can provide a satisfactory winter berth for round and flat-bottomed boats but should be tidal, allowing the boat to float on an average high tide.

If the boat winters afloat, remember that corrosion and fouling will continue through the winter and early beaching and cleaning at the beginning of the new season may be necessary.

Before leaving the boat for winter, remove all items that might be stolen, including the propeller. Everything removable should be taken to ashore to allow maximum circulation of air.
Remove cushions, mattresses, curtains, carpets and any other movable and valuable pieces. Remove floorboards, drawers, etc. and pump the bilges dry. Stop holes in the hull after cleaning out any accumulated marine growths.
Shut all sea cocks and disconnect and drain water hoses, including the toilet, engine water jacket, heat exchanger, etc. Plug sea cocks or refit hoses for safety and wash all deck fittings, rigging screws, etc. with fresh, warm water and coat with petroleum jelly..

Disconnect the batteries and take ashore. Smear the battery leads with petroleum jelly. Empty water tanks, top up diesel fuel tanks. Remove the gas cylinder and brush paraffin over the jets and burner of the stove to protect the vulnerable brass and steel parts.

Don’t lock stale air in the boat.
Everything removable should be taken to ashore to allow maximum circulation of air. Open cabin and locker doors and wedge to allow air to circulate and prevent them from swinging. It is particularly important to arrange for air circulation at the ends of the boat. Lock the fore-hatch slightly open.

Winterizing the Engine :
When the temperature falls below freezing, if there is water inside your engine or gear case, the result can be a cracked block or housing and a repair bill that runs into the thousands.
Before hauling out: Drain oil sump, refill with recommended lubricating oil, which contains a rust-inhibiting additive if you are laying up a motor for very long periods. This will prevent condensation from forming inside the tank. Add antifreeze to the sealed water cooling system and run the motor to ensure that the antifreeze is thoroughly mixed. If the motor has been overheating, the cooling system should be drained and cleaned.

To protect cylinder head and valves, mix a small amount of petrol with oil [3-1] , feed into the fuel line to coat the carburetor and cylinder head. Pour a little oil into the air intake with the engine running. Clean or replace filter and strainers. Remove rocker cover, oil rockers and springs, and replace. Clean engine by wire-brushing rusty parts and then with a rag dipped into methylated spirits. Remove carburetor, plug inlet with an oily rag, remove spark plugs and pour about one teaspoon of oil into each cylinder. Replace plugs finger tight and rotate the flywheel several times to distribute oil.

Draining the cooling system:
Open seacocks and check valves, then drain. Release upper-most flexible hose and blow down it until air can be hear gurgling out of the water inlet and outlet. Shut seacocks to exclude the seawater. Open all other pet cocks and drain plugs completely. Close and flush with fresh water hose inserted into the water inlet.
Open all drain plugs to make sure they are clear. Poke with a stiff wire if necessary. If blocked, disconnect hoses and plug the exhaust , keeping the seacocks closed if the boat is to winter afloat.
If it is possible that water is trapped in the raw water cooling system, fill with a mix of water and anti-freeze poured into a top hose. Bleed drain plus and pet cocks and top up if necessary. Paint rusted engine parts.

Stabilize the fuel:
Some boaters prefer to store the tanks full to minimize the potential for condensation. A cupful of water in the tank in the spring is a lot smaller problem than 50 gallons of bad gasoline, but if you want to leave the tank full, pour in an appropriate amount of gasoline stabilizer to combat the formation of passage-clogging gums.

Store engine upright because laying the engine down risks water draining where it shouldn’t. An engine stand is easy enough to cobble together.

Source: The Boat Repair Manual by George Buchanan
Consultant Editors: Allan Boyd, Harry Spencer, and George Chandler.

By Margot B

The globalization of car theft

2010-10-18T10:20:00.001-07:00

Monday 18th October, 2010

(Op-ed) Cesar Chelala - The Japan Times Monday 18th October, 2010

Every 24 seconds, a motor vehicle is stolen in the United States.

Contrary to popular belief, thieves target not only expensive cars but also, most frequently, those in the mid-price range.

Cars are stolen usually for the resale value of their parts, which become particularly valuable when they are no longer manufactured or are too difficult or too expensive to obtain.

Stolen cars transported across international borders have become a common, almost inevitable consequence of globalization.

Recently, in Albania, I was amazed at the large number of Mercedes Benz cars in Tirana, the capital city, until a friend explained to me that many of them were stolen cars that came from Germany. A similar sight can be observed in Central American countries, where many stolen cars stolen up north in the U.S. end up.

When I told a policeman recently that I lived in Soho, downtown Manhattan, and drove a leading Japanese model, he said, "You are a prime candidate to have your car stolen."

He explained that Japanese cars get a good resale price and that downtown Manhattan is near the Holland tunnel. This makes it easy for robbers to flee to New Jersey, out of reach of the New York police. From New Jersey, the car may be transported to other states. Since then, I've decided to use a parking garage rather than leave my car in the street, even though garage fees in New York can run into several hundred dollars a month.

Recent research from the Netherlands found that thieves are less likely to steal brightly colored cars because they have a lower resale value. They can also be more easily detected. Of 109 pink cars in the study, none were stolen.

In the past, if thieves didn't steal a car, they often might break a window and take the portable radio or CD player. For a long time, parking a car in the street could be annoying, particularly when one was liable to find a broken window and the car's interior vandalized.

My wife had this unpleasant experience when she left the car in a suburban parking lot. The car was stolen by adolescents for a joy ride, and when the police returned it, the interior had been practically destroyed — probably by the police looking for hidden drugs.

A physician friend of mine thought he had solved this problem. When he parked his car in the street, he used to put up a note in the window reading, "RADIO ALREADY STOLEN, NO CD PLAYER, NO VALUABLES INSIDE."

For a long time his car was safe and my friend was happy at having fooled would-be robbers. One day, though, he came back to his car and found a note in the back window: "NOW, NO SPARE TIRE."

(The writer Cesar Chelala, M.D. and Ph.D., is a writer on human rights and foreign policy issues).

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Major storm breaks in Philippines

2010-10-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

Monday 18th October, 2010

Big News Network.com Monday 18th October, 2010

Thousands of people in the Philippines have fled their homes as a powerful storm approaches.
A man is believed to have died in the northern Philippines with Typhoon Megi sweeping in with heavy rain and strong winds.

Megi, is generating winds of up to 260 kilometres per hour in the strongest storm the country has faced in four years.

More than 30 provinces and islands in the north have been placed under a storm alert and many people have been evacuated as the fears of mudslides grow stronger.

The so-called super-typhoon reached the country early on Monday with the high winds damaging buildings, power supplies and agriculture.

The typhoon is forecast to move toward the South China Sea after sweeping the northern Philippines.

The last storm of this magnitude occurred in 2006, triggering mudslides, destroying villages and killing about 1,000 people.

Floods have already been reported in the north-eastern provinces of Cagayan and Isabela.
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China says US is using currency as a scapegoat

2010-10-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

Monday 18th October, 2010

Big News Network.com Saturday 16th October, 2010

A spokesperson for the Chinese Commerce Ministry alleges the US is using the yuan as a scapegoat, despite ongoing criticism of China's restrictive financial system.
China has told the United States not to make the yuan, their national currency, a scapegoat for domestic problems with the US dollar, in a new twist to the deteriorating trade conflict between the world’s two biggest economies.

Yao Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Commerce Ministry made the comments just hours before the United States decides whether to formally label their biggest trade competitor a currency manipulator due to allegations of China artificially depressing the value of the yuan.

Jian accused the US government of looking only at China’s trade surplus as evidence of currency manipulation, rather than considering whether that trade surplus was the result of China’s legitimate supremacy over the US in the current financial climate.

China offers a cheaper alternative to most developed countries, which makes it difficult to compete with the export giant, especially in a financial climate in which businesses and governments are seeking to save money wherever they can.

China remains under pressure from major economies such as Japan and the US to enact faster currency reforms in the Asian powerhouse, which is renowned for a financial system that remains restrictive compared to other major economies.

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Explosion in Chinese mine kills 20, over 30 trapped

2010-10-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

Monday 18th October, 2010

Big News Network.com (ANI) Saturday 16th October, 2010

An explosion in a Chinese coal mine has killed 20 workers and trapped over 30 underground in Yuzhou City.

According to Xinhua news agency, the blast happened at about 6 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Rescuers have retrieved 20 bodies, and are still searching for other miners.

The mine is owned by Pingyu Coal and Electric Co. Ltd., a company jointly established by Zhong Ping Energy Chemical Group and China Power Investment Corp.he China blast comes shortly after the world was riveted by the Chile's dramatic rescue of 33 trapped miners after they spent over two months in the collapsed San Jose copper and gold mine. (ANI)

‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback

2010-10-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

William C. Eckenberg/The New York Times

The study of urban blight has long been influenced by political fashions.

By PATRICIA COHEN

Published: October 17, 2010

- alink

For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be Named.

Enlarge This Image

George Tames/The New York Times: Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his office at Harvard in 1971.

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times:

A Chicago mother and child in 1997 at the notorious Robert Taylor Homes, since demolished.

The reticence was a legacy of the ugly battles that erupted after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea of a “culture of poverty” to the public in a startling 1965 report. Although Moynihan didn’t coin the phrase (that distinction belongs to the anthropologist Oscar Lewis), his description of the urban black family as caught in an inescapable “tangle of pathology” of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency was seen as attributing self-perpetuating moral deficiencies to black people, as if blaming them for their own misfortune.
Moynihan’s analysis never lost its appeal to conservative thinkers, whose arguments ultimately succeeded when President Bill Clinton signed a bill in 1996 “ending welfare as we know it.” But in the overwhelmingly liberal ranks of academic sociology and anthropology the word “culture” became a live grenade, and the idea that attitudes and behavior patterns kept people poor was shunned.
Now, after decades of silence, these scholars are speaking openly about you-know-what, conceding that culture and persistent poverty are enmeshed.
“We’ve finally reached the stage where people aren’t afraid of being politically incorrect,” said Douglas S. Massey, a sociologist at Princeton who has argued that Moynihan was unfairly maligned.
The old debate has shaped the new. Last month Princeton and the Brookings Institution released a collection of papers on unmarried parents, a subject, it noted, that became off-limits after the Moynihan report. At the recent annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, attendees discussed the resurgence of scholarship on culture. And in Washington last spring, social scientists participated in a Congressional briefing on culture and poverty linked to a special issue of The Annals, the journal of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
“Culture is back on the poverty research agenda,” the introduction declares, acknowledging that it should never have been removed.
The topic has generated interest on Capitol Hill because so much of the research intersects with policy debates. Views of the cultural roots of poverty “play important roles in shaping how lawmakers choose to address poverty issues,” Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, noted at the briefing.
This surge of academic research also comes as the percentage of Americans living in poverty hit a 15-year high: one in seven, or 44 million.
With these studies come many new and varied definitions of culture, but they all differ from the ’60s-era model in these crucial respects: Today, social scientists are rejecting the notion of a monolithic and unchanging culture of poverty. And they attribute destructive attitudes and behavior not to inherent moral character but to sustained racism and isolation.
To Robert J. Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, culture is best understood as “shared understandings.”
“I study inequality, and the dominant focus is on structures of poverty,” he said. But he added that the reason a neighborhood turns into a “poverty trap” is also related to a common perception of the way people in a community act and think. When people see graffiti and garbage, do they find it acceptable or see serious disorder? Do they respect the legal system or have a high level of “moral cynicism,” believing that “laws were made to be broken”?
As part of a large research project in Chicago, Professor Sampson walked through different neighborhoods this summer, dropping stamped, addressed envelopes to see how many people would pick up an apparently lost letter and mail it, a sign that looking out for others is part of the community’s culture.
In some neighborhoods, like Grand Boulevard, where the notorious Robert Taylor public housing projects once stood, almost no envelopes were mailed; in others researchers received more than half of the letters back. Income levels did not necessarily explain the difference, Professor Sampson said, but rather the community’s cultural norms, the levels of moral cynicism and disorder.
The shared perception of a neighborhood — is it on the rise or stagnant? — does a better job of predicting a community’s future than the actual level of poverty, he said.
William Julius Wilson, whose pioneering work boldly confronted ghetto life while focusing on economic explanations for persistent poverty, defines culture as the way “individuals in a community develop an understanding of how the world works and make decisions based on that understanding.”
For some young black men, Professor Wilson, a Harvard sociologist, said, the world works like this: “If you don’t develop a tough demeanor, you won’t survive. If you have access to weapons, you get them, and if you get into a fight, you have to use them.”
Seeking to recapture the topic from economists, sociologists have ventured into poor neighborhoods to delve deeper into the attitudes of residents. Their results have challenged some common assumptions, like the belief that poor mothers remain single because they don’t value marriage.
In Philadelphia, for example, low-income mothers told the sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas that they thought marriage was profoundly important, even sacred, but doubted that their partners were “marriage material.” Their results have prompted some lawmakers and poverty experts to conclude that programs that promote marriage without changing economic and social conditions are unlikely to work.
Mario Luis Small, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and an editor of The Annals’ special issue, tried to figure out why some New York City mothers with children in day care developed networks of support while others did not. As he explained in his 2009 book, “Unanticipated Gains,” the answer did not depend on income or ethnicity, but rather the rules of the day-care institution. Centers that held frequent field trips, organized parents’ associations and had pick-up and drop-off procedures created more opportunities for parents to connect.
Younger academics like Professor Small, 35, attributed the upswing in cultural explanations to a “new generation of scholars without the baggage of that debate.”
Scholars like Professor Wilson, 74, who have tilled the field much longer, mentioned the development of more sophisticated data and analytical tools. He said he felt compelled to look more closely at culture after the publication of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s controversial 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” which attributed African-Americans’ lower I.Q. scores to genetics.
The authors claimed to have taken family background into account, Professor Wilson said, but “they had not captured the cumulative effects of living in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods.”
He added, “I realized we needed a comprehensive measure of the environment, that we must consider structural and cultural forces.”
He mentioned a study by Professor Sampson, 54, that found that growing up in areas where violence limits socializing outside the family and where parents haven’t attended college stunts verbal ability, lowering I.Q. scores by as much as six points, the equivalent of missing more than a year in school.
Changes outside campuses have made conversation about the cultural roots of poverty easier than it was in the ’60s. Divorce, living together without marrying, and single motherhood are now commonplace. At the same time prominent African-Americans have begun to speak out on the subject. In 2004 the comedian Bill Cosby made headlines when he criticized poor blacks for “not parenting” and dropping out of school. President Obama, who was abandoned by his father, has repeatedly talked about “responsible fatherhood.”
Conservatives also deserve credit, said Kay S. Hymowitz, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, for their sustained focus on family values and marriage even when cultural explanations were disparaged.
Still, worries about blaming the victim persist. Policy makers and the public still tend to view poverty through one of two competing lenses, Michèle Lamont, another editor of the special issue of The Annals, said: “Are the poor poor because they are lazy, or are the poor poor because they are a victim of the markets?”
So even now some sociologists avoid words like “values” and “morals” or reject the idea that, as The Annals put it, “a group’s culture is more or less coherent.” Watered-down definitions of culture, Ms. Hymowitz complained, reduce some of the new work to “sociological pablum.”
“If anthropologists had come away from doing field work in New Guinea concluding ‘everyone’s different,’ but sometimes people help each other out,” she wrote in an e-mail, “there would be no field of anthropology — and no word culture for cultural sociologists to bend to their will.”
Fuzzy definitions or not, culture is back. This prompted mock surprise from Rep. Woolsey at last spring’s Congressional briefing: “What a concept. Values, norms, beliefs play very important roles in the way people meet the challenges of poverty.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 18, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

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Over 80 million threatened by poverty in EU Society

2010-10-17T21:44:00.000-07:00

BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (KUNA) -- The European Union (EU) is one of the richest regions in the world, yet over 84 million people are still threatened by poverty, EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Laszlo Andor said here in a statement today to mark the International day for the Eradication of Poverty.
The decision to lift at least 20 million people out of poverty by 2020 sends a powerful message that the EU takes social inclusion very seriously, he added.

The 27-member European bloc has a population of over 500 million people.

"The International Day for Eradication of Poverty is a day when the whole world is reminded that there are people who suffer from poverty and we need to act together to make a difference," he added.

On his part, EU Commissioner for Development, Andris Piebalgs declared that radicating poverty is also a global challenge. "Today, 1.4 billion people in the developing world are still denied the chance to build a future by living in extreme poverty. In September, global leaders gave a new impetus to the fight against poverty and committed to make the Millennium Development Goals a success by 2015," he noted.

The UN summit on MDGs in September adopted a global action plan to achieve the anti-poverty goals by 2015. (end)

nk.mt KUNA 171332 Oct 10NNNN

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Southern Russia floods leave 11 dead

2010-10-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Updated: 08:21, Sunday October 17, 2010

Floods in southern Russia have killed 11 people, and three are missing, authorities say.

Two days of heavy rain in the Krasnodar region caused a mountain river to burst its banks, sending torrents of water down the mountains onto villages.

Local Emergency Ministry spokesman Roman Kravchenko said three of the 11 killed were elderly people trapped in their houses. Two more were found dead in a sewer hole.

About 160 people were evacuated from their homes on Friday, but as the rain stopped on Saturday they headed back home to take stock of the damage, the spokesman said.

Authorities say heavy rain also caused mudslides in the mountains, blocking several sections of the North Caucasian railway.

Source Article

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The Rot Within: Our Culture of Financial Fraud and the Anger of the Honest (October 15, 2010)

2010-10-17T13:26:00.000-07:00

Misrepresentation, fraud and gaming the system are all heavily incentivized in the U.S. culture and economy, and honesty is punished. This truth is finally being revealed on a grand scale. The coming implosion of the U.S. economy has been richly earned. Today I am publishing a commentary by an accountant with decades of experience in high-level global consulting firms and Fortune 50 U.S. corporations. What he has observed is unknown to the vast majority of Americans.
I have documented the poisoning of the nation's culture and economy by a "game the system"/exploitation mentality:
The Coming Collapse of the Real Estate Market
Runaway Feedback Loops, Wealth Concentration and Gaming-The-System
Imagining A Middle Class Does Not Create One
With accountability effectively lost, cheating, lying, misrepresention, embezzlement and fraud, both petty and monumental, have all been incentivized. Thus the "little people" game the welfare/entitlement system and the Financial Elites game the mortgage market, and everyone gamed whatever piece of the housing bubble they could grab.
Where does that leave the honest citizenry? At an extreme disadvantage. Lying, sins of omission, misrepresentation and doing the bidding of evil organizations gets you bonuses and career advancement, while refusing to game the system as instructed gets your fired.
How does that make honest people feel? How about righteously angry?
I'd like to provide some context for this commentary from the Survival+ critique. Here is how I would summarize an integrated understanding of our plight:
1. Humans are selected to seek windfalls and exploit them. I call this windfall exploitation. It is neither good nor bad, it is simply a profoundly advantageous strategy in a hunter-gatherer-wanderer environment.
Individuals can maximize their gain by exploiting windfalls alone, but some windfalls are better exploited by groups. This is the basis of cooperation, which is expressed in both capitalist and socialist systems.
2. The natural resources windfalls have all been exploited. In general, the natural resources are in depletion and there is active competition for them which reduces the windfall.
3. Neoliberal Capitalism developed a solution for this paucity of natural windfalls: the partnership of the Financial Elites and the Central State. The Central State gathered powers of taxation and control which enable it to "enforce" the collection of the national income which can be channeled to its cronies in wealthy (and hence politically powerful) cartels.
The investment banking/mortgage banking industries are the example of this dynamic par excellence. (Please see The Coming Collapse of the Real Estate Market for more.)
4. The last significant windfall available to advanced global Capitalism was the financialization of the global economy. In the U.S., we see this clearly in the financial share of corporate profits; from a pittance in the "real growth" decades of the 1950s and 60s, finance-derived profits came to dominate Corporate America's profits.
5. This financialization effected a net transfer of public and private income streams and wealth from the citizenry and State to the coffers of the financial Elites. As actual productivity and wealth-creation declined, so did wages and incomes when priced in purchasing power.
To offset that decline, people, companies and governments replaced income with debt: they borrowed to fill the gap between their desires/commitments/spending and their net income.
The financial Elites were happy to supply the debt and capture the income streams of servicing that debt. By securitizing those debts and writing derivatives against them, the Elites created a stupendously profitable windfall to exploit. The Central State and its central bank were happy to comply, as they are in partnership with the Elites which enrich and empower them.
6. The net result of this expansion of credit is asset bubbles. When the asset bubbles pop, the debts remain, impoverishing the over-indebted holders of the busted assets.
7. Unfortunately for the Financial Elites, this destruction of assets and debt feeds runaway feedback loops which threaten the entire foundation of their wealth and control.
8. The strategy of both the Financial Elites and the Central State (its willing partner in exploitation of the citizenry) is to conjure up simulacra to replace the truth, which is fatally dangerous to the status quo that is now completely dependent on maintaining a culture of financial untruths.
The order of the day is thus necessarily propaganda, bogus balance sheets, toothless facsimiles of "reform" presented as "real reform," and endless frauds, embezzlements, lies, misrepresentations, omissions, etc., all of which have come to full flower in the credit-housing bubble/mortgage-forclosure debacle.
This is why the Financial Power Elites and the Federal Government are both wedded to lies, half-truths, misrepresentation, omissions, fraud, corruption and the full panoply of propaganda. To tell the truth is to bring down the entire status quo.
Here is our accountant's commentary:

I belong to a large number of finance organizations and sometimes I even assist clients with hiring a finance person. Since I have a lot of experience with finance and accounting, when I am interviewing these people I know when I am getting a BS answer and unlike most BS recruiters I do not steer away from controversy since I am truly looking for the most qualified for my clients and not who is just most marketable to them. After I start drilling down you would be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t) how many of these CFO’s and Controller types were basically dismissed because they would not cook the books in some manner. Now maybe I have told you that I was asked to resign from one of the nations largest companies (a company that I worked hard for and saved from bankruptcy and due to my actions had created) in the US because I refused to book a revenue entry for over a million dollars which was unsupported and the CFO (I had been the CFO up until a merger) blew up with me when I asked him to send a memo telling me to record it. Funny, a few years and one acquisition later it melted down as one of the biggest accounting frauds in US history.
My next gig as the CFO for a NYSE company I basically walked in and found what I would consider a $60 million dollar accounting fraud in one day (once again a mark to market issue draining cash flow and sucking the company into a dark hole). Corrected that accounting problem and the company began to prosper but since I thought the board and upper management was so corrupt I left (Chairman of the Audit Committee was found guilty at another large company for back dating options).
The next public company where not only was I the CFO but prior to that a board member, I was basically asked to resign for BS reasons a couple of weeks later after I pointed out what the board was asking me to do was basically wire fraud and of course they backed off quickly and said they would get a legal opinion from our law firm (one of the top 10 in the US) to cover me. In the same meeting our outside legal counsel said he had a problem giving such an opinion and I pointed out that a legal opinion did not keep me from being both civil and criminally liable. It should be noted that this was another company that 2 years before I came in and took the reins as CFO/COO and pulled the company out of black hole of looming bankruptcy and made it profitable in the first time in its history since it went public and then refinanced the company. In summary a year after I left the company had burned through the money I raised and the Board sold the company for nothing.
There is lots of bitterness out there with the straight shooting finance people. Many of them find themselves unemployable. This stretches from banks, Private Equity, Investment Banking, through the large accounting firms (the average partner in the large accounting firms any more is a pathological liar) to senior finance people in organizations. Right before Enron and MCI blew-up, I actually had a BS HR person tell me I was not flexible enough. I wanted to tell this idiot that I knew where flexibility got me and it was an orange jumpsuit. Bankers and Companies only hire the weakest and most pliable senior finance executives they can find.
One other short story. A while back I was at a networking meeting with a large group of CFO and ex-CFO’s. I asked this group how many thought that most CEO’s wanted a weak CFO working for them. Approximately 70% of the attendees raised their hand! You have to remember that the only person who had steady access to the Board is the CFO.
The point, the middle class is becoming torn and frayed and there is real anger out there. The common belief is that only the liars and thieves are moving ahead in this country.

The anger of the honest will soon know no bounds, and the guilt of the complicit will settle like a silent pall over the nation: guilty as charged. Who will raise their hands to plead the guilt we all see and know?

If you would like to post a comment where others can read it, please go to DailyJava.net, (registering only takes a moment), select Of Two Minds-Charles Smith, and then go to The daily topic. To see other readers recent comments, go to New Posts.

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Why I'm an optimist about changing the world

2010-10-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

By Melinda French Gates, Special to CNN

What nonprofits can learn from Coke

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Melinda Gates: The UN adopted Millennium Development Goals 10 years ago
She says there's been extraordinary progress in many areas
Reduction in child mortality alone will save 4 million lives in 2010, compared to 1990, she says
Gates: I'm optimistic about the world but impatient for faster change

RELATED TOPICS

Editor's note: Melinda French Gates is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website.

(CNN) -- At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we consider ourselves to be impatient optimists -- we are impatient with the way the world is, but optimistic that changing it is possible.
One reason for this optimism is the progress that we have seen in the 10 years since the United Nations created the Millennium Development Goals, eight international goals to improve social and economic conditions in the world's poorest countries.
Recently, we partnered with TED to create a global event to discuss this progress. TEDxChange was hosted in New York and broadcast live to over 80 simultaneous TEDx events in 40 countries around the world, including sites in Kibera, Kenya; Abuja, Nigeria; Pune, India; Cochabamba, Bolivia; and Lahore, Pakistan.
The millennium goals themselves embody impatient optimism. They recognize how much there is to be done, while at the same time signaling the scale and scope of the world's ambition.
The world is not called on to conjure progress from a void. Instead, it is called on to learn from very real progress on nearly all the goals, to expand it, and to speed it up.
One refrain I hear is that we are off track on many of the goals. That statement is technically accurate. Not every country will meet every goal, and there is a risk that some of the global goals won't be met. But that binary outlook -- with total success on one side, total failure on the other, and people on all sides blaming each other -- obscures extraordinary progress driven by extraordinary people across the globe.
Take the goal for child mortality. The goal is a two-thirds reduction, and we may not reach it by 2015. But have we failed when 4 million children who would have died in 1990 will survive in 2010? Have we failed when we have reduced polio, a crippling childhood disease, by 99 percent in the past 20 years?
Another complaint I hear a lot is that progress isn't spread evenly. Some people dismiss the fact that 1.3 billion people have lifted themselves out of poverty by pointing out that most of them live in China and India, not in African countries.
I believe that when poor people lift themselves out of poverty, we ought to celebrate, no matter where they happen to live. Bill and I started our foundation because we believe that all lives have equal value, and I am not comfortable comparing one person's suffering to that of another.
While it's true that some countries are reducing poverty more quickly than others -- and some, sadly, have moved backwards -- eight African countries have already achieved the goal on poverty reduction, and several more are on schedule to do so by 2015. Across nearly every goal, there are inspiring examples of even the poorest countries making dramatic improvements in short periods of time.
However, we can also learn from the successes in other sectors. My TEDxChange talk focuses on the question of how Coca-Cola has become so ubiquitous around the world and what governments and the development community can learn from the company's success. By analyzing what Coca-Cola has done to become so prevalent, we can apply those lessons to the millennium goals and save even more lives.
The task ahead is to learn what's working so that we can spread best practices. In difficult economic times, it is imperative that we increase support for effective interventions that provide maximum value for money -- and not shift even bigger burdens to the poorest by cutting back on development spending.
So I am impatient. I am impatient because the world is not getting better fast enough, or for enough people.
But I am also optimistic. I am optimistic because there are proven and affordable ways to decrease hunger and poverty, to help mothers and their babies thrive, to make rapid progress on all the Millennium Development Goals.
And I am optimistic that our impatience will lead us all to be more motivated, not less. I am optimistic that our sense of urgency will inspire us to work together, not to isolate ourselves. For if we are motivated, if we are inspired, if we work together -- then we can meet again in five years to celebrate achievements that few of us might have dared to imagine.
I'm grateful to CNN for including my TEDxChange presentation as part of their TEDTalks Tuesday series. There were several other speakers who joined our event that day, and I urge you to come to our TEDxChange website and watch their speeches as well.
• Hans Rosling, professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who uses statistics to show concrete examples of progress in child health;
• Graca Machel, a renowned international advocate for women's and children's rights, on the key role of women and girls in achieving social change;
• Mechai Viravaidya, aka Mr. Condom, the founder and chairman of the Population and Community Development Association, on creative approaches to family planning.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Melinda French Gates.

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Former UK Chancellor says West is running out of money

2010-10-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Clarke, the former UK chancellor, has warned the West is in grave danger of financial collapse.

Now the Justice Secretary under Britain's coalition government, Mr Clarke told a conference of prison authorities that the country faced "quite the most dramatic spending cuts in living memory."

In a forceful address to his audience, he said: "There is an extremely serious financial crisis. I actually am one of those who believes, with a grave danger of financial collapse, we’re not out of the woods in the Western world yet.

Speaking prior to next week’s comprehensive spending review, which will see most Government departments’ budgets cut by 25 per cent over four years, the Justice Secretary said: "These are difficult circumstances. There’s no one alive who remembers a crisis of this kind. It is not the usual public spending squeeze."

His remarks appeared to contradict the Prime Minister, who insisted days ago that the Coalition’s early decisions have put Britain out of the danger zone.

When the comments were put to Mr Clarke, he said: "We have rescued ourselves...at the moment".

He told the prison governors there would be no extra money available to drive through the Government’s radical jail reforms in which the government wants inmates to work a 40-hour week, in return for the minimum wage.

Mr Clarke said: "I want to be clear, so far as all these reforms go, we don’t have any money."

Big News Network.com Sunday 17th October, 2010

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Students join the large demonstrations in France

2010-10-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Students in France have joined the mass protests against government plans to increase the state retirement age.

High school students have swelled the ranks of protesters, claiming moves to raise the pension age will mean fewer jobs for young people.

Oil refineries and fuel depots have hard-hit by the strikes and there have been major disruptions to the country's supplies, especially at airports.

Fuel supplies to Paris and France’s main international airports are now suffering fuel shortages.

On Friday, Trapil, a company that operates a petrol pipeline to Paris’ airports announced that they’d had to shut it down due to strikes.

The pipeline is supplied by a refinery in Seine-et-Marne, which has been crippled by strikes.

Resistance grows to the government’s plan for pension reform with numbers of young people now out of work in France.

Unions have said they will turn the heat up on the government if it refuses to budge.

The unions have claimed up to three million people took part in this weekend's protests.

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Susan Boyle wows fans at book signing event

2010-10-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Big News Network.com (ANI)

Susan Boyle stunned fans when she arrived to sign copies of her autobiography 'The Woman I Was Born to Be'.

The Britain's Got Talent star arrived at Waterstone's flagship store in London's Piccadilly wearing a navy blue overcoat with a purple scarf.

One fan, a man in his 50s, revealed how the star had confided that she still has the gold frilly dress which she wore for her first appearance on the show.

"I asked her if she if she still has the dress and she told me she kept it for sentimental value although she could probably make a fortune if she sold it," the Daily Express quoted the fan as saying. (ANI)

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Stories from the mine starting to emerge

2010-10-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

Big News Network.com Sunday 17th October, 2010

The rescued Chilean miners are preparing to tell the story of life underground in dangerous, confined conditions.

The tales of the struggle to survive are beginning to emerge from the 33 men who were pulled from a collapsed Chilean mine.

While they arrived above ground to rapturous receptions, two remain in hospital undergoing routine checks after their 69-day ordeal.

It is believed the stories to emerge will include how the man drank oil-contaminated water and even detonated explosives to alert rescuers.

Victor Sergovia, one of the miners who has been given the task of detailing the events, described the experience as a living nightmare.

He has said the miners had made a pact not to talk about the hardest situations, including the occasional flare-up of tempers during their confinement.

There have been unconfirmed reports of fist-fights and arguments over food.

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Death toll from Central China's mine accident reaches 26

2010-10-17T09:00:00.001-07:00

Big News Network.com (ANI) Sunday 17th October, 2010

The death toll from Saturday's coal mine gas leak in Central China's Henan Province climbed to 26 on Sunday with rescuers still battling to reach the eleven miners, who are still trapped inside.
"Rescuers were battling to reach the 11 miners still trapped underground, but chances for them to survive were very slim. Based upon past experience, the remaining 11 miners could be buried in coal dust, so the survival chances are frail," The Xinhua quoted Rescue Headquarters Deputy Chief Du Bo, as saying.
"More than 2,500 tonnes of coal dust smothered the pit after the gas leak, which hampered the rescue," he added.
The blast occurred around 6 a.m. on Saturday when 276 miners were working underground in the mine in Yuzhou City.
Out of 276 miners, 239 escaped when the gas burst.
As per the reports of the initial investigation, around 173,500 cubic meters of gas leaked out in the accident.
"At around 6 a.m., I felt there was something wrong with the airflow in the shaft, and one of the team captains told me he also felt it and had already reported the problem," said Liu Wenbin, a deputy hief engineer by Pingyu Coal and Electric Co. Ltd., who was in the pit when the accident happened. (ANI)

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US state department defends Europe-wide terror alert

2010-10-17T03:05:00.000-07:00

3 October bulletin warned US citizens travelling to Europe that 'al-Qaida and affiliated organisations continue to plan attacks'

The alert sparked speculation that European landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower could be targets for attacks. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersThe US state department today defended the decision to issue a terror alert covering all of Europe but admitted that it had no specific information of any plot or potential target.
The alert issued on 3 October stated "current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organisations continue to plan terrorist attacks". It warned American citizens to take safety measures when travelling in Europe, particularly on public transport or at tourist sites.
The alarm led to consternation across Europe, "tit-for-tat" warnings by France and Britain about travel in each other's countries, German government complaints the US was over-reacting to a "hypothetical" threat, anonymous criticism by European security officials, and claims by Pakistani diplomats that the US move was politically motivated.
Speaking today in London after a tour of European capitals, Daniel Benjamin, co-ordinator for counter-terrorism at the state department, asserted that the decision to issue the 3 October alert was fully justified.
It followed "the accumulation of a significant body of information and corroboration that was of great concern", he said. "The credibility [of the information] was striking and internally consistent. That said, some specifics were absent," he acknowledged; for this reason, the alert was general in nature and did not mention individual countries.
Subsequent American media reports suggesting landmarks in European capitals, including the Hotel Adlon in Berlin and the Eiffel Tower in Paris, had been identified as terrorist targets had no basis in fact, Benjamin said. Nor did he offer any evidence to support newspaper claims that commando attacks like that in Mumbai in 2008 were planned.
Deciding whether or not to issue such an alert was one of the most difficult challenges facing any government, Benjamin said. "You need to discharge your responsibilities to the public while avoiding accusations of a lack of credibility."
Rejecting a suggestion that it achieved little beyond media speculation, Benjamin said: "People will be more aware, take greater precautions. There's a risk of being cynical about what people might do. We were just saying, 'Don't hang around at stations, don't go people-watching at that demonstration, move on briskly'."
Benjamin said the alert remained in force. His British and European counterparts were in full agreement about the threat level, he said. There were no serious divergences in approach, although it was accepted that "we [the Americans] do things a little differently".
Benjamin said that terrorist networks linked to al-Qaida and centred on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the subject of escalating US drone and helicopter missile attacks, continued to pose "the most formidable threat we face". The links were spreading to take in groups in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the Maghreb, part of what he said was a wider effort by al-Qaida to advance its "out-of-area" ambitions.
"There is clearly an attempt to get people under our radar, as on December 25 [when a Nigerian man tried to blow up a US airliner over Detroit]. There has been a lot of progress. The border region is under more pressure than at any time since 9/11. But it is a serious threat."
Benjamin said Pakistan's tribal areas had become a "melting pot" for terrorist groups that were increasingly indistinguishable from each other. They included the Haqqani network, the Pakistani Taliban, and foreign-born apprentice jihadis from Britain, Europe and the US who went there for indoctrination and training in terror techniques.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

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10 Things You Really, Really Don't Need

2010-10-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

Shopping is an adrenaline rush. How else to explain the talking ceramic cat you had to have, or the face cream that you bought because it was guaranteed to return your skin to the hue it had in the womb? Sure, the Great Recession has shifted Americans’ shopping habits, but we’re still a spending force to be reckoned with. Luckily, there are things we just don’t need on this planet. So take a look at some items you might want to trim from your shopping list.

1. Microwave oven

I haven’t had a microwave since Clinton was in the White House. Sure, on occasion I’ll miss the opportunity to melt down butter without burning it on the stove. I’d just rather give the counter space to something more deserving, like cookies. Or cupcakes. Or brownies…

2. Electric wine bottle openers

Waiters can open a bottle of organic wine, at the table, with just a mere flick of a wrist and cork-screw. Mentally raising a cork out of the bottle with special brain powers would be cooler, but for now a simple corkscrew works fine. And gives good strength training!

3. Bread machines

Sure, bread machines can be an awesome way to get perfectly-shaped loaves of steamy, fresh bread. But allow us to face the delicious reality of fresh bread. If you’re taking the time to make fresh bread in your bread machine, you probably have the time to bake fresh bread in your oven. Hard realities, folks. Hard realities.

4. Neck creams

It’s become casual sport in Hollywood to guess an actress’ age by her neck, which still remains hard to control by Botox or a lift. So now there’s a whole industry of creams dedicated to the neck. In reality, you should just use the same creams and treatments on your neck as you do on your face. Moisturize tone, mask – just bring it down a few inches lower than your jaw line.

5. Beauty products tested on animals

To which we and super cute-bunny-that-fits-in-a-hand say – really? Products like said Botox are continually tested on animals with appalling results. There’s a whole world of products, beauty or otherwise, that are cruelty-free. You can find them here.

6. Hand sanitizers

I’m not saying medical professionals should go without, or that we should immediately start diving into gas station bathrooms to dance around barefoot. But washing your hands will kill germs just as easily as hand sanitizers. Sanitizing your paws every time you touch a door knob will kill most bacteria. But the tough ones that survived will multiply and will be stronger than the cousins you killed off. (Read more about that here.)

7. The latest product from Apple

iPods are fun. As are iPhones and yes, even iPads are kind of cool. Do they get more fun as the latest updates cycle through every year and/or month? (As giant UFOs bearing the Apple insignia lower into our horizons.) Sure, maybe we all need the ability to instantly play music/record/brew latte with our phones. But why not let your old apples actually fall from the tree before you replace them?

8. Automatic toilet flushers

One of the greatest questions of our time is obviously – do toilets really need to flush on their own, causing us to flee to the other side of the stall to avoid splash back? And repeat.

9. Motion-Activated Anything

Recently, I saw an advert for a motion-activity candy dispenser. (Because obesity isn’t enough of a problem in this country. Yes, I’m waving a cranky cane right now.) Motion-activated devices are fantastic for people with disability issues. But how many wheelchairs do we see on escalators? We also opened doors for centuries without the power of electricity.

10. Throw pillows

When you’re lost under a gigantic pile of plush, you have no one but yourself to blame.

This post first appeared on EcoSalon.

© 2010 EcoSalon All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148474/

By Katherine Butler, EcoSalon
Posted on October 15, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/148474/

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Cotton Hits Record High After Poor Crops

2010-10-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Heavy buying in China takes futures prices past closing-levels on New York markets, creating fears of acute local shortages.

Cotton prices hit a record high both in global and local markets with Rs.7,600 per 40kg in Pakistan and 125 cents per pounds internationally.

Pakistani exporters have done the export deals of 200 tons at a rate of 120 pound per cent.

Due to the recent devastating floods, cotton production in Pakistan has reduced drastically, below than the domestic industrial needs.

However, no cotton export policy has yet been announced. Whereas contrary to it, India has put a ceiling on exports exceeding 5.5 million bales of cotton, although their production is far above than their domestic needs..

Article Source: Wall Street Journal
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Charging of Australian soldiers for Afghan crimes provokes frenzied reaction

2010-10-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

By James Cogan

WSWS, October 14, 2010

An unprecedented controversy has erupted in Australia over the charging of three special forces’ commandos on September 29 for the killing of five children in Afghanistan in early 2009. Just weeks after an election, in which the conflict barely rated a mention, blanket justifications for the Afghan war, and civilian deaths at the hands of Australian troops, have been thrust to the centre of political life.

The three soldiers are being prosecuted after an almost year-long investigation by the Director of Military Prosecutions (DMP), a legal arm of the armed forces that is formally independent of the government of the day. The details of the case have further fuelled the popular opposition to a war that is repeatedly being exposed as a murderous and brutal neo-colonial occupation.

On Tuesday, conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott lashed out and publicly labelled the charges as "soldiers being stabbed in the back by their own government". In statements deeply prejudicial to the conduct of a military court martial that has not yet begun—and which have been promoted throughout the mass media—Abbott declared that the soldiers had been doing "the right thing by Australians" and were being "thrown to the wolves" by the Labor Party-led minority government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

While Abbott’s statements on the case were unexpected and somewhat unhinged, they were made as the entire political establishment is pre-occupied with demonstrating its commitment to the US-led war in Afghanistan.

Gillard’s first overseas trip as prime minister was to Afghanistan on October 3. Abbott made his own visit on October 10. Both were briefed by US and Australian commanders to the effect that while the 1,550 Australian troops currently deployed were adequate, the efforts to crush the Taliban-led insurgency were at a critical stage and more might be needed.

Full detail is yet to emerge, but there are ample indications that dissatisfaction in Washington with Australia’s Afghanistan policy was one of the factors in the conspiratorial and anti-democratic political coup that removed Kevin Rudd as prime minister on June 23-24. Under Rudd, Labor had ruled out sending more Australian troops and, on the same day as the coup began, had announced they would be withdrawn within two to four years.

Since Rudd’s ousting, Gillard has gone out of her way to stress her government’s unconditional support for both the US alliance and the Afghan war. The Labor government now faces the task of disregarding public sentiment and escalating Australian involvement if called upon to do so by Washington.

Abbott has elevated the case of the three commandos to intensify pressure on the government. He has placed himself at the forefront of a campaign to mobilise a right-wing constituency that will vocally defend the war and seek to intimidate and drown out opposition.

Abbott made his remarks on the DMP prosecution on the Sydney-based 2GB radio program of Alan Jones, one of the most provocative right-wing commentators, or "shock jocks," in the Australian media.

Jones, infamous for such outrages as helping to whip up the anti-Muslim sentiment that led to the December 2005 riot in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla, has made the case of the three soldiers his latest hobby-horse. His broadcasts and a 2GB bulletin board have been turned into a vehicle for vitriolic denunciations of DMP head Brigadier Lyn McDade, as well as the Labor government and Gillard.

A typical entry, posted yesterday, reads: "Leave our brave soldiers alone you SCUM… This scum who wants to prosecute our elite men and women should first have to serve on the front line for a few months and see how well they go. Gillard is GUTLESS SCUM. Her response was a disgrace. Either support our brave soldiers, or pull them out, don’t hang them out to dry!"

A petition, initiated by a former military officer who declared his outrage at soldiers having to fight with "one hand tied behind their back" and promoted by 2GB, has been signed by some 21,000 people. The petition calls on the governor-general—the constitutional commander of the Australian armed forces—to intervene and cancel the prosecution over the head of the DMP and the government.

Among those who have supposedly written to 2GB or signed the petition are hundreds of active military personnel, in contravention of military discipline. Many might well have been emboldened by the lack of action against a special forces officer who appeared on national television on September 30 to denounce the charges and declare that soldiers, especially those who had served in Afghanistan, were "dismayed" and "angry".

The chief of the army, General Ken Gillespie, who has himself reportedly voiced opposition to the charges internally, was forced to send out an army-wide email following Abbott’s statements. In it, Gillespie warned that soldiers commenting on the case could face charges of contempt of court or other penalties under the Defence Force Discipline Act.

The rage in the military over the charges stems from the fact that the incident in which the five children were killed was a typical operation for the Australian special forces in Afghanistan. In the brutal campaign to crush opposition among the Afghan people to the US occupation, the task of the special services is to hunt down and assassinate or capture alleged guerrilla fighters. Missions often involve raiding villages and smashing into civilian homes in the dead of night. If non-combatants, women and children are killed in the process, the deaths are generally blamed on the alleged insurgents themselves—for "sheltering" among civilians—or dismissed as unavoidable "collateral damage".

The three men charged on September 29 are the first Australian soldiers ever to be prosecuted for war crimes, not only in Afghanistan, but in Iraq and Vietnam as well. The only reason the incident was not buried was because journalists from the government-owned Australian television station SBS independently gathered and widely broadcast witness statements that called into question the military’s account of what had taken place.

It appears that the DMP only proceeded with the charges in order to pre-empt a possible indictment from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which was carrying out its own investigations into the killings. As a result, the soldiers will only ever appear before an Australian military court, which can carefully vet what evidence is introduced.

Regardless of the DMP’s motives, however, the case inevitably calls into question the propaganda, used since 2001, to justify the war in Afghanistan as a "good war" being fought against terrorism and for the benefit of the Afghan people. It sheds light on the criminal and neo-colonial nature of the operation, in which soldiers have been trained to view the lives and well-being of the Afghan population with indifference and contempt.

At the same time, real responsibility for the atrocities that have been committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan lies with those political leaders who sent them there.

The extraordinary frenzy whipped up over the charges coincides with preparations for a debate on the Afghan war in the lower house of parliament next Tuesday, October 19. Both Gillard and Abbott will deliver speeches, outlining their standpoint on Australia’s ongoing and deeply unpopular involvement in the nine-year long, US-led occupation of the country.

Holding such a debate was one of the terms for the Green Party member Adam Bandt and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie supporting the return of Labor to power, following the hung parliament that resulted from the August 21 federal election. The formal electoral position of the Greens is that Australian troops should be withdrawn so they are available for military operations in the Pacific. Wilkie, a former army officer and intelligence official who supported the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, has also called for a troop withdrawal on the grounds that the war has become unwinnable.

It is clear, however, that the debate will not centre on these criticisms of the war.

Gillard has already spelt out the Labor government’s position. Following her return from a visit to Afghanistan on October 3, she declared that Australian troops would be deployed in a combat, training or "over-watch" capacity for an indefinite timeframe, to prevent Afghanistan becoming a haven for "terrorists". She stressed that the number of Australian forces in the country was "not a cap". While it was "about right," she stated, troop levels would be determined by what military commanders told her was "required".

Up until now, the Liberal-National opposition has maintained bipartisan agreement with the Labor Party on the conduct of the war, as well as on the indefinite commitment of troops. No-one in the opposition, however, has distanced themselves from Abbott’s inflammatory comments, or from the hysteria being promoted in the military over the DMP charges.

Opposition defence spokesman Senator David Johnston told journalists today that he had been told by military sources that the legal defence provided to the three soldiers had been inadequate and had contributed to the charges being laid. He has demanded the release of all defence submissions to the DMP.

The central purpose of the campaign now being carried out by Abbott, the entire Liberal-National opposition and figures like Alan Jones, is to create a climate where any questioning of the conduct of the war, or any suggestion that, under international law, genuine war crimes have been committed, is regarded as tantamount to treason.

The author also recommends:
Australian soldiers charged over civilian killings in Afghanistan[1 October 2010]

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.
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Zardari: US ‘Arranging’ Taliban Attacks in Pakistan

2010-10-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

Jason Ditz

Zardari Says 'Karzai Told Him'

October 14, 2010

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari believes that the United States has been secretly behind a number of Taliban suicide attacks across the nation, according to a detailed account from Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars.

According to the book, Zardari expressed this concern to then-US envoy Zalmay Khalizad during a dinner, telling him that they were being arranged by either the US or India and that he "didn’t think India could be that clever."

Met with shock by Khalizad, Zardari explained that it was part of a US plot to "destabilize Pakistan so that the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons." Zardari also apparently claimed that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had told him the US was responsible for the attacks.

The claims continued to get more elaborate, as Zardari claimed the CIA was overtly supporting Baitullah Mehsud and that the US had "revealed its support of the TTP." Mehsud, the former leader of the TTP, was assassinated in August 2009, and has since been replaced by Hakimullah Mehsud.

Link: news.antiwar.com/2010/10/13/zardari-us-arranging-taliban-attacks-in-pakistan/

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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Doc who ‘inspired’ torture program gets $31 million Army contract

2010-10-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

RAW STORY, October 14, 2010

A psychologist whose research was used in constructing the US's program to torture terrorism suspects has been granted a $31-million no-bid Army contract to provide "resilience training" to US soldiers.
Mark Benjamin at Salon.com reports that University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman's research "formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration's torture program."

The Army awarded the "sole source" contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university's Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.
Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because "there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements." And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.

In a 2009 article, the New York Times described Seligman's small but crucial role in the establishment of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on terrorism suspects before the techniques were suspended in 2008.
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In December 2001, a small group of professors and law enforcement and intelligence officers gathered outside Philadelphia at the home of a prominent psychologist, Martin E. P. Seligman, to brainstorm about Muslim extremism. Among them was Dr. [Jim] Mitchell, who attended with a C.I.A. psychologist, Kirk M. Hubbard.
During a break, Dr. Mitchell introduced himself to Dr. Seligman and said how much he admired the older man’s writing on "learned helplessness." Dr. Seligman was so struck by Dr. Mitchell’s unreserved praise, he recalled in an interview, that he mentioned it to his wife that night. Later, he said, he was "grieved and horrified" to learn that his work had been cited to justify brutal interrogations.
Dr. Seligman had discovered in the 1960s that dogs that learned they could do nothing to avoid small electric shocks would become listless and simply whine and endure the shocks even after being given a chance to escape.

According to Benjamin, Seligman is "most famous for his work in the 1960s in which he was able to psychologically destroy caged dogs by subjecting them to repeated electric shocks with no hope of escape. The dogs broke down completely and ultimately would not attempt to escape through an open cage door when given the opportunity to avoid more pain. Seligman called the phenomenon 'learned helplessness.'"
In an interview with Harper's in 2008, author Jane Mayer said that in 2002, as the US was trying to extract information from Abu Zybaydah, Seligman was brought in by the CIA to speak on his research. But Selgiman asserted that his involvement had to do with helping soldiers resist torture, not carry it out.

It was completely fascinating to me to learn that Martin Seligman, one of the most esteemed psychologists in the country, a former head of the APA, was connected to the CIA after 9/11....
Seligman confirmed for me, by email, that in the spring of 2002, as the CIA was trying to figure out how to interrogate its first major high-value detainee, Abu Zubayda, he was brought in to speak about his theories to a high-level confab apparently organized by CIA officials, at the Navy’s SERE School in San Diego. He said his talk lasted some three hours. Seligman said his talk was focused on how to help U.S. soldiers resist torture—not on how to breakdown resistance in detainees....
Among the U.S. Government’s interrogation techniques that seem to echo these experiments are the uses of random maltreatment—taking away any predictable schedule from detainees so that they have no idea what time it is, no sense of when meals are delivered, no idea if it is day or night, as well as manipulating temperature, sound, sleep, and using isolation, all of which are meant to cause psychic stress that would erode a prisoner’s resistance to being interrogated and foster total dependency upon an interrogator. Perhaps just coincidentally, the detainees have described other ways in which they were treated like dogs—the use of dog cages and of a collar and leash.

Benjamin notes that Seligman in considered by at least some of his colleagues to be a social conservative. He points to an online comment Seligman wrote, urging scientists to use their knowledge to aid in the war on terrorism.

The civilized world is at war with Jihad Islamic terrorism. It takes a bomb in the office of some academics to make them realize that their most basic values are now threatened, and some of my good friends and colleagues on the Edge seem to have forgotten 9/11. If we lose the war, the laudable, but pet projects they endorse, will not be issues. Fighting fatwahs and no education for women will displace grousing about random assignment of schoolchildren to study education. If we win this war, we can go on to pursue the normal goals of science.

By Daniel Tencer

:: Article nr. 70779 sent on 15-oct-2010 01:34 ECT www.uruknet.info?p=70779

Link: www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/doc-torture-program-army-contract/

:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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Calcium and vitamin D linked to weight loss

2010-10-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Big Pharma's diet pills come with big risks and small results... but if you want to kick-start your own weight loss plan, there are a few things you can take that really do work.

And they're nutrients you need anyway.

Researchers have found that vitamin D and calcium, two nutrients that work so well together in everything from bone health to cancer prevention, can help you shed pounds.

And it doesn't take much of either.

In a new analysis, researchers examined data on 322 people with an average age of 52 and BMI of 31. While most of the patients were tracked for two years, 126 of them were followed for an extra six months to track their levels of vitamin D.

The researchers found that volunteers with an average daily intake of 580 milligrams of calcium along with vitamin D blood levels of 30.2 nanograms per millimeter lost nearly 12 pounds over two years, according to the study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Like I said, these aren't especially high levels of either nutrient--580 mg of calcium is barely half the U.S. government's "recommended daily intake," and those blood levels of vitamin D are below what many in the mainstream now recommend.

And while 12 pounds over two years isn't a stunning level of weight loss by any stretch, it's actually better than the results we've seen from studies on many of Big Pharma's diet drugs--with none of the dangerous side effects.

Most people can get the calcium they need from a good diet of natural foods, but a supplement isn't a bad idea if you think there's a chance you're not getting enough.

Vitamin D, on the other hand, is much trickier. Our bodies can make it from sunlight--but since so few of us get the sun exposure we need to stimulate D production, most people are actually badly deficient.

In fact, it's become the world's leading nutritional deficiency--so if you're not taking a D supplement now, you should... whether you need to lose weight or not.

Add these key nutrients to a healthy lifestyle low in sugar and other refined carbohydrates, and you won't believe how easily the pounds will come off.

No drugs necessary.

On a mission for your health,

Ed Martin
Editor, House Calls

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How 'B' can beat dementia

2010-10-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

There may "B" an answer to Alzheimer's after all--and it might even be something you're taking right now.

Researchers have found that high levels of three common B vitamins can dramatically slash the brain shrinkage associated with dementia and related conditions.

Naturally, they're already hoping to sell this to you as a "drug," but you don't have to wait for Big Pharma's blessing--because the ingredients are sitting on the shelf at your local vitamin store right now, and I'll tell you all about them in a moment.

But first, let's take a look at this remarkable new study.

Researchers recruited 168 seniors who suffered from mild cognitive impairment and assigned them to either a placebo or TrioBe Plus--a patented blend of vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and folic acid.

After two years, MRI scans revealed that those who had been taking the B vitamin blend had a much slower rate of brain shrinkage: .76 percent of volume per year, versus 1.08 percent in those who were given the placebo, or a difference of 30 percent.

What's more, patients with the highest blood levels of the inflammation marker homocysteine at the start of the study had a 53 percent reduction in the shrinkage rate, according to the study in PLoS One.

By the way, here's a humbling piece of trivia: All of our brains are shrinking. Even the healthiest ones lose about half a percent each year. Just a guess, but they may end up in the same place as keys, wallets and left socks.

Now, before you run off to try to slow your own shrinkage with some B vitamins, the researchers behind this study have a warning: Their blend, they say, is a high-dose "drug" and should only be given under the care of a doctor.

But that sounds a lot like patent-protecting greed to me, because one look at the TrioBe Plus ingredients label reveals that these high doses aren't so high after all: 800 micrograms of folate, 500 micrograms of B12 and 20 milligrams of B6.

They're high levels in that they exceed the U.S. government's lowball recommended daily intakes... but not so high that they can't be found without a prescription. In fact, you can pick them up at almost any supermarket or health food story in those exact amounts.

Since your own needs could vary depending on your age and condition, talk to a naturopathic physician about the best ways to add some B to your regimen now--but don't be afraid to do it.

And don't be afraid to start today--before your brain shrinks even more than it already has.

Those aren't the only ordinary vitamins that can beat Big Pharma meds... keep reading for the latest news on safe and inexpensive supplements that can help you lose weight!

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Kremlin fury over 'worm salad' tweet

2010-10-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Dmitry Zelenin, governor of Tver region, tweeted that he found a worm in his salad
* Took place during a reception of Germany's president at the Kremlin
* Kremlin officials have promised to take action if the claims prove false

(CNN) -- A senior Russian official has been branded an "imbecile" after tweeting that he found a worm in his salad during a Kremlin banquet for visiting German President Christian Wulff.

Dmitry Zelenin, the governor of Tver region in central Russia, wrote: "The beef came with live worms. That's an original way to show that the lettuce leaf is fresh."

He also published a photograph of the offending invertebrate online.

Far from amused, Kremlin foreign policy advisor, Sergei Prikhodko, told Russia's RIA Novosti news agency on Wednesday that he regretted there was no rule on "firing governors for imbecility."

An official from the office of President Dmitry Medvedev told RIA Novosti that a preliminary study of the image showed "it represents neither the place [of the reception], nor the serving of the table layout during this protocol event in the Grand Kremlin Palace."

Ominously, he added that if the information in the message, which has since been deleted, proves incorrect "then the person who made this statement will be held accountable in line with the current law."

Kremlin officials said the kitchens would also be checked.

Source Article

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© 2008 Cable News Network

Most Important Windows Security Patch Ever

2010-10-15T10:40:00.000-07:00

Source article

October 14, 2010 by shogan in The Pit Blog

For the past 7 years Microsoft has released security patches for their products on the second Tuesday of each month. Following tradition, Microsoft just issued its largest security patch ever on October 12th, Patch Tuesday. Let me say again that this is the largest patch ever from Microsoft. A total of 49 vulnerabilities are fixed with 16 patches and this far exceeds the previous record of 34.
One of the most notorious exploits, that was mostly fixed, was the Stuxnet virus. This is the virus that attacked the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran earlier this year. I think it was a mistake when we coined the word "virus" to describe these attacks. We forget that what we call a virus is a direct attack by an individual or group. It's almost as if we accept virus activity like we would accept having a cold. Make no mistake, this virus is not about a few stolen credit card numbers. There is a war going on. There are good guys and bad guys. The good guys are called "White Hat Hackers", the bad guys are called "Black Hat Hackers", and they are locked in mortal combat.

The introduction of the Stuxnet Virus changed the game. It amazed and horrified all the current experts. The attack on Bushehr was and still is, a big deal. The Stuxnet virus attacked a physical plant, and a nuclear plant at that. No longer a simple attack on software but a full blown attack on hard objects.
This absolutely marks the beginning of a new era. The beginning of digital strikes against physical targets. The results can be the same as if someone dropped a bomb on your city .

Stuxnet took months of preparation and a level of expertises that was previously unknown. A bag of new tactics that infected without internet connections, without the click of a button. The sophistication was staggering. There's little doubt that the attack was the work of a well trained group or nation and not the work of individuals.
Suddenly my monthly discussions with good friend and Apple user Bill R. seem rather unimportant. Now I realize that while protecting my computer is a must, it's not the whole issue. The real issue is much bigger and much more ominous. The real issue is about the safety of nations and families. I've never looked to see where or how many nuclear plants were in the US, but a quick Google search let me know that unless I move to Oregon or North Dakota, I've got every chance of glowing like a light bulb if someone decides to launch a similar attack in the US.

WHAT TO DO

1. Do your part and update immediately. Be sure to mark it on your calendar to updated every Patch Tuesday.
2. Purchase a good antivirus product. Find a product that doesn't waste resources and slow your system to the point that you disable it. Find one that updates automatically and offers real time protection. Remember you're only as safe as your most recent update. In fact, the most dangerous time is immediately after Patch Tuesday on Hacker Wednesday. The hackers take advantage of those who don't update right away.
3. Continue to be cautious when receiving and opening email.
4. Avoid visiting Social Networks and unprotected file sharing sites. There is no protection when you intentionally click the download button. It's up to you to decide whether the person on the other end is clear of infection.
5. Enjoy the protection that comes with Cloud Computing. It's going to be one of the biggest shifts in how computing is done. Eventually all of your applications and programs will be kept on a server and not your computer. It's the future and PC Pitstop is a part of it. All of our programs are in The Clouds. Get on board.

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If You Eat These Eggs, You are Being Ripped Off

2010-10-15T09:15:00.001-07:00

Posted By Dr. Mercola | October 15 2010 | 89,407 views

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The Cornucopia Institute has released a report that exposes widespread abuses in the production of organic eggs, primarily by large factory farms.
The study compares management practices employed by small organic egg farmers with those of large industrial operations that label eggs 'organic' that have been produced by chickens confined by the hundreds of thousands in industrial facilities.
According to Cornucopia News:

"After visiting over 15% of the certified egg farms in the United States, and surveying all name-brand and private-label industry marketers, it's obvious that a high percentage of the eggs on the market should be labeled 'produced with organic feed' rather than bearing the USDA-certified organic logo," said Mark A. Kastel, The Cornucopia Institute's codirector and senior farm policy analyst."
Eighty percent of all organic eggs are produced by a handful of operations. Most of these businesses own hundreds of thousands to millions of birds and market a percentage of their produce as 'specialty eggs,' one of which is organic. Most of the giant henhouses used by these factory farms provide no legitimate access to the outdoors, which is a requirement of federal organic regulations.

"Many of these operators are gaming the system by providing minute enclosed porches, with roofs and concrete or wood flooring, and calling these structures 'the outdoors,'" stated Charlotte Vallaeys, a farm policy analyst with Cornucopia and lead author of the report.

"Many of the porches represent just 3 to 5 percent of the square footage of the main building housing the birds. That means 95 percent or more of the birds have absolutely no access whatsoever."

Per Cornucopia News, family farm-scale organic egg farmers will challenge agribusiness lobbyists at the October 25 meeting of the NOSB (National Organic Standards Board).

Sources:

Cornucopia News September 26, 2010

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Eggs are one of the healthiest foods in the world, and at their very best if you eat them raw. But the quality of your eggs is paramount. Organic, free-range eggs are clearly your best bet, but as this Cornucopia report shows, there are loopholes in the organic regulations that allow less than truly organic producers to slip their eggs through.

Are Factory Farmed Organic Eggs Truly Organic?

Based on The Cornucopia Institute's research and inspection of organic egg producers across the US, the answer to that question seems to be a disappointing no.
Their report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture, contains a scorecard that rates nearly 70 different organic egg brands based on 22 organic criteria.
Sadly, there is no shortage of brands that miss the mark, despite their USDA Organic label.
One of the most glaring problems is the lack of true adherence to free-range standards. Health conscious organic consumers expect organic free-range eggs to be produced by hens that have ample access to the outdoors.
But as Cornucopia says, "a high percentage of the eggs on the market should be labeled 'produced with organic feed' rather than bearing the USDA-certified organic logo," because many of these birds never actually get to set foot outdoors.
Mass-producing organic egg farmers circumvent the free-range criteria by providing tiny enclosed porches with roofs and concrete or wood flooring – a far cry from what most organic consumers would associate with the word "free-range."
According to Cornucopia:
"Many of the porches represent just 3 to 5 percent of the square footage of the main building housing the birds. That means 95 percent or more of the birds have absolutely no access whatsoever."

The REAL Definition of Free-Range Eggs

Don't be fooled by the egg industry's double-speak definitions of what organic and free-range really is. True free-range eggs are from hens that walk about freely outdoors on a pasture where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.
A hen that is let outside into a barren lot for a few minutes a day but is fed a diet of corn, soy and cottonseed meal, plus synthetic additives, is NOT an organic free-range hen, and will not produce the same quality eggs as its foraging counterpart.
Likewise, a hen that is fed an organic diet, but never gets to go outside is also NOT a true free-range hen, although it may currently slide through as an "organic" one…
A MAJOR part of a hen being truly organic is having free range access to outdoor pasture. It's not just about being fed organic grains. And this is a major point of contention within the egg industry.
The largest egg producers have been hard at work, vigorously lobbying against requirements for outdoor pasture.
Cornucopia writes:
"At previous meetings of the NOSB [National Organic Standards Board], United Egg Producers represented industrial-scale producers and publicly opposed proposals to strengthen regulations requiring outdoor access.
"We are strongly opposed to any requirement for hens to have access to the soil," said Kurt Kreher of Kreher's Sunrise Farms in Clarence, N.Y.
And Bart Slaugh, director of quality assurance at Eggland's Best, a marketer of both conventional and organic eggs based in Jeffersonville, Pa., noted that, "The push for continually expanding outdoor access … needs to stop." "
Family-scale organic egg farmers and other organic egg advocates will challenge industry lobbyists and push to close the regulatory loophole that allows organic egg farmers to circumvent the need to pasture their chickens at the next NOSB meeting being held on October 25 in Madison, WI.
The NOSB is currently struggling with proposed new regulations for poultry and other livestock, trying to establish standards for housing density, and clear up the "confusion" about what "outdoor access" really means.
Cornucopia writes:
"From the beginning our position was that the original organic regulatory language actually means something," said [Mark A.] Kastel [codirector for The Cornucopia Institute's and senior farm policy analyst].
"Just because it didn't prescribe exactly how to comply with the requirement for 'access to the outdoors for all organic livestock' or 'access to pasture for ruminants' doesn't mean farm operators could ignore the requirement."
…"As in organic dairying, we discovered similar flagrant violations of the law in the organic egg business," lamented Kastel. "Some of the largest operators even have a note from their veterinarian, or some state official, saying 'we recommend that you not let your birds outside to protect their health.' And some accommodating, corporate-friendly organic certifiers have signed-off on this," Kastel said."
A note from the veterinarian prescribing the hens to be kept indoors for their own well-being?
Seriously?!

Family-Scale Organic Egg Producers Get Top Scores

The good news here is that you can still depend on your small, local farmer to produce some of the best food on earth.
The report concludes that the vast majority of family-scale producers do comply with, or exceed, organic regulations.
In fact, "[a]n important subset of organic farmers are even going far beyond the minimum requirements in the organic standards: not just providing access to the outdoors but rotating birds on high-quality pasture," Cornucopia reports.
The main problem is that they can't compete against cheaper mass-produced organic eggs. Because although factory farmed organic eggs typically do not fulfill the expectation of organic consumers, most consumers simply do not realize that they're being short-changed, because both eggs bear the identical organic label…
For more information, and to locate a high-rating organic egg producer in your area, please see The Cornucopia Institute's report, Scrambled Eggs: Separating Factory Farm Egg Production from Authentic Organic Agriculture.

Organic Eggs are Healthier, More Nutritious Eggs

Why should you care about whether or not your eggs are truly organic AND free-range?
Because organic, pasture raised hens are healthier, live longer, and produce eggs with superior flavor and nutritional content than their factory-raised counterparts. Organic eggs also tend to be more expensive, so why shouldn't you get everything you pay for? A hen that has been in a crowded pen simply will not produce as healthful an egg as a hen that has been pastured, even if she's fed an all organic diet…
Quite simply, the healthier the hen, the healthier her eggs, and outdoor access is a major part of optimal health for food producing animals.
An egg-testing project performed by Mother Earth News in 2007 found there were significant differences in nutrition between factory-farmed and organically raised eggs.
Compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:
1/3 less cholesterol
1/4 less saturated fat
2/3 more vitamin A
2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
3 times more vitamin E
7 times more beta carotene
These dramatically differing nutrient levels are most likely the result of the differences in diet between free-range pastured hens, vs. commercially farmed hens.
The fact that the USDA and other organizations (which are often funded or influenced by industry) refuse to acknowledge that there is a direct link between the diet of the bird and the nutritional value of their eggs, is a clear indicator that there are strong financial incentives at work – not nutritional science.

The Best and the Worst of Eggs

If at all possible, I would encourage you to avoid buying all store bought eggs unless you have no other choices. Exceptions would be small health food stores that carry locally farmed eggs.
Ideally it would be best to locate a local famer where the chickens are fed well and raised in humane conditions and allowed to eat insects. I have never seen store bought eggs that compares to the color of the yolk in these eggs. Typically they are deep orange, where most of the store bought eggs are light yellow.
In addition to being true pasture raised, these types of eggs are also less likely to have been treated with damaging chlorine baths.
If you have to purchase your eggs from a commercial grocery store, I would advise selecting a high-rated brand from The Cornucopia Institute's report, to ensure you're actually getting high-quality organic eggs.
But finding a local egg producer may not be as hard as you think. In my experience, this is one of the easiest foods to find from local farmers.
To locate a free-range pasture farm near you, try:
www.eatwild.com
www.localharvest.org
Another option is to raise your own. Mother Earth News has a great article on how to do it.
As for the worst eggs out there, omega-3 fortified eggs take top billing and should be avoided. Typically, the animals producing these eggs are fed poor-quality sources of omega-3 fats that are already oxidized. Also, omega-3 eggs do not last anywhere near as long as non-omega-3 eggs.

Organic, Pasture Raised Eggs Also Do Not Need Refrigeration and are FAR Less Likely to be Contaminated with Salmonella

It is actually wise to NOT refrigerate your eggs. If you have ever been to Europe or South America, you will know that the practice of non-refrigeration is common in those countries.
In the U.S., refrigeration of eggs became the cultural norm when mass production caused eggs to travel long distances and sit in storage for weeks to months before arriving at your superstore. The general lack of cleanliness of factory farms has increased the likelihood that your eggs have come into contact with pathogens, amplifying the need for disinfection and refrigeration.
But if your eggs are very fresh and organically-raised, you typically do not have to refrigerate them.
As for the risk of contracting salmonella, chickens raised in unsanitary factory farm conditions are far more likely to be contaminated, and lay contaminated eggs.
In fact, one study by the British government found that 23 percent of farms with caged hens tested positive for salmonella, compared to just over 4 percent in organic flocks and 6.5 percent in pasture raised flocks.

Why genes are leftwing

2010-10-14T22:14:00.000-07:00

The right loves genetic explanations for poverty or mental illness. But science fingers society

When the map of the human genome was presented to the world in 2001, psychiatrists had high hopes for it. Itemising all our genes would surely provide molecular evidence that the main cause of mental illness was genetic – something psychiatrists had long believed. Drug companies were wetting their lips at the prospect of massive profits from unique potions for every idiosyncrasy.
But a decade later, unnoticed by the media, the human genome project has not delivered what the psychiatrists hoped: we now know that genes play little part in why one sibling, social class or ethnic group is more likely to suffer mental health problems than another.

This result had been predicted by Craig Venter, one of the key researchers on the project. When the map was published, he said that because we only have about 25,000 genes psychological differences could not be much determined by them. "Our environments are critical," he concluded. And, after only a few years of extensive genome searching, even the most convinced geneticists began to publicly admit that there are no individual genes for the vast majority of mental health problems. In 2009 Professor Robert Plomin, a leading behavioural geneticist, wrote that the evidence had proved that "genetic effects are much smaller than previously considered: the largest effects account for only 1% of quantitative traits". However, he believed that all was not lost. Complex combinations of genes might hold the key. So far, this has not been shown, nor is it likely to be.
This February's editorial of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry was entitled "It's the environment, stupid!". The author, Edmund Sonuga-Barke, stated that "serious science is now more than ever focused on the power of the environment … all but the most dogged of genetic determinists have revised their view".
In Sonuga-Barke's own field, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he observed that "even the most comprehensive genome-wide scans available, with thousands of patients using hundreds of thousands of genetic markers … appear to account for a relatively small proportion of disorder expression". Genes hardly explained at all why some children have ADHD and not others.

That was illustrated recently in a heavily publicised study by Anita Thapar, of Cardiff University. Although she claimed to have proved that ADHD is a "genetic disease", if anything, she proved the opposite. Only 16% of the children with ADHD in her study had the pattern of genes that she claimed causes the illness. Taken at face value, her study proved that non-genetic factors cause it in 8 out of 10 children.
Another theory was that genes create vulnerabilities. For example, it was thought that people with a particular gene variant were more likely to become depressed if they were maltreated as children. This also now looks unlikely. An analysis of 14,250 people showed that those with the variant were not at greater risk of depression. Nor were they more likely to be depressed when the variant was combined with childhood maltreatment.
In developed nations, women and those on a low income are twice as likely to be depressed as men and the wealthy. When DNA is tested in large samples, neither women nor the poor are more likely to have the variant. Worldwide, depression is least common in south-east Asia. Yet a study of 29 nations found the variant to be commonest there – the degree to which a society is collectivist rather than individualistic partly explains depression rates, not genes.

Politics may be the reason why the media has so far failed to report the small role of genes. The political right believes that genes largely explain why the poor are poor, as well as twice as likely as the rich to be mentally ill. To them, the poor are genetic mud, sinking to the bottom of the genetic pool.

Writing in 2000, the political scientist Charles Murray made a rash prediction he may now regret. "The story of human nature, as revealed by genetics and neuroscience, will be conservative in its political [shape]." The American poor would turn out to have significantly different genes to the affluent: "This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true." Almost certainly false, more like.

Instead, the Human Genome Project is rapidly providing a scientific basis for the political left. Childhood maltreatment, economic inequality and excessive materialism seem the main determinants of mental illness. State-sponsored interventions, like reduced inequality, are the most likely solutions.

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Dollar fall sparks stability warnings

2010-10-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

By David Oakley and Peter Garnham in London and Michael Mackenzie in New York

Published: October 14 2010 19:55 | Last updated: October 14 2010 19:55

The dollar tumbled against most major currencies on Thursday, prompting warnings that the weakness of the world’s reserve currency could destabilise the global economy and push other countries into retaliatory devaluations to underwrite their exports.

Increasing expectations the Federal Reserve will pump more money into the US economy next month under a policy known as quantitative easing sent the dollar to new lows against the Chinese renminbi, Swiss franc and Australian dollar. It dropped to a 15-year low against the yen and an eight-month low against the euro.

The dollar index, which tracks a basket of currencies, reached its lowest level this year.

A senior European policy-maker, who asked not to be named, said a further aggressive round of monetary easing by the US Federal Reserve would be “irresponsible” as it made US exports more competitive at the expense of its rivals.

Simon Derrick, chief currency strategist for BNY Mellon, said: “In narrow terms, the US is winning the currency wars as a weaker dollar will help its economy, but it could damage the other big economic blocs of China, Japan and Europe.”

The dollar’s fall was given fresh impetus after the Monetary Authority of Singapore surprised the market when it tightened policy by widening the trading band for its currency, allowing it to appreciate. The move by the Singapore authorities, responding to fears over inflation, helped push up other Asian currencies.

Russia’s finance minister Alexei Kudrin, in a meeting with European Union officials, blamed the US – and others – for global currency instability.

He said one reason for exchange rate turmoil “is the stimulating monetary policy of some developed countries, above all the United States, which are trying to solve their structural problems in this way”.

Commodities, which are mostly traded in dollars, were boosted by the US currency’s slide. Copper hit a two-year high of $8,490 per tonne at one point, while gold surged to a record of $1,387 per troy ounce.

The twice-yearly US Treasury currency report, to be published on Friday, could ramp up the debate, although it is likely to stop short of accusing China of manipulating its currency.

However, turbulence was contained in the currency markets, as equities are benefiting from expectations of more QE. Investors hope that the fresh flood of money will find its way into stocks.

The QE factor and the strong start to the US earnings season propelled the FTSE All World Index to highs last seen around the time of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. This index has risen 20 per cent since the start of July.

Robert Parkes, equity strategist at HSBC, said: “The equity bull run, which started in March last year, will go on.”

US inflation expectations for the next 10 years also continued to climb, reaching 2.09 per cent, up from 1.90 per cent in the past week.

The dollar fell to Rmb6.6493 against the Chinese renminbi, dropped to SFr0.9461 against the Swiss franc and fell to $0.9993 against the Australian dollar, just shy of parity. The Canadian dollar reached parity with the US currency, last seen in April. The US dollar fell below Y81 against the Japanese yen and tumbled to $1.4121 against the euro. The dollar index dropped nearly 1 per cent at one point to 76.259, its lowest since December.

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The craziest tax: Unemployed just can’t get a break

2010-09-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

By Ted Rall

My friend was a survivor. Until she wasn’t. She’d made it through 14 rounds of layoffs at her accounting firm. Then came number 15: “I was a telecommuter. When my boss told me to come into the office for a meeting, I knew I was done for. I told her to cut the crap, save me the trip, and fire me over the phone.”

I told her how to file for unemployment benefits. In New York, you can get up to $405 a week plus $25 in extra “Obama bucks” approved by the feds back during the hope-and-change days. (Most states pay less.) Then I warned her: “Remember, set some of that aside. Unemployment benefits are taxable.” In New York, that means roughly 40 percent.

She was shocked.

You probably are too.

When people lose their jobs, they spend their savings. They take out loans against their house. They’re poor — but that’s not how the federal government sees them. The I.R.S. sees them as big, fat cash cows. Hey, someone has to pay for those missiles we shoot at Afghan wedding parties — not to mention those bonuses for executives at AIG and Goldman Sachs. Why not people a couple of months away from foreclosure? The unemployed are living phat!

The bizarre unemployment tax goes back to 1985, while the Reagan administration was busily waging class war against the poor and middle class.

It was Reagan’s idea, marketed as an easy way to raise $2.3 billion over five years. But it was congressional Democrats, exhibiting their characteristic cowardice, who pushed through the measure. “This is a real step back from a traditional Democratic position,” said Rep. Brian Donnelly (D-MA) at the time. “Under the guise of tax reform, we agreed to raise $2.3 billion from people who don’t have jobs.”

It was also hypocritical for Republi-cans, who rail against “double taxation” when they argue for the repeal of taxes on the estates of the wealthy. Unemployment benefits, after all, were already taxed once; while employed, workers pay into the federal and state unemployment compensation systems. When they get downsized, they’re merely getting back what they put in.

The official unemployment rate is above 10 percent and rising. With lots of folks out of work for at least a year, savings are running out. Tight credit and the housing bust means they can’t subsist on home equity loans. And there’s no recovery in sight. In other words, if you’re not out of work yet, you could be soon.

As banks and insurance firms wallow in hundreds of billions of federal bailout dollars, it seems unbelievably churlish to tax unemployment checks, which are the only “income” received by millions of people — and are keeping many of them just barely afloat. It’s also utterly absurd. Why should the government send out money to the jobless, then take it right back?

The Obama administration should repeal the Reagan Tax on the unemployed, and it should do so this instant. Call your congressperson (it’s more effective than e-mail) and demand that he or she take action on the Unemployment Benefit Tax Suspension Act of 2009 (S. 155), currently stuck in committee because Congress cares more about bankers than struggling unemployed Americans. You can find contact information for your representative and senators at www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt.

Rall’s most recent book is “Wake Up, You’re Liberal! How We Can Take America Back From the Right” (Soft Skull Press).

Copyright © 2010 - Chelsea Now

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UCLA business school to end public funding

2010-09-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles

Published: September 6 2010 18:36 | Last updated: September 6 2010 18:36

A leading business school in the University of California system is preparing to forgo public funding amid increasing uncertainty about the state’s economic health and California’s ability to pay for higher education.

Source ~ Full article

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Online Content Doesn’t Have an Expiration Date

2010-09-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

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Publishing content online is simple; maybe too simple. When you click publish, share or tweet, do you instantly forget about the information you just shared? In a social media culture where the hunt for the next big trend constantly exists, putting aside published content to move on to the next topic is a natural reaction. This mode of thinking makes all of us online publishers often forget one very important thing: Online content is forever.
A notebook can get thrown in the trash, and a digital document can sit in a crowded folder and be ignored forever. Blog posts, tweets, ebooks, Facebook updates, and all other content published online, however, doesn’t go away. It continuously reappears in search results across different sites. Even if you delete content that was previously published online, odds are that it is still cached somewhere on the web or has been copied by someone and placed on another site. While this may seem a little scary to some, it is also one of the key factors that has helped level the marketing playing field.

Why Forever Is Great for Marketers

With traditional marketing like direct mail and print ads, your content was disposable. Once the next trade magazine issue came out, your message was in the trash. Because of this, the only way to keep a constant flow of messages in the marketplace was to keep spending money. This gave the power to large companies with bigger budgets. In online marketing, it is much less about marketing budgets or company size; the main success factor has become agility. In online marketing, you have to be able to create content your customers want and publish it quickly.

This gives the leverage to companies that are agile. If your business takes a month to approve a tweet, then a smaller startup can easily compete in the world of online marketing due to their ability to create content and engage with customers more frequently. Because content is forever, the effect of being able to create high-quality content regularly quickly snowballs and creates more and more leverage as each month ticks by.

3 Steps for Leveraging Forever

When you are a marketer, forever is your friend. The fact that content is forever helps you build a vault of online content that new and existing competitors won’t be able to overcome. Whether you are a marketer who is new to online marketing or a veteran who is looking to squeeze out every ounce of your marketing investment, then consider these three pieces of advice.

1. Conduct a Hard Drive Audit - Set aside some time and look at the documents, videos, and other types of content that are filling up your hard drive or that might be hiding in a marketing folder on a server somewhere. As you are looking through content, think about which items could be posted online that could help you target keywords, generate search traffic, or help answer prospect and customer questions. Odds are, you have at least a few items that can help with this but have never made their way onto the web. Work to add them to your blog or corporate website.

2. Make PDFs Friendly - Marketing departments are PDF-creating machines. The problem is, while PDFs provide some search engine opportunity value, the same content presented in a different way would have a much stronger, long-term benefit. Use content that is in PDF form when possible and move it to an HTML page where you can have control over the page title, headers, and other factors that can improve on-page SEO. You don’t need to do this with all PDFs. For example, if you have a PDF download behind a landing page for lead generation, that is fine. However, if you have a PDF of a product manual, that content would work much harder for your marketing team if it was no longer in PDF form.

3. Promote Past Content - Content that is old to you isn’t necessarily old to a prospect just learning about your company for the first time. We have explained some best practices for promoting evergreen content in the past, but it is worth revisiting the issue. If you write 50 blog articles a year, it is likely that many of them aren't time-sensitive. Take this evergreen content and reintroduce it to social media subscribers who may have only begun following you in the months following the publication date of that blog post. Promoting existing content is a great way to improve thought leadership and leader generation without dedicating the time needed to write a new article.

How do you leverage forever?

Photo Credit: TheFriendlyFiend

Posted by Kipp Bodnar

Fri, Sep 03, 2010 @ 08:00 AM

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Payback Tips For Handling Telemarketers And Junk Mail Senders

2010-09-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

These tips came from an anonymous person, but was received by a reader:

Tips for Handling Telemarketers

Three Little Words That Work!!

(1)The three little words are: ‘Hold On, Please…’

Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear the phone company’s ’beep-beep-beep’ tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.

These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting..

(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end? This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.

This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a ‘real’ sales person to call back and get someone at home.

What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call, and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!

(3) Junk Mail Help:

When you get ‘ads’ enclosed with your phone or utility bill, RETURN these ‘ads’ with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.

When you get those ‘pre-approved’ letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.

Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 44 cents postage, ‘IF’ and when they receive them back.
It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

One of Andy Rooney‘s (60 minutes) ideas.

Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn’t get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back!

If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn’t on anything you send them.

You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 44 cents.

The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let’s let them know what it’s like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they’re paying for it…Twice!

Let’s help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that’s why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!

If enough people follow these tips, it will work —- I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.

By George Gombossy | Last updated Sep 5, 2010, 6:29 pm

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AFN and First Nations in British Columbia Call on Federal Government to Stop Mining

2010-09-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

Project that will Destroy Environment and Way of Life for First Nations Written by Administrator

Thursday, 02 September 2010 11:49

OTTAWA, Sept. 2 - Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo strongly supports the call by the Tsilhqot'in Nation Government and First Nation leaders from across British Columbia to prevent a mining project that would destroy the pristine Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), a traditional First Nations fishery and sacred ceremonial site near Williams Lake, B.C.

First Nation leaders from the Tsilhqot'in Nation Government and across British Columbia were in Ottawa today delivering their message to the federal government which is expected to decide next week on whether or not to allow the Taseko Mines Limited Prosperity Mining Project to proceed.

"The Teztan Biny - or Fish Lake - has sustained the six member First Nation communities of the Tsilhqot'in Nation for generations. The proposed mine will not bring prosperity to First Nations in the region and could instead devastate their communities and their ways of life," said AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo, referencing a study published by Simon Fraser University economist Marvin Shaffer which states the mine will produce little net gain for B.C. and may in fact cause a net financial loss due to electricity subsidies, infrastructure maintenance, and carbon offset goals.

The plan for the proposed gold and copper Prosperity Mine involves draining the Teztan Biny completely to create a tailings pond that will collect toxic effluent from the mining activities. This would destroy millions of cultural artifacts in the region of the lake, devastate the surrounding environment and permanently threaten the rich heritage of the territories of the Tsilhqot'in Nation.

The project is unanimously opposed by the six member communities of the Tsilhqot'in Nation, B.C. First Nations Summit Grand Chief Ed John, Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs Grand Chief Stewart Phillip (both of whom attended today's press conference) and the Assembly of First Nations, which passed a resolution at the Annual General Assembly in Winnipeg in July.

The AFN Chiefs-in-Assembly resolved to call upon the federal government to heed the cautions of an independent panel created by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency which concluded that the project would negatively impact fish habitat, local wildlife, navigation and traditional land use, permanently destroying lands and waters.

"By rejecting the proposed mining project, the Government of Canada could demonstrate a commitment to environmental protection and the cultural survival of First Nations," said National Chief Atleo. "There was no meaningful consultation with the affected First Nations and governments have a legal duty to consult with our people. First Nations across Canada are eagerly awaiting the government decision that will determine if there is any value or integrity in the environmental assessments for major projects, or whether First Nations must turn to litigation and other means to assert our rights and protect our lands and cultures."

In addition to the impacts on Teztan Biny, the proposed mining project would also impact the Tsihqot'in Nations' rights to hunt and trap, rights that have been recognized by the British Columbia Supreme Court. The Teztan Biny area is a traditional food gathering area for the Tsilhqot'in. The lake provides trout and the region around the lake provides hunting and trapping grounds that could be destroyed by the proposed mine.

"First Nations in B.C. are not, on principle, opposed to development where cultural, environmental and economic issues are dealt with to their satisfaction as we saw recently with two tax revenue sharing agreements announced last week," said AFN B.C. Regional Chief Jody Wilson Raybould, who attended today's press conference in Ottawa, adding: "This is not the case with Prosperity Mines which seeks to destroy Teztan Biny. Common sense in our Province seems to have given way to greed and the BC AFN strongly urges the Government of Canada to do the right thing and listen to the Tsilhqot'in Nation and reject the proposal in the interests of all Canadians."

The Assembly of First Nations is the national organization representing First Nations citizens in Canada.

For further information:

Jenna Young, Communications Officer, Assembly of First Nations 613-241-6789, ext 401, 613-314-8157 (mobile) or jyoung[at]afn.ca

Don Kelly, A/Communications Director, Assembly of First Nations 613-292-2787 or dkelly[at]afn.ca

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THE NEW-OLD FASCIST HISTORY

2010-09-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

By Carolyn Baker

Sunday, 05 September 2010
In 2006 I published U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You. The book's introduction informs the reader that it is not a textbook but rather a supplement written to expand and illumine material included in institutionally approved college history textbooks. I was motivated to offer the supplement because as a professor of history, I was appalled at the amount of history omitted in mainstream U.S. history college textbooks not only due to the desire of publishers to produce less costly books but as a result of a massive dumbing down of American culture in recent years. Or as one former history student of mine put it: "I used to be bored when I would watch the news with my dad because it was actually news, but today when I watch the news, it's fun because it's about things that really interest me like celebrity gossip, hip hop music, and funny commercials." U.S. History Uncensored provides well-documented resources beyond traditional textbook material to which the reader can refer to glean additional information about historical events and read for him/herself the primary and secondary sources that are so frequently ignored in college history textbooks. I'm not Howard Zinn, even though my book has sometimes been referred to as "Zinn on steroids." Dear Howard left us just before the Texas history textbook controversy erupted, and I have no doubt that he's spinning in his grave in response to it. So is this article a commercial for my book? In a sense yes, but more importantly, it is an urgent appeal to the reader to connect the dots of the rabid agenda perpetuated those who are currently obsessed with revising U.S. history. Why does this matter? Because if you want to conquer a people-any people, one of the first strategies for doing so is to eliminate or distort their history. While the neo-fascist revisionist "historians" would disagree, the fact is that nineteenth-century public education in the United States devised a specific agenda for removing Native American culture from Native children in this country who were forced (often kidnapped and then forced) to attend non-Native schools. Likewise, it was not until the 1960s that African American culture was taught in white schools in America because from the white perspective, the only history worth knowing was white history. Excise a human being's culture and history from him/her, and you have a human being which you can fashion in any manner you desire. The revision of U.S. history by the rabid, neo-fascist right in a tragically dumbed-down culture signals the conquest of young minds in service of a particular social and political perspective that indoctrinates them in geopolitical exceptionalism and expansionism, white supremacy, corporate capitalism, and a virulent religionist ideology. In fact all of these are characteristics of political fascism and a society immersed in its principles. The revision of history did not begin with Nazi Germany, but the Third Reich's success in manipulating German history is a stellar example of revisionist history in the modern world. Later, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, that nation's history was similarly revised. Overall, historical revision emerges from attempts by political minorities to advance their political position or ideology. Legitimate revision of historical interpretation evolves in many cases because new historical facts have arisen which compel historians to adopt a new perspective. It should be noted, however, that revision is not the same as denial. For example, this past week, Mississippi Governor, Haley Barbour asserted that when he was attending high school in Mississippi in the mid-1960s and when attending the University of Mississippi during the same era, race relations were "no big deal." This statement is not an example of revisionist history, but blatant denial of the historical fact of white hot racial tension in the American South during the 1950s and ‘60s. And in the worst case scenario, people sometimes blatantly lie about history which is beyond either revision or denial. For example Glenn Beck reluctantly admitted that he lied when in his infamous August 28 "Restoring Honor" rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial he stated that he had visited the National Archives and "held in his hand," the original draft of George Washington's Inaugural Address. Turns out that someone showed it to him, but he was never allowed to touch it. Another example of high patriotic and exceedingly manipulative drama. But are the promotion of ideology or the drive toward political power the only motivations for revising, denying, or lying about history? Absolutely not. In my opinion, a huge motivator is the desire to purge history of illuminating one's own shadowy past. Let's face it, coming to terms with the facts of white European genocide of the Native population on this continent, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the eclipsing of the U.S. Constitution by corporate capitalism and imperialist expansionism--barbaric and shameful realities in our nation's history, is challenging for any American citizen. Conveniently, these are denied, distorted, or completely eliminated in the new fascist history brought to us by largely fundamentalist Christian conservatives. Moreover, this ideological mangling of U.S. history not only omits the odious aspects of our past but serves to justify them since ideologically speaking, racism, imperialism, sexism, and corporatism have been overwhelmingly embraced by conservative Christianity for the past two millennia. Thus any hint of social justice, a la Liberation Theology is viciously denounced as "un-American" and "socialistic." A literate and well-informed citizenry would not tolerate the ignorant fabrications and outright lies of conservative Christianity with regard to this nation's history. Had a commitment to scholarship taken precedence over consumerism in our panoply of cultural values in the past century, the new-old fascist history would have been recognized for what it is and would have been resoundingly rejected. In fact, it could be argued that conservative Christianity can only implant itself in the soil of corporate capitalist values, thereby spawning monstrous perceptions of a society's past, present, and future with implacable determination to perpetuate its earth-hating, soul-murdering agenda throughout the farthest reaches of the planet. As the collapse of public education in the United States exacerbates, parents and educators who are awake and who may well end up with no options for educating children beyond home schooling must educate themselves in American history. They must investigate history beyond what is taught in traditional textbooks, and certainly beyond the ideological mutilation of history by those who seek to proselytize and politicize using a new-old fascist agenda. Otherwise, citizens young and old-of all ethnicities and genders can be manipulated in any direction that serves the whims of religious zealots and political opportunists. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You may be purchased at the Speaking Truth to Power website or at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or IUniverse Publishing online.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 05 September 2010 BACK to margotbworldnews.com

Michelle Bachmann Attacks DFA

2010-09-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Sept 4, 2010
We've got Michele Bachmann running scared.

She's so afraid our support for progressive Democrat Tarryl Clark will put Clark over the top and Bachmann out of a job that she's using it to scare more money from her Tea Party supporters.

Bachmann sent the email below yesterday. I've copied it in full -- but I changed all the links -- so we can make sure this is one scare tactic that backfires on Michele Bachmann. Let's double down in our support for Tarryl Clark and show Bachmann what it really means to be "steamrolled" with a "liberal surge of money." We raised $22,000 in 24 hours last time, can we do it again before the end of Labor Day weekend?

CONTRIBUTE TO TARRYL CLARK RIGHT NOW

-Arshad

Arshad Hasan, Executive Director
Democracy for America

Dear Fellow Conservative,

Today we are only 60 days away from Election Day. And while thousands of Minnesotans -- including my family -- are enjoying time together at the Minnesota State Fair, my opponent and her liberal allies are plotting new schemes to defeat me on November 2.

I'm running against a tax-and-spend liberal whose love for taxing hardworking families goes so far that she wants to raise taxes on state fair food like corn dogs and beer! It's facts like this that make it crystal clear: we can't afford to allow Tarryl Clark and Nancy Pelosi to defeat me.

I need your support in these final weeks as I fight back against the attacks they launch every day. Will you follow this link right away to make an immediate donation of $60, $120, or $180? By giving just $1, $2 or even $3 per day from now until the election, you will ensure that our shared constitutional conservative values continue to have a strong voice in Washington.

I'm the top Congressional target on the left. You may already know that Nancy Pelosi has targeted me for defeat, but did you know Howard Dean has thrown his weight behind my opponent?

His far-left liberal organization, "Democracy for America" raised $22,000 in 24 hours to defeat me and have bragged about it to media outlets. They're using this as an example of how much liberals like Dean want to see me defeated. Let's show them we're not going anywhere. I need your immediate support to fight back against this liberal surge of money in my race.

Will you follow this link to make an immediate donation to help me raise $22,000 in 24 hours? I know, with your generous support, we can match Howard Dean and his far-left supporters dollar for dollar.

Liberals see a conservative tide building across our nation. So they are pulling out all the stops to try and stop our rallies and defeat candidates like me. They will stop at nothing to silence our voices.

We must band together to send a message that we are only gaining strength in the final 60 days leading up to this election. Your immediate donation of $60 -- just one dollar per day -- will help me do just this.

Please don't sit on the sidelines and allow Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean steamroll me with their well-funded attacks. Take action today!

Your support, encouragement and prayers are always appreciated.

Sincerely,

Michele Bachmann

P.S. My opponent and her liberal friends will be using the final 60 days of this campaign to attack me. Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean have thrown their full financial support to my opponent. Dean is the latest to target me for defeat, raising $22,000 in 24 hours for my opponent. Will you help me match this amount with a generous donation of $60 or more today? Any amount you can give up to the $2,400 legal limit is appreciated. I am confident, with your continued support, we will celebrate victory on November 2.

Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter. Please Contribute Today and support our mission.

Paid for by Democracy for America, http://www.democracyforamerica.com/?akid=180.1527674.p8QoEt&t=3 and not authorized by any candidate. Contributions to Democracy for America are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.

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Happily ever after

2010-09-04T14:33:00.000-07:00

UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young
Every end is a new beginning.
– Proverb
Why is it that close to half of all marriages end in divorce? Are we more fickle, less committed, more restless and always searching for more?
We fall in love and it feels so wonderful that we want it for the rest of our lives. We get married, promising to love one another until death. We fall in love not only with the person, but also with the dream, the vision of what we think our life should be. At this moment in the evolving vision, we press pause and say that this is the picture I choose for my life.
It is the very human, egoic part of our being that does it this way. At the time, it is all that we know. We think we are the director of our life story and that we can set the agenda. If this were true, marriages would not end in divorce, accidents would not happen, loved ones would not die before we are ready to let them go and we would achieve all we desire.
Ego does not like to acknowledge that on this journey, the power is shared. We are only one half of the equation; the universe is the other half. This second half is the manifestation of soul’s destiny or purpose.
Imagine a sailboat setting out to sea. All the charts and weather patterns have been studied and a smooth, enjoyable journey is expected. Now imagine there is a sailing coach who has the ability to manipulate the oceans. He decides that, while a smooth journey would be nice, the sailor is very capable and would learn so much more if there were challenges along the way. He knows that while the challenges will be difficult, the sailor will gain strength and wisdom in struggling through them.
So the sailor sets out prepared to have an easy sail, with lots of rest and relaxation. A few days in, he discovers it will be anything but. He encounters rough seas with high waves and has to push himself to the limit to manage them. Eventually, the storm passes and he thinks the worst is now over and he can finally relax. Of course, the moment he does relax is the moment the rogue wave hits.
Our life’s journey and our relationships often go this way. While the ego plans to fall in love and live happily ever after, the soul’s agenda involves so much more. Sometimes, it seems like this: two people are drawn together with a powerful attraction and know they want to be together. Things go well as they plan their lives. Children come and they are overjoyed. A few, or many, years later, they are just not happy with each other and with their lives. Despite all of their efforts, they cannot get the feelings back. The love has faded, if not died.
It seems as though while they were dreaming, the bigger agenda involved bringing the souls of their children into this world. Those souls picked this mom and that dad and so they had to be together to fulfill this purpose. Once the purpose was fulfilled, there was no longer any reason for them to stay together. In fact, the universe had other agendas in which they needed to participate. Unaware of this, they go through all the pain and angst about how this should not have happened, as we do tend to think of divorce as a breakdown or failure of something that should have lasted.
I think we still need to believe in love, make sincere commitments and aim for the lifelong love with which some are blessed. At the same time, we need to learn to accept that the universe sometimes has other plans for us and the ending of the marriage is really no one’s fault. With this, we can learn to let go gracefully and honour one another for the gifts that surely were there, once upon a time.

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Gwen Randall-Young is a psychotherapist in private practise and author of Growing Into Soul: The Next Step in Human Evolution. For more articles, permission to reprint and information about her books and “Deep Powerful Change” personal growth/hypnosis CDs, visit www.gwen.ca. See display ad this issue.

Reformed Venezuelan Insurance Law to Combat Health Insurance Abuses

2010-09-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

By Tamara Pearson - Venezuelanalysis.com

Merida, September 1^st, 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Some Venezuelan insurance companies are resisting Venezuela’s reformed Insurance Activity Law, which attempts to address social exclusion in private health insurance, better protect the rights of insurance benefiters, and obliges companies to cover pre-existing conditions, among other things.

The National Assembly passed the law on 25 May this year, and it became applicable at the end of July. The law now applies to companies supplying prepaid medicine and to insurance cooperatives, and signifies that insurance companies are now subject to greater regulation by the state.

One key change is article 40, which requires emergency cases in private clinics be treated straight away, rather than waiting for authorisation by the insurance company.
“This article establishes some social justice, because no one can understand how a third person, without any medical training, can decide if a patient arriving at an emergency clinic, is treated or not,” said legislator Tirso Silva.
Pre-existing or acquired illnesses, such as congenital defects, must now be included in hospital, surgery and maternity insurance contracts.

This means, “patients with cleft lip or cleft palate, or morbid obesity, for example, could receive surgery without it being considered aesthetic,” Silva explained.

Before, it was very difficult for patients to claim their insurance, with many companies applying a “contractual limbo” in order to not have to explain why they were rejecting the request. Now the law states they must provide facts and legal reasons as to why they have rejected the request.

“When you go to the barrios, you realise that people don’t have any insurance. Even though they can count on the [health] Mission Barrio Adentro and the Integral Diagnostic Centres, only people who work in the formal economy enjoy insurance,” said Tomas Sanchez, the new president of Previsora Insurance, a recently nationalised insurance company.

Hipolito Garcia, president of the Venezuelan Society of Hospitals and Clinics, said that 12 million people out of Venezuela’s 28 million are currently covered by some kind of private health insurance.
Article 134 establishes the obligation of insurance companies to provide plans for retired people, pensions, the elderly, people with disabilities and for people with physical or mental illnesses.
Also, it is now obligatory to provide insurance coverage to those who earn less than 25 tax units per month; currently Bs 1,625 (US$ 377). “The aim of this coverage, known as the health solidarity plan, is to guarantee patients with chronic illness such as cancer, continued medical assistance,” Silva said.

Through article 13, those who feel that their rights have been violated can go to their communal council, which is then obligated to investigate and refer the complaint to the Superintendency of Insurance Activity
Finally, article 31 authorises state owned companies to function like insurance companies, in order to be able to provide medical protection to their employees and their families.

Since the law took effect on 29 July when it was published in the official gazette, some businesses have objected. The Chamber of Insurers of Venezuela (CAV) complained that emergency cases have “never been denied”, despite AVN reporting many accusations to the contrary by patients and their families.
The regional newspaper Nueva Prensa reported that many companies, especially in the centre of Venezuela were “reluctant” to comply with the reformed law.
An unnamed “expert” told Nueva Prensa that there was an unconstitutional aspect to the law, in that the Superintendency of Insurance Activity now has access to companies’ information systems. The Superintendency of Insurance Activity is the body that monitors insurance companies, and can apply substantial fines if the companies don’t comply with the law.
Also, two weeks ago the National Assembly announced that it would conduct a study of the real costs of private health care clinics. Legislator German Ferrer said the assembly considered the increased tariff rates, some of which were increased in response to the law, were an “exaggeration”.
Last month the government forcefully expropriated the insurance company La Previsora. The company was linked to three banks that were nationalised at the end of last year for violating banking regulations. La Previsora was also generating losses, fraud, and was two months behind on its payments for contracts with public institutions.

La Previsora is now run by the government and forms part of the new National Socialist Network of Insurance and Mixed Social Assistance.

In response to the situation with La Previsora, the reformed law also prohibits financial links between insurance and banking sectors. Banks can not now oblige their clients to take out insurance with a connected company or sell policies through bank tellers.

The change is also in response to the 1994 financial crisis in Venezuela, when banks that had shares in insurance companies pulled down those companies and clients could not receive benefits.
Responding to the inaccessibility of insurance for poorer sectors, Sanchez said that now La Previsora Insurance, as a state company, would offer “solidarity” policies for the excluded sectors of society, including organised sectors such as the communal councils.

Sanchez also said in the long term, the system of insurance should be absorbed by the national health system, but in the meantime, “in the period of transition, we’re going to provide the service through companies and through these solidarity policies.”

Regarding the future of health in Venezuela, “There’ll be a growth in the socialist mentality of the [government trained] doctors, who are starting to graduate and who guarantee that medicine won’t continue to be a business, something for profit,” Sanchez concluded.

Published on Sep 3rd 2010 at 1.27pm

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Common

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Another Day, Another Oil Rig Explodes

2010-09-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

Sept 2, 2010
Margot -

Our dependence on dirty fuels isn't doing America any favors. Yesterday, another oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded sending a dozen workers to the hospital and clean-up crews scrambling to protect us from the possibility of another massive oil spill disaster.

While it looks today like a new environmental catastrophe may have been averted, what will happen tomorrow? It's not like we haven't had enough warnings. In fact, Mariner Energy, the owners of the oil rig, have been involved in at least 13 different offshore accidents since 2006 -- in the Gulf of Mexico alone.

It's time for America to stop spending $35 billion of taxpayer dollars on dirty fuels and invest that money in green jobs and renewable energy. Members of Congress and candidates for office up and down the ballot need to know where we stand today.

DEMAND CONGRESS TAKE ACTION -- ADD YOUR NAME NOW

You won't be alone when you add your name. Not only have thousands of Americans already joined our campaign with our friends at TrueMajority and CREDO Action, but now Senator Robert Menendez is standing up to take the lead in making it happen. Senator Menendez committed to ending Big Oil bailouts and has promised to introduce legislation after Congress returns from August recess.

Senator Menendez is a powerful ally. He's a member of the committees on Banking, Finance and the Environment and the Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. There's no doubt he's an important member of Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate, but he can't do this without us.

The more support he can show from Americans across the country demanding an end to Big Oil Bailouts, the more of his Senate colleagues he'll be able to bring on board. Right now, we have 50,000 signers on our petition to stop Big Oil bailouts. Can we get it to 75,000 Americans before Congress returns after Labor Day?

CLICK HERE TO WATCH SEN. MENENDEZ ON MSNBC AND BACK HIM UP BY ADDING YOUR NAME TODAY

There's never been a better time to pressure Congress and all candidates for office to take on Big Oil than now. Let's not miss this vital opportunity to move America and our environment forward.

-Charles

Charles Chamberlain, Political Director
Democracy for America

Democracy for America relies on you and the people-power of more than one million members to fund the grassroots organizing and training that delivers progressive change on the issues that matter. Please Contribute Today and support our mission.

Paid for by Democracy for America, http://www.democracyforamerica.com/?akid=179.1527674.yoAgUW&t=3 and not authorized by any candidate. Contributions to Democracy for America are not deductible for federal income tax purposes.

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Disappearing Amazon: Congratulations to Brazil’s Cattle Ranchers

2010-09-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

01.09.2010

Disappearing Amazon: Congratulations to Brazil’s Cattle Ranchers
The Amazon rainforest belongs to Brazil and nobody else. That being said, despite the fact that the rate of deforestation has slowed considerably in recent years, fifteen per cent of the area once covered by the rainforest has now disappeared, according to research undertaken by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE)* has released data today revealing that the total area of the Brazilian rainforest has been reduced by 15 %, although in recent years the rate of deforestation has decreased. Reaching a peak in 2004, by 2009, the area destroyed was just one third of that cut down five years before.

The campaign by President Lula’s Government started to kick in, in terms of results, in recent years: between 2007 and 2009 forest fires were reduced by 63%, while between 1997 and 2004, the area destroyed showed a continuous increase.

The report claims that the main source of emission of harmful GEG gases in Brazil is the destruction of the rainforest, because the fires represent around 75% of Brazilian carbon dioxide emissions. IBGE states that this statistic puts Brazil among the 10 highest producers of GEG.

* IBGE Sustainable Development Indicators´

João MOREIRA

BRAZIL

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Pakistan's Worst Natural Disaster in History Affects 13.8 Million

2010-09-02T14:21:00.000-07:00

Pakistan's Worst Natural Disaster in History Affects 13.8 Million

Thousands of people fled a major city in central Pakistan as authorities warned that swollen rivers could soon submerge the area, making them victims of the worst natural disaster in the nation's history.

The UN, relying on Pakistani figures, said the number of people affected by flooding over the past two weeks was now 13.8 million - more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, although the death toll in each of those disasters was much higher than the 1,500 people killed in the floods, The Press Association says.

“The flood and the devastation caused a very huge human catastrophe,” Safder Hussain Mehkri, a vice chairman of the Rice Exporters’ Association of Pakistan, said by phone today. “We need to rebuild the lives of these people.”

The flooding is “Pakistan’s worst national disaster,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in a televised speech yesterday. On a tour of Sindh and Punjab, the country’s most populous provinces and its biggest agricultural zone, Gilani told reporters that the destruction of roads, bridges and towns has set Pakistan’s economic development back by years, Bloomberg informs.

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