I'm not sure what the criteria were, but this list looks pretty good.
Or course making a list like this is always a good way to start a spirited discussion.
Search
Earthweek - A Diary of the PlanetExtreme Temperatures
Friday, February 29, 2008
3 Ways To Avoid Duplicate Content on Blog Posts
By Syed Balkhi
Duplicate content becomes a big issue when it comes to blogging, and it can significantly effect your ranking in Search Engines. While that is said, I am going to be pointing out some key things I notice that you can do as well on your blogs to avoid duplicate content. Not only these will help you avoid duplicate content, but it will also help you increase ranking of your inner pages in search engine as well as give you a chance of getting higher pagerank.
First thing you need to do is get rid of those archives pages. Yes i know it comes in with the default template, but it can be turned off, and I seriously recommend it to be turned off because half of your real users won't even bother using the archives if you have a prominent search button on your website. Why should they digg through your archives when they can just type a keyword and get the results through the search feature. It has no benefit what so ever as for SEO Perspective, but it does have some disadvantages and one thing is that it will create additional pages with duplicate content. Your indexed page count might increase in Google and other search engines, but when those additional pages are duplicate content, then it becomes a bit conflicting.
Next you can eliminate the factor of duplicate content by displaying posts in more then one category. While it is ok to do it sometimes if it is absolutely necessary, but try to find the most accurate category for the post. For example I could've put this post in both SEO and For Starters as this is something that starters can use, but so can the current bloggers and it is seo related so I decided that it should belong in SEO Category not both.
However, like my Expansion Template Post which was both for phpLD and Wordpress therefore I couldn't just post it in WP Themes section, but if I just post it in the Freebies then my wp themes collection would be separated therefore I had no choice but to put it in the categories. Those are some choice that as a blogger you would have to make.
Third way to avoid duplicate content is using excerpts. When writing a wordpress post there is an option below the Upload section which says Optional Excerpt if you write something in that section that will be the content that wordpress will show on the homepage and the original post will be shown on the category page. Not only will it help avoiding duplicate content, but it will allow your category pages to rank higher as well in search engines as they have some keywords which your main page does not. That will help your ranking as well as increase your possibilities of getting a higher page rank.
By using this these three methods you can definitely avoid duplicate content on your blog and have higher rankings then your competitor. Get that edge now by applying these three strategies on your blog.
SEO Crunch went into some technical ways of showing how to use an excerpt.
Syed Balkhi
CEO of Balkhis Inc.
http://www.balkhis.com
admin@balkhis.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Syed_Balkhi
Duplicate content becomes a big issue when it comes to blogging, and it can significantly effect your ranking in Search Engines. While that is said, I am going to be pointing out some key things I notice that you can do as well on your blogs to avoid duplicate content. Not only these will help you avoid duplicate content, but it will also help you increase ranking of your inner pages in search engine as well as give you a chance of getting higher pagerank.
First thing you need to do is get rid of those archives pages. Yes i know it comes in with the default template, but it can be turned off, and I seriously recommend it to be turned off because half of your real users won't even bother using the archives if you have a prominent search button on your website. Why should they digg through your archives when they can just type a keyword and get the results through the search feature. It has no benefit what so ever as for SEO Perspective, but it does have some disadvantages and one thing is that it will create additional pages with duplicate content. Your indexed page count might increase in Google and other search engines, but when those additional pages are duplicate content, then it becomes a bit conflicting.
Next you can eliminate the factor of duplicate content by displaying posts in more then one category. While it is ok to do it sometimes if it is absolutely necessary, but try to find the most accurate category for the post. For example I could've put this post in both SEO and For Starters as this is something that starters can use, but so can the current bloggers and it is seo related so I decided that it should belong in SEO Category not both.
However, like my Expansion Template Post which was both for phpLD and Wordpress therefore I couldn't just post it in WP Themes section, but if I just post it in the Freebies then my wp themes collection would be separated therefore I had no choice but to put it in the categories. Those are some choice that as a blogger you would have to make.
Third way to avoid duplicate content is using excerpts. When writing a wordpress post there is an option below the Upload section which says Optional Excerpt if you write something in that section that will be the content that wordpress will show on the homepage and the original post will be shown on the category page. Not only will it help avoiding duplicate content, but it will allow your category pages to rank higher as well in search engines as they have some keywords which your main page does not. That will help your ranking as well as increase your possibilities of getting a higher page rank.
By using this these three methods you can definitely avoid duplicate content on your blog and have higher rankings then your competitor. Get that edge now by applying these three strategies on your blog.
SEO Crunch went into some technical ways of showing how to use an excerpt.
Syed Balkhi
CEO of Balkhis Inc.
http://www.balkhis.com
admin@balkhis.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Syed_Balkhi
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Italian Tax Police Bust Up Fake-Ferrari Ring
Auto-Body Shops
Built Counterfeits
Using Pontiac Fieros
By ROSAMARIA MANCINI
February 28, 2008; Page D5
(See Corrections and Amplifications item below.)
It was the ultimate face-lift: a sporty red Ferrari F355 on the outside, a used Pontiac Fiero on the inside.
That was enough, apparently, to entice wannabe Ferrari owners to plunk down €20,000, or about $30,000, for the chance to own an approximation of the real thing.
Yesterday, Italian tax police, the Guardia di Finanza, busted up a ring of auto-body shops across the country that were trafficking in one of the most high-end and high-priced counterfeit cars of all time.
The ring operated in a dozen cities from near the Alps in the north to Sicily in the south. Tax police rounded up seven completed fake Ferraris, as well as another seven that were still being decked out. Some of the counterfeit cars had already been sold. They also seized numerous spare parts, some of which were genuine Ferrari. Eight people were placed under investigation, but no arrests were made.
The head of the Palermo unit of the tax police, Guido Mario Geremia, who spearheaded the investigation, said it involved "a sophisticated operation that was running throughout Italy."
The global counterfeit industry has been one of the world's most inventive, churning out knockoff copies not just of Channel handbags and Gucci sunglasses, but also of products ranging from high-end wines to pharmaceuticals, telecommunications equipment and videogames.
Even by those standards, copying a Ferrari seems particularly brazen. The company makes about 6,000 cars a year, and waiting lists for new models can run years. Most cost more than $200,000, but prices can soar far beyond that depending on the level of customization. The company boasts that its engineering -- much of which it also uses on its championship Formula One racing team -- is second to none.
So who would dare buy a fake? "There are people who buy fake Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags, so it's not so strange that someone would buy a fake Ferrari," said Mr. Geremia.
Mr. Geremia said he began working on the case six months ago based on a tip. He was able to trace the different cars and fake parts to cities throughout Italy, where specialized auto-body shops would strip down the body of the old Fiero, including its bumpers, hood and rear, and then mount parts to build the fake Ferrari.
Once assembled, the fake Ferraris looked pretty close to the real things. At least when standing still. The Pontiac Fiero, whose production cycle spanned the second half of the 1980s, was considered a peppy, if not so dependable, two-seater. Still, its V4 engine is no match for the V8 under the hood of the F355, which boasts a top speed of 183 miles per hour.
In a few cases, Mercedes and Porsches were used as the underlying cars instead of Pontiacs.
Ferrari SpA, a unit of Fiat SpA, had no comment on the investigation. Spokeswoman Mariella Mengozzi said the company works side by side with authorities in Italy and abroad on these types of investigations.
Last year, fake Ferraris were nabbed by the tax police in Sardinia and Rome. In 2006, the European Commissioner for Justice, Franco Frattini, protested publicly that fake Ferraris were popping up in China.
The ring uncovered yesterday included salesmen who promoted what they said were "replica" Ferraris over several Internet sites. They also operated showrooms where the cars were displayed. Others provided parts, from headlights to steering wheels.
The latest figures from the World Customs Organization show that all types of counterfeits result in about $500 billion to $600 billion in lost sales annually, which is about 5% of global trade.
Harley Lewin, a partner with New York law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, who specializes in counterfeit issues and isn't involved in the Ferrari case, said that even a few fake Ferraris on the road could harm the company's image. "It starts to taint the brand," he said. "It becomes a big deal; all of the sudden legitimate products start to lose their color, their appeal. The fake cheapen and diminish the real thing."
Write to Rosamaria Mancini at Rosamaria.Mancini@dowjones.com
Corrections and Amplifications
A previous version of the slideshow that accompanies this article incorrectly said the fake auto was a Ferrari F355.
Built Counterfeits
Using Pontiac Fieros
By ROSAMARIA MANCINI
February 28, 2008; Page D5
(See Corrections and Amplifications item below.)
It was the ultimate face-lift: a sporty red Ferrari F355 on the outside, a used Pontiac Fiero on the inside.
That was enough, apparently, to entice wannabe Ferrari owners to plunk down €20,000, or about $30,000, for the chance to own an approximation of the real thing.
Yesterday, Italian tax police, the Guardia di Finanza, busted up a ring of auto-body shops across the country that were trafficking in one of the most high-end and high-priced counterfeit cars of all time.
The ring operated in a dozen cities from near the Alps in the north to Sicily in the south. Tax police rounded up seven completed fake Ferraris, as well as another seven that were still being decked out. Some of the counterfeit cars had already been sold. They also seized numerous spare parts, some of which were genuine Ferrari. Eight people were placed under investigation, but no arrests were made.
The head of the Palermo unit of the tax police, Guido Mario Geremia, who spearheaded the investigation, said it involved "a sophisticated operation that was running throughout Italy."
The global counterfeit industry has been one of the world's most inventive, churning out knockoff copies not just of Channel handbags and Gucci sunglasses, but also of products ranging from high-end wines to pharmaceuticals, telecommunications equipment and videogames.
Even by those standards, copying a Ferrari seems particularly brazen. The company makes about 6,000 cars a year, and waiting lists for new models can run years. Most cost more than $200,000, but prices can soar far beyond that depending on the level of customization. The company boasts that its engineering -- much of which it also uses on its championship Formula One racing team -- is second to none.
So who would dare buy a fake? "There are people who buy fake Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags, so it's not so strange that someone would buy a fake Ferrari," said Mr. Geremia.
Mr. Geremia said he began working on the case six months ago based on a tip. He was able to trace the different cars and fake parts to cities throughout Italy, where specialized auto-body shops would strip down the body of the old Fiero, including its bumpers, hood and rear, and then mount parts to build the fake Ferrari.
Once assembled, the fake Ferraris looked pretty close to the real things. At least when standing still. The Pontiac Fiero, whose production cycle spanned the second half of the 1980s, was considered a peppy, if not so dependable, two-seater. Still, its V4 engine is no match for the V8 under the hood of the F355, which boasts a top speed of 183 miles per hour.
In a few cases, Mercedes and Porsches were used as the underlying cars instead of Pontiacs.
Ferrari SpA, a unit of Fiat SpA, had no comment on the investigation. Spokeswoman Mariella Mengozzi said the company works side by side with authorities in Italy and abroad on these types of investigations.
Last year, fake Ferraris were nabbed by the tax police in Sardinia and Rome. In 2006, the European Commissioner for Justice, Franco Frattini, protested publicly that fake Ferraris were popping up in China.
The ring uncovered yesterday included salesmen who promoted what they said were "replica" Ferraris over several Internet sites. They also operated showrooms where the cars were displayed. Others provided parts, from headlights to steering wheels.
The latest figures from the World Customs Organization show that all types of counterfeits result in about $500 billion to $600 billion in lost sales annually, which is about 5% of global trade.
Harley Lewin, a partner with New York law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, who specializes in counterfeit issues and isn't involved in the Ferrari case, said that even a few fake Ferraris on the road could harm the company's image. "It starts to taint the brand," he said. "It becomes a big deal; all of the sudden legitimate products start to lose their color, their appeal. The fake cheapen and diminish the real thing."
Write to Rosamaria Mancini at Rosamaria.Mancini@dowjones.com
Corrections and Amplifications
A previous version of the slideshow that accompanies this article incorrectly said the fake auto was a Ferrari F355.
Democrat Baby
It will probably run for president in several years! It is furthermore rumored that this is the only know unpublished (until now) Hillary's baby picture. Others have suggested this is Hillary at age 4 years and four months. We report--you decide. lol lol
Wine Bottle And Bicycle Stunt
Ge Fengcai, a resident, balances on a row of wine bottles in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province February 23, 2008. Ge, a mail carrier, has been performing stunts on a bicycle for 20 years, local media reported. REUTERS/Sean Yong (CHINA) CHINA OUT
PETA
A policewoman escorts Lana Wendt (C) and Kristi-Anna Brydon (R) after police stopped a topless demonstration by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) at Circular Quay in Sydney February 27, 2008. The animal liberation group was drawing attention to the Running of the Bulls event in Pamplona, Spain, which PETA says is cruel to the animals. REUTERS/Will Burgess (AUSTRALIA)
An Inside Look at Acupuncture
Author: John Edmond Posted: 20-03-2007
The world is facing a phenomenon for the first time in history, that of an increased population of older adults (baby boomers) versus adolescents, young adults, and children. The birth rate has slowed dramatically and, in some parts of the world where overpopulation was a serious issue, governments no longer have to worry.
Medical advances mean that people are living longer. Adults, for the most part, no longer have to be hunter/gatherers and can instead focus on healthy lives filled with ease and comfort. People no longer have to live with chronic pain and anguish. A pop of a pill is not always the answer though, and more individuals are seeking alternatives. The fastest rising trend in healthcare is in the field of Oriental Medicine and, in particular, acupuncture.
Acupuncture is by no means something new or a current trend that will fall from favor. In fact, the technique has been in use for over two thousand years, mostly in China. In the recent past, acupuncture's positive results have gained notoriety in the Western world, and many people turn to the technique because of its non-invasiveness. Acupuncture can easily treat many illnesses and common complaints, such as back pain, depression, and even nausea from chemotherapy, with little side effects and a rapid recovery time.
The procedure begins with an initial consultation with the licensed acupuncturist, akin to a standard office visit. There are questions asked regarding past medical history, a standard physical, and then the areas which need to be addressed during the acupuncture session. It is comparative to a visit to the chiropractor where the issue is not solved with one visit, as acupuncture often takes many visits to find relief, though many patients report some immediate alleviation to the pain.
During acupuncture, a series of thin, solid needles are inserted at different points into the body. There are more than two thousand of these points that run along what are called meridians, or pathways. There are fourteen pathways within the body that keep the body's energy, or Qi (pronounced chee), flowing. It is believed that when these meridians become blocked, then illness occurs.
After insertion, the needles are then manipulated by various means, and the patient is left to relax for a period of time. Once that time has expired, the needles are removed. It most often takes several visits to work on a painful problem, so instantaneous relief should not be expected.
People may tend to think of acupuncture as being something relatively new in common practice, but it can be found in many areas that individuals aren't aware of. Hospitals, addiction-treatment centers, and even prisons have been using acupuncture as a method to help with health complaints such as chronic pain, addiction, and depression. Acupuncture remains a solid alternative to other types of cures and its results will continue to be monitored because of its positive outcome.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/an-inside-look-at-acupuncture-118722.html
About the Author:
John Edmond owns and writes regularly for The Acupuncture Alternative where you can read many more articles on acupuncture for non invasive therapy to help you make the most your life.
The world is facing a phenomenon for the first time in history, that of an increased population of older adults (baby boomers) versus adolescents, young adults, and children. The birth rate has slowed dramatically and, in some parts of the world where overpopulation was a serious issue, governments no longer have to worry.
Medical advances mean that people are living longer. Adults, for the most part, no longer have to be hunter/gatherers and can instead focus on healthy lives filled with ease and comfort. People no longer have to live with chronic pain and anguish. A pop of a pill is not always the answer though, and more individuals are seeking alternatives. The fastest rising trend in healthcare is in the field of Oriental Medicine and, in particular, acupuncture.
Acupuncture is by no means something new or a current trend that will fall from favor. In fact, the technique has been in use for over two thousand years, mostly in China. In the recent past, acupuncture's positive results have gained notoriety in the Western world, and many people turn to the technique because of its non-invasiveness. Acupuncture can easily treat many illnesses and common complaints, such as back pain, depression, and even nausea from chemotherapy, with little side effects and a rapid recovery time.
The procedure begins with an initial consultation with the licensed acupuncturist, akin to a standard office visit. There are questions asked regarding past medical history, a standard physical, and then the areas which need to be addressed during the acupuncture session. It is comparative to a visit to the chiropractor where the issue is not solved with one visit, as acupuncture often takes many visits to find relief, though many patients report some immediate alleviation to the pain.
During acupuncture, a series of thin, solid needles are inserted at different points into the body. There are more than two thousand of these points that run along what are called meridians, or pathways. There are fourteen pathways within the body that keep the body's energy, or Qi (pronounced chee), flowing. It is believed that when these meridians become blocked, then illness occurs.
After insertion, the needles are then manipulated by various means, and the patient is left to relax for a period of time. Once that time has expired, the needles are removed. It most often takes several visits to work on a painful problem, so instantaneous relief should not be expected.
People may tend to think of acupuncture as being something relatively new in common practice, but it can be found in many areas that individuals aren't aware of. Hospitals, addiction-treatment centers, and even prisons have been using acupuncture as a method to help with health complaints such as chronic pain, addiction, and depression. Acupuncture remains a solid alternative to other types of cures and its results will continue to be monitored because of its positive outcome.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/an-inside-look-at-acupuncture-118722.html
About the Author:
John Edmond owns and writes regularly for The Acupuncture Alternative where you can read many more articles on acupuncture for non invasive therapy to help you make the most your life.
Happiness Symbols - 8 Chinese Happiness Symbols!
Author: Abhishek Agarwal Posted: 26-02-2008
The Chinese have a very rich traditional and cultural heritage, which goes back to faraway times. It is recorded in the annals of history that the Chinese ethos has its origins in the most ancient and the most multifaceted civilizations ever seen by humanity.
During the Chinese festivities associated with their New Year, a countless number of things exist, which the Chinese avail of, to bring fortune and joy for the coming year. With regard to the gala surrounding the spring festival, an extensive variety of foods are available that are recognized as happiness symbols.
It is widely acknowledged that this New Year of the Chinese people denotes merriment and is a festivity where all the family comes together and share some good times. To the Chinese, this occasion brings with it joy, fortune and well-being to each family member.
Obviously, the food, which is cooked, should be in harmony with the intention or goal, which the family is directed towards. Following is the list of mandatory food items at the time of the New Year festivity, which symbolize happiness:
1) The Hot Pot
This steaming hot pot, also called Chinese fondue, filled with vegetables, meat, and seafood is compulsory. The hot pot is considered to usher in fortune and growth.
2) The Fish
Especially the fish known as yu is a popular dish, which is regularly served at Chinese New Year festivities. The fish is supposed to represent profusion or excess. Generally, the fish is steamed and served on Chinese New Year eve for the get-together dinner. A further belief that is associated with the fish states that the bones, tail, and head should be retained in one piece when it is served.
3) The Shrimp
Now the shrimp is associated with welfare and joy for the beginning of the New Year of the Chinese people.
4) The Boiled Dumplings
Fashioned like gold bars, boiled dumplings are an essential item of Chinese New Year festivities. The dumplings signify the hour at which the New Year changes over. In the extreme north of China, these dumplings are stuffed with meat and consumed so as to fetch riches and good fortune during the coming year.
Occasionally a coin is inserted into a few dumplings and there is this belief that the individual who sinks his teeth into it will receive riches in the coming New Year. In addition, dumplings and yellow noodles when prepared in combination represent "golden filaments through gold bars". In Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, egg dumplings are attractively served and consumed, as they appear very similar to gold bars.
5) The Oyster
Wonderful tidings are what the oyster signifies. It is a common custom in the southern China, to serve oysters with rice noodles, which are very fine.
6) The Green Vegetables
These green vegetables signify strengthening of intimate family bonds because they denote closeness or intimacy.
7) Sticky Rice Cake
Made from rice flour and topped with red dates, the steamed cake is a sign of getting additional wealth and status for the forthcoming New Year of the Chinese.
8) The Noodles
Chinese noodles are forever linked with prolonged existence.
Is it not true that the Chinese lifestyle revolves around good luck? While some of us are not Chinese by faith or birth, there is no harm in pursuing the custom of serving these eatables as symbols of happiness for New Year. Now happiness cannot be wholly ascribed to fortune. It is just coming up with successful ways to attain happiness. However, you should in no way rely on these foods for finding happiness. They are simply but enrichments.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/happiness-symbols-8-chinese-happiness-symbols-342904.html
About the Author:
Abhishek is a self-proclaimed Personality Development Guru and has written several books on this topic! Visit his website www.Positive-You.com and Download his FREE Personality Development Report and discover some amazing self-improvement tips for FREE. Become the best you can become and reclaim your life! But hurry, only limited Free copies available! www.Positive-You.com
The Chinese have a very rich traditional and cultural heritage, which goes back to faraway times. It is recorded in the annals of history that the Chinese ethos has its origins in the most ancient and the most multifaceted civilizations ever seen by humanity.
During the Chinese festivities associated with their New Year, a countless number of things exist, which the Chinese avail of, to bring fortune and joy for the coming year. With regard to the gala surrounding the spring festival, an extensive variety of foods are available that are recognized as happiness symbols.
It is widely acknowledged that this New Year of the Chinese people denotes merriment and is a festivity where all the family comes together and share some good times. To the Chinese, this occasion brings with it joy, fortune and well-being to each family member.
Obviously, the food, which is cooked, should be in harmony with the intention or goal, which the family is directed towards. Following is the list of mandatory food items at the time of the New Year festivity, which symbolize happiness:
1) The Hot Pot
This steaming hot pot, also called Chinese fondue, filled with vegetables, meat, and seafood is compulsory. The hot pot is considered to usher in fortune and growth.
2) The Fish
Especially the fish known as yu is a popular dish, which is regularly served at Chinese New Year festivities. The fish is supposed to represent profusion or excess. Generally, the fish is steamed and served on Chinese New Year eve for the get-together dinner. A further belief that is associated with the fish states that the bones, tail, and head should be retained in one piece when it is served.
3) The Shrimp
Now the shrimp is associated with welfare and joy for the beginning of the New Year of the Chinese people.
4) The Boiled Dumplings
Fashioned like gold bars, boiled dumplings are an essential item of Chinese New Year festivities. The dumplings signify the hour at which the New Year changes over. In the extreme north of China, these dumplings are stuffed with meat and consumed so as to fetch riches and good fortune during the coming year.
Occasionally a coin is inserted into a few dumplings and there is this belief that the individual who sinks his teeth into it will receive riches in the coming New Year. In addition, dumplings and yellow noodles when prepared in combination represent "golden filaments through gold bars". In Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, egg dumplings are attractively served and consumed, as they appear very similar to gold bars.
5) The Oyster
Wonderful tidings are what the oyster signifies. It is a common custom in the southern China, to serve oysters with rice noodles, which are very fine.
6) The Green Vegetables
These green vegetables signify strengthening of intimate family bonds because they denote closeness or intimacy.
7) Sticky Rice Cake
Made from rice flour and topped with red dates, the steamed cake is a sign of getting additional wealth and status for the forthcoming New Year of the Chinese.
8) The Noodles
Chinese noodles are forever linked with prolonged existence.
Is it not true that the Chinese lifestyle revolves around good luck? While some of us are not Chinese by faith or birth, there is no harm in pursuing the custom of serving these eatables as symbols of happiness for New Year. Now happiness cannot be wholly ascribed to fortune. It is just coming up with successful ways to attain happiness. However, you should in no way rely on these foods for finding happiness. They are simply but enrichments.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/self-improvement-articles/happiness-symbols-8-chinese-happiness-symbols-342904.html
About the Author:
Abhishek is a self-proclaimed Personality Development Guru and has written several books on this topic! Visit his website www.Positive-You.com and Download his FREE Personality Development Report and discover some amazing self-improvement tips for FREE. Become the best you can become and reclaim your life! But hurry, only limited Free copies available! www.Positive-You.com
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
The Space Shuttle Columbia
The Space Shuttle Columbia touches down on lakebed runway 23 at Edwards Air Force Base, California, to conclude the first orbital shuttle mission
The Healthy Whey
By Lucretia Schanfarber
Hunky muscle men do it. Petite yoga instructors do it. Dieters do it. Even grandmothers do it. They all use whey protein powders.
Whey’s image has certainly changed a lot since “little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey.” Until the 1960s, whey was considered a waste product of cheese making and was fed to livestock or disposed of in rivers and streams.
You’ve Come a Long Whey
Nowadays whey protein is in big demand. Through the innovative use of sophisticated filtration methods, the liquid whey’s fat and carbohydrate content are minimized, while the proteins are concentrated and isolated. Low temperature spray-drying methods transform the liquid to a powder without denaturing the proteins.
Typically, whey protein concentrates yield 80 percent protein, while isolates provide 90 percent. Concentrates tend to be more popular because of the lower cost and milder taste.
Pure whey protein powders are virtually fat-free and very low in carbohydrates and lactose. Many lactose-sensitive people tolerate whey proteins well. If an individual has a milk allergy, however, whey protein powders are not advised, and fermented soy powder or other non-dairy protein sources are best.
Body Benefits
Whey protein is a naturally rich source of protein microfractions including lactoferrin (powerful antioxidant effects), glycomacropeptides (reduces appetite, aids in digestion and absorption of protein, anti-microbial and anti-bacterial), immunoglobulins, beta and alpha-lactalbumins, serum albumin, and lactoperoxidase (promote gastrointestinal health and immunity).
In his book, The New Nutrition, Medicine for the Millennium (Apple, 1995), Dr. Michael Colgan cites numerous studies supporting the use of whey protein for helping with weight loss, immune support, bone health, muscle building, and hormonal support.
Frequently used to build strength and muscularity, it is effective for supporting weight loss by stabilizing blood sugar levels and encouraging fat loss. Whey protein supplementation has been shown to support the healing process of those who are ill or injured. In combination with regular weight-bearing exercise, whey protein supplementation can help elderly people retain lean muscle tissue as they age.
Once considered an exclusive supplement for the gym crowd, whey protein powders have become mainstream and are now used by people of all ages and activity levels.
Organic Blueberry Protein Shake
Not your typical protein drink, this homemade blueberry whey protein shake is loaded with phytonutrients and antioxidants.
1 cup (250 mL) organic apple juice
3 Tbsp (20 g) plain, unsweetened or natural vanilla-flavoured whey protein powder
½ cup (125 mL) organic blueberries
½ cup (125 mL) ice (crushed)
1 tsp (5mL) organic maple syrup
Pour apple juice into blender. Add whey protein powder. Blend on medium speed until smooth. Add blueberries, crushed ice, and maple syrup (optional). Blend on high speed for another 60 seconds until light and frothy. Pour into glass. Sip and enjoy.
Lucretia Schanfarber began her career in natural health care more than 30 years ago. She is recognized for her many contributions in promoting the principles of natural healing as a writer, editor, and radio broadcaster. Lucretia writes about health and healing, organic gardening and environmental health and is a regular contributor to alive magazine. Visit http://www.alive.com for related articles.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lucretia_Schanfarber
Hunky muscle men do it. Petite yoga instructors do it. Dieters do it. Even grandmothers do it. They all use whey protein powders.
Whey’s image has certainly changed a lot since “little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet, eating her curds and whey.” Until the 1960s, whey was considered a waste product of cheese making and was fed to livestock or disposed of in rivers and streams.
You’ve Come a Long Whey
Nowadays whey protein is in big demand. Through the innovative use of sophisticated filtration methods, the liquid whey’s fat and carbohydrate content are minimized, while the proteins are concentrated and isolated. Low temperature spray-drying methods transform the liquid to a powder without denaturing the proteins.
Typically, whey protein concentrates yield 80 percent protein, while isolates provide 90 percent. Concentrates tend to be more popular because of the lower cost and milder taste.
Pure whey protein powders are virtually fat-free and very low in carbohydrates and lactose. Many lactose-sensitive people tolerate whey proteins well. If an individual has a milk allergy, however, whey protein powders are not advised, and fermented soy powder or other non-dairy protein sources are best.
Body Benefits
Whey protein is a naturally rich source of protein microfractions including lactoferrin (powerful antioxidant effects), glycomacropeptides (reduces appetite, aids in digestion and absorption of protein, anti-microbial and anti-bacterial), immunoglobulins, beta and alpha-lactalbumins, serum albumin, and lactoperoxidase (promote gastrointestinal health and immunity).
In his book, The New Nutrition, Medicine for the Millennium (Apple, 1995), Dr. Michael Colgan cites numerous studies supporting the use of whey protein for helping with weight loss, immune support, bone health, muscle building, and hormonal support.
Frequently used to build strength and muscularity, it is effective for supporting weight loss by stabilizing blood sugar levels and encouraging fat loss. Whey protein supplementation has been shown to support the healing process of those who are ill or injured. In combination with regular weight-bearing exercise, whey protein supplementation can help elderly people retain lean muscle tissue as they age.
Once considered an exclusive supplement for the gym crowd, whey protein powders have become mainstream and are now used by people of all ages and activity levels.
Organic Blueberry Protein Shake
Not your typical protein drink, this homemade blueberry whey protein shake is loaded with phytonutrients and antioxidants.
1 cup (250 mL) organic apple juice
3 Tbsp (20 g) plain, unsweetened or natural vanilla-flavoured whey protein powder
½ cup (125 mL) organic blueberries
½ cup (125 mL) ice (crushed)
1 tsp (5mL) organic maple syrup
Pour apple juice into blender. Add whey protein powder. Blend on medium speed until smooth. Add blueberries, crushed ice, and maple syrup (optional). Blend on high speed for another 60 seconds until light and frothy. Pour into glass. Sip and enjoy.
Lucretia Schanfarber began her career in natural health care more than 30 years ago. She is recognized for her many contributions in promoting the principles of natural healing as a writer, editor, and radio broadcaster. Lucretia writes about health and healing, organic gardening and environmental health and is a regular contributor to alive magazine. Visit http://www.alive.com for related articles.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lucretia_Schanfarber
Qbesq
Do you remember Spirograph? It was a cool toy involving these wheels which you would pin to a piece of paper and make swirly designs. I amused myself with that thing for days. This is like that except without paper or pins or wheels.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The Queen Elizabeth 2 Ocean Liner
The Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner sails from Sydney Harbour as it continues its final world voyage.
Japanese Men Mud Wrestle
Japanese men mud wrestle at a shrine in Yotsukaido, near Tokyo, in a traditional ceremony to pray for an abundant harvest and good health for babies.
Cast iron seat collectors convene for historic auction
By Scott Hollis
Art and Martha Heritage's estate sale offers rare and unusual varieties
For more than 25 years Art Heritage of Delaware County, Ind., collected farm items. Yet, his cast-iron seat collection brought him widespread attention even after his death. That collection will be available to bidders at the Art and Martha Heritage public estate auction on May 10, 2003, at the Delaware Fairgrounds in Muncie, Ind. "The collection is probably the premier cast iron seat collection in the country," Kenneth Ellenberger, president of Ellenberger Brothers Inc. Auctioneers says. The Heritage collection includes about 500 cast iron seats - one of the most complete and unique in the world.
The assembled collection is special in part because of Art's friendship with John D. Friedly, Jr., author of Cast Iron Seats V, which features a selection of Heritage-owned seats. Some seat styles for sale have never been sold and will set benchmark standards for their respective varieties. A handful of the seats are rated as "10" (very rare) or higher in Friedly's book, which makes them extremely desirable to seat collectors. The collection will include seats from across the United States, Europe and Canada.
A preview of the seat collection will be held on Friday, May 9 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Some of the seats for sale include a #123 Blount, No. 10; #125 Boby, No. 9; #418 Forlows Stalk Cutter, No. 10; #968 Springfield M'F'G' Co., No. 10; #227 Chapman, Donnelly & Co., Lima, Ohio, No. 10; #24 Aetna, No. 10; and #228 Charmer, No. 10 1/2. Thirty two cast iron hog oilers will also be sold.
Other Heritage-owned valuables will be sold, including antique furniture, machinist tools, autos, a coin collection, an International Harvester 574 tractor with loader and more. The main auction will be held on May 9 at 10 a.m., a separate event from the seat auction.
"Just the fact that this is Art Heritage's sale will interest people since he was such a prominent collector," Charolette Traxler, secretary of the Cast Iron Seat Collectors says. Heritage was a long-time member of the Cast Iron Seat Collectors and a retired tool and die machinist in Muncie, Ind. FC
- For more information, contact Ellenberger Bros. Auctioneers at (800) 373-6363; e-mail: ellenberger@parlorcity.com; www.EllenbergerBros. com
Art and Martha Heritage's estate sale offers rare and unusual varieties
For more than 25 years Art Heritage of Delaware County, Ind., collected farm items. Yet, his cast-iron seat collection brought him widespread attention even after his death. That collection will be available to bidders at the Art and Martha Heritage public estate auction on May 10, 2003, at the Delaware Fairgrounds in Muncie, Ind. "The collection is probably the premier cast iron seat collection in the country," Kenneth Ellenberger, president of Ellenberger Brothers Inc. Auctioneers says. The Heritage collection includes about 500 cast iron seats - one of the most complete and unique in the world.
The assembled collection is special in part because of Art's friendship with John D. Friedly, Jr., author of Cast Iron Seats V, which features a selection of Heritage-owned seats. Some seat styles for sale have never been sold and will set benchmark standards for their respective varieties. A handful of the seats are rated as "10" (very rare) or higher in Friedly's book, which makes them extremely desirable to seat collectors. The collection will include seats from across the United States, Europe and Canada.
A preview of the seat collection will be held on Friday, May 9 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Some of the seats for sale include a #123 Blount, No. 10; #125 Boby, No. 9; #418 Forlows Stalk Cutter, No. 10; #968 Springfield M'F'G' Co., No. 10; #227 Chapman, Donnelly & Co., Lima, Ohio, No. 10; #24 Aetna, No. 10; and #228 Charmer, No. 10 1/2. Thirty two cast iron hog oilers will also be sold.
Other Heritage-owned valuables will be sold, including antique furniture, machinist tools, autos, a coin collection, an International Harvester 574 tractor with loader and more. The main auction will be held on May 9 at 10 a.m., a separate event from the seat auction.
"Just the fact that this is Art Heritage's sale will interest people since he was such a prominent collector," Charolette Traxler, secretary of the Cast Iron Seat Collectors says. Heritage was a long-time member of the Cast Iron Seat Collectors and a retired tool and die machinist in Muncie, Ind. FC
- For more information, contact Ellenberger Bros. Auctioneers at (800) 373-6363; e-mail: ellenberger@parlorcity.com; www.EllenbergerBros. com
Franny's Wonder Shed
By John Fox
Wisconsin man bitten by the tool bug amasses a virtual tool shrine
All special places need a unique name, and Francis's tool shed is no exception as reflected in this sign he made for the building.
Francis Fox has never been one to throw anything away for as long as I can remember. Growing up as the youngest in a family of six during the Great Depression taught him a simple lesson: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. I've heard that saying many times, and believe me, he lives by that rule to this day. Maybe that explains his fondness for useful and unique wrenches, rasps and files.
How'd an antique tool collection like his get started? Well, the antique bug bit Dad in the 1960s and 1970s when he was middle aged. It was the first time in his life that he could comfortably support our family and also buy things for himself that weren't just bread and butter or a roof over our heads. Raised on a farm, Dad always used a variety of tools, so he naturally began to collect them. "Tools were fairly inexpensive to buy when I started collecting," the South Wayne, Wis., tool collector recalls. "Now, all the baby boomers are collecting them, and they sell for a good price."
Wisconsin man bitten by the tool bug amasses a virtual tool shrine
All special places need a unique name, and Francis's tool shed is no exception as reflected in this sign he made for the building.
Francis Fox has never been one to throw anything away for as long as I can remember. Growing up as the youngest in a family of six during the Great Depression taught him a simple lesson: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. I've heard that saying many times, and believe me, he lives by that rule to this day. Maybe that explains his fondness for useful and unique wrenches, rasps and files.
How'd an antique tool collection like his get started? Well, the antique bug bit Dad in the 1960s and 1970s when he was middle aged. It was the first time in his life that he could comfortably support our family and also buy things for himself that weren't just bread and butter or a roof over our heads. Raised on a farm, Dad always used a variety of tools, so he naturally began to collect them. "Tools were fairly inexpensive to buy when I started collecting," the South Wayne, Wis., tool collector recalls. "Now, all the baby boomers are collecting them, and they sell for a good price."
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Monday, February 25, 2008
Small Farm Skills & Lifestyle Challenges
By Colin Croucher
In recent times there has been a dramatic shift in the preferred lifestyle of so many people, some have made a Sea Change and choose to live by the coast, others make a Tree Change, and move to the country to embrace the rural lifestyle, where the air is clean and fresh, and the day to day living is much more relaxed than one could ever experience in the city.
The small farm or country location generally provides a low stress lifestyle, a rural lifestyle means bidding farewell forever to the daily grind of the peak hour work commute. Sophisticated Internet technology provides ready access to the city based office; it is now feasible to work in your rural based office and be equally productive as if you were actually "In your city based office".
You'll now be able to claim your life back, and have more time to spend with family & friends, to pursue new hobbies & interests, Or spend some time tending to the daily chores around your rural lifestyle property.
But rural life is not all beer and skittles.
What will you do when equipment & machines begin to break down on your small farm? Will you have to call in the local expert to repair & fix things every time you have a minor mechanical disaster? Wouldn't you like to acquire the skills and know-how to be able to rebuild or repair all manner of things on your small farm.
Living in a rural environment generally requires a plethora of special skills such as: Fence building, to build new farm fences, or to build handling yards to hold sheep or cattle, there's no doubt you will need a special set of yards to hold animals while you work and care for them. If you want to build small sheds, welding and fabricating skills will serve you well. Carpentry skills will also be a big help when it comes to building or renovating around the farmhouse.
DIY is a growing trend right across most western countries, driven by the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult & expensive to secure the services of a suitable tradesman, many people are resorting to learning many practical skills, and surprising themselves at just how good they are at accomplishing things with tools & new skills that they previously never dreamed possible, it is all part of the push to be self-reliant, and being able to maintain your small farm, without having to rely on too much outside help.
One particular metal work hobby that is burgeoning across the globe is hobby metal casting, this amazing ancient process is carried out using the methods and techniques passed down from previous generations to create cast metal objects and items from molten metal, mainly bronze and aluminium, but the experienced worker can even melt and pour cast iron in the home hobby foundry.
Once the skill & knowledge is acquired, the small rural farm enterprise is an ideal place to fabricate the tools and the simple equipment to begin the art of metal casting, many new cast items can be readily made from scrap aluminium or bronze, such as; replacement parts to repair old machinery, many people who have lathes, mills and drills often look to metal casting as a natural extension of their general metal working skills.
The art of metal casting is not difficult to learn, and it is an amazing process, this ancient process can be used to make high value products from readily available scrap metal. The creative person can even make art castings. For the practical small farm operator searching for a new challenge, or a new hobby to indulge those spare hours in, this hobby could provide a real creative challenge and personal reward.
To learn more about the ancient art of metal casting, feel free to make a visit To: http://www.myhomefoundry.com one of the worlds leading hobby foundry Info web sites. Download your free introductory metal casting made easy ebook. And read how others have mastered hobby metal casting.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Colin_Croucher
In recent times there has been a dramatic shift in the preferred lifestyle of so many people, some have made a Sea Change and choose to live by the coast, others make a Tree Change, and move to the country to embrace the rural lifestyle, where the air is clean and fresh, and the day to day living is much more relaxed than one could ever experience in the city.
The small farm or country location generally provides a low stress lifestyle, a rural lifestyle means bidding farewell forever to the daily grind of the peak hour work commute. Sophisticated Internet technology provides ready access to the city based office; it is now feasible to work in your rural based office and be equally productive as if you were actually "In your city based office".
You'll now be able to claim your life back, and have more time to spend with family & friends, to pursue new hobbies & interests, Or spend some time tending to the daily chores around your rural lifestyle property.
But rural life is not all beer and skittles.
What will you do when equipment & machines begin to break down on your small farm? Will you have to call in the local expert to repair & fix things every time you have a minor mechanical disaster? Wouldn't you like to acquire the skills and know-how to be able to rebuild or repair all manner of things on your small farm.
Living in a rural environment generally requires a plethora of special skills such as: Fence building, to build new farm fences, or to build handling yards to hold sheep or cattle, there's no doubt you will need a special set of yards to hold animals while you work and care for them. If you want to build small sheds, welding and fabricating skills will serve you well. Carpentry skills will also be a big help when it comes to building or renovating around the farmhouse.
DIY is a growing trend right across most western countries, driven by the fact that it is becoming more and more difficult & expensive to secure the services of a suitable tradesman, many people are resorting to learning many practical skills, and surprising themselves at just how good they are at accomplishing things with tools & new skills that they previously never dreamed possible, it is all part of the push to be self-reliant, and being able to maintain your small farm, without having to rely on too much outside help.
One particular metal work hobby that is burgeoning across the globe is hobby metal casting, this amazing ancient process is carried out using the methods and techniques passed down from previous generations to create cast metal objects and items from molten metal, mainly bronze and aluminium, but the experienced worker can even melt and pour cast iron in the home hobby foundry.
Once the skill & knowledge is acquired, the small rural farm enterprise is an ideal place to fabricate the tools and the simple equipment to begin the art of metal casting, many new cast items can be readily made from scrap aluminium or bronze, such as; replacement parts to repair old machinery, many people who have lathes, mills and drills often look to metal casting as a natural extension of their general metal working skills.
The art of metal casting is not difficult to learn, and it is an amazing process, this ancient process can be used to make high value products from readily available scrap metal. The creative person can even make art castings. For the practical small farm operator searching for a new challenge, or a new hobby to indulge those spare hours in, this hobby could provide a real creative challenge and personal reward.
To learn more about the ancient art of metal casting, feel free to make a visit To: http://www.myhomefoundry.com one of the worlds leading hobby foundry Info web sites. Download your free introductory metal casting made easy ebook. And read how others have mastered hobby metal casting.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Colin_Croucher
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Who's Really To Blame For $100 Oil
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy: A refinery burns in Texas while politicians fiddle in Washington. As oil goes over $100 a barrel, we don't have to worry about Hugo Chavez restricting supply. We have the Democrats in Congress to do that.
Suppose you had a ton of money sitting in your bank account but you decided to max out your credit cards anyway. That's the energy policy of the United States as fashioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
At these prices, we have a trillion dollars worth of oil sitting under a section of frozen tundra the size of Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. We could go get it. Instead we prefer to shovel billions of our dollars to thugs like Chavez while the same politicians who lock up our domestic energy praise him when he offers "cheap" home heating oil to states in the Northeast.
Chavez has said he's changed his mind about cutting off supplies to the U.S., but it's because he'd have a hard time selling Venezuela's heavy crude — which requires special refining — anywhere else. He's not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, neither is the U.S. Senate.
Oil futures closed above $100 for the first time Tuesday after Monday's explosion at Alon USA's refinery in Big Spring, Texas. It could be shuttered for two months. Yet NIMBYs won't let new refineries be built, and the greenies won't let the domestic oil be refined.
The heads-in-the-tundra crowd is led by Hillary Clinton. She has voted no fewer than nine times to block drilling in a tiny, frozen part of ANWR. Her husband first blocked ANWR development in 1995. After Hurricane Katrina disabled offshore oil platforms, revealing our energy vulnerability, Mrs. Clinton said: "It makes no sense to respond to a disaster in the Gulf by making a disaster in Alaska."
Never mind that the caribou and other critters have thrived despite drilling in Prudhoe Bay, which recently delivered its 15 billionth barrel of oil through the Alaska pipeline. Oil from ANWR could meet all of New York's petroleum needs for 34 years, yet the state's junior senator opposes getting it.
"ANWR would supply every drop of petroleum for Florida for 29 years," said former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "New York for 34 years, California for 16 years or New Hampshire for 315 years." It could also supply Washington, D.C., a place where there's no shortage of hot air, for 1,710 years.
In 2005, the Senate voted twice by narrow margins on amendments authorizing ANWR drilling to a budget resolution bill (March 16) and a budget reconciliation bill (Nov. 3). Forty-one Democrats voted against both. Twenty-three of them were around to have voted against ANWR in 1995.
Barack Obama, who has voted twice against drilling in ANWR, has noted that a "large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes." Still, he says that "we cannot drill our way out of the problem." Call this the audacity of helplessness.
In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama writes: "Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, we should end every single tax break the industry currently receives and demand that 1% of the revenues from oil companies with over $1 billion in quarterly profits go toward financing alternative energy research and infrastructure."
Yet he'd subsidize the ethanol industry, which contributes to rising food prices and hurts the environment through increased agricultural runoff. He would feed the world, but he'd have us put ears of corn in our cars.
We are not against alternative energy. America is going to need all the energy it can produce — from all sources. We just don't like leaving energy in the ground.
The Democrats promise hope and change. Let's hope we develop our domestic energy sources, starting with ANWR. Now that would be a real change.
Energy: A refinery burns in Texas while politicians fiddle in Washington. As oil goes over $100 a barrel, we don't have to worry about Hugo Chavez restricting supply. We have the Democrats in Congress to do that.
Suppose you had a ton of money sitting in your bank account but you decided to max out your credit cards anyway. That's the energy policy of the United States as fashioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
At these prices, we have a trillion dollars worth of oil sitting under a section of frozen tundra the size of Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. We could go get it. Instead we prefer to shovel billions of our dollars to thugs like Chavez while the same politicians who lock up our domestic energy praise him when he offers "cheap" home heating oil to states in the Northeast.
Chavez has said he's changed his mind about cutting off supplies to the U.S., but it's because he'd have a hard time selling Venezuela's heavy crude — which requires special refining — anywhere else. He's not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, neither is the U.S. Senate.
Oil futures closed above $100 for the first time Tuesday after Monday's explosion at Alon USA's refinery in Big Spring, Texas. It could be shuttered for two months. Yet NIMBYs won't let new refineries be built, and the greenies won't let the domestic oil be refined.
The heads-in-the-tundra crowd is led by Hillary Clinton. She has voted no fewer than nine times to block drilling in a tiny, frozen part of ANWR. Her husband first blocked ANWR development in 1995. After Hurricane Katrina disabled offshore oil platforms, revealing our energy vulnerability, Mrs. Clinton said: "It makes no sense to respond to a disaster in the Gulf by making a disaster in Alaska."
Never mind that the caribou and other critters have thrived despite drilling in Prudhoe Bay, which recently delivered its 15 billionth barrel of oil through the Alaska pipeline. Oil from ANWR could meet all of New York's petroleum needs for 34 years, yet the state's junior senator opposes getting it.
"ANWR would supply every drop of petroleum for Florida for 29 years," said former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "New York for 34 years, California for 16 years or New Hampshire for 315 years." It could also supply Washington, D.C., a place where there's no shortage of hot air, for 1,710 years.
In 2005, the Senate voted twice by narrow margins on amendments authorizing ANWR drilling to a budget resolution bill (March 16) and a budget reconciliation bill (Nov. 3). Forty-one Democrats voted against both. Twenty-three of them were around to have voted against ANWR in 1995.
Barack Obama, who has voted twice against drilling in ANWR, has noted that a "large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes." Still, he says that "we cannot drill our way out of the problem." Call this the audacity of helplessness.
In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama writes: "Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, we should end every single tax break the industry currently receives and demand that 1% of the revenues from oil companies with over $1 billion in quarterly profits go toward financing alternative energy research and infrastructure."
Yet he'd subsidize the ethanol industry, which contributes to rising food prices and hurts the environment through increased agricultural runoff. He would feed the world, but he'd have us put ears of corn in our cars.
We are not against alternative energy. America is going to need all the energy it can produce — from all sources. We just don't like leaving energy in the ground.
The Democrats promise hope and change. Let's hope we develop our domestic energy sources, starting with ANWR. Now that would be a real change.
Where's The Stem Celebration?
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Bioethics: UCLA scientists have reprogrammed human skin cells into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells. The process doesn't use human eggs or destroy human embryos, so you may not have heard of it.
Confirming the work first reported last November by researcher Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University and James Thompson at the University of Wisconsin, researchers at UCLA also have managed to coax the human skin cells back in time to a point in their development before they had committed to becoming a particular type of tissue.
The reprogrammed cells, known as "induced pluripotent stem cells," genetically matched to the donor, can be used to grow tissues for future use in tissue replacement therapies, including a range of things from regeneration of damaged heart tissue to Parkinson's to spinal-cord injury.
The discovery potentially provides a virtually unlimited supply of embryonic stem cells without the moral baggage of or need to use human embryos, cloning or human eggs. It also takes such research out of the political arena back into the realm of science where it belongs.
"Our reprogrammed human skin cells were virtually undistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells," said Kethrin Plathm, assistant professor of biological chemistry and lead author of the study. "Our findings are an important step towards manipulating differentiated human cells to generate an unlimited supply of patient specific pluripotent stem cells"
"Reprogramming normal human stem cells into cells with identical properties to those in embryonic stem cells . . . may have important therapeutic ramifications and provide us with another valuable method to develop human stem cell lines," says William Lowry, an assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, and co-author of the study that appeared Feb. 11 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
The National Institutes of Health say this type of stem cell offers the prospect of having a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.
The work of the UCLA team, Yamanaka, Thompson and others may lead to a day when after a heart attack, for example, skin cells from the patient could be similarly manipulated to form muscle cells to repair damage to the heart, or brain cells to repair the effects of Parkinson's. Because they were the patient's own cells, the problem of rejection is solved.
"It's a bit like learning how to turn lead into gold," says Dr. Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts-based research firm.
You'd think this astonishing accomplishment by three separate research teams would warrant a Newsweek cover or a congratulatory press release from John Edwards, who in 2004 said if John Kerry was elected president people would rise out of their wheelchairs and walk again.
But the passion for embryonic stem cell research is driven by ideology, not science. When Bush put limits on federal funding of ESCR, he was called a "moral ayatollah" by Sen. Thomas Harkin. Never mind that he was right that non-embryonic research was more promising.
"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought it through," Thompson has said. It made President Bush uncomfortable. This discovery may render the question moot.
People may someday get out of their wheelchairs and walk, but it will not be because of ideologues or demagogic politicians. It will be because of dedicated scientists and researchers such as the team at UCLA.
Bioethics: UCLA scientists have reprogrammed human skin cells into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells. The process doesn't use human eggs or destroy human embryos, so you may not have heard of it.
Confirming the work first reported last November by researcher Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University and James Thompson at the University of Wisconsin, researchers at UCLA also have managed to coax the human skin cells back in time to a point in their development before they had committed to becoming a particular type of tissue.
The reprogrammed cells, known as "induced pluripotent stem cells," genetically matched to the donor, can be used to grow tissues for future use in tissue replacement therapies, including a range of things from regeneration of damaged heart tissue to Parkinson's to spinal-cord injury.
The discovery potentially provides a virtually unlimited supply of embryonic stem cells without the moral baggage of or need to use human embryos, cloning or human eggs. It also takes such research out of the political arena back into the realm of science where it belongs.
"Our reprogrammed human skin cells were virtually undistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells," said Kethrin Plathm, assistant professor of biological chemistry and lead author of the study. "Our findings are an important step towards manipulating differentiated human cells to generate an unlimited supply of patient specific pluripotent stem cells"
"Reprogramming normal human stem cells into cells with identical properties to those in embryonic stem cells . . . may have important therapeutic ramifications and provide us with another valuable method to develop human stem cell lines," says William Lowry, an assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, and co-author of the study that appeared Feb. 11 in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
The National Institutes of Health say this type of stem cell offers the prospect of having a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few.
The work of the UCLA team, Yamanaka, Thompson and others may lead to a day when after a heart attack, for example, skin cells from the patient could be similarly manipulated to form muscle cells to repair damage to the heart, or brain cells to repair the effects of Parkinson's. Because they were the patient's own cells, the problem of rejection is solved.
"It's a bit like learning how to turn lead into gold," says Dr. Robert Lanza, a stem cell researcher at Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts-based research firm.
You'd think this astonishing accomplishment by three separate research teams would warrant a Newsweek cover or a congratulatory press release from John Edwards, who in 2004 said if John Kerry was elected president people would rise out of their wheelchairs and walk again.
But the passion for embryonic stem cell research is driven by ideology, not science. When Bush put limits on federal funding of ESCR, he was called a "moral ayatollah" by Sen. Thomas Harkin. Never mind that he was right that non-embryonic research was more promising.
"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought it through," Thompson has said. It made President Bush uncomfortable. This discovery may render the question moot.
People may someday get out of their wheelchairs and walk, but it will not be because of ideologues or demagogic politicians. It will be because of dedicated scientists and researchers such as the team at UCLA.
First African President
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Foreign Affairs: George W. Bush has been singled out as the American president who has done the most for Africa. So where's the recognition, both in the media and the black community, of this worthy achievement?
Bill Clinton might have been America's first black president, but it seems he didn't do as much for Africa as Bush has. Bob Geldof, Irish rocker and Africa activist, says the Texas oilman, who is wrapping up his second trip to the continent, "has done more than any other president so far."
That's high praise from Geldof, a man who has spent much of the last 20 years fixated on Africa's many problems. He sees Bush's efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa as "the triumph of American policy." Though he says it was "unexpected of the man," Geldof admits both the president and the nation "rose to the occasion."
Geldof rightly chastises the American media for ignoring Bush's contributions to Africa.
But it would be unrealistic to have expected otherwise. This is a national press corps that seems to notice homelessness and poverty only when a Republican is in the White House, and which itself votes heavily Democratic.
Meanwhile, African-Americans give little support to Bush — he got 11% of their vote in 2004 after taking 8% in 2000. Black leaders — such as NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, who has called Bush a liar, compared his judicial nominees to the Taliban and equated the GOP to Nazis — continue their shrill verbal assaults on the man.
Yet under Bush, the U.S. has boosted development and humanitarian aid to Africa from $1.4 billion in his first year in office to $4 billion a year today. He's also sought $30 billion to fight AIDS.
Trade — far more efficient than aid — between our country and Africa has more than doubled during his terms. This administration has also actively sought to stop the genocide in Darfur and has led in attempts to end wars in Sierra Leone, Sudan and Congo.
As the U.S. press swoons over Barack Obama and his bromidic promise of "change" to the exclusion of almost all else, the African media have noticed Bush's work.
It wasn't the New York Times or ABC, but AllAfrica.com that gratefully acknowledged that Bush's policies "have saved millions of (African) lives and lifted many others from abject poverty."
Foreign Affairs: George W. Bush has been singled out as the American president who has done the most for Africa. So where's the recognition, both in the media and the black community, of this worthy achievement?
Bill Clinton might have been America's first black president, but it seems he didn't do as much for Africa as Bush has. Bob Geldof, Irish rocker and Africa activist, says the Texas oilman, who is wrapping up his second trip to the continent, "has done more than any other president so far."
That's high praise from Geldof, a man who has spent much of the last 20 years fixated on Africa's many problems. He sees Bush's efforts to fight disease and poverty in Africa as "the triumph of American policy." Though he says it was "unexpected of the man," Geldof admits both the president and the nation "rose to the occasion."
Geldof rightly chastises the American media for ignoring Bush's contributions to Africa.
But it would be unrealistic to have expected otherwise. This is a national press corps that seems to notice homelessness and poverty only when a Republican is in the White House, and which itself votes heavily Democratic.
Meanwhile, African-Americans give little support to Bush — he got 11% of their vote in 2004 after taking 8% in 2000. Black leaders — such as NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, who has called Bush a liar, compared his judicial nominees to the Taliban and equated the GOP to Nazis — continue their shrill verbal assaults on the man.
Yet under Bush, the U.S. has boosted development and humanitarian aid to Africa from $1.4 billion in his first year in office to $4 billion a year today. He's also sought $30 billion to fight AIDS.
Trade — far more efficient than aid — between our country and Africa has more than doubled during his terms. This administration has also actively sought to stop the genocide in Darfur and has led in attempts to end wars in Sierra Leone, Sudan and Congo.
As the U.S. press swoons over Barack Obama and his bromidic promise of "change" to the exclusion of almost all else, the African media have noticed Bush's work.
It wasn't the New York Times or ABC, but AllAfrica.com that gratefully acknowledged that Bush's policies "have saved millions of (African) lives and lifted many others from abject poverty."
No Amnesty In Arizona
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Immigration Reform: The problem of illegal immigration seems to take care of itself if laws are obeyed and enforced. For the latest evidence, we turn to Sen. John McCain's home state.
Arizona is seeing signs of a flight by Mexican immigrants out of the state and back across the border. Local reformers credit the state's recent crackdown on illegal immigration. Indeed, sanctions against employers are playing a key role.
The new state law — which goes into effect March 1 — punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants by suspending their business license for 10 days on the first violation and revoking it for a second offense.
At the same time, the county sheriff in Phoenix has been helping enforce federal immigration laws by rounding up people living there illegally.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has given arrest authority to many deputies. So in the course of a traffic stop, illegal aliens without driver's licenses for the first time now stand a real chance of being deported.
In response to the crackdown, illegals are flooding the Mexican consulate in Phoenix to obtain papers to move back across the border and enroll their children in school.
The consulate is reporting an "unusual" 400% increase in parents applying for Mexican birth certificates for their anchor babies and other documents they need to return to Mexico.
They're also requesting a paper known as a "menaje de casa," which allows illegals living in the U.S. to cross into Mexico without paying a tax on their furniture and other household goods.
How charming that they follow their own immigration rules, but not ours. And how telling that the Mexican government makes it hard for its citizens to return, while making it easier for them to break into our country by handing out thousands of maps to border tunnels and water tanks in the Arizona desert.
Some immigrants' rights groups are claiming U.S. citizens, not just illegals, are crossing into Mexico, because the Arizona economy is flagging, and construction and retail jobs are drying up. That makes little sense. Americans don't flee to Mexico to find work.
Fact is, some 30,000 illegal immigrants plan to leave Arizona sometime before March 1, when the state's tough new immigration laws kick in, according to a survey conducted earlier this month by Chicanos Por La Causa. And CPLC can hardly be accused of anti-immigrant bias — it's a nonprofit immigrant-support group.
State lawmakers who pushed through the crackdown are already heralding its success. The desired effect was having illegals see that the red carpet would no longer be rolled out for them.
Arizona has borne the brunt of the Mexican invasion, and its citizens are fed up. According to a study last year, 12% of Arizona workers are in the U.S. illegally — the highest share in the country.
Illegal immigrants and their families are not only a burden on public services, but many of them join gangs and commit violent crimes while living here.
Amnesty advocates argue it's not feasible to deport millions of illegals. They say it's impossible to round up 12 million people and kick them out of the country.
But the out-migration in Arizona proves you don't have to. Just making a strong show of law enforcement at the work site and on the street corners is enough to discourage illegals from staying.
Arizona is a model for other states being overrun by illegals. If they just send a clear message to immigrants living here illegally that they're serious about enforcing the law, they'll pack up and leave. And they'll tell their friends and relatives waiting to break in on the other side of the border that it just ain't worth it.
It costs a lot of money to hire coyotes and smugglers to get here. They'll see in due order that they'll be wasting their money and will stay home — or get in line with law-abiding immigrants who actually want to come to America and be American citizens.
Immigration Reform: The problem of illegal immigration seems to take care of itself if laws are obeyed and enforced. For the latest evidence, we turn to Sen. John McCain's home state.
Arizona is seeing signs of a flight by Mexican immigrants out of the state and back across the border. Local reformers credit the state's recent crackdown on illegal immigration. Indeed, sanctions against employers are playing a key role.
The new state law — which goes into effect March 1 — punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants by suspending their business license for 10 days on the first violation and revoking it for a second offense.
At the same time, the county sheriff in Phoenix has been helping enforce federal immigration laws by rounding up people living there illegally.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has given arrest authority to many deputies. So in the course of a traffic stop, illegal aliens without driver's licenses for the first time now stand a real chance of being deported.
In response to the crackdown, illegals are flooding the Mexican consulate in Phoenix to obtain papers to move back across the border and enroll their children in school.
The consulate is reporting an "unusual" 400% increase in parents applying for Mexican birth certificates for their anchor babies and other documents they need to return to Mexico.
They're also requesting a paper known as a "menaje de casa," which allows illegals living in the U.S. to cross into Mexico without paying a tax on their furniture and other household goods.
How charming that they follow their own immigration rules, but not ours. And how telling that the Mexican government makes it hard for its citizens to return, while making it easier for them to break into our country by handing out thousands of maps to border tunnels and water tanks in the Arizona desert.
Some immigrants' rights groups are claiming U.S. citizens, not just illegals, are crossing into Mexico, because the Arizona economy is flagging, and construction and retail jobs are drying up. That makes little sense. Americans don't flee to Mexico to find work.
Fact is, some 30,000 illegal immigrants plan to leave Arizona sometime before March 1, when the state's tough new immigration laws kick in, according to a survey conducted earlier this month by Chicanos Por La Causa. And CPLC can hardly be accused of anti-immigrant bias — it's a nonprofit immigrant-support group.
State lawmakers who pushed through the crackdown are already heralding its success. The desired effect was having illegals see that the red carpet would no longer be rolled out for them.
Arizona has borne the brunt of the Mexican invasion, and its citizens are fed up. According to a study last year, 12% of Arizona workers are in the U.S. illegally — the highest share in the country.
Illegal immigrants and their families are not only a burden on public services, but many of them join gangs and commit violent crimes while living here.
Amnesty advocates argue it's not feasible to deport millions of illegals. They say it's impossible to round up 12 million people and kick them out of the country.
But the out-migration in Arizona proves you don't have to. Just making a strong show of law enforcement at the work site and on the street corners is enough to discourage illegals from staying.
Arizona is a model for other states being overrun by illegals. If they just send a clear message to immigrants living here illegally that they're serious about enforcing the law, they'll pack up and leave. And they'll tell their friends and relatives waiting to break in on the other side of the border that it just ain't worth it.
It costs a lot of money to hire coyotes and smugglers to get here. They'll see in due order that they'll be wasting their money and will stay home — or get in line with law-abiding immigrants who actually want to come to America and be American citizens.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Adsense - 7 keys to empire?
Sun Feb 17th, 2008, by Vikram Parmar)
There's a lot of buzz around about how you can make a quick and easy fortune using this AdSense course or that tool or this book. And they show you their incomes from AdSense too (though not necessarily THIS month). Now, is it just me or is something a little odd in all this? Say, I'm making $5000 - no make that $15,276 a month from AdSense on my sites. And now I'm going to sell all my secrets on how to do that for $67 or $97 or whatever. So what happened, did I get all bored with my filthy riches and decide to become a philanthropist and sell stuff that makes me 15K a month for a pittance? Or is it something else? Am I saying it's impossible? Certainly not. I know people who make that more. But a little reality. Those people don't have 5 or 6 or 50 sites. They have maybe 500 or 3000 or more. Few sites make 20 or more a day. Very few. Average income is probably less than a dollar a day. So with 500 sites at a dollar a day, you've got your 15K a month. Now the domain names cost you maybe $3500 to $4500. Then you need hosting and somehow you've got to build the sites and get traffic to them. There are excellent tools but the ones that will let you do this kind of thing in a reasonably short time are also very (very) expensive. And you are continually dealing with sites that don't get indexed or get de-indexed or even get banned. Traffic today, gone tomorrow. Plus, if you're not real careful with those tools you may get an unpleasant letter from Google about a DMCA copyright infringement which could cost you your AdSense account. You can make money, you can build an empire. But it isn't easy or quick no matter what you hear. And it really isn't a business. It's not a long run proposition, it's not stable. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail - or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business. You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 7 "secret" keys to AdSense. 1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over. 2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and URL. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe its part of the text. Wake up, OK? 3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad. 4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords. 5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot? You might hear that 1% or 1.5% click through rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages). 6. You have to track what you're doing and you have to test variations in ad layout, placement, color and related content to optimize your income. No one can tell you how to do it except the traffic coming to your site. If you don't test and track, you're flying blind. 7. You need to keep building new sites. You are now a member of the AdSense Illuminati. Quite possibly you already knew all that. So why are you looking for something else? Really. This is all you need to start doing it. Probably any course or book can help you if that's what it takes to get you moving and doing. Ultimately, no one can really show you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to learn the ropes and put in the time. Like everything in life - the greatest traffic generator, the ultimate course or the super MLM opportunity, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. There's no magic bullet, no ultimate secret to buy. There's no easy, painless, work free, certain road to riches (except, maybe, inheriting it and that can be very hard on the heirs). Whatever you do on the net, do it wide awake and with your brain actually functioning. The final un-numbered key is that a technique, a shortcut, and an idea that will make what you do easier, faster, or more profitable - one single tiny thing - is worth more than any book or course costs. One useable idea and you've gotten a great deal. If you learned something you didn't know or had forgotten, then its worth much more than you paid. There may not be any magic solution out there, but there are useful concepts, techniques and ideas. You just have to see them for what they are, and then get busy and really use them.
There's a lot of buzz around about how you can make a quick and easy fortune using this AdSense course or that tool or this book. And they show you their incomes from AdSense too (though not necessarily THIS month). Now, is it just me or is something a little odd in all this? Say, I'm making $5000 - no make that $15,276 a month from AdSense on my sites. And now I'm going to sell all my secrets on how to do that for $67 or $97 or whatever. So what happened, did I get all bored with my filthy riches and decide to become a philanthropist and sell stuff that makes me 15K a month for a pittance? Or is it something else? Am I saying it's impossible? Certainly not. I know people who make that more. But a little reality. Those people don't have 5 or 6 or 50 sites. They have maybe 500 or 3000 or more. Few sites make 20 or more a day. Very few. Average income is probably less than a dollar a day. So with 500 sites at a dollar a day, you've got your 15K a month. Now the domain names cost you maybe $3500 to $4500. Then you need hosting and somehow you've got to build the sites and get traffic to them. There are excellent tools but the ones that will let you do this kind of thing in a reasonably short time are also very (very) expensive. And you are continually dealing with sites that don't get indexed or get de-indexed or even get banned. Traffic today, gone tomorrow. Plus, if you're not real careful with those tools you may get an unpleasant letter from Google about a DMCA copyright infringement which could cost you your AdSense account. You can make money, you can build an empire. But it isn't easy or quick no matter what you hear. And it really isn't a business. It's not a long run proposition, it's not stable. You need to keep creating more sites as older ones fail - or you need to be smart and use those AdSense revenues to build an enduring business. You put up with this down to here, so here are the real 7 "secret" keys to AdSense. 1. The best performing AdSense type is the large rectangle. This has been tested over and over. 2. The best colors are blue for the link - surfers know that blue means click me. And darkish almost black and grey for the text and URL. No borders. The same background as your page. Will it merge into your content? No, that's bogus. There are maybe 4 surfers in this galaxy who can't tell a Google ad when they see one. They are not going to believe its part of the text. Wake up, OK? 3. Another format which is being reported to more or less work is the full wide banner type layout with text ads and images directly above the links. Try it and see if it works for you. Maybe it's a fad. 4. Keywords and related content are critical if you want targeted ads. If you want high paying clicks you need to target the costly keywords AND have content that supports the keywords. 5. You need traffic interested in the ads. Which means your traffic generation techniques have to be targeted not scattershot? You might hear that 1% or 1.5% click through rate is OK and 3% is good. Nonsense. Really successful people get CTRs that are often well above 30%. Even with modest efforts you should be getting an average 6 to 15% CTR (per ad impression, not pages). 6. You have to track what you're doing and you have to test variations in ad layout, placement, color and related content to optimize your income. No one can tell you how to do it except the traffic coming to your site. If you don't test and track, you're flying blind. 7. You need to keep building new sites. You are now a member of the AdSense Illuminati. Quite possibly you already knew all that. So why are you looking for something else? Really. This is all you need to start doing it. Probably any course or book can help you if that's what it takes to get you moving and doing. Ultimately, no one can really show you exactly how to do it. You're going to have to learn the ropes and put in the time. Like everything in life - the greatest traffic generator, the ultimate course or the super MLM opportunity, if it sounds too good to be true, then it is. There's no magic bullet, no ultimate secret to buy. There's no easy, painless, work free, certain road to riches (except, maybe, inheriting it and that can be very hard on the heirs). Whatever you do on the net, do it wide awake and with your brain actually functioning. The final un-numbered key is that a technique, a shortcut, and an idea that will make what you do easier, faster, or more profitable - one single tiny thing - is worth more than any book or course costs. One useable idea and you've gotten a great deal. If you learned something you didn't know or had forgotten, then its worth much more than you paid. There may not be any magic solution out there, but there are useful concepts, techniques and ideas. You just have to see them for what they are, and then get busy and really use them.
14 Year kid makes hundreds online through Adsense!
Wed Feb 20th, 2008, by Taylor Watson)
It is amazing how people are making their millions online, and it is also crazy how most of them start out at younger then 18 years old! This young entrepreneur spent 2 years studying and memorizing php and html so he could build his own websites. His name is Taylor Jay and he is just 14 year's old. With over 10 websites already up and running, he has created one of the biggest databases of online website's ever, for a 14 year old kid. Just some of is websites are: http://www.lamelime.com - A Free online gaming forum http://www.unlockmytouch.com - Recieves around 1400 unique visitor's a day! It is an iPod touch website http://www.proxynyc.com - He recently bought this website and the unique visitors are going steadliy up daily http://www.highvoltagehalo.com - Also steadily increasing He plans to increase website unique visitors by 300% in 2008 and he also has plan's to purchase a major website soon with a fellow business partner. His programming and unique abilities are quite exquisite. With no previous knowledge and no internet know-how's in his family, he learned it all by himself, from how to code a website from scratch, or how to set up MySQL database, everything had to be learned with no previous knowledge. He made special goals on making a e-mail script one day, and then creating an entire web directery the next. Be sure to see Taylor Jay in headlines in the future, and make sure your keep up to date on what Taylor Jay has comming next =)
It is amazing how people are making their millions online, and it is also crazy how most of them start out at younger then 18 years old! This young entrepreneur spent 2 years studying and memorizing php and html so he could build his own websites. His name is Taylor Jay and he is just 14 year's old. With over 10 websites already up and running, he has created one of the biggest databases of online website's ever, for a 14 year old kid. Just some of is websites are: http://www.lamelime.com - A Free online gaming forum http://www.unlockmytouch.com - Recieves around 1400 unique visitor's a day! It is an iPod touch website http://www.proxynyc.com - He recently bought this website and the unique visitors are going steadliy up daily http://www.highvoltagehalo.com - Also steadily increasing He plans to increase website unique visitors by 300% in 2008 and he also has plan's to purchase a major website soon with a fellow business partner. His programming and unique abilities are quite exquisite. With no previous knowledge and no internet know-how's in his family, he learned it all by himself, from how to code a website from scratch, or how to set up MySQL database, everything had to be learned with no previous knowledge. He made special goals on making a e-mail script one day, and then creating an entire web directery the next. Be sure to see Taylor Jay in headlines in the future, and make sure your keep up to date on what Taylor Jay has comming next =)
Beijing 2008: China's Attempt To Disguise Its Olympic Failure
China campaigned for the 2008 Olympic Games with a promise to improve its sad record of human rights abuse and suppression of free speech. It promised world reporters "unfettered access" in the country and made a commitment to clean up the quality of the air in Beijing for the Olympic Games.
The fact is that Beijing has failed on every important promise it made to become the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games. Sure it spent the money to build world class Olympic venues. It even spent several billion dollars in a failed attempt to clean up its air. However, granting basic human rights, allowing free speech, and its effort to improve the quality of the air in Beijing have all turned out to be dismal government failures of Olympic proportions.
The result of all these failed promises is that China was allowed to win the 2008 Olympic Games as the host city under false pretenses. To disguise its sad failure, Beijing has taken a page out of the Nazi regime's playbook used during the Summer Games in Berlin, Germany in 1936. During those Olympics, Berlin tried to disguise its racist policies while welcoming the world as the host city of the Games. All anti-Jewish signs were temporarily removed and newspapers toned down racist rhetoric. The Olympic Games were used as a venue to present foreign spectators and journalists with a false image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany.
Seventy years later, China is attempting to disguise its dismal failure on improving human rights, free speech, and the environment as it always does, by controlling the message and the messenger. Like Germany in 1936, it is the totalitarian regime's message control that disguises the truth and promotes the big lie. Here is a quote from China's official newspaper, The People's Daily last month: "If at each Olympics people stood up and used politics to attack the host nation, where does that leave the Olympic spirit?"
There it is for all to see. The Chinese government's Olympic year initiative to disguise its failure. In effect the government's subtle message is that there is no Olympic Spirit in free speech. Therefore, to criticize China during the 2008 Games is against the Spirit of the Olympics. This quote comes after China's crackdown on internal dissidents over the last several months. Many dissidents including Hu Jia, Wang Dejia, and others have been jailed in the country since late in 2007 for not exhibiting the proper "Olympic Spirit".
According to the London newspaper, The Mail, on Sunday February 10, 2008, China's attempt to control free speech has now extended into a compliant United Kingdom. The paper reports that British athletes competing at this year's Olympic Games in China are being asked to sign a contract that includes a pledge not to speak out on political or human rights issues. The Mail says a clause in the contract states that "athletes are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues." It reports that anyone who violates the contract will be sent home from Beijing.
Potentially the pledge in the contract means that a British athlete who witnesses someone being mistreated at any time in China is forbidden from even speaking to their colleagues about it. Competitors emailing home or writing blogs will also have to exercise self-censorship or face having their Olympic dreams ended.
The pledge (which is contained within a thirty two page document that is designed to be presented to all participants on the British Olympic team ) brings back memories of the order given to England's football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1936 which immediately created a large protest in Great Britain.
Further consider the fact that it has been reported that December 12, 2007 was the worst day in history for the measurement of air quality around the city of Beijing. Many of the world's athletes will risk health problems due to the filthy air especially on the long distance endurance events at this summer's Games. For this reason many teams are postponing their arrival in Beijing to just prior to the scheduled events. Years of being the world's biggest environmental polluter could not be corrected in time for the Olympic Games. However that has not stopped these Olympic Games in Beijing from being promoted as the environmentally friendly "Green Games".
The political reality of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is the sad spectacle of China's ongoing human rights crackdowns on its internal dissidents. In addition, China continues to support some of the world's worst regimes in Tibet, Myanmar, and the Sudan. It has placed world class athletes from every country in the world at risk from exposure to its filthy, polluted air. It is clearly evident that China's commitments to the world that led it to become the host city for the 2008 Olympic Games have been broken.
Indeed, it is a record of failure of Olympic proportions; a record that China is attempting to disguise just as Nazi Germany disguised their real intentions as host of the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936.
By: James William Smith
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
James William Smith has worked in senior management positions for some of the largest financial services firms in the United States for the last twenty five years. He has also provided business consulting support for insurance organizations and start up businesses. Mr. Smith has a Bachelor of Science Degree from Boston College. He enjoys writing articles on political, national, and world events. Visit his website at www.eworldvu.com
The fact is that Beijing has failed on every important promise it made to become the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games. Sure it spent the money to build world class Olympic venues. It even spent several billion dollars in a failed attempt to clean up its air. However, granting basic human rights, allowing free speech, and its effort to improve the quality of the air in Beijing have all turned out to be dismal government failures of Olympic proportions.
The result of all these failed promises is that China was allowed to win the 2008 Olympic Games as the host city under false pretenses. To disguise its sad failure, Beijing has taken a page out of the Nazi regime's playbook used during the Summer Games in Berlin, Germany in 1936. During those Olympics, Berlin tried to disguise its racist policies while welcoming the world as the host city of the Games. All anti-Jewish signs were temporarily removed and newspapers toned down racist rhetoric. The Olympic Games were used as a venue to present foreign spectators and journalists with a false image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany.
Seventy years later, China is attempting to disguise its dismal failure on improving human rights, free speech, and the environment as it always does, by controlling the message and the messenger. Like Germany in 1936, it is the totalitarian regime's message control that disguises the truth and promotes the big lie. Here is a quote from China's official newspaper, The People's Daily last month: "If at each Olympics people stood up and used politics to attack the host nation, where does that leave the Olympic spirit?"
There it is for all to see. The Chinese government's Olympic year initiative to disguise its failure. In effect the government's subtle message is that there is no Olympic Spirit in free speech. Therefore, to criticize China during the 2008 Games is against the Spirit of the Olympics. This quote comes after China's crackdown on internal dissidents over the last several months. Many dissidents including Hu Jia, Wang Dejia, and others have been jailed in the country since late in 2007 for not exhibiting the proper "Olympic Spirit".
According to the London newspaper, The Mail, on Sunday February 10, 2008, China's attempt to control free speech has now extended into a compliant United Kingdom. The paper reports that British athletes competing at this year's Olympic Games in China are being asked to sign a contract that includes a pledge not to speak out on political or human rights issues. The Mail says a clause in the contract states that "athletes are not to comment on any politically sensitive issues." It reports that anyone who violates the contract will be sent home from Beijing.
Potentially the pledge in the contract means that a British athlete who witnesses someone being mistreated at any time in China is forbidden from even speaking to their colleagues about it. Competitors emailing home or writing blogs will also have to exercise self-censorship or face having their Olympic dreams ended.
The pledge (which is contained within a thirty two page document that is designed to be presented to all participants on the British Olympic team ) brings back memories of the order given to England's football team to give a Nazi salute in Berlin in 1936 which immediately created a large protest in Great Britain.
Further consider the fact that it has been reported that December 12, 2007 was the worst day in history for the measurement of air quality around the city of Beijing. Many of the world's athletes will risk health problems due to the filthy air especially on the long distance endurance events at this summer's Games. For this reason many teams are postponing their arrival in Beijing to just prior to the scheduled events. Years of being the world's biggest environmental polluter could not be corrected in time for the Olympic Games. However that has not stopped these Olympic Games in Beijing from being promoted as the environmentally friendly "Green Games".
The political reality of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is the sad spectacle of China's ongoing human rights crackdowns on its internal dissidents. In addition, China continues to support some of the world's worst regimes in Tibet, Myanmar, and the Sudan. It has placed world class athletes from every country in the world at risk from exposure to its filthy, polluted air. It is clearly evident that China's commitments to the world that led it to become the host city for the 2008 Olympic Games have been broken.
Indeed, it is a record of failure of Olympic proportions; a record that China is attempting to disguise just as Nazi Germany disguised their real intentions as host of the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936.
By: James William Smith
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
James William Smith has worked in senior management positions for some of the largest financial services firms in the United States for the last twenty five years. He has also provided business consulting support for insurance organizations and start up businesses. Mr. Smith has a Bachelor of Science Degree from Boston College. He enjoys writing articles on political, national, and world events. Visit his website at www.eworldvu.com
America's Secret Weapons: Mind Control and Biowarfare
By Jerry Leonard
"Because of its power and global interests U.S. leaders have committed crimes as a matter of course and structural necessity. A strict application of international law would ... have given every U.S. president of the past 50 years Nuremberg treatment." --Edward Herman
The United States ended World War II by using the most horrific weapon in the history of warfare—the atomic bomb—on the Japanese civilian population. This doomsday weapon had been developed in total secrecy as part of a massive research program employing a small army of world-class scientists. After the war, the United States scrambled through the rubble and chaos to determine what progress its enemies had made in their secret weapons development programs. It turned out that the Germans’ atom bomb effort was primitive compared to the Manhattan Project. However, the Germans and the Japanese had made progress in other areas – and we were obsessed over finding out just how much.
Two of the “weapons’’ we sought information on had nothing to do with the traditional field of battle, but their ramifications would be enormous. Using volumes of information gained from German and Japanese experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners, POWs and entire civilian populations, the U.S. continued its enemies’ research programs in mind control[i] and biological warfare.[ii] It even employed some of the war criminals that managed these programs as consultants at Fort Detrick[iii],[iv] for experiments using U.S. citizens and soldiers as guinea pigs.
The Manhattan Project infrastructure itself was employed in this regard.[v] Under this umbrella, the U.S. hoped to duplicate its success in creating devastating weapons by perfecting the mind-control technology developed by the Germans[vi] and the biological warfare technology developed and tested by the Japanese.
The postwar effort to develop novel weapons was substantially different, however, from that which produced a super-bomb capable of leveling an entire city. Instead of using physics and chemistry to harness the fundamental forces of nature, these new weapons would exploit the fields of psychology and biology to manipulate the fundamental processes required for mental[vii] and physical health in humans. By unlocking the keys to the brain and the body, the United States would be able to induce diseases at will for psychological or biological warfare. These weapons ultimately had the potential to be more devastating than the atom bomb since they could not only control both mental and physical health on an unprecedented scale but, more importantly, could be tested and used in complete secrecy.
To refine the weapons developed by its enemies in WWII, the Central Intelligence Agency launched an immense program of clandestine research and international experimentation on human subjects. By covertly leveraging the U.S. medical infrastructure, the CIA was able to orchestrate this experimentation under the pretense of legitimate research by doctors who often didn't realize the sinister ends to which their research would be used.[viii]
The initial mind-control research was conducted toward nominally noble ends—even if the means to achieve them were abominable. Like their counterparts in other fields, the nation’s elite psychologists and psychiatrists attempted to create human diseases on-demand so that cures could be tested under laboratory conditions. For example, research geared toward selectively inducing hypnotic amnesia and drug-induced schizophrenic states would provide doctors with a way of testing theories on the causes of neurosis and mental illness. Medical research with biological agents had similarly stated goals. Human experiments with “anticancer viruses” such as West Nile Virus and with “cancer transplants” in subjects with impaired immune systems would allow scientists to test their theories of how the immune system controlled the growth of diseases. Such information would assist in manipulating the human immune system toward the development of cancer vaccines.
But of course these experiments toward inducing laboratory models of mental and physical diseases were not conducted purely for medical purposes. Much of this research was conducted for psychological and biological warfare applications, and even then under the pretext of developing defensive measures against enemy use of such technology. For example, learning how to destroy memory and manipulate personality through stress, drugs and hypnosis might allow researchers to counteract these processes and “inoculate” their men against enemy use of such techniques in hostile interrogations. (Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” was the victim of exactly this type of research as a student at Harvard.) Likewise, knowledge of how immunity could be destroyed by chemicals and viruses to cause disease would provide clues critical to counteract these processes in the development of vaccines. Such vaccines would allow the government to inoculate its own troops against bioweapons used by national security threats.[ix]
Toward even more sinister ends, this research also provided an offensive capability. Supposedly defensive mind-control research[x] would give the CIA the ability to create agents and operatives who would carry out their assignments in the midst of danger without risk of their becoming security threats.[xi] Through mental conditioning and the creation of synthetic, multiple personalities, interrogation-proof double agents could be produced who would not only safely transfer information as human couriers (to a friendly hypnotist) but obediently commit acts such as assassinations that were contrary to their personal morality and safety. Agents with enhanced or selectively depleted memories could even be sent into the field to accomplish tasks they would have no conscious recollection of completing.[xii]
Work on vaccines had dual uses as well. By developing the technology to selectively deplete the immune system, researchers could develop an understanding of how immune system defects caused disease. This information could then be used to counteract such processes and selectively enhance the immune system in the form of vaccines.[xiii] But the ability to controllably destroy the immune system was in itself a biological weapon that could be used as part of an offensive capability.[xiv] And these offensive and defensive tools could be used synergistically. Defensive vaccines could be developed that would allow U.S. forces to be inoculated against offensive bioweapons to be used on enemy forces.[xv]
Theory is one thing, implementation quite another. Has the U.S. government, through its agencies, transformed “could” and “would” into “can” and “will”? Did it actually bring research in psychological and biological warfare to the next level? Years of study have convinced me that this has happened and is happening to this very day. Consider:
* The technology developed to control the immune system—selectively depleting immune cells with viruses in animal cancer-transplant experiments—was exploited to induce the epidemic of AIDS and cancer in humans. This latter epidemic is highly beneficial for fulfilling the goals of both the cancer vaccine research and national security establishments, the two fields that worked synergistically to create AIDS viruses grown in human cells just prior to the HIV epidemic. My book AIDS: The “Perfect” Disease explains how such biological warfare agents were not only created under the pretext of cancer research but unleashed under the pretext of an international cancer experiment.[xvi] In this way, the United States echoed the wartime international biological warfare exercises conducted by the Japanese researchers it recruited following WWII using immunosuppressive viruses it perfected through decades of cancer experiments in animals.[xvii]
* Nazi mind-control techniques were covertly perfected by U.S. intelligence agencies after decades of research on hundreds of victims,[xviii] ultimately yielding the ability to control the human mind to create “programmed” provocateurs, double agents and “involuntary assassins.” According to declassified government documents published by the New York Times, such agents would carry out actions “even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.” The most egregious crime from these creations was the programming of the assassin used to murder President John F. Kennedy. My book The Perfect Assassin shows how Lee Harvey Oswald’s seemingly contradictory actions are eerily consistent with his being unwittingly manipulated through mind control by the CIA through the now legendary Cold War programs MKULTRA and COINTELPRO. The benefits of Oswald’s actions to the CIA and the foreshadowing of his activities in CIA memos and statements of military hypnotists are revealed in my harmonizing study of the JFK murder.
* Mind-control experimentation is also an enabling technology to maintain a population of human guinea pigs for biological experimentation. The use of AIDS within this framework of experimentation is an extraordinary vehicle to continue the long-running eugenics program to create a master race overseen by American corporations in Nazi Germany. I believe much of U.S. policy is designed to quietly perpetuate this brutally destructive and elitist program. My book Hitler Is Winning describes the tragic legacy and current dangers of this ongoing effort quietly sponsored by history’s deadliest and unpunished war criminals—including America’s elite universities, corporate foundations and political and financial luminaries.
While discussion of mind control and biological warfare by our own government is disconcerting to many, and incredible to some, it is only through public awareness of these subjects that I believe national security planners can be held accountable and thus be prevented from their continued use. For those interested in exploring these subjects further, please read my works explaining the development and use of these weapons available at www.winstonsmith.net.
Forewarned is forearmed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Ironically, one of the American biowarfare experts sent into Germany on a fact-finding mission would later die under suspicious circumstances as a result of being an unwitting participant in a CIA mind-control drug experiment similar to those conducted by the Nazis he was tasked with interviewing. Frank Olson, a U.S. government anthrax expert, had been sent to Germany in 1951 with two other men as part of a CIA program to evaluate progress made in Nazi mind-control research. In this case it was the research overseen by “Nazi anthrax expert and SS Major General Dr. Walter P. Schreiber” during the war. As H.P. Albarelli Jr. reported, the U.S.team “traveled to Germany to interview Schreiber” and learn “all that it could about a Nazi SS project that employed ‘psychochemical drugs’ during concentration camp interrogation experiments.” H.P. Albarelli Jr., “Feds’ involvement in anthrax experiments: Records show conflicting reports about bacterium’s use as weapon;” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/21/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406).
[ii] Americans also scrambled to get data from Japanese biological warfare experts such as Dr. Shiro Ishii, the head of Japan’s biowarfare establishment. (This establishment, known as Unit 731, killed tens of thousands of civilians in field tests with biowarfare agents it developed in tests on prisoners of war.) Lt. Col. Arvo T. Thompson interviewed Ishii after his capture by American forces: “In Japan, Thompson interviewed Ishii, who had been captured by the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. …A top-secret U.S. Army Far East Command report on Thompson’s findings reads: ‘The value to the U.S. of Japanese biological weapons data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war-crimes prosecution.’ A 1956 FBI memorandum reveals that by the mid-1950s the U.S. knew everything about Ishii’s human experiments but agreed not to prosecute in exchange for Japan’s scientific data on germ warfare.” Like Frank Olson, Thompson later committed suicide: “In May 1951, scientists at Fort Detrick were shocked to learn that Thompson had ‘committed suicide’ while on another special assignment in Tokyo. The circumstances surrounding Thompson’s death have never been publicly revealed. Two years later, Olson would also ‘commit suicide’ under circumstances so unusual that eventually he became an icon of American mysteries.” H.P. Albarelli Jr., “Feds’ involvement in anthrax experiments: Records show conflicting reports about bacterium’s use as weapon;” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/21/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406).
[iii] War criminals from both enemy camps would be hired as consultants and brought to lecture at Fort Detrick, Maryland—the U.S. center for biological warfare development. According to Fort Detrick researchers, the chief Japanese biological warfare researcher (Ishii), along with other Japanese researchers, “was secreted into the United States to lecture at Camp Detrick…. on Unit 731's human experiments.” http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406
[iv] “Remarkably, despite his being wanted for war crimes and strong suspicions that he was acting as a double agent for the Russians, [Nazi SS Major Walter P. Schreiber] was hired to work with the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. On Oct. 7, 1951, the New York Times reported that Schreiber was in Texas working for the U.S. Air Force. After his employment contract with the Army and Air Force expired, the CIA blocked plans to send Schreiber back to Germany and in May 1952 helped arrange his relocation to Buenos Aires where he was employed as an expert on ‘disease and epidemics’ by the Argentine government. Some former Fort Detrick researchers who declined to be identified maintained that Schreiber, on at least two occasions, lectured at the Frederick, Md., facility. Others maintain that Schreiber was relocated to Argentina so he could help facilitate the flow to the United States of other fugitive Nazi scientists hiding there.” H.P. Albarelli Jr., “The secret history of anthrax: Declassified documents show widespread experimentation in ‘40s,” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/06/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25220); H.P. Albarelli Jr., “Feds’ involvement in anthrax experiments: Records show conflicting reports about bacterium’s use as weapon;” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/21/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406).
[v] John Marks, The Search For The Manchurian Candidate (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), pp. 6-8.
[vi] Marks reports that the Nazis first conducted mind-control experiments with mescaline “to eliminate the will of the person examined.” While the Nazis experimented on “Jews, gypsies, Russians and other groups on whose lives the Nazis place little or no value,” American scientists using exactly the same techniques (for example, slipping the drug into a person’s drink) with even more powerful chemicals would test these substances on the American public at-large. Like the Nazis, the Americans would also use drugs in combination with hypnosis for mind-control experiments. Marks, p. 4, 5.
[vii] Quoting CIA sources, the New York Times summarized the “25-year, $25-million effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to learn how to control the human mind.” The CIA “sought to crack the mental defenses of enemy agents—to be able to program them and its own operatives to carry out any mission even against their will and ‘against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.’” Nicholas M. Horrock, “Private Institutions Used in CIA Effort to Control Behavior,” New York Times, August 2, 1977.
[viii] This research was secretly financed and orchestrated through a network of CIA-controlled foundations.
[ix] There is a historical precedent for this scenario, which goes back to the very formation of the Republic. George Washington vaccinated his recruits against smallpox to protect them from suspected biological warfare attempts by the British. It is known that the British used such measures against Indian populations. According to an article on the PBS website: “During the French and Indian War in 1763 the British Commander-in-Chief Sir Jeffrey Amherst wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet about the using smallpox against Indians: ‘Could it not be contrived to send smallpox among these disaffected tribes of Indians? We must use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.’” The BBC reported the favorable response to the letter: “The colonel replied: 'I will try to inoculate the [Native American tribe] with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' Smallpox decimated the Native Americans, who had never been exposed to the disease before and had no immunity.”
[x] John Marks described how offensive mind-control research was related to defensive research. According to Marks, the early mind-control researchers “quickly realized that the only way to build an effective defense against mind control was to understand its offensive possibilities. The line between offense and defense—if it ever existed—soon became so blurred as to be meaningless.” John Marks, The Search For The Manchurian Candidate (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), p. 25.
[xi] As John Marks summarized: “Caught in the muck and frustration of ordinary spywork, operators hoped for a miracle tool. Faced with liars and deceivers, they longed for a truth drug. Surrounded by people who knew too much, they sought a way to create amnesia. They dreamed of finding means to make unwilling people carry out specific tasks, such as stealing documents, provoking a fight, killing someone or otherwise committing an antisocial act. … Plagued by the unsureness, agency officials hoped to take the randomness—indeed, the free will—out of agent handling. … Thus the impetus toward mind-control research came not only from the lure of science and the fantasies of science fiction, it also came from the art of the spy business.” John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), pp. 52, 53.
[xii] Mind-control technology could also be used to extract information from enemy agents or even turn them into unwitting double agents.
[xiii] This process was designed to induce immunoproficiency through creating immunodeficiency. See Why AIDS Was Invented, by the author.
[xiv] In addition to helping researchers understand how to increase the lethality of bioweapons, the ability to selectively deplete the immune system would allow the government to turn everyday diseases into biowarfare agents. Through the use of this technology, the U.S. could selectively destroy entire populations considered national security threats.
[xv] In the 1960s, the U.S. considered using smallpox as a bioweapon against the Vietnamese since U.S. soldiers were vaccinated against the disease while the Vietnamese were not. “A boomerang effect seemed unlikely, since American troops were routinely vaccinated against the contagious disease. And North Vietnamese troops appeared to be vulnerable. In some ways, the setting was ideal. Though Vietnam had experienced no smallpox outbreaks since 1959, the disease still lurked in neighboring countries, allowing an epidemic to be attributed to natural causes. In the argot of covert operations, the strike would be plausibly deniable, a key requirement.” Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William Broad, Germs, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 60, 61, 74.
[xvi] This technology allowed planners to selectively deplete not only populations of immune system cells but entire populations in the Third World.
[xvii] In my book, I summarize the evidence that this biological warfare exercise was conducted under the pretext of administering vaccines, including the smallpox vaccine. Curiously, there is a historical precedent for the use of smallpox vaccination in a biological warfare exercise. According to a BBC article by Colette Flight: “It has been alleged that smallpox was also used as a weapon during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). During the winter of 1775-76, American forces were attempting to free Quebec from British control. After capturing Montreal, it looked as if they might succeed. But in December 1775, the British fort commander reportedly had civilians immunized against the disease and then deliberately sent out to infect the American troops. A few weeks later a major smallpox epidemic broke out in the American ranks, affecting about half of the 10,000 soldiers. They retreated in chaos after burying their dead in mass graves.”
[xviii] The Scotland Sunday Times reported the activities of an internationally respected Canadian doctor recruited by the CIA: “Doctor Ewan Cameron, who became one of the world’s leading psychiatrists, developed techniques used by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of people in his care.” Under Cameron’s “care,” patients were kept on LSD for months at a time so they could be brainwashed. According to the Times, “Patients were woken from drug-induced stupors two or three times a day for multiple electric shocks. In a specially designed ‘sleep room’ …Cameron placed a speaker under the patient’s pillow and relayed negative messages for 16 hours a day.” One of Cameron’s victims was Gail Kastner, who after 50 years, has finally gotten her lawsuit appealed in the Canadian courts. According to the Times, “Kastner was a 19-year-old honors student suffering from mild depression when she first underwent ‘treatment’ in 1953. On returning home she sucked her thumb, demanded to be fed from a bottle, talked in a baby voice and urinated on the floor.” This court case opens the possibility of compensation for hundreds of more victims. “Brainwash victims win cash claims,” Karin Goodwin, The Sunday Times, Scotland October 17, 2004.
Jerry Leonard is a physicist who has been actively involved in microelectronics research and production for over 15 years. He has numerous patents and publications related to his scientific career. In his personal research he has analyzed the extensive though hidden role American corporations played not only in creating Nazi Germany but in recruiting Nazi war criminals following the war. Jerry documents how this resulted in the continuation of the unethical human experimentation conducted in Nazi concentration camps--including mind control research, which he proposes ultimately led to the assassination of JFK, and vaccine research, which he proposes led to AIDS and the continuation of Hitler's eugenic mission. http://www.winstonsmith.net
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jerry_Leonard
"Because of its power and global interests U.S. leaders have committed crimes as a matter of course and structural necessity. A strict application of international law would ... have given every U.S. president of the past 50 years Nuremberg treatment." --Edward Herman
The United States ended World War II by using the most horrific weapon in the history of warfare—the atomic bomb—on the Japanese civilian population. This doomsday weapon had been developed in total secrecy as part of a massive research program employing a small army of world-class scientists. After the war, the United States scrambled through the rubble and chaos to determine what progress its enemies had made in their secret weapons development programs. It turned out that the Germans’ atom bomb effort was primitive compared to the Manhattan Project. However, the Germans and the Japanese had made progress in other areas – and we were obsessed over finding out just how much.
Two of the “weapons’’ we sought information on had nothing to do with the traditional field of battle, but their ramifications would be enormous. Using volumes of information gained from German and Japanese experiments conducted on concentration camp prisoners, POWs and entire civilian populations, the U.S. continued its enemies’ research programs in mind control[i] and biological warfare.[ii] It even employed some of the war criminals that managed these programs as consultants at Fort Detrick[iii],[iv] for experiments using U.S. citizens and soldiers as guinea pigs.
The Manhattan Project infrastructure itself was employed in this regard.[v] Under this umbrella, the U.S. hoped to duplicate its success in creating devastating weapons by perfecting the mind-control technology developed by the Germans[vi] and the biological warfare technology developed and tested by the Japanese.
The postwar effort to develop novel weapons was substantially different, however, from that which produced a super-bomb capable of leveling an entire city. Instead of using physics and chemistry to harness the fundamental forces of nature, these new weapons would exploit the fields of psychology and biology to manipulate the fundamental processes required for mental[vii] and physical health in humans. By unlocking the keys to the brain and the body, the United States would be able to induce diseases at will for psychological or biological warfare. These weapons ultimately had the potential to be more devastating than the atom bomb since they could not only control both mental and physical health on an unprecedented scale but, more importantly, could be tested and used in complete secrecy.
To refine the weapons developed by its enemies in WWII, the Central Intelligence Agency launched an immense program of clandestine research and international experimentation on human subjects. By covertly leveraging the U.S. medical infrastructure, the CIA was able to orchestrate this experimentation under the pretense of legitimate research by doctors who often didn't realize the sinister ends to which their research would be used.[viii]
The initial mind-control research was conducted toward nominally noble ends—even if the means to achieve them were abominable. Like their counterparts in other fields, the nation’s elite psychologists and psychiatrists attempted to create human diseases on-demand so that cures could be tested under laboratory conditions. For example, research geared toward selectively inducing hypnotic amnesia and drug-induced schizophrenic states would provide doctors with a way of testing theories on the causes of neurosis and mental illness. Medical research with biological agents had similarly stated goals. Human experiments with “anticancer viruses” such as West Nile Virus and with “cancer transplants” in subjects with impaired immune systems would allow scientists to test their theories of how the immune system controlled the growth of diseases. Such information would assist in manipulating the human immune system toward the development of cancer vaccines.
But of course these experiments toward inducing laboratory models of mental and physical diseases were not conducted purely for medical purposes. Much of this research was conducted for psychological and biological warfare applications, and even then under the pretext of developing defensive measures against enemy use of such technology. For example, learning how to destroy memory and manipulate personality through stress, drugs and hypnosis might allow researchers to counteract these processes and “inoculate” their men against enemy use of such techniques in hostile interrogations. (Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” was the victim of exactly this type of research as a student at Harvard.) Likewise, knowledge of how immunity could be destroyed by chemicals and viruses to cause disease would provide clues critical to counteract these processes in the development of vaccines. Such vaccines would allow the government to inoculate its own troops against bioweapons used by national security threats.[ix]
Toward even more sinister ends, this research also provided an offensive capability. Supposedly defensive mind-control research[x] would give the CIA the ability to create agents and operatives who would carry out their assignments in the midst of danger without risk of their becoming security threats.[xi] Through mental conditioning and the creation of synthetic, multiple personalities, interrogation-proof double agents could be produced who would not only safely transfer information as human couriers (to a friendly hypnotist) but obediently commit acts such as assassinations that were contrary to their personal morality and safety. Agents with enhanced or selectively depleted memories could even be sent into the field to accomplish tasks they would have no conscious recollection of completing.[xii]
Work on vaccines had dual uses as well. By developing the technology to selectively deplete the immune system, researchers could develop an understanding of how immune system defects caused disease. This information could then be used to counteract such processes and selectively enhance the immune system in the form of vaccines.[xiii] But the ability to controllably destroy the immune system was in itself a biological weapon that could be used as part of an offensive capability.[xiv] And these offensive and defensive tools could be used synergistically. Defensive vaccines could be developed that would allow U.S. forces to be inoculated against offensive bioweapons to be used on enemy forces.[xv]
Theory is one thing, implementation quite another. Has the U.S. government, through its agencies, transformed “could” and “would” into “can” and “will”? Did it actually bring research in psychological and biological warfare to the next level? Years of study have convinced me that this has happened and is happening to this very day. Consider:
* The technology developed to control the immune system—selectively depleting immune cells with viruses in animal cancer-transplant experiments—was exploited to induce the epidemic of AIDS and cancer in humans. This latter epidemic is highly beneficial for fulfilling the goals of both the cancer vaccine research and national security establishments, the two fields that worked synergistically to create AIDS viruses grown in human cells just prior to the HIV epidemic. My book AIDS: The “Perfect” Disease explains how such biological warfare agents were not only created under the pretext of cancer research but unleashed under the pretext of an international cancer experiment.[xvi] In this way, the United States echoed the wartime international biological warfare exercises conducted by the Japanese researchers it recruited following WWII using immunosuppressive viruses it perfected through decades of cancer experiments in animals.[xvii]
* Nazi mind-control techniques were covertly perfected by U.S. intelligence agencies after decades of research on hundreds of victims,[xviii] ultimately yielding the ability to control the human mind to create “programmed” provocateurs, double agents and “involuntary assassins.” According to declassified government documents published by the New York Times, such agents would carry out actions “even against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.” The most egregious crime from these creations was the programming of the assassin used to murder President John F. Kennedy. My book The Perfect Assassin shows how Lee Harvey Oswald’s seemingly contradictory actions are eerily consistent with his being unwittingly manipulated through mind control by the CIA through the now legendary Cold War programs MKULTRA and COINTELPRO. The benefits of Oswald’s actions to the CIA and the foreshadowing of his activities in CIA memos and statements of military hypnotists are revealed in my harmonizing study of the JFK murder.
* Mind-control experimentation is also an enabling technology to maintain a population of human guinea pigs for biological experimentation. The use of AIDS within this framework of experimentation is an extraordinary vehicle to continue the long-running eugenics program to create a master race overseen by American corporations in Nazi Germany. I believe much of U.S. policy is designed to quietly perpetuate this brutally destructive and elitist program. My book Hitler Is Winning describes the tragic legacy and current dangers of this ongoing effort quietly sponsored by history’s deadliest and unpunished war criminals—including America’s elite universities, corporate foundations and political and financial luminaries.
While discussion of mind control and biological warfare by our own government is disconcerting to many, and incredible to some, it is only through public awareness of these subjects that I believe national security planners can be held accountable and thus be prevented from their continued use. For those interested in exploring these subjects further, please read my works explaining the development and use of these weapons available at www.winstonsmith.net.
Forewarned is forearmed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Ironically, one of the American biowarfare experts sent into Germany on a fact-finding mission would later die under suspicious circumstances as a result of being an unwitting participant in a CIA mind-control drug experiment similar to those conducted by the Nazis he was tasked with interviewing. Frank Olson, a U.S. government anthrax expert, had been sent to Germany in 1951 with two other men as part of a CIA program to evaluate progress made in Nazi mind-control research. In this case it was the research overseen by “Nazi anthrax expert and SS Major General Dr. Walter P. Schreiber” during the war. As H.P. Albarelli Jr. reported, the U.S.team “traveled to Germany to interview Schreiber” and learn “all that it could about a Nazi SS project that employed ‘psychochemical drugs’ during concentration camp interrogation experiments.” H.P. Albarelli Jr., “Feds’ involvement in anthrax experiments: Records show conflicting reports about bacterium’s use as weapon;” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/21/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406).
[ii] Americans also scrambled to get data from Japanese biological warfare experts such as Dr. Shiro Ishii, the head of Japan’s biowarfare establishment. (This establishment, known as Unit 731, killed tens of thousands of civilians in field tests with biowarfare agents it developed in tests on prisoners of war.) Lt. Col. Arvo T. Thompson interviewed Ishii after his capture by American forces: “In Japan, Thompson interviewed Ishii, who had been captured by the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps. …A top-secret U.S. Army Far East Command report on Thompson’s findings reads: ‘The value to the U.S. of Japanese biological weapons data is of such importance to national security as to far outweigh the value accruing from war-crimes prosecution.’ A 1956 FBI memorandum reveals that by the mid-1950s the U.S. knew everything about Ishii’s human experiments but agreed not to prosecute in exchange for Japan’s scientific data on germ warfare.” Like Frank Olson, Thompson later committed suicide: “In May 1951, scientists at Fort Detrick were shocked to learn that Thompson had ‘committed suicide’ while on another special assignment in Tokyo. The circumstances surrounding Thompson’s death have never been publicly revealed. Two years later, Olson would also ‘commit suicide’ under circumstances so unusual that eventually he became an icon of American mysteries.” H.P. Albarelli Jr., “Feds’ involvement in anthrax experiments: Records show conflicting reports about bacterium’s use as weapon;” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/21/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406).
[iii] War criminals from both enemy camps would be hired as consultants and brought to lecture at Fort Detrick, Maryland—the U.S. center for biological warfare development. According to Fort Detrick researchers, the chief Japanese biological warfare researcher (Ishii), along with other Japanese researchers, “was secreted into the United States to lecture at Camp Detrick…. on Unit 731's human experiments.” http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406
[iv] “Remarkably, despite his being wanted for war crimes and strong suspicions that he was acting as a double agent for the Russians, [Nazi SS Major Walter P. Schreiber] was hired to work with the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. On Oct. 7, 1951, the New York Times reported that Schreiber was in Texas working for the U.S. Air Force. After his employment contract with the Army and Air Force expired, the CIA blocked plans to send Schreiber back to Germany and in May 1952 helped arrange his relocation to Buenos Aires where he was employed as an expert on ‘disease and epidemics’ by the Argentine government. Some former Fort Detrick researchers who declined to be identified maintained that Schreiber, on at least two occasions, lectured at the Frederick, Md., facility. Others maintain that Schreiber was relocated to Argentina so he could help facilitate the flow to the United States of other fugitive Nazi scientists hiding there.” H.P. Albarelli Jr., “The secret history of anthrax: Declassified documents show widespread experimentation in ‘40s,” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/06/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25220); H.P. Albarelli Jr., “Feds’ involvement in anthrax experiments: Records show conflicting reports about bacterium’s use as weapon;” WorldNetDaily.com, 9/21/01, (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25406).
[v] John Marks, The Search For The Manchurian Candidate (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), pp. 6-8.
[vi] Marks reports that the Nazis first conducted mind-control experiments with mescaline “to eliminate the will of the person examined.” While the Nazis experimented on “Jews, gypsies, Russians and other groups on whose lives the Nazis place little or no value,” American scientists using exactly the same techniques (for example, slipping the drug into a person’s drink) with even more powerful chemicals would test these substances on the American public at-large. Like the Nazis, the Americans would also use drugs in combination with hypnosis for mind-control experiments. Marks, p. 4, 5.
[vii] Quoting CIA sources, the New York Times summarized the “25-year, $25-million effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to learn how to control the human mind.” The CIA “sought to crack the mental defenses of enemy agents—to be able to program them and its own operatives to carry out any mission even against their will and ‘against such fundamental laws of nature as self-preservation.’” Nicholas M. Horrock, “Private Institutions Used in CIA Effort to Control Behavior,” New York Times, August 2, 1977.
[viii] This research was secretly financed and orchestrated through a network of CIA-controlled foundations.
[ix] There is a historical precedent for this scenario, which goes back to the very formation of the Republic. George Washington vaccinated his recruits against smallpox to protect them from suspected biological warfare attempts by the British. It is known that the British used such measures against Indian populations. According to an article on the PBS website: “During the French and Indian War in 1763 the British Commander-in-Chief Sir Jeffrey Amherst wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet about the using smallpox against Indians: ‘Could it not be contrived to send smallpox among these disaffected tribes of Indians? We must use every stratagem in our power to reduce them.’” The BBC reported the favorable response to the letter: “The colonel replied: 'I will try to inoculate the [Native American tribe] with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' Smallpox decimated the Native Americans, who had never been exposed to the disease before and had no immunity.”
[x] John Marks described how offensive mind-control research was related to defensive research. According to Marks, the early mind-control researchers “quickly realized that the only way to build an effective defense against mind control was to understand its offensive possibilities. The line between offense and defense—if it ever existed—soon became so blurred as to be meaningless.” John Marks, The Search For The Manchurian Candidate (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), p. 25.
[xi] As John Marks summarized: “Caught in the muck and frustration of ordinary spywork, operators hoped for a miracle tool. Faced with liars and deceivers, they longed for a truth drug. Surrounded by people who knew too much, they sought a way to create amnesia. They dreamed of finding means to make unwilling people carry out specific tasks, such as stealing documents, provoking a fight, killing someone or otherwise committing an antisocial act. … Plagued by the unsureness, agency officials hoped to take the randomness—indeed, the free will—out of agent handling. … Thus the impetus toward mind-control research came not only from the lure of science and the fantasies of science fiction, it also came from the art of the spy business.” John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979), pp. 52, 53.
[xii] Mind-control technology could also be used to extract information from enemy agents or even turn them into unwitting double agents.
[xiii] This process was designed to induce immunoproficiency through creating immunodeficiency. See Why AIDS Was Invented, by the author.
[xiv] In addition to helping researchers understand how to increase the lethality of bioweapons, the ability to selectively deplete the immune system would allow the government to turn everyday diseases into biowarfare agents. Through the use of this technology, the U.S. could selectively destroy entire populations considered national security threats.
[xv] In the 1960s, the U.S. considered using smallpox as a bioweapon against the Vietnamese since U.S. soldiers were vaccinated against the disease while the Vietnamese were not. “A boomerang effect seemed unlikely, since American troops were routinely vaccinated against the contagious disease. And North Vietnamese troops appeared to be vulnerable. In some ways, the setting was ideal. Though Vietnam had experienced no smallpox outbreaks since 1959, the disease still lurked in neighboring countries, allowing an epidemic to be attributed to natural causes. In the argot of covert operations, the strike would be plausibly deniable, a key requirement.” Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William Broad, Germs, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), pp. 60, 61, 74.
[xvi] This technology allowed planners to selectively deplete not only populations of immune system cells but entire populations in the Third World.
[xvii] In my book, I summarize the evidence that this biological warfare exercise was conducted under the pretext of administering vaccines, including the smallpox vaccine. Curiously, there is a historical precedent for the use of smallpox vaccination in a biological warfare exercise. According to a BBC article by Colette Flight: “It has been alleged that smallpox was also used as a weapon during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). During the winter of 1775-76, American forces were attempting to free Quebec from British control. After capturing Montreal, it looked as if they might succeed. But in December 1775, the British fort commander reportedly had civilians immunized against the disease and then deliberately sent out to infect the American troops. A few weeks later a major smallpox epidemic broke out in the American ranks, affecting about half of the 10,000 soldiers. They retreated in chaos after burying their dead in mass graves.”
[xviii] The Scotland Sunday Times reported the activities of an internationally respected Canadian doctor recruited by the CIA: “Doctor Ewan Cameron, who became one of the world’s leading psychiatrists, developed techniques used by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of people in his care.” Under Cameron’s “care,” patients were kept on LSD for months at a time so they could be brainwashed. According to the Times, “Patients were woken from drug-induced stupors two or three times a day for multiple electric shocks. In a specially designed ‘sleep room’ …Cameron placed a speaker under the patient’s pillow and relayed negative messages for 16 hours a day.” One of Cameron’s victims was Gail Kastner, who after 50 years, has finally gotten her lawsuit appealed in the Canadian courts. According to the Times, “Kastner was a 19-year-old honors student suffering from mild depression when she first underwent ‘treatment’ in 1953. On returning home she sucked her thumb, demanded to be fed from a bottle, talked in a baby voice and urinated on the floor.” This court case opens the possibility of compensation for hundreds of more victims. “Brainwash victims win cash claims,” Karin Goodwin, The Sunday Times, Scotland October 17, 2004.
Jerry Leonard is a physicist who has been actively involved in microelectronics research and production for over 15 years. He has numerous patents and publications related to his scientific career. In his personal research he has analyzed the extensive though hidden role American corporations played not only in creating Nazi Germany but in recruiting Nazi war criminals following the war. Jerry documents how this resulted in the continuation of the unethical human experimentation conducted in Nazi concentration camps--including mind control research, which he proposes ultimately led to the assassination of JFK, and vaccine research, which he proposes led to AIDS and the continuation of Hitler's eugenic mission. http://www.winstonsmith.net
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jerry_Leonard
Got Milk? Hope Not
By Dr. Linda Posh
The approval by the FDA to use BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) to increase the amount of milk produced per cow is just the icing on the cake for an already bleak scenario. BGH causes an in crease in insulin like growth factor (IGF-1) in the milk of cows receiving this dreadful hormone. IGF-1 survives milk processing (pasteurization and homogenization) and is easily absorbed into the human bloodstream. It is important to note that IGF-1 promotes the transformation of human breast cells into cancerous cells. IGF-1 is an already intact growth factor for existing cancer cells. BGH also causes cows to have increased rates of infections. Of course, regular doses of antibiotics help to alleviate this phenomenon.
But what about my calcium? The majority of the world’s population takes much less calcium than we do, yet have markedly lesser rates of osteoporosis and tooth decay. You can get all the calcium your body requires by including ample portions of dark leafy green vegetables into your diet. Where do you think that cow gets the calcium in requires to grow to such monstrous proportions?
To date, cow’s milk is the number one allergic food in this country. Cow’s milk is very well documented in cases of bloating, gas, diarrhea, anemia (iron deficiency type), atherosclerosis and acne. Cow’s milk, the primary cause of repeat ear infections in children. Cow’s milk is linked to insulin dependant diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. However, small amounts of dairy products consumed in moderation will result in little to no problems for the majority.
The major difficulty here is processing. Healthy, nutrient dense milk products are turned into hormone laden allergens via modern feeding methods that substitute fresh green grass with soy and grain based feeds. NOT what a cow was designed to live on. Modern breeding methods produce cows with oversize pituitary glands which stimulate them to produce three times more milk.
During pasteurization, valuable enzymes are destroyed. Without these naturally occurring enzymes, milk is near impossible to digest for many. Synthetic Vitamin D is added after processing. Synthetic Vitamin D is known to be toxic to the liver.
The American Dairy Board has done a bang up wonderful job of promoting this atrocious food as a must have in the American diet. The majority believe that milk is a must have for a complete wholesome diet. Nothing is further from the truth.
If possible, try to obtain non processed raw dairy products in your area. There are a fortunate few who are able to go directly to the farmer for unprocessed dairy products. At the very least, obtain organic and hormone free dairy products from your local health food store.
Dr. Linda Posh MS SLP ND. "Doc Posh" brings a fresh perspective to natural health and nutrition. She packs a solid educational background with degrees in organic chemistry, psychology and a Masters in Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Dr. sports a diverse work history including experience and expertise in acute care neurorehab services, special education, autism support services, spinal cord injuries, senior rehabilitation services and currently consults to both patients and colleagues in natural health. Recently, she has been in the laboratory, formulating revolutionary whole food nutritional supplements.
Nutra-Resources Body Balance Liquid Vitamins Website donates all profits to providing free Health Care for those in need. Sign up for Doc Posh’s newsletter. Get the latest in health care discoveries, consumer deception and more. Visit http://www.Nutra-Resources.com for the finest in liquid vitamins.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Linda_Posh
The approval by the FDA to use BGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) to increase the amount of milk produced per cow is just the icing on the cake for an already bleak scenario. BGH causes an in crease in insulin like growth factor (IGF-1) in the milk of cows receiving this dreadful hormone. IGF-1 survives milk processing (pasteurization and homogenization) and is easily absorbed into the human bloodstream. It is important to note that IGF-1 promotes the transformation of human breast cells into cancerous cells. IGF-1 is an already intact growth factor for existing cancer cells. BGH also causes cows to have increased rates of infections. Of course, regular doses of antibiotics help to alleviate this phenomenon.
But what about my calcium? The majority of the world’s population takes much less calcium than we do, yet have markedly lesser rates of osteoporosis and tooth decay. You can get all the calcium your body requires by including ample portions of dark leafy green vegetables into your diet. Where do you think that cow gets the calcium in requires to grow to such monstrous proportions?
To date, cow’s milk is the number one allergic food in this country. Cow’s milk is very well documented in cases of bloating, gas, diarrhea, anemia (iron deficiency type), atherosclerosis and acne. Cow’s milk, the primary cause of repeat ear infections in children. Cow’s milk is linked to insulin dependant diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. However, small amounts of dairy products consumed in moderation will result in little to no problems for the majority.
The major difficulty here is processing. Healthy, nutrient dense milk products are turned into hormone laden allergens via modern feeding methods that substitute fresh green grass with soy and grain based feeds. NOT what a cow was designed to live on. Modern breeding methods produce cows with oversize pituitary glands which stimulate them to produce three times more milk.
During pasteurization, valuable enzymes are destroyed. Without these naturally occurring enzymes, milk is near impossible to digest for many. Synthetic Vitamin D is added after processing. Synthetic Vitamin D is known to be toxic to the liver.
The American Dairy Board has done a bang up wonderful job of promoting this atrocious food as a must have in the American diet. The majority believe that milk is a must have for a complete wholesome diet. Nothing is further from the truth.
If possible, try to obtain non processed raw dairy products in your area. There are a fortunate few who are able to go directly to the farmer for unprocessed dairy products. At the very least, obtain organic and hormone free dairy products from your local health food store.
Dr. Linda Posh MS SLP ND. "Doc Posh" brings a fresh perspective to natural health and nutrition. She packs a solid educational background with degrees in organic chemistry, psychology and a Masters in Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Dr. sports a diverse work history including experience and expertise in acute care neurorehab services, special education, autism support services, spinal cord injuries, senior rehabilitation services and currently consults to both patients and colleagues in natural health. Recently, she has been in the laboratory, formulating revolutionary whole food nutritional supplements.
Nutra-Resources Body Balance Liquid Vitamins Website donates all profits to providing free Health Care for those in need. Sign up for Doc Posh’s newsletter. Get the latest in health care discoveries, consumer deception and more. Visit http://www.Nutra-Resources.com for the finest in liquid vitamins.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Linda_Posh
Refusing to Name Sources, Reporter May Face Big Fines
By ROBERT MACMILLAN
February 23, 2008; Page A2 WSJ
Toni Locy, a former USA Today reporter, could face some tough and expensive decisions beginning next week.
Ms. Locy has defied a court order to reveal the sources she used in stories that named a government researcher as "a person of interest" in an FBI investigation into a string of post-9/11 anthrax attacks. A federal judge will decide as early as next week whether to fine Ms. Locy $5,000 a day for refusing to give up those names.
Courts in the last few years have been stepping-up pressure on reporters to identify sources used in politically sensitive stories, including pieces about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the steroids investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, or Balco.
What makes Ms. Locy's case different is that the judge may force her to pay the daily fines out of her own pocket. Ms. Locy now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, where she earns $75,000 a year. She says she has no savings to speak of. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton has said he would raise the daily fine with each week that the dispute drags on -- requiring her to pay $500 a day for the first week, $1,000 a day in the second week, and $5,000 a day in the third week. (Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, has been paying for Ms. Locy's legal bills.)
If Ms. Locy were to hold out for three weeks, she would owe $45,500, or about 60% of her salary. She said her journalism students have offered to hold a bake sale to raise some of the money, but she doesn't even know if the judge would allow that because the funds would be coming from someone else. "I'll be bankrupt in a matter of days," Ms. Locy said in a telephone interview this week.
Steven J. Hatfill, who was named by Ms. Locy and other reporters in stories beginning in 2002, later sued the Justice Department, accusing it of violating the federal Privacy Act by giving reporters information about him even though he hadn't been charged with a crime. Mr. Hatfill, who was never charged in the case, is suing for unspecified damages. His legal team has asked for the sources' identities as part of the case, and also for fines to be levied against Ms. Locy and former CBS reporter James Stewart for failing to obey the judge's order. Three other reporters who wrote stories about Mr. Hatfill wound up not having to disclose their sources for technical reasons.
If the judge levies the fines, Ms. Locy is planning to appeal the contempt order. If that happens, the judge may issue a stay on the contempt order until the appeal is heard. Meanwhile, she is trying to reconnect with her sources to see if they will release her from her promise to keep them anonymous. Two of her approximately 10 sources did so last year and were deposed in the case.
February 23, 2008; Page A2 WSJ
Toni Locy, a former USA Today reporter, could face some tough and expensive decisions beginning next week.
Ms. Locy has defied a court order to reveal the sources she used in stories that named a government researcher as "a person of interest" in an FBI investigation into a string of post-9/11 anthrax attacks. A federal judge will decide as early as next week whether to fine Ms. Locy $5,000 a day for refusing to give up those names.
Courts in the last few years have been stepping-up pressure on reporters to identify sources used in politically sensitive stories, including pieces about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the steroids investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative, or Balco.
What makes Ms. Locy's case different is that the judge may force her to pay the daily fines out of her own pocket. Ms. Locy now teaches journalism at West Virginia University, where she earns $75,000 a year. She says she has no savings to speak of. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton has said he would raise the daily fine with each week that the dispute drags on -- requiring her to pay $500 a day for the first week, $1,000 a day in the second week, and $5,000 a day in the third week. (Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, has been paying for Ms. Locy's legal bills.)
If Ms. Locy were to hold out for three weeks, she would owe $45,500, or about 60% of her salary. She said her journalism students have offered to hold a bake sale to raise some of the money, but she doesn't even know if the judge would allow that because the funds would be coming from someone else. "I'll be bankrupt in a matter of days," Ms. Locy said in a telephone interview this week.
Steven J. Hatfill, who was named by Ms. Locy and other reporters in stories beginning in 2002, later sued the Justice Department, accusing it of violating the federal Privacy Act by giving reporters information about him even though he hadn't been charged with a crime. Mr. Hatfill, who was never charged in the case, is suing for unspecified damages. His legal team has asked for the sources' identities as part of the case, and also for fines to be levied against Ms. Locy and former CBS reporter James Stewart for failing to obey the judge's order. Three other reporters who wrote stories about Mr. Hatfill wound up not having to disclose their sources for technical reasons.
If the judge levies the fines, Ms. Locy is planning to appeal the contempt order. If that happens, the judge may issue a stay on the contempt order until the appeal is heard. Meanwhile, she is trying to reconnect with her sources to see if they will release her from her promise to keep them anonymous. Two of her approximately 10 sources did so last year and were deposed in the case.
His and Her Finances
February 22, 2008; Page A14 WSJ
Stonewalling and secrecy helped Bill and Hillary Clinton win the White House without a thorough enough vetting in 1992. Now they're trying to do it again, this time by not disclosing either their income tax returns or the donor list for the Clinton Foundation.
All of this has become the target of greater attention since Mrs. Clinton loaned her struggling campaign $5 million last month. She waited until after the crucial Super Tuesday voting to disclose this news, and initially described the loan as "my money." Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson then clarified that the cash had come from Mrs. Clinton's 50% "share" of the couple's joint resources.
Is America a great country or what? Only seven years ago the Clintons were swimming in legal bills. They've since cashed in on their celebrity to pay off a $2 million mortgage on their Washington D.C. home, and are now able to lend $5 million to Mrs. Clinton's campaign. The Senator has had her own success, earning more than $5 million for her "Living History" memoir. But the real income source has been the former President, who has been giving $450,000 speeches, and in general parlaying his political fame into personal riches.
Mr. Clinton is now trying to unwind a business relationship with billionaire pal Ron Burkle. This deal made him a partner -- along with the ruler of Dubai -- in the Yucaipa Global Fund. How much did Mr. Clinton earn from a partnership with men whose business interests might be affected by the policy actions of a President Hillary Clinton? The Clintons and their accountant know, but the public doesn't.
Mr. Clinton has also been raising cash for the Clinton Foundation, which funds his charitable activities and Presidential library. The foundation has raised more than $500 million, but Mr. Clinton has refused to release a donor list.
What we do know is that Mr. Clinton has allowed donors to use his influence to advance their business interests. That was the case with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier, who won a huge mining concession in Kazakhstan after Mr. Clinton flew all the way to Almaty to introduce him to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Bloomberg reported this week that Mr. Clinton has also been a frequent flyer on Mr. Giustra's corporate jet.
Mr. Giustra later donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation and has pledged $100 million more. As the New York Times has reported, Mr. Clinton used his trip to praise Mr. Nazarbayev's bid to head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, even as Senator Clinton was slamming the country's record on corruption and elections. If Mr. Clinton's personal business is going to affect U.S. foreign policy, he ought to tell the world who his benefactors are.
We've seen this nondisclosure before. During the 1992 campaign, the Clintons claimed to be coming clean by releasing their tax returns from 1980 forward. But they steadfastly refused to release their returns for prior years, and only later did we learn that 1978 and 1979 were the tax years when Mrs. Clinton reported her 10,000% cattle-futures trading profit. Remember Red Bone and Jim Blair, and how she claimed she had made the investment on her own after reading the Wall Street Journal? For that matter, remember the other characters who provided cash for the Clintons in return for nights in the Lincoln Bedroom, among other things?
Senator Clinton has said she'll make her tax returns public only if she wins the Democratic nomination. Mr. Clinton has said he'll disclose his future donors only if she is President. Once again they're trying to block disclosure until it's too late to inform the judgment of voters.
Mr. Obama has released his tax returns and has suggested Mrs. Clinton do the same because "the American people deserve to know where you get your income from." If the Clintons continue to keep his and her finances under wraps, the public would be wise, given their history, to assume they have something to hide.
Stonewalling and secrecy helped Bill and Hillary Clinton win the White House without a thorough enough vetting in 1992. Now they're trying to do it again, this time by not disclosing either their income tax returns or the donor list for the Clinton Foundation.
All of this has become the target of greater attention since Mrs. Clinton loaned her struggling campaign $5 million last month. She waited until after the crucial Super Tuesday voting to disclose this news, and initially described the loan as "my money." Campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson then clarified that the cash had come from Mrs. Clinton's 50% "share" of the couple's joint resources.
Is America a great country or what? Only seven years ago the Clintons were swimming in legal bills. They've since cashed in on their celebrity to pay off a $2 million mortgage on their Washington D.C. home, and are now able to lend $5 million to Mrs. Clinton's campaign. The Senator has had her own success, earning more than $5 million for her "Living History" memoir. But the real income source has been the former President, who has been giving $450,000 speeches, and in general parlaying his political fame into personal riches.
Mr. Clinton is now trying to unwind a business relationship with billionaire pal Ron Burkle. This deal made him a partner -- along with the ruler of Dubai -- in the Yucaipa Global Fund. How much did Mr. Clinton earn from a partnership with men whose business interests might be affected by the policy actions of a President Hillary Clinton? The Clintons and their accountant know, but the public doesn't.
Mr. Clinton has also been raising cash for the Clinton Foundation, which funds his charitable activities and Presidential library. The foundation has raised more than $500 million, but Mr. Clinton has refused to release a donor list.
What we do know is that Mr. Clinton has allowed donors to use his influence to advance their business interests. That was the case with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier, who won a huge mining concession in Kazakhstan after Mr. Clinton flew all the way to Almaty to introduce him to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Bloomberg reported this week that Mr. Clinton has also been a frequent flyer on Mr. Giustra's corporate jet.
Mr. Giustra later donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation and has pledged $100 million more. As the New York Times has reported, Mr. Clinton used his trip to praise Mr. Nazarbayev's bid to head the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, even as Senator Clinton was slamming the country's record on corruption and elections. If Mr. Clinton's personal business is going to affect U.S. foreign policy, he ought to tell the world who his benefactors are.
We've seen this nondisclosure before. During the 1992 campaign, the Clintons claimed to be coming clean by releasing their tax returns from 1980 forward. But they steadfastly refused to release their returns for prior years, and only later did we learn that 1978 and 1979 were the tax years when Mrs. Clinton reported her 10,000% cattle-futures trading profit. Remember Red Bone and Jim Blair, and how she claimed she had made the investment on her own after reading the Wall Street Journal? For that matter, remember the other characters who provided cash for the Clintons in return for nights in the Lincoln Bedroom, among other things?
Senator Clinton has said she'll make her tax returns public only if she wins the Democratic nomination. Mr. Clinton has said he'll disclose his future donors only if she is President. Once again they're trying to block disclosure until it's too late to inform the judgment of voters.
Mr. Obama has released his tax returns and has suggested Mrs. Clinton do the same because "the American people deserve to know where you get your income from." If the Clintons continue to keep his and her finances under wraps, the public would be wise, given their history, to assume they have something to hide.
Clintons' Tax Returns Would Cast a Wider Light
By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER and JAMES BANDLER
February 23, 2008; Page A5 WSJ
February 23, 2008; Page A5 WSJ
• Campaign Issue: Hillary Clinton has resisted calls from Barack Obama to release personal tax returns.
• What They Show: Her returns would reveal how much the Clintons pay annually in taxes, along with other financial details.
• Her Pledge: A Clinton spokesman says she would release her tax information if she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
Hillary Clinton has resisted calls from Barack Obama to follow him in releasing personal tax returns, arguing that Senate and presidential disclosure rules already have required her to make public large amounts of personal financial information.
But the New York senator's tax returns likely would provide information not available in those filings. The returns probably would show at least some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars of income earned in recent years by Bill Clinton that isn't required to be reported on Mrs. Clinton's political disclosure forms. The 1040 form also would show how much taxes the Clintons pay annually and whether they are paying at the standard rate or have used various deductions and shelters to lower their Internal Revenue Service bill.
Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said she has committed to releasing her tax information if she does become the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Calling for release of the tax returns now "is an attempt to create an issue where there isn't one," he said. Mr. Wolfson also said the couple take "traditional" tax deductions but didn't elaborate.
While parties' nominees traditionally release their tax returns, Mr. Obama's disclosure during the primary season is unusual. Mr. Obama released his 2006 tax returns last April. They showed that he and his wife, Michelle, had income of $991,296 in 2006, down from $1.6 million the previous year.
Mrs. Clinton faced pressure to release her returns earlier this month, after announcing that she had lent her campaign $5 million. "I think the American people deserve to know where you get your income from," Sen. Obama told reporters at the time. "I've disclosed my income-tax returns...I think we set the bar in terms of transparency and disclosure."
The presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, hasn't released his tax returns either. His campaign has said it won't decide whether to release the returns until after he is officially the nominee.
Mrs. Clinton's latest Senate disclosure form, filed last May, indicates that the Clintons' 2006 income was as much as $12 million. More than $10 million of that came from speeches the former president made to groups around the world, at up to $450,000 an appearance. In the first half of last year, Mr. Clinton earned an additional $5.8 million from speeches, according to Mrs. Clinton's presidential disclosure form filed in June.
However, neither of those forms fully reports Mr. Clinton's income. For certain types of spousal compensation -- such as consulting arrangements -- the forms reveal only the source of funds, and the fact that the payment exceeds $1,000. They don't say how much over $1,000.
Mrs. Clinton's forms make such a notation for infoUSA Inc., an Omaha, Neb., provider of marketing information that is headed by Vinod Gupta, a friend and political supporter of the Clintons.
A filing made as part of a shareholder lawsuit in Delaware state court against Mr. Gupta and others contends that, under a consulting agreement, infoUSA paid Mr. Clinton $2.1 million from July 2003 to April 2005 and agreed to pay him an additional $1.2 million through 2008. The suit contends that corporate assets were misused in various ways.
A person familiar with the matter said these numbers are essentially accurate. Mr. Gupta has denied wrongdoing and said the court has found the payments to Mr. Clinton to be legal. A spokesman for Mr. Clinton didn't respond to a question concerning the magnitude of payments from infoUSA.
Mrs. Clinton's disclosure forms also list her husband's partnership interests in an investment fund operated by Mr. Clinton's longtime friend and political supporter, Los Angeles billionaire Ronald Burkle. As reported, Mr. Clinton has been a senior adviser to Mr. Burkle's closely held Yucaipa Cos. and a partner or profit participant in certain Yucaipa investment funds.
Mrs. Clinton's presidential disclosure form shows that her husband had received as much as $17,500 in interest income from Yucaipa holdings since the beginning of 2006. It also said Mr. Clinton received a "guaranteed" partnership payment of "over $1,000." The Clintons' tax returns likely would give a clearer idea of the precise magnitude of that partnership payment and possibly other details about his partnership arrangement with Yucaipa.
The Clintons' tax returns also could provide information about some of the couple's expenses, said Paul Offenbacher, a Silver Spring, Md., accountant. One possible example: What expenses, if any, Mr. Clinton writes off against his annual income from speeches. When Mr. Clinton travels around the country or the world, he often travels on the private jets of friends or supporters. It isn't fully known whether or how Mr. Clinton reimburses such people for those trips.
The Clintons' tax returns also might give a fuller picture of the magnitude of the couple's charitable giving. Aside from Mr. Clinton's postpresidential foundation, called the William J. Clinton Foundation, the couple have a smaller charitable entity, called the Clinton Family Foundation. Like all charitable entities, the returns for those are public.
The forms for the latter foundation show that in 2006, the Clintons contributed nearly $1.6 million to the foundation. In that same year, the family foundation made nearly $1.3 million in donations to a range of philanthropic, religious and educational entities. Mr. Wolfson, the Clinton spokesman, said "the vast amount" of the couple's charitable donations go through the family foundation.
Candidates -- even presidents -- are under no legal obligation to release their tax returns. Since the 1990s it has been standard practice for party nominees to do so, said Joseph Thorndike, a tax historian for Tax Analysts, a Falls Church, Va., nonprofit provider of tax information.
Mr. Thorndike called Mr. Obama's release of his returns before the primaries "pretty unusual."
Mr. Thorndike said tax returns can point to politicians' inconsistencies. Franklin Roosevelt, whose returns were released after his death, took significant loss deductions on his Hyde Park, N.Y., estate, said Mr. Thorndike.
"That was the kind of tax-avoidance technique he railed against," said Mr. Thorndike.
"The easiest route for a candidate to avoid persistent questions about their finances is to just lay it out there," said Massie Ritsch, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics. "By withholding things, people wonder what you're trying to keep from them."
Write to John R. Emshwiller at john.emshwiller@wsj.com and James Bandler at james.bandler@wsj.com
Friday, February 22, 2008
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Mile High-Rise girl: Blonde city planner 'approved illegal skyscrapers' in return for sex from developers
By RICHARD SHEARS
Last updated at 23:09pm on 22nd February 2008
Striding out in her smart business suit, she looks every inch the responsible executive.
But the steamy reality of town planner Beth Morgan's career has shocked a nation.
The 32-year-old single mother, is at the heart of a scandal involving sex, skyscrapers and alleged corruption.
She is accused of approving millions of pounds worth of illegal tall buildings in return for lavish gifts and flings with developers who approached her.
Miss Morgan is said to have been on a "mission for sex" - hence the nickname she has been given... the Mile High-Rise Girl.
The saga has rocked the Sydney courtroom where it is unfolding before the powerful Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Miss Morgan was sacked by her council employer last year for "serious misconduct".
Now the commission is examining whether there was any corruption involved. During her time at the council in the steel-and-surfing city of Wollongong, near Sydney, Miss Morgan was involved either in the assessment or approval of four major developments worth more than £63million.
Two developers have admitted affairs with her, while a third claimed they were friends, but not in a sexual relationship.
The case also involves two conmen, pretending to be government investigators, who sought to blackmail her and the developers into paying tens of thousands of pounds to keep her "favouritism" hushed up.
The scandal, which has captivated Australians, also threatens several ministers in the government of the nation's most populous state, New South Wales.
Australians generally believe their country to be largely corruption-free and it ranks well on the international index prepared by Transparency International.
Amid the public corruption commission hearings, state Premier Morris Iemma promised to sack a senior minister if he was found to have improperly given a job to a city councillor linked to the scandal.
While there are serious political implications, it is Miss Morgan's alleged insatiable appetite for sex and luxury goods that has drawn the most attention.
In return for allowing illegal property developments, involving buildings that were higher than regulations dictated, she received cameras, cash, designer handbags and a holiday in China.
She also received sex, which she appeared to have sought as readily as the other gifts.
Adding to her humiliation has been the release of emails between her and her lovers, one of whom described her as being on a "mission for sex".
In one intimate email to developer Michael Kollaras, she described him as "my most favourite, sexy, delectable, gorgeous, loveable Greek (who I can't wait for another day when we can - )". She left out the final word, but local reporters said this left little to the imagination.
Another developer, Glen Tabak, said he met Miss Morgan at least once for sex at a hotel - where she paid for the room. They also slept together at her house.
Science graduate Miss Morgan began her job at the Wollongong Council in May 2000.
The developments in question were approved between 2004 and 2007.
The inquiry continues next week
Last updated at 23:09pm on 22nd February 2008
Striding out in her smart business suit, she looks every inch the responsible executive.
But the steamy reality of town planner Beth Morgan's career has shocked a nation.
The 32-year-old single mother, is at the heart of a scandal involving sex, skyscrapers and alleged corruption.
She is accused of approving millions of pounds worth of illegal tall buildings in return for lavish gifts and flings with developers who approached her.
Miss Morgan is said to have been on a "mission for sex" - hence the nickname she has been given... the Mile High-Rise Girl.
The saga has rocked the Sydney courtroom where it is unfolding before the powerful Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Miss Morgan was sacked by her council employer last year for "serious misconduct".
Now the commission is examining whether there was any corruption involved. During her time at the council in the steel-and-surfing city of Wollongong, near Sydney, Miss Morgan was involved either in the assessment or approval of four major developments worth more than £63million.
Two developers have admitted affairs with her, while a third claimed they were friends, but not in a sexual relationship.
The case also involves two conmen, pretending to be government investigators, who sought to blackmail her and the developers into paying tens of thousands of pounds to keep her "favouritism" hushed up.
The scandal, which has captivated Australians, also threatens several ministers in the government of the nation's most populous state, New South Wales.
Australians generally believe their country to be largely corruption-free and it ranks well on the international index prepared by Transparency International.
Amid the public corruption commission hearings, state Premier Morris Iemma promised to sack a senior minister if he was found to have improperly given a job to a city councillor linked to the scandal.
While there are serious political implications, it is Miss Morgan's alleged insatiable appetite for sex and luxury goods that has drawn the most attention.
In return for allowing illegal property developments, involving buildings that were higher than regulations dictated, she received cameras, cash, designer handbags and a holiday in China.
She also received sex, which she appeared to have sought as readily as the other gifts.
Adding to her humiliation has been the release of emails between her and her lovers, one of whom described her as being on a "mission for sex".
In one intimate email to developer Michael Kollaras, she described him as "my most favourite, sexy, delectable, gorgeous, loveable Greek (who I can't wait for another day when we can - )". She left out the final word, but local reporters said this left little to the imagination.
Another developer, Glen Tabak, said he met Miss Morgan at least once for sex at a hotel - where she paid for the room. They also slept together at her house.
Science graduate Miss Morgan began her job at the Wollongong Council in May 2000.
The developments in question were approved between 2004 and 2007.
The inquiry continues next week
Medical scans on a mummy
Experts from technology firm Siemens joined forces with mummy researchers from the University of Zurich to explore the use of new magnetic resonance scanning software in explaining anatomy and disease characteristics of dry tissue. The project involved examining a 1,000-year-old mummy from Peru without having to moisten tissues before examination. see and learn more here>>>
Indian Lunch-box Deliverymen
Indian lunch-box deliverymen - who deliver tiffin tins to workplaces around Mumbai each day - attend a laughter therapy session to beat stress in the Indian city.Pakistan Voters
People in Pakistan voted in an election marred by political violence. The result saw the Pakistan People's Party of slain former PM Benazir Bhutto emerge as the largest party.Pregnant Tigress
A pregnant tigress is released from a boat into the river Sundarikati, India. It had been badly beaten by villagers in the Sunderbans forest before being rescued by forest workers.
One Store's Old Food Is Others' Bread and Butter
Surplus grocers like SharpShopper in Leola, Pa., sell closeout products.By DAVID KESMODEL
February 22, 2008; Page B1 WSJ
LEOLA, Pa. -- When food prices began to jump last year, Dan McCauley started making weekly trips to SharpShopper, a no-frills discount store here that sells food makers' surplus goods. On a recent weekday afternoon, the 50-year-old's haul included two bags of Archway cookies for just $1 and two cases of vitamin water made by Kraft Foods Inc. for 25 cents a bottle.
Mr. McCauley didn't mind that the "best if eaten by" date on the cookies was two weeks old. "A cookie is a cookie to me," said the vocational-school teacher and married father of two. He says he has slashed his family's grocery bill by 25% since he began buying more food at SharpShopper and less at Giant, a conventional grocer owned by Dutch retailer Royal Ahold NV.
Shoppers like Mr. McCauley are boosting sales at surplus or "salvage" grocers, a little-noticed segment of the food industry, at a time when U.S. consumers face the highest rate of food inflation in almost two decades, along with steep gasoline prices and a sputtering economy.
Everything from milk to steak to macaroni and cheese costs more at supermarkets these days. Food prices rose about 5% in the U.S. last year, the biggest jump since 1990, as emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere pushed up demand for meat and milk, which increased demand for grain to feed livestock. Wheat prices recently hit a record high thanks partly to poor harvests in major wheat-producing countries. Meanwhile, demand for grain-derived ethanol has sparked sharp increases in corn and soybean prices.
Surplus grocers sell "closeouts," which include products that manufacturers have discontinued, seasonal items that are outdated and goods that are near the date when manufacturers expect freshness to wane. Many such grocers also sell products that were damaged in transit but remain edible, such as a dented box of Cheerios. Prices tend to be significantly lower than those at conventional stores and big discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Amelia's, a chain with 11 surplus stores in eastern Pennsylvania, saw its sales jump 17% last year from a year earlier, says Mike Mitchell, president of the company. Sales at stores open at least a year, a key measure of a retailer's health, rose 12% last year, and Mr. Mitchell expects same-store sales to climb 13% this year. That compares with rates below 6% at the nation's biggest traditional grocers, including Kroger Co.
"When the economy gets tight, we tend to attract new customers," says Mr. Mitchell. "Groceries are one place where people can do things to save a lot of money."
At SharpShopper, a rival chain in eastern Pennsylvania where Mr. McCauley was doing his shopping, sales have risen recently, at least partly because of economic conditions, says owner Dennis Sharp. He wouldn't divulge specific sales numbers.
Similar grocers in other parts of the U.S. report sales increases. Scott Godes, co-owner of So Low Grocery Outlet, a store in a low-income neighborhood in Minneapolis, says sales jumped 30% last year.
Grocery Outlet Inc., a Berkeley, Calif., operator of 131 surplus stores in the western U.S., has seen a steady increase in same-store sales since last fall, says Melissa Porter, vice president of marketing. Annual sales exceed $600 million at the closely held company. "We see a lot of new faces we haven't seen before," Ms. Porter says. "People are feeling poorer right now."
The size of the surplus food-retail segment isn't known. Analysts don't track the sales because most of the companies are closely held and independent.
Some larger food retailers say they have noticed customers shifting buying habits amid high food prices. Supervalu Inc., the nation's third-largest food retailer by sales after Wal-Mart and Kroger, told investors in January that sales are up at its bargain chain, Save-A-Lot, and that customers are buying more food per shopping trip due to higher gasoline prices. Save-A-Lot's 1,200 stores don't sell surplus inventory, but offer a limited assortment of discounted groceries, primarily store brands.
Surplus stores mainly draw middle- and lower-income shoppers, and many accept food stamps. They also attract people who just like to find good deals.
Take Joanna Stein, a 54-year-old retiree. On a February afternoon, she drove about 12 miles from her home in Exton, Pa., to an Amelia's in Coatesville, hunting for bargains. Among her finds: four bottles of organic balsamic vinaigrette made by Kraft, all for $1. The bottles had a best-if-used-by date of Dec. 21.
Ms. Stein used to work in the food industry and says that products generally taste fine well beyond such dates. Most states only prohibit sales of dairy products and baby formula that are out of date.
Ms. Stein says she likes shopping at stores like Amelia's because "you never know what you're going to get."
Packaged-food products at Amelia's are stacked on shelves in cardboard boxes. A huge sign inside the Coatesville store says "savings up to 70% off retail, everyday." The chain is an authorized dealer for such food giants as Kraft, Kellogg Co. and Tyson Foods Inc. The stores also carry store brands made for retailers in other regions of the country. Amelia's, for example, carries ice-cream bars made for Publix, a chain in the Southeast.
Shopping in salvage stores can carry risks. In 1999, Alabama's agriculture commissioner found persistent problems with outdated baby food and formula sold at some salvage stores.
Shelley Hoober, a 56-year-old shopper at the Leola, Pa., SharpShopper, says she exercises caution when selecting products, noting that she bought a box of surplus cereal that turned out to be infested with bugs. "You have to really watch the dates," she says.
The supply of inventory overstock and other salvage products is limited. But the largest store operators, like Grocery Outlet on the West Coast, say they aren't seeing supply diminish even as food manufacturers become more efficient at managing their inventories. One reason is that manufacturers continue to come up with new products, some of which fail to catch on. For food manufacturers like Kraft, the maker of Oreos, Ritz crackers and A.1. steak sauce, surplus stores offer a useful outlet for excess inventory. "We consider these retail outlets to be growth channels," says Bridget MacConnell, a Kraft spokeswoman.
Chains such as Amelia's, SharpShopper and Grocery Outlet buy much of their inventory directly from manufacturers or food distributors, but many smaller salvage grocers buy goods from so-called reclamation centers. Reclamation centers collect goods that conventional food retailers have received from manufacturers but deemed unsuitable for sale, often because they are damaged. Some reclamation centers then sell these goods to brokers, which hawk them to small salvage stores. The goods are typically contained in boxes that once carried bananas, so these smaller operations are often called banana-box grocers.
Some food-industry experts say one drawback to the banana-box stores is that fewer damaged goods are being distributed to food banks, which have reported steep inventory declines over the past year.
The banana-box grocers have less control over their inventory than Amelia's or SharpShopper, because instead of buying big cases or pallets of specific items, they are buying boxes filled with a mix of goods. "It's like Christmas every time," says Leanne Silber, owner of Discount Food & More, a small banana-box store in Pownal, Vt. "We don't know if a box will have sauerkraut or aluminum foil."
Ms. Silber says her store is attracting more residents of her town of 3,400 since food prices surged. "I think people are becoming less worried about a crushed box and more about their bottom line," she says.
Write to David Kesmodel at david.kesmodel@wsj.com
February 22, 2008; Page B1 WSJ
LEOLA, Pa. -- When food prices began to jump last year, Dan McCauley started making weekly trips to SharpShopper, a no-frills discount store here that sells food makers' surplus goods. On a recent weekday afternoon, the 50-year-old's haul included two bags of Archway cookies for just $1 and two cases of vitamin water made by Kraft Foods Inc. for 25 cents a bottle.
Mr. McCauley didn't mind that the "best if eaten by" date on the cookies was two weeks old. "A cookie is a cookie to me," said the vocational-school teacher and married father of two. He says he has slashed his family's grocery bill by 25% since he began buying more food at SharpShopper and less at Giant, a conventional grocer owned by Dutch retailer Royal Ahold NV.
Shoppers like Mr. McCauley are boosting sales at surplus or "salvage" grocers, a little-noticed segment of the food industry, at a time when U.S. consumers face the highest rate of food inflation in almost two decades, along with steep gasoline prices and a sputtering economy.
Everything from milk to steak to macaroni and cheese costs more at supermarkets these days. Food prices rose about 5% in the U.S. last year, the biggest jump since 1990, as emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere pushed up demand for meat and milk, which increased demand for grain to feed livestock. Wheat prices recently hit a record high thanks partly to poor harvests in major wheat-producing countries. Meanwhile, demand for grain-derived ethanol has sparked sharp increases in corn and soybean prices.
Surplus grocers sell "closeouts," which include products that manufacturers have discontinued, seasonal items that are outdated and goods that are near the date when manufacturers expect freshness to wane. Many such grocers also sell products that were damaged in transit but remain edible, such as a dented box of Cheerios. Prices tend to be significantly lower than those at conventional stores and big discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Amelia's, a chain with 11 surplus stores in eastern Pennsylvania, saw its sales jump 17% last year from a year earlier, says Mike Mitchell, president of the company. Sales at stores open at least a year, a key measure of a retailer's health, rose 12% last year, and Mr. Mitchell expects same-store sales to climb 13% this year. That compares with rates below 6% at the nation's biggest traditional grocers, including Kroger Co.
"When the economy gets tight, we tend to attract new customers," says Mr. Mitchell. "Groceries are one place where people can do things to save a lot of money."
At SharpShopper, a rival chain in eastern Pennsylvania where Mr. McCauley was doing his shopping, sales have risen recently, at least partly because of economic conditions, says owner Dennis Sharp. He wouldn't divulge specific sales numbers.
Similar grocers in other parts of the U.S. report sales increases. Scott Godes, co-owner of So Low Grocery Outlet, a store in a low-income neighborhood in Minneapolis, says sales jumped 30% last year.
Grocery Outlet Inc., a Berkeley, Calif., operator of 131 surplus stores in the western U.S., has seen a steady increase in same-store sales since last fall, says Melissa Porter, vice president of marketing. Annual sales exceed $600 million at the closely held company. "We see a lot of new faces we haven't seen before," Ms. Porter says. "People are feeling poorer right now."
The size of the surplus food-retail segment isn't known. Analysts don't track the sales because most of the companies are closely held and independent.
Some larger food retailers say they have noticed customers shifting buying habits amid high food prices. Supervalu Inc., the nation's third-largest food retailer by sales after Wal-Mart and Kroger, told investors in January that sales are up at its bargain chain, Save-A-Lot, and that customers are buying more food per shopping trip due to higher gasoline prices. Save-A-Lot's 1,200 stores don't sell surplus inventory, but offer a limited assortment of discounted groceries, primarily store brands.
Surplus stores mainly draw middle- and lower-income shoppers, and many accept food stamps. They also attract people who just like to find good deals.
Take Joanna Stein, a 54-year-old retiree. On a February afternoon, she drove about 12 miles from her home in Exton, Pa., to an Amelia's in Coatesville, hunting for bargains. Among her finds: four bottles of organic balsamic vinaigrette made by Kraft, all for $1. The bottles had a best-if-used-by date of Dec. 21.
Ms. Stein used to work in the food industry and says that products generally taste fine well beyond such dates. Most states only prohibit sales of dairy products and baby formula that are out of date.
Ms. Stein says she likes shopping at stores like Amelia's because "you never know what you're going to get."
Packaged-food products at Amelia's are stacked on shelves in cardboard boxes. A huge sign inside the Coatesville store says "savings up to 70% off retail, everyday." The chain is an authorized dealer for such food giants as Kraft, Kellogg Co. and Tyson Foods Inc. The stores also carry store brands made for retailers in other regions of the country. Amelia's, for example, carries ice-cream bars made for Publix, a chain in the Southeast.
Shopping in salvage stores can carry risks. In 1999, Alabama's agriculture commissioner found persistent problems with outdated baby food and formula sold at some salvage stores.
Shelley Hoober, a 56-year-old shopper at the Leola, Pa., SharpShopper, says she exercises caution when selecting products, noting that she bought a box of surplus cereal that turned out to be infested with bugs. "You have to really watch the dates," she says.
The supply of inventory overstock and other salvage products is limited. But the largest store operators, like Grocery Outlet on the West Coast, say they aren't seeing supply diminish even as food manufacturers become more efficient at managing their inventories. One reason is that manufacturers continue to come up with new products, some of which fail to catch on. For food manufacturers like Kraft, the maker of Oreos, Ritz crackers and A.1. steak sauce, surplus stores offer a useful outlet for excess inventory. "We consider these retail outlets to be growth channels," says Bridget MacConnell, a Kraft spokeswoman.
Chains such as Amelia's, SharpShopper and Grocery Outlet buy much of their inventory directly from manufacturers or food distributors, but many smaller salvage grocers buy goods from so-called reclamation centers. Reclamation centers collect goods that conventional food retailers have received from manufacturers but deemed unsuitable for sale, often because they are damaged. Some reclamation centers then sell these goods to brokers, which hawk them to small salvage stores. The goods are typically contained in boxes that once carried bananas, so these smaller operations are often called banana-box grocers.
Some food-industry experts say one drawback to the banana-box stores is that fewer damaged goods are being distributed to food banks, which have reported steep inventory declines over the past year.
The banana-box grocers have less control over their inventory than Amelia's or SharpShopper, because instead of buying big cases or pallets of specific items, they are buying boxes filled with a mix of goods. "It's like Christmas every time," says Leanne Silber, owner of Discount Food & More, a small banana-box store in Pownal, Vt. "We don't know if a box will have sauerkraut or aluminum foil."
Ms. Silber says her store is attracting more residents of her town of 3,400 since food prices surged. "I think people are becoming less worried about a crushed box and more about their bottom line," she says.
Write to David Kesmodel at david.kesmodel@wsj.com
'Giant chicken' fooled press
Matt Connors
February 14, 2008 11:00pm
IT captured world headlines in the '60s from the chicken coops of Cornwall to the barnyards of Alabama.
In the tiny outback town of Jundah in western Queensland, a grazier had reared a giant chicken of legendary proportions. A behemoth of a bird weighing upwards of 30 pounds (13.6kg).
Now the legend of Queensland's colossal chook has finely come home to roost.
It was nothing but a fowl prank cooked up by one of Queensland's finest newsmen, veteran ABC journalist Albert Asbury, who retires today after half-a-century with the national broadcaster.
"It's quite bizarre . . . you spend 50 years as a journalist and your legacy is a giant chook," Asbury, 68, laughs.
The cock-and-bull story started when Asbury was a young radio journalist based in Longreach and was short of a decent yarn on April Fool's Day.
"I phoned the Brisbane newsroom with a story about a giant chook," he recalled. "It stood three-foot-six from claw to comb, as the story went, and weighed 30 pounds."
The day got busy, and Asbury forgot about the story – until it ran on the national news that night and was picked up by the BBC and global news agencies.
"Two days later the ABC in Brisbane decided to send up a television crew to Longreach to find the chicken," Asbury said.
"I sat at my typewriter and pondered what to do. All of a sudden, this story emerged: "The world's biggest chook died suddenly today at Jundah."
Such a paltry – or should that be poultry – story only enhances the legend of Albert Asbury as a veteran journalist.
"I've seen quite a few premiers pass, saw Townsville grow from a small town to a big city . . . covered plenty of floods and cyclones in North Queensland and the big Mt Isa miner's strike in the early '60s," he said. "But after 49½ years I've decided to declare the innings closed."
He is planning a Greek holiday with his wife Lynette
February 14, 2008 11:00pm
IT captured world headlines in the '60s from the chicken coops of Cornwall to the barnyards of Alabama.
In the tiny outback town of Jundah in western Queensland, a grazier had reared a giant chicken of legendary proportions. A behemoth of a bird weighing upwards of 30 pounds (13.6kg).
Now the legend of Queensland's colossal chook has finely come home to roost.
It was nothing but a fowl prank cooked up by one of Queensland's finest newsmen, veteran ABC journalist Albert Asbury, who retires today after half-a-century with the national broadcaster.
"It's quite bizarre . . . you spend 50 years as a journalist and your legacy is a giant chook," Asbury, 68, laughs.
The cock-and-bull story started when Asbury was a young radio journalist based in Longreach and was short of a decent yarn on April Fool's Day.
"I phoned the Brisbane newsroom with a story about a giant chook," he recalled. "It stood three-foot-six from claw to comb, as the story went, and weighed 30 pounds."
The day got busy, and Asbury forgot about the story – until it ran on the national news that night and was picked up by the BBC and global news agencies.
"Two days later the ABC in Brisbane decided to send up a television crew to Longreach to find the chicken," Asbury said.
"I sat at my typewriter and pondered what to do. All of a sudden, this story emerged: "The world's biggest chook died suddenly today at Jundah."
Such a paltry – or should that be poultry – story only enhances the legend of Albert Asbury as a veteran journalist.
"I've seen quite a few premiers pass, saw Townsville grow from a small town to a big city . . . covered plenty of floods and cyclones in North Queensland and the big Mt Isa miner's strike in the early '60s," he said. "But after 49½ years I've decided to declare the innings closed."
He is planning a Greek holiday with his wife Lynette
Small Talk: Online pet medicine man moves into farming
By Karen Attwood and Daniel Igra
Monday, 18 February 2008
An entrepreneur already shaking up the pet medicine market is set to launch a website catering to farmers. Ricky Thomas founded the online pet medicine retailer Petmeds.co.uk 18 months ago following changes in the law which allowed animal owners to take prescriptions from vets to another business acting as a dispensary. Feeling short-changed after being presented with a whacking great bill at the vets for his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Monty, the 28-year-old came up with a solution – selling on the web.
With a background in IT, including managing systems at IG group, Mr Thomas has been able quickly to overtake other sites on the market, and he says that his is now the leading internet site selling pet drugs. A key move was to make his site the sole supplier to animal charities. Turnover last year hit £2.5m, and this year is expected to reach £4m.
Mr Thomas, who has based his company at Greenwich, now wants to repeat his success with the farming community after coming to the aid of a farmer who needed to treat his cattle with ringworm but could find no one in the local area to supply him with the necessary drugs in time to get the animals to market. Mr Thomas has already recruited a former Defra employee and is set to launch within weeks. Next up, he has his eye on the ethical retail market.
Mr Thomas likes a challenge. He is training for the Marathon of the Sands – six marathons in six days across the Sahara desert – at the end of March. It was the first time he took part in the endurance race two years ago that convinced him to give his web idea a go. After sharing a tent with a life coach who was himself at a crossroads in his life, the thought of returning to a boring IT job gave him the impetus to quit and throw his £80,000 savings into his new venture.
Monday, 18 February 2008
An entrepreneur already shaking up the pet medicine market is set to launch a website catering to farmers. Ricky Thomas founded the online pet medicine retailer Petmeds.co.uk 18 months ago following changes in the law which allowed animal owners to take prescriptions from vets to another business acting as a dispensary. Feeling short-changed after being presented with a whacking great bill at the vets for his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Monty, the 28-year-old came up with a solution – selling on the web.
With a background in IT, including managing systems at IG group, Mr Thomas has been able quickly to overtake other sites on the market, and he says that his is now the leading internet site selling pet drugs. A key move was to make his site the sole supplier to animal charities. Turnover last year hit £2.5m, and this year is expected to reach £4m.
Mr Thomas, who has based his company at Greenwich, now wants to repeat his success with the farming community after coming to the aid of a farmer who needed to treat his cattle with ringworm but could find no one in the local area to supply him with the necessary drugs in time to get the animals to market. Mr Thomas has already recruited a former Defra employee and is set to launch within weeks. Next up, he has his eye on the ethical retail market.
Mr Thomas likes a challenge. He is training for the Marathon of the Sands – six marathons in six days across the Sahara desert – at the end of March. It was the first time he took part in the endurance race two years ago that convinced him to give his web idea a go. After sharing a tent with a life coach who was himself at a crossroads in his life, the thought of returning to a boring IT job gave him the impetus to quit and throw his £80,000 savings into his new venture.
Canned cat food has the same nutrition as dry
SMUDGE & BRYSON
February 22, 2008
Dear Smudge and Bryson: I am a handsome and adventurous 4-year old orange tabby who is a very finicky eater, but do enjoy a limited diet of dry as well as canned food.
Lately, my mom has been reading that cats should only be fed canned food. Please let me know if this is true, so I can give my mom some peace of mind. Thanks.
Your friend, Digby
West Salem
From Bryson: Digby, my man, thanks for the question. I have to tell you how amazed I am that kitties can jump so high without bending their knees.
Incredible.
And now, I'll hand it over to Dr. Michael J. Sirianni:
Dear Digby: This is a very good question and one we hear quite often in the veterinary profession.
Though canned cat food may seem more appealing to your cat, it is no more or less nutritious than dry food.
It simply has higher water content than dry food.
There are both benefits and detriments to both types of food.
The most common side effect to eating only canned foods seems to be a more rapid progression of dental disease.
Dry foods tend to create more friction when cats are chewing, which can slow down the progression of dental disease.
Canned diets do seem to benefit cats with sensitive mouths though, making eating more comfortable. Canned food is also a good alternative when a cat has a decreased appetite. It can have a more appealing aroma and flavor, thus stimulating a cat's appetite.
Thank you for you question, and as always, if you have any other concerns or questions, your veterinarian is always your best resource for information. -- Dr. Michael J. Sirianni
Smudge the pug here: I'm taking time away from my food dish to give a shout-out to a new breed (pun intended) of dog-boarding facility that a pet story in Feb. 15 Statesman Journal editions overlooked.
Diane Johnson owns Keizer Pet Sitting, which boards one dog at a time in her home. Johnson, who has a 9-year-old shih tzu, a three-legged Doberman pinscher, and a blue heeler/miniature pinscher mix, has been offering individualized dog sitting for almost four years.
Each client dog, as well as her own dogs, have the run of the house and her fenced-in backyard. She only accepts small to medium-sized dogs, and they must be well socialized and able to get along well with her brood. She invites dog owners and their dogs to meet her pets before they become clients.
Her dogs sleep in a crate, but boarded dogs are welcome to sleep on a sofa in the front room. Johnson is insured, and requires client dogs to be current on their vaccinations and flea free. Dog owners also must supply their dog's food. Cost is $20 per day. Call (503) 304-3812.
Smudge and Bryson provide confused pets with tips and solutions for better living. Area experts will help them answer your questions on Fridays in the Life section. Write to the boys at SmudgeandBryson@StatesmanJournal.com. Include a name, daytime phone number and photo if you can.
February 22, 2008
Dear Smudge and Bryson: I am a handsome and adventurous 4-year old orange tabby who is a very finicky eater, but do enjoy a limited diet of dry as well as canned food.
Lately, my mom has been reading that cats should only be fed canned food. Please let me know if this is true, so I can give my mom some peace of mind. Thanks.
Your friend, Digby
West Salem
From Bryson: Digby, my man, thanks for the question. I have to tell you how amazed I am that kitties can jump so high without bending their knees.
Incredible.
And now, I'll hand it over to Dr. Michael J. Sirianni:
Dear Digby: This is a very good question and one we hear quite often in the veterinary profession.
Though canned cat food may seem more appealing to your cat, it is no more or less nutritious than dry food.
It simply has higher water content than dry food.
There are both benefits and detriments to both types of food.
The most common side effect to eating only canned foods seems to be a more rapid progression of dental disease.
Dry foods tend to create more friction when cats are chewing, which can slow down the progression of dental disease.
Canned diets do seem to benefit cats with sensitive mouths though, making eating more comfortable. Canned food is also a good alternative when a cat has a decreased appetite. It can have a more appealing aroma and flavor, thus stimulating a cat's appetite.
Thank you for you question, and as always, if you have any other concerns or questions, your veterinarian is always your best resource for information. -- Dr. Michael J. Sirianni
Smudge the pug here: I'm taking time away from my food dish to give a shout-out to a new breed (pun intended) of dog-boarding facility that a pet story in Feb. 15 Statesman Journal editions overlooked.
Diane Johnson owns Keizer Pet Sitting, which boards one dog at a time in her home. Johnson, who has a 9-year-old shih tzu, a three-legged Doberman pinscher, and a blue heeler/miniature pinscher mix, has been offering individualized dog sitting for almost four years.
Each client dog, as well as her own dogs, have the run of the house and her fenced-in backyard. She only accepts small to medium-sized dogs, and they must be well socialized and able to get along well with her brood. She invites dog owners and their dogs to meet her pets before they become clients.
Her dogs sleep in a crate, but boarded dogs are welcome to sleep on a sofa in the front room. Johnson is insured, and requires client dogs to be current on their vaccinations and flea free. Dog owners also must supply their dog's food. Cost is $20 per day. Call (503) 304-3812.
Smudge and Bryson provide confused pets with tips and solutions for better living. Area experts will help them answer your questions on Fridays in the Life section. Write to the boys at SmudgeandBryson@StatesmanJournal.com. Include a name, daytime phone number and photo if you can.
Painted ponies to populate Lake Geneva
Monday, February 11, 2008
By Kayla Bunge/The Janesville Gazette
Colorful colts will overrun the streets of Lake Geneva this summer as S.M.I.L.E.S. therapeutic riding center in Darien launches a public art exhibition of life-size horses painted by artists.
The "Horsing Around Town" exhibition is in the same vein as Chicago's "Cows on Parade," Madison's "Cow Parade" and Milwaukee's "Beastie Beat." But for S.M.I.L.E.S., it's about honoring the animal that makes the program possible, said project coordinator Kathy Hansen.
S.M.I.L.E.S., Special Methods in Learning Equine Skills, specializes in therapeutic riding for children and adults with disabilities. Hansen said the exhibition is a way to get the word out about the program.
"There are miracles happening here," she said. "The people that are participating know it, but the public doesn't realize what's really happening."
"Horsing Around Town" will feature 80 sculptures painted by local and national artists and sponsored by local businesses and organizations. Selected artists will have three months to transform the blank sculptures. Each fiberglass colt stands 3-1/2 feet tall.
S.M.I.L.E.S. began soliciting artists and sponsors Wednesday, and the response has been positive, according to Hansen.
"We already have people calling just from word of mouth," she said.
A kick-off is planned for May 31, when the completed horses will be on display before hitting the streets of Lake Geneva for four months, from June through September.
The painted horses will be auctioned off at the end of September, and all proceeds will benefit S.M.I.L.E.S.
Hansen said the center has high hopes for the exhibition.
"The quality of the horses we're anticipating is going to be phenomenal," she said. "It's going to be a lot of fun, and it will get the whole community involved."
The exhibition will bring pride to the artists and sponsors and bring tourism dollars to the area, Hansen said.
"A lot of really good things will happen because of this," she said. "It's an attitude. It's an excitement that's in the air."
ooo
Learn more
Artists and sponsors interested in participating in the "Horsing Around Town" exhibition should call S.M.I.L.E.S. at (262) 882-3470 or e-mail smiles@smiles.nu. Artist packets and sponsorship information also are available at the Lake Geneva Chamber of Commerce, 201 Wrigley Drive, Lake Geneva. Deadline for artist submissions is Friday, Feb. 22.
By Kayla Bunge/The Janesville Gazette
Colorful colts will overrun the streets of Lake Geneva this summer as S.M.I.L.E.S. therapeutic riding center in Darien launches a public art exhibition of life-size horses painted by artists.
The "Horsing Around Town" exhibition is in the same vein as Chicago's "Cows on Parade," Madison's "Cow Parade" and Milwaukee's "Beastie Beat." But for S.M.I.L.E.S., it's about honoring the animal that makes the program possible, said project coordinator Kathy Hansen.
S.M.I.L.E.S., Special Methods in Learning Equine Skills, specializes in therapeutic riding for children and adults with disabilities. Hansen said the exhibition is a way to get the word out about the program.
"There are miracles happening here," she said. "The people that are participating know it, but the public doesn't realize what's really happening."
"Horsing Around Town" will feature 80 sculptures painted by local and national artists and sponsored by local businesses and organizations. Selected artists will have three months to transform the blank sculptures. Each fiberglass colt stands 3-1/2 feet tall.
S.M.I.L.E.S. began soliciting artists and sponsors Wednesday, and the response has been positive, according to Hansen.
"We already have people calling just from word of mouth," she said.
A kick-off is planned for May 31, when the completed horses will be on display before hitting the streets of Lake Geneva for four months, from June through September.
The painted horses will be auctioned off at the end of September, and all proceeds will benefit S.M.I.L.E.S.
Hansen said the center has high hopes for the exhibition.
"The quality of the horses we're anticipating is going to be phenomenal," she said. "It's going to be a lot of fun, and it will get the whole community involved."
The exhibition will bring pride to the artists and sponsors and bring tourism dollars to the area, Hansen said.
"A lot of really good things will happen because of this," she said. "It's an attitude. It's an excitement that's in the air."
ooo
Learn more
Artists and sponsors interested in participating in the "Horsing Around Town" exhibition should call S.M.I.L.E.S. at (262) 882-3470 or e-mail smiles@smiles.nu. Artist packets and sponsorship information also are available at the Lake Geneva Chamber of Commerce, 201 Wrigley Drive, Lake Geneva. Deadline for artist submissions is Friday, Feb. 22.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The Clintons' Terror Pardons
By DEBRA BURLINGAME
February 12, 2008; Page A17 WSJ
It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.
"He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face," remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. "We really didn't even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that's how badly he was injured."
About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.
The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.
FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims "reactionary corporate executives" and threatening: "You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can't escape." By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.
On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.
Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. "For me," the president concluded, "the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose."
His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of "guilt by association," were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were "in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity."
The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.
"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."
Observed Judge George Layton, who sentenced four FALN defendants for their conspiracy to use military-grade explosives to break an FALN leader from Ft. Leavenworth Penitentiary and detonate bombs at other public buildings, "[T]his case . . . represents one of the finest examples of preventive law enforcement that has ever come to this court's attention in the 20-odd years it has been a judge and in the 20 years before that as a practicing lawyer in criminal cases."
The FBI cracked the cases with the discovery of an FALN safe house and bomb factory. Video surveillance showed two of those on the clemency list firing weapons and building bombs intended for an imminent attack at a U.S. military installation. FBI agents obtained a warrant and entered the premises, surreptitiously disarming the bombs whose components bore the unmistakable FALN signature. They found 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false IDs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
A total of six safe houses were ultimately uncovered. Seven hundred hours of surveillance video were recorded, resulting in a mountain of evidence connecting the 16 prisoners to multiple FALN operations past and present.
Federal law enforcement agencies considered these individuals so dangerous, extraordinary security precautions were taken at their numerous trials. Courthouse elevators were restricted and no one, including the court officers, was permitted to carry a firearm in the courtroom.
Given all this, why would Bill Clinton, who had ignored the 3,226 clemency petitions that had piled up on his desk over the years, suddenly reach into the stack and pluck out these 16 meritless cases? (The New York Times ran a column with the headline, "Bill's Little Gift.")
Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.
Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners' delay in refusing to renounce violence "speaks volumes," she said.
The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn't actually asked for clemency.
To push the deal through, signed statements renouncing violence and expressing remorse were required by the Justice Department. The FALN prisoners, surely relishing the embarrassment and discomfiture they were causing the president and his wife, had previously declined to accept these conditions. Committed and unrepentant militants who did not accept the authority of the United States, they refused to apologize for activities they were proud of in order to obtain a clemency they never requested.
So desperate was the White House to get the deal finalized and out of the news, an unprecedented 16-way conference call was set up for the "petitioners" who were locked up in 11 different federal facilities so that they could strategize a response to the president's offer. Two eventually refused to renounce their cause, preferring to serve out their lengthy sentences rather than follow the White House script.
Mr. Clinton's fecklessness in the handling of these cases was demonstrated by the fact that none of the prisoners were required, as a standard condition of release, to cooperate in ongoing investigations of countless unsolved FALN bombing cases and other crimes. Mrs. Clinton's so-called disagreement with her husband on the matter made no mention of that fact. The risk of demanding such a requirement, of course, was that the prisoners might have proudly implicated themselves, causing the entire enterprise to implode, with maximum damage to the president and potentially sinking Hillary Clinton's Senate chances.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rican politicians in New York who'd been crowing to their constituents about the impending release of these "freedom fighters" were enraged and insulted at Hillary Clinton's withdrawal of support. "It was a horrible blunder," said State Sen. Olga A. Mendez. "She needs to learn the rules."
The first lady called her failure to consult the Puerto Rican political establishment before assessing the entire issue a mistake "that will never happen again" -- even as the cops who had been maimed and disfigured by FALN operations continued to be ignored. Tom and Joe Connor, two brothers who were little boys when their 33-year-old father, Frank, was killed in the Fraunces Tavern attack, were dumbstruck to learn that White House staffers referred to the FALN militants as "political prisoners" and were planning a meeting with their children to humanize their plight.
Members of Congress viewed the clemencies as a dangerous abuse of presidential power that could not go unchallenged. Resolutions condemning the president's action were passed with a vote of 95-2 in the Senate, 311-41 in the House. It was the most they could do; the president's pardon power, conferred by the Constitution, is absolute. The House launched an investigation, subpoenaing records from the White House and Justice in an effort to determine whether proper procedure had been followed. President Clinton promptly invoked executive privilege, putting Justice Department lawyers in the impossible position of admitting that they had sent the White House a recommendation on the issue, but barred from disclosing what it was.
Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony.
The investigation revealed that the White House was driving the effort to release the prisoners, rather than the other way around. White House aides created talking points and strategies for a public campaign on the prisoners' behalf included asking prominent individuals for letters supporting clemency.
Jeffrey Farrow, a key adviser on the White House Interagency Working Group for Puerto Rico recommended meetings with the president and the three leading members of Congressional Hispanic Caucus who were pushing the effort, stating in a March 6, 1999 email, "This is Gutierrez's [sic] top priority as well as of high constituent importance to Serrano and Velazquez." The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste sent an email to White House Counsel Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency issue, supporting Mr. Farrow's view, saying, "Chuck -- Jeff's right about this -- very hot issue." Another adviser in the Working Group, Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, noted that releasing the prisoners would be "fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters)."
And there you have it. Votes.
While the pardon scandals that marked Bill and Hillary Clinton's final days in office are remembered as transactions involving cronies, criminals and campaign contributors, the FALN clemencies of 1999 should be remembered in the context of the increasing threat of domestic and transnational terrorism that was ramping up during the Clinton years of alleged peace and prosperity. To wit, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivans bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot.
It was within that context that the FBI gave its position on the FALN clemencies -- which the White House succeeded in keeping out of news coverage but ultimately failed to suppress -- stating that "the release of these individuals will psychologically and operationally enhance the ongoing violent and criminal activities of terrorist groups, not only in Puerto Rico, but throughout the world." The White House spun the clemencies as a sign of the president's universal commitment to "peace and reconciliation" just one year after Osama bin Laden told his followers that the United States is a "paper tiger" that can be attacked with impunity.
It would be a mistake to dismiss as "old news" the story of how and why these terrorists were released in light of the fact that it took place during the precise period when Bill Clinton now claims he was avidly engaged, even "obsessed," with efforts to protect the public from clandestine terrorist attacks. If Bill and Hillary Clinton were willing to pander to the demands of local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights activists defending bomb-makers convicted of seditious conspiracy, how might they stand up to pressure from other interest groups working in less obvious ways against U.S. interests in a post-9/11 world?
Radical Islamists are a sophisticated and determined enemy who understand that violence alone will not achieve their goals. Islamist front groups, representing themselves as rights organizations, are attempting to get a foothold here as they have already in parts of Western Europe by deftly exploiting ethnic and racial politics, agitating under the banner of civil liberties even as they are clamoring for the imposition of special Shariah law privileges in the public domain. They believe that the road to America's ultimate defeat is through the back door of policy and law and they are aggressively using money, influence and retail politics to achieve their goal.
On the campaign trail, the Clintons like to say that Bill is merely supportive and enthusiastic, "just like all the other candidates' spouses." Nothing could be further from the truth. Returning Bill and Hillary Clinton to the White House would present the country with the unprecedented situation of a former and current president simultaneously occupying the White House, the practical implications of which have yet to be fully explored.
The FALN clemencies provide a disturbing example of how the abuse or misuse of presidential prerogative, under the guise of policy, can be put in service of the personal and private activities of the president's spouse -- and beyond the reach of meaningful congressional oversight.
Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
February 12, 2008; Page A17 WSJ
It was nearly 10 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 1982. Two officers on New York Police Department's elite bomb squad rushed to headquarters at One Police Plaza, where minutes earlier an explosion had destroyed the entrance to the building. Lying amid the carnage was Police Officer Rocco Pascarella, his lower leg blasted off.
"He was ripped up like someone took a box cutter and shredded his face," remembered Detective Anthony Senft, one of the bomb-squad officers who answered the call 25 years ago. "We really didn't even know that he was a uniformed man until we found his weapon, that's how badly he was injured."
About 20 minutes later, Mr. Senft and his partner, Richard Pastorella, were blown 15 feet in the air as they knelt in protective gear to defuse another bomb. Detective Senft was blinded in one eye, his facial bones shattered, his hip severely fractured. Mr. Pastorella was blinded in both eyes and lost all the fingers of his right hand. A total of four bombs exploded in a single hour on that night, including at FBI headquarters in Manhattan and the federal courthouse in Brooklyn.
The perpetrators were members of Armed Forces of National Liberation, FALN (the Spanish acronym), a clandestine terrorist group devoted to bringing about independence for Puerto Rico through violent means. Its members waged war on America with bombings, arson, kidnappings, prison escapes, threats and intimidation. The most gruesome attack was the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in Lower Manhattan. Timed to go off during the lunch-hour rush, the explosion decapitated one of the four people killed and injured another 60.
FALN bragged about the bloodbath, calling the victims "reactionary corporate executives" and threatening: "You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankees can't escape." By 1996, the FBI had linked FALN to 146 bombings and a string of armed robberies -- a reign of terror that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injured victims.
On Aug. 7, 1999, the one-year anniversary of the U.S. African embassy bombings that killed 257 people and injured 5,000, President Bill Clinton reaffirmed his commitment to the victims of terrorism, vowing that he "will not rest until justice is done." Four days later, while Congress was on summer recess, the White House quietly issued a press release announcing that the president was granting clemency to 16 imprisoned members of FALN. What began as a simple paragraph on the AP wire exploded into a major controversy.
Mr. Clinton justified the clemencies by asserting that the sentences were disproportionate to the crimes. None of the petitioners, he stated, had been directly involved in crimes that caused bodily harm to anyone. "For me," the president concluded, "the question, therefore, was whether their continuing incarceration served any meaningful purpose."
His comments, including the astonishing claim that the FALN prisoners were being unfairly punished because of "guilt by association," were widely condemned as a concession to terrorists. Further, they were seen as an outrageous slap in the face of the victims and a bitter betrayal of the cops and federal law enforcement officers who had put their lives on the line to protect the public and who had invested years of their careers to put these people behind bars. The U.S. Sentencing Commission affirmed a pre-existing Justice Department assessment that the sentences, ranging from 30 to 90 years, were "in line with sentences imposed in other cases for similar terrorist activity."
The prisoners were convicted on a variety of charges that included conspiracy, sedition, violation of the Hobbes Act (extortion by force, violence or fear), armed robbery and illegal possession of weapons and explosives -- including large quantities of C-4 plastic explosive, dynamite and huge caches of ammunition. Mr. Clinton's action was opposed by the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney offices that prosecuted the cases and the victims whose lives had been shattered. In contravention of standard procedures, none of these agencies, victims or families of victims were consulted or notified prior to the president's announcement.
"I know the chilling evidence that convicted the petitioners," wrote Deborah Devaney, one of the federal prosecutors who spent years on the cases. "The conspirators made every effort to murder and maim. . . . A few dedicated federal agents are the only people who stood in their way."
Observed Judge George Layton, who sentenced four FALN defendants for their conspiracy to use military-grade explosives to break an FALN leader from Ft. Leavenworth Penitentiary and detonate bombs at other public buildings, "[T]his case . . . represents one of the finest examples of preventive law enforcement that has ever come to this court's attention in the 20-odd years it has been a judge and in the 20 years before that as a practicing lawyer in criminal cases."
The FBI cracked the cases with the discovery of an FALN safe house and bomb factory. Video surveillance showed two of those on the clemency list firing weapons and building bombs intended for an imminent attack at a U.S. military installation. FBI agents obtained a warrant and entered the premises, surreptitiously disarming the bombs whose components bore the unmistakable FALN signature. They found 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false IDs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
A total of six safe houses were ultimately uncovered. Seven hundred hours of surveillance video were recorded, resulting in a mountain of evidence connecting the 16 prisoners to multiple FALN operations past and present.
Federal law enforcement agencies considered these individuals so dangerous, extraordinary security precautions were taken at their numerous trials. Courthouse elevators were restricted and no one, including the court officers, was permitted to carry a firearm in the courtroom.
Given all this, why would Bill Clinton, who had ignored the 3,226 clemency petitions that had piled up on his desk over the years, suddenly reach into the stack and pluck out these 16 meritless cases? (The New York Times ran a column with the headline, "Bill's Little Gift.")
Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the midst of her state-wide "listening tour" in anticipation of her run for the U.S. Senate in New York, a state which included 1.3 million Hispanics. Three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus -- Luis V. Gutierrez (D., Ill.), Jose E. Serrano, (D., N.Y.) and Nydia M. Velazquez, (D., N.Y.) -- along with local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights advocates, had been agitating for years on behalf of the FALN cases directly to the White House and first lady.
Initial reports stated that Mrs. Clinton supported the clemencies, but when public reaction went negative she changed course, issuing a short statement three weeks after the clemencies were announced. The prisoners' delay in refusing to renounce violence "speaks volumes," she said.
The Clintons were caught in an awkward predicament of their own making. The president had ignored federal guidelines for commutation of sentences, including the most fundamental: The prisoners hadn't actually asked for clemency.
To push the deal through, signed statements renouncing violence and expressing remorse were required by the Justice Department. The FALN prisoners, surely relishing the embarrassment and discomfiture they were causing the president and his wife, had previously declined to accept these conditions. Committed and unrepentant militants who did not accept the authority of the United States, they refused to apologize for activities they were proud of in order to obtain a clemency they never requested.
So desperate was the White House to get the deal finalized and out of the news, an unprecedented 16-way conference call was set up for the "petitioners" who were locked up in 11 different federal facilities so that they could strategize a response to the president's offer. Two eventually refused to renounce their cause, preferring to serve out their lengthy sentences rather than follow the White House script.
Mr. Clinton's fecklessness in the handling of these cases was demonstrated by the fact that none of the prisoners were required, as a standard condition of release, to cooperate in ongoing investigations of countless unsolved FALN bombing cases and other crimes. Mrs. Clinton's so-called disagreement with her husband on the matter made no mention of that fact. The risk of demanding such a requirement, of course, was that the prisoners might have proudly implicated themselves, causing the entire enterprise to implode, with maximum damage to the president and potentially sinking Hillary Clinton's Senate chances.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rican politicians in New York who'd been crowing to their constituents about the impending release of these "freedom fighters" were enraged and insulted at Hillary Clinton's withdrawal of support. "It was a horrible blunder," said State Sen. Olga A. Mendez. "She needs to learn the rules."
The first lady called her failure to consult the Puerto Rican political establishment before assessing the entire issue a mistake "that will never happen again" -- even as the cops who had been maimed and disfigured by FALN operations continued to be ignored. Tom and Joe Connor, two brothers who were little boys when their 33-year-old father, Frank, was killed in the Fraunces Tavern attack, were dumbstruck to learn that White House staffers referred to the FALN militants as "political prisoners" and were planning a meeting with their children to humanize their plight.
Members of Congress viewed the clemencies as a dangerous abuse of presidential power that could not go unchallenged. Resolutions condemning the president's action were passed with a vote of 95-2 in the Senate, 311-41 in the House. It was the most they could do; the president's pardon power, conferred by the Constitution, is absolute. The House launched an investigation, subpoenaing records from the White House and Justice in an effort to determine whether proper procedure had been followed. President Clinton promptly invoked executive privilege, putting Justice Department lawyers in the impossible position of admitting that they had sent the White House a recommendation on the issue, but barred from disclosing what it was.
Twenty-four hours before a scheduled Senate committee hearing, the DOJ withheld the FBI's written statement about the history of the FALN and an assessment of its current terrorist capability. "They pulled the plug on us," said an unnamed FBI official in a news report, referring to the Justice Department decision to prevent FBI testimony.
The investigation revealed that the White House was driving the effort to release the prisoners, rather than the other way around. White House aides created talking points and strategies for a public campaign on the prisoners' behalf included asking prominent individuals for letters supporting clemency.
Jeffrey Farrow, a key adviser on the White House Interagency Working Group for Puerto Rico recommended meetings with the president and the three leading members of Congressional Hispanic Caucus who were pushing the effort, stating in a March 6, 1999 email, "This is Gutierrez's [sic] top priority as well as of high constituent importance to Serrano and Velazquez." The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste sent an email to White House Counsel Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency issue, supporting Mr. Farrow's view, saying, "Chuck -- Jeff's right about this -- very hot issue." Another adviser in the Working Group, Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, noted that releasing the prisoners would be "fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters)."
And there you have it. Votes.
While the pardon scandals that marked Bill and Hillary Clinton's final days in office are remembered as transactions involving cronies, criminals and campaign contributors, the FALN clemencies of 1999 should be remembered in the context of the increasing threat of domestic and transnational terrorism that was ramping up during the Clinton years of alleged peace and prosperity. To wit, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway Sarin attack, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 "Bojinka" conspiracy to hijack airplanes and crash them into buildings, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1996 Summer Olympics bombing, Osama bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 "Declarations of War" on America, the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the 2000 USS Sullivans bombing attempt, the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and the 2000 Millennium bombing plot.
It was within that context that the FBI gave its position on the FALN clemencies -- which the White House succeeded in keeping out of news coverage but ultimately failed to suppress -- stating that "the release of these individuals will psychologically and operationally enhance the ongoing violent and criminal activities of terrorist groups, not only in Puerto Rico, but throughout the world." The White House spun the clemencies as a sign of the president's universal commitment to "peace and reconciliation" just one year after Osama bin Laden told his followers that the United States is a "paper tiger" that can be attacked with impunity.
It would be a mistake to dismiss as "old news" the story of how and why these terrorists were released in light of the fact that it took place during the precise period when Bill Clinton now claims he was avidly engaged, even "obsessed," with efforts to protect the public from clandestine terrorist attacks. If Bill and Hillary Clinton were willing to pander to the demands of local Hispanic politicians and leftist human-rights activists defending bomb-makers convicted of seditious conspiracy, how might they stand up to pressure from other interest groups working in less obvious ways against U.S. interests in a post-9/11 world?
Radical Islamists are a sophisticated and determined enemy who understand that violence alone will not achieve their goals. Islamist front groups, representing themselves as rights organizations, are attempting to get a foothold here as they have already in parts of Western Europe by deftly exploiting ethnic and racial politics, agitating under the banner of civil liberties even as they are clamoring for the imposition of special Shariah law privileges in the public domain. They believe that the road to America's ultimate defeat is through the back door of policy and law and they are aggressively using money, influence and retail politics to achieve their goal.
On the campaign trail, the Clintons like to say that Bill is merely supportive and enthusiastic, "just like all the other candidates' spouses." Nothing could be further from the truth. Returning Bill and Hillary Clinton to the White House would present the country with the unprecedented situation of a former and current president simultaneously occupying the White House, the practical implications of which have yet to be fully explored.
The FALN clemencies provide a disturbing example of how the abuse or misuse of presidential prerogative, under the guise of policy, can be put in service of the personal and private activities of the president's spouse -- and beyond the reach of meaningful congressional oversight.
Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Hamster prices triple in China
Hamsters can have a mean streak and deliver a nasty biteLast Updated: Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 09:43 GMT
Hamsters have become the must-have pet in China since the Year of the Rat began on 7 February.
Pet shop owners say stocks are running low - and prices high - as children clamour for a furry friend.
According to the Chinese media, prices have tripled to about 30 yuan ($4.20, £2.10) per hamster across the country.
In the Year of the Rat, this tiny creature has become the most acceptable rodent, a type of animal that is not everyone's first-choice pet.
"Rats and mice have a bad image, but hamsters are gentle. You can hold them in your hand and play with them," Xinhua News Agency reported.
Pet stores are also reporting an increased interest in other, similar-looking creatures, such as chinchillas and squirrels.
But it is the hamster that appears to have caught the imagination at the start of a new lunar year in China.
One father told the media: "I've always wanted to buy my son a small animal and a hamster is an ideal choice.
"By bringing up a pet, my son will learn about compassion and caring for animals."
But there is a downside. Experts are warning that rodents have sharp teeth and can deliver a nasty bite.
Some could even be carrying the rabies virus.
Hamsters have become the must-have pet in China since the Year of the Rat began on 7 February.
Pet shop owners say stocks are running low - and prices high - as children clamour for a furry friend.
According to the Chinese media, prices have tripled to about 30 yuan ($4.20, £2.10) per hamster across the country.
In the Year of the Rat, this tiny creature has become the most acceptable rodent, a type of animal that is not everyone's first-choice pet.
"Rats and mice have a bad image, but hamsters are gentle. You can hold them in your hand and play with them," Xinhua News Agency reported.
Pet stores are also reporting an increased interest in other, similar-looking creatures, such as chinchillas and squirrels.
But it is the hamster that appears to have caught the imagination at the start of a new lunar year in China.
One father told the media: "I've always wanted to buy my son a small animal and a hamster is an ideal choice.
"By bringing up a pet, my son will learn about compassion and caring for animals."
But there is a downside. Experts are warning that rodents have sharp teeth and can deliver a nasty bite.
Some could even be carrying the rabies virus.
Dating Small Talk: 3 Tips to Avoiding Big Problems
By: Daryl Campbell
It can be a terrible ordeal for many of us. It seems to particularly strike when you are out on a date. The symptoms include: sweaty palms, forced laughter, awkward pauses, extended periods of uncomfortable silence and occasional desperate glances toward the nearest exit. It respects no person or title and has an incredible track record of ending relationships that otherwise would have blossomed. I am sure medical people have a term for it (they always do) but for the rest of us it is pretty basic. We are in trouble when it comes to making small talk.
Some people can be the life of the party with chit chat skills that rival Oprah. They seem to know what to say, when to say it and how. Is it gift? In a lot of ways the answer is yes but the ability to connect with people is not only for the chosen few.
You may not ever get your own daytime talk show but with a little practice and patience you can overcome any small talk obstacles in your dating relationship.
1. Develop Self Confidence
Without this one, it is extremely difficult to break thru the small talk barrier. It is not just a matter of speaking without being too self conscious; it also comes down to conveying the right body language. If your date sees that no matter how much you talk, you still look uncomfortable then the chances are pretty strong they will also feel uncomfortable.
Develop self confidence by engaging strangers in small talk. Whether you are in the grocery store checkout line or a crowded elevator, turn to the person next to you and start chatting. What do you talk about? Anything within reason and good taste; remember they are strangers. Talk about the weather, how slow the checkout line is moving, or ask people, "Is it Friday yet"? That one can be a major icebreaker to anyone who holds down a nine to five job.
2. Tone Down Your Self Consciousness
You can think about what you will say to your date and have it all worked out. Worked out that is until the self conscious police take over. How should I say it, what will it sound like, what will my date say,should I even say it? This is only the tip of the iceberg after the self conscious police get thru with you.
Part of having confidence and enjoying yourself on a date is the ability to think of someone other than yourself. If you want to do a personal evaluation save it until the date is over. And even then do not trash yourself. No one is perfect so critique gently and make the adjustments accordingly.
3. Stay Informed
This is an incredible dating tool. Keeping on top of news and current events is perfect for overcoming any small talk obstacles. Staying informed allows you to speak intelligently on a broad range of topics. Keep in mind however you are not doing this to show off so do not study current events like it is a college exam. The whole point is to engage your date so that both of you can feel more comfortable. Mentioning a news story you read may lead to an extended conversation where you can really get to know each other.
Again do not go overboard. Be observant to the words and body language of the other person. If the conversation is starting to drag, get a little too one sided or uncomfortably passionate then end it quickly. Try to have a few lines handy to segue into another subject or exit the current one politely.
There is no getting around dating small talk but it is also nothing to fear. Just practice your confidence, leave your self consciousness at the door and stay informed about news and currents events. Good small talk has the capability of putting your date at ease so they feel comfortable enough to share things about their life with you and vice versa.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
It can be a terrible ordeal for many of us. It seems to particularly strike when you are out on a date. The symptoms include: sweaty palms, forced laughter, awkward pauses, extended periods of uncomfortable silence and occasional desperate glances toward the nearest exit. It respects no person or title and has an incredible track record of ending relationships that otherwise would have blossomed. I am sure medical people have a term for it (they always do) but for the rest of us it is pretty basic. We are in trouble when it comes to making small talk.
Some people can be the life of the party with chit chat skills that rival Oprah. They seem to know what to say, when to say it and how. Is it gift? In a lot of ways the answer is yes but the ability to connect with people is not only for the chosen few.
You may not ever get your own daytime talk show but with a little practice and patience you can overcome any small talk obstacles in your dating relationship.
1. Develop Self Confidence
Without this one, it is extremely difficult to break thru the small talk barrier. It is not just a matter of speaking without being too self conscious; it also comes down to conveying the right body language. If your date sees that no matter how much you talk, you still look uncomfortable then the chances are pretty strong they will also feel uncomfortable.
Develop self confidence by engaging strangers in small talk. Whether you are in the grocery store checkout line or a crowded elevator, turn to the person next to you and start chatting. What do you talk about? Anything within reason and good taste; remember they are strangers. Talk about the weather, how slow the checkout line is moving, or ask people, "Is it Friday yet"? That one can be a major icebreaker to anyone who holds down a nine to five job.
2. Tone Down Your Self Consciousness
You can think about what you will say to your date and have it all worked out. Worked out that is until the self conscious police take over. How should I say it, what will it sound like, what will my date say,should I even say it? This is only the tip of the iceberg after the self conscious police get thru with you.
Part of having confidence and enjoying yourself on a date is the ability to think of someone other than yourself. If you want to do a personal evaluation save it until the date is over. And even then do not trash yourself. No one is perfect so critique gently and make the adjustments accordingly.
3. Stay Informed
This is an incredible dating tool. Keeping on top of news and current events is perfect for overcoming any small talk obstacles. Staying informed allows you to speak intelligently on a broad range of topics. Keep in mind however you are not doing this to show off so do not study current events like it is a college exam. The whole point is to engage your date so that both of you can feel more comfortable. Mentioning a news story you read may lead to an extended conversation where you can really get to know each other.
Again do not go overboard. Be observant to the words and body language of the other person. If the conversation is starting to drag, get a little too one sided or uncomfortably passionate then end it quickly. Try to have a few lines handy to segue into another subject or exit the current one politely.
There is no getting around dating small talk but it is also nothing to fear. Just practice your confidence, leave your self consciousness at the door and stay informed about news and currents events. Good small talk has the capability of putting your date at ease so they feel comfortable enough to share things about their life with you and vice versa.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
How To Choose The Right Online Dating Service
By: Marvin Perry
Once you start looking for the right online dating service you will quickly notice a few things. In this article we will look at how to search the internet for a dating service and how to determine what is the most important features to you.
One of the first things you will discover is that all dating websites are not created equal. What is important to you may not be as important to someone else. Because of all the success stories relating to online dating you can be encouraged that you could soon be one of them.
One of the best things about online dating sites is you are able to do your searches based on hobbies, looks, age, income, education, location, religion, many more.
Another great thing about searching for an online dating service is you get to do it in the comfort of your own home. The dating scene does not work for a lot of people because it happens in bars. Going through an internet dating service gives you more control and will let you proceed at your own pace.
Personality matching is a term that is rising in popularity thanks to online dating services. If you go to servcies like Great Expectations, PerfectMatch.com. and Yahoo Personals you will find they offer personality matching allowing you to more closely find a person who may be similar to you in how they think.
This will allow you to be more comfortable in the early stages of online dating because you will not be at a loss for things to talk about. If you like sports and music you will know that they do as well. If you like to travel and they are travelers you will be able to talk for hours about where you have been and where you want to visit someday.
Because of the amount of online dating services, it can be confusing trying to decide which dating service to try first. There are literally thousands of online dating services. Many have trial offers that let you check them out and see if they work well for you.
Certainly the more well known ones like Match and True.com are safe bets. You might find ones with a more local feel to them which is good to be able to find a person closer to where you live. Do not be afraid to check out smaller ones as well.
Finding the right dating service is going to take a little leg work on your part. However, if you are willing to spend some time you will find one which offers what you are looking for.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
Once you start looking for the right online dating service you will quickly notice a few things. In this article we will look at how to search the internet for a dating service and how to determine what is the most important features to you.
One of the first things you will discover is that all dating websites are not created equal. What is important to you may not be as important to someone else. Because of all the success stories relating to online dating you can be encouraged that you could soon be one of them.
One of the best things about online dating sites is you are able to do your searches based on hobbies, looks, age, income, education, location, religion, many more.
Another great thing about searching for an online dating service is you get to do it in the comfort of your own home. The dating scene does not work for a lot of people because it happens in bars. Going through an internet dating service gives you more control and will let you proceed at your own pace.
Personality matching is a term that is rising in popularity thanks to online dating services. If you go to servcies like Great Expectations, PerfectMatch.com. and Yahoo Personals you will find they offer personality matching allowing you to more closely find a person who may be similar to you in how they think.
This will allow you to be more comfortable in the early stages of online dating because you will not be at a loss for things to talk about. If you like sports and music you will know that they do as well. If you like to travel and they are travelers you will be able to talk for hours about where you have been and where you want to visit someday.
Because of the amount of online dating services, it can be confusing trying to decide which dating service to try first. There are literally thousands of online dating services. Many have trial offers that let you check them out and see if they work well for you.
Certainly the more well known ones like Match and True.com are safe bets. You might find ones with a more local feel to them which is good to be able to find a person closer to where you live. Do not be afraid to check out smaller ones as well.
Finding the right dating service is going to take a little leg work on your part. However, if you are willing to spend some time you will find one which offers what you are looking for.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
Benefits and Dangers of Online Dating
By: Ronald Vyhmeister
Online dating has been a revolution ever since it started, but like every coin has another side to it. Online dating poses some serious side effects, which if not taken care of shall result in disasters. You need to understand on how online dating can affect your life, habits, routine and time management. Before getting into details, a word of caution to all those passionate online daters: be careful and understand that prevention is better than cure!
For first timers, it's an amazing, new and unseen experience which immediately attracts their attention. But you might end up having a bad company, someone who might mislead you, someone who might exploit you and what not? First of all, extensive online dating can turn into an addiction that kills your precious time.
People who tend to get involved in such relationship tend to forget everything else and sit in front of the computer almost throughout the day; such activities not only affect their other work but their health as well. They tend to stay online for long periods, skipping meals and sleep and avoiding their responsibilities. These individuals also drift away from family and friends and start experiencing drastic mood swings. The worst is when they have a problem with the computer or cannot login to the website, they become highly frustrated and keep on grumbling.
More cons of online dating are:
- Risk of meeting a dishonest person who created a profile with a dating site only for scamming other member, telling them he/she is in need of help and would appreciate if they could cooperate with money.
- Paying your membership fee and then realizing the website has not enough members, so it will be very difficult to find someone.
But not everything is bad, online dating provides many benefits too. The Internet provides a wider selection of men and women. With so many profiles online you can narrow down your serch to find those specific carachteristics important to you. You will be able to get to know your dream date even before you have met them. Several websites offer online dating services you can take advantage of. This is one way of increasing your chances of meeting your dream date. Staying true to the romantic art of exchanging notes and letters, online dating has taken the next modern step of expressing yourself through the Internet. This adds a mystery into the relationship which is why some people would like to have an online dating relationship before they take the next step of arranging to meet personally.
Internet has been a great revolution and probably the very reason for the arrival of the information age, but you need to be careful while using it because addiction to anything is never good. And when it comes to online dating, it is great if you find a genuine person but do not waste your time if you feel it is not for you as there are many more options to find a partner.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
Online dating has been a revolution ever since it started, but like every coin has another side to it. Online dating poses some serious side effects, which if not taken care of shall result in disasters. You need to understand on how online dating can affect your life, habits, routine and time management. Before getting into details, a word of caution to all those passionate online daters: be careful and understand that prevention is better than cure!
For first timers, it's an amazing, new and unseen experience which immediately attracts their attention. But you might end up having a bad company, someone who might mislead you, someone who might exploit you and what not? First of all, extensive online dating can turn into an addiction that kills your precious time.
People who tend to get involved in such relationship tend to forget everything else and sit in front of the computer almost throughout the day; such activities not only affect their other work but their health as well. They tend to stay online for long periods, skipping meals and sleep and avoiding their responsibilities. These individuals also drift away from family and friends and start experiencing drastic mood swings. The worst is when they have a problem with the computer or cannot login to the website, they become highly frustrated and keep on grumbling.
More cons of online dating are:
- Risk of meeting a dishonest person who created a profile with a dating site only for scamming other member, telling them he/she is in need of help and would appreciate if they could cooperate with money.
- Paying your membership fee and then realizing the website has not enough members, so it will be very difficult to find someone.
But not everything is bad, online dating provides many benefits too. The Internet provides a wider selection of men and women. With so many profiles online you can narrow down your serch to find those specific carachteristics important to you. You will be able to get to know your dream date even before you have met them. Several websites offer online dating services you can take advantage of. This is one way of increasing your chances of meeting your dream date. Staying true to the romantic art of exchanging notes and letters, online dating has taken the next modern step of expressing yourself through the Internet. This adds a mystery into the relationship which is why some people would like to have an online dating relationship before they take the next step of arranging to meet personally.
Internet has been a great revolution and probably the very reason for the arrival of the information age, but you need to be careful while using it because addiction to anything is never good. And when it comes to online dating, it is great if you find a genuine person but do not waste your time if you feel it is not for you as there are many more options to find a partner.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
Being Prepared for an Attack with Weapons of Mass Destruction
By: Craig Elliott
The truth is that terrorism isn't supposed to be predictable. By inflicting the maximum amount of damage to the maximum amount of people, terrorists win their game. So when we talk about being prepared for an attack with weapons of mass destruction, where can we even begin? Since predicting the attack is out of the question, what else can the everyday person do to start living a life that's prepared for what was once thought of as impossible?
Everyone Can Help
However, the attitude of the common day person should be one of being helpful not helpless. While we might not be able to interpret every word that comes from the mouths of terrorists, we can become more alert in our everyday lives, often being the heroes in spotting things that just aren't right. Being prepared isn't just about putting up physical barriers to our homes, but it's about opening out eyes to things that might be dangerous around us. For example, if you're out in a busy shopping mall and you notice a bag sitting by itself in the middle of the mall and no one is near it, you might want to contact the mall security about what you've seen. Though the chances are high that it may be nothing, it's always best to be over-careful than to ignore the possibility that it could be dangerous.
Have a Disaster Kit Handy
If the country is attacked by weapons of mass destruction, there are two likely scenarios. One scene is that your city will be destroyed or two, that you won't be hurt, but you will be out of touch with the rest of the world that is damaged. Since the likelihood of your survival is high, you need to be ready to be on your own for a few days. This means you need to have a disaster kit ready, no matter where you are. Most of us have heard that we need one of these kits in our homes, but you might want to think about having supplies in your car and at the office as well. Disaster can strike anywhere.
This kit should include enough water for at least three days, as the waters around you might be contaminated or the filtration centers may not be working. You will also want to include non-perishable foods like nuts, canned goods, etc. Things like protein bars are another good idea, plus multivitamins for any nutrients that you may not be able to provide in these foods. In this kit, you should have medical supplies like bandages and antiseptic solution, but also burn cream and pain killers. You will also want to make sure you have enough of your regular prescriptions so that you don’t run out.
If you have pets, you need to also have enough water for them as well as food and any medications they might need. You will also want to have crates for them to be put into should you need to transport them for evacuation. Be sure they have collars with their names and your contact information too in case you get separated.
Store these items in a garbage can or some other water proof container to keep it from being contaminated. You will also want to switch out the water and food every six months to be sure it's fresh.
While you might not be able to stop the weapons of mass destruction, you can make sure that you are being alert and ready for the possibility. While the government is doing everything they can to be sure we are safe, it's still up to you to make sure you and your family is taken care of.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
The truth is that terrorism isn't supposed to be predictable. By inflicting the maximum amount of damage to the maximum amount of people, terrorists win their game. So when we talk about being prepared for an attack with weapons of mass destruction, where can we even begin? Since predicting the attack is out of the question, what else can the everyday person do to start living a life that's prepared for what was once thought of as impossible?
Everyone Can Help
However, the attitude of the common day person should be one of being helpful not helpless. While we might not be able to interpret every word that comes from the mouths of terrorists, we can become more alert in our everyday lives, often being the heroes in spotting things that just aren't right. Being prepared isn't just about putting up physical barriers to our homes, but it's about opening out eyes to things that might be dangerous around us. For example, if you're out in a busy shopping mall and you notice a bag sitting by itself in the middle of the mall and no one is near it, you might want to contact the mall security about what you've seen. Though the chances are high that it may be nothing, it's always best to be over-careful than to ignore the possibility that it could be dangerous.
Have a Disaster Kit Handy
If the country is attacked by weapons of mass destruction, there are two likely scenarios. One scene is that your city will be destroyed or two, that you won't be hurt, but you will be out of touch with the rest of the world that is damaged. Since the likelihood of your survival is high, you need to be ready to be on your own for a few days. This means you need to have a disaster kit ready, no matter where you are. Most of us have heard that we need one of these kits in our homes, but you might want to think about having supplies in your car and at the office as well. Disaster can strike anywhere.
This kit should include enough water for at least three days, as the waters around you might be contaminated or the filtration centers may not be working. You will also want to include non-perishable foods like nuts, canned goods, etc. Things like protein bars are another good idea, plus multivitamins for any nutrients that you may not be able to provide in these foods. In this kit, you should have medical supplies like bandages and antiseptic solution, but also burn cream and pain killers. You will also want to make sure you have enough of your regular prescriptions so that you don’t run out.
If you have pets, you need to also have enough water for them as well as food and any medications they might need. You will also want to have crates for them to be put into should you need to transport them for evacuation. Be sure they have collars with their names and your contact information too in case you get separated.
Store these items in a garbage can or some other water proof container to keep it from being contaminated. You will also want to switch out the water and food every six months to be sure it's fresh.
While you might not be able to stop the weapons of mass destruction, you can make sure that you are being alert and ready for the possibility. While the government is doing everything they can to be sure we are safe, it's still up to you to make sure you and your family is taken care of.
Free Article Source: http://www.za77.org
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Hillary Rodham Custer?
by Jed Babbin
Posted: 02/13/2008
No, Virginia, you weren’t Hillary Rodham Custer’s last stand. But standing as Barack Obama’s sixth-in-a-row primary or caucus victory, Hillary’s loss in Virginia is a clear setback. The later results in DC and Maryland confirmed a Chesapeake Bay trifecta for Obama that split Clinton’s most reliable voting blocks right down the middle.
Clinton isn’t done, at least yet. Her all-out campaigns in Texas and Ohio between now and their March 4 primaries will determine whether Obama can score a TKO against the Clinton machine, and the Clintons won’t go quietly.
After yesterday’s losses Clinton’s campaign is reeling. The disorganization attendant to firing campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle after the Tsunami Tuesday and weekend losses, the Clinton campaign is less a campaign for votes than a huddled mass in a bunker. There the old Clinton machine is re-forming for a guerilla war against Obama that may last until the August convention in Denver.
The fact that Clinton replaced Doyle with her old White House henchman Maggie Williams is one proof of the imploding Clinton organization.
Maggie, for those who are just tuning in, was one of Hillary’s most faithful “fixers” while Bill was president. The July 1993 suicide of White House lawyer and Hillary confidante Vince Foster was the first display of Williams’ skills. Williams -- with Hillary’s other fixers, Bernie Nussbaum and Patsy Thomasson -- searched Foster’s office at the time of his death. And, as the New York Daily News reminded us a few days ago, a uniformed Secret Service officer testified under oath that he saw Williams leaving Foster’s office carrying documents at just about the time the Justice Department was about to search Foster’s papers. The papers Williams left with were never turned over to the Justice Department.
Williams is also famous for receiving improperly, in the White House, a $50,000 check for the Democratic National Committee from Johnny Chung. Chung later pled guilty to campaign law violations and testified to Congress that he funneled $300,000 of Communist Chinese government money to the Clinton campaign.
The Tuesday setback for Hillary cuts much deeper than the voter turnouts or delegate counts. It is in the large 63%-36% margin in Virginia and in the split that Obama made in some of Clinton’s most faithful voting blocks. Not only did he capture a huge percentage of the Virginia black vote (probably more than 80-20) but Obama also received about 50% of the white vote and nearly the same margin of women as Clinton did. Obama also garnered about 53% of senior citizens’ votes, and 59% of the low-income vote. There’s no good news for Clinton in any of this.
It appears that most of the voting blocks she and Bill have always been able to rely on are sundered.
The DC vote -- which Obama won by an overwhelming 72%-26% -- was no surprise because of Obama’s strength among black voters who predominate in DC. But the Maryland vote -- about 48%-41% for Obama – was more interesting, and all the more damaging to Clinton.
The large margin of Obama’s victory in Virginia was equaled in Maryland and DC, and the same splits in the voting blocks were evident.
According to Fox News, the Maryland vote was dominated by women’s turnout, more than 60% of the total. But Maryland women went for Obama 58%-39% over Clinton. They split the white vote (Clinton 49% and Obama 47%) but Obama also seized the senior vote 51%-44% over Clinton.
Some of us, myself included, thought last year that Obama was in the race for the experience. Still a very young 46, Obama seemed an unlikely competitor for the Clinton machine. But the voters had a different idea. His ability to turn voters on and get them to the polls is formidable.
One of HUMAN EVENTS' editors voted in the city of Occoquan in the early morning hours. He reported that the line was long, and many black voters were present. One was overheard remarking on the “new” voting machines being used. But those same machines had been used for the past three elections. People who have not voted before, or haven’t voted in years, are turning out for Obama.
His victory speech last night showed why. He took Martin Luther King, Jr.s’ “dream” theme and turned it into an emotional – though substance-free -- appeal for a mandate from the voters. It may be enough to sink Hillary. And John McCain.
“Change”, to the Clintons, means rounding up the usual suspects. At least those who aren’t in jail or on the lam. For the Old Team to overcome this long string of defeats will require a reinvention of the Clinton campaign methodology that has worked for decades and is now failing. Obama’s sustained string of victories has Clinton badly off balance.
Clinton campaigns also triangulate expertly, taking the steam out of the opponent’s arguments. But plagiarizing “Change” -- as Hillary did in South Carolina and Florida -- didn’t work either. Obama chants ‘change’ without ascribing meaning to it, leaving Hillary trying to triangulate a cloud. And the last Clinton tactic -- appealing to reliable voting blocks with individual pander ploys -- is trumped by Obama’s personality. People aren’t listening to the wonk when the young charismatic speaks.
The Clintons used surrogates successfully to attack, with every line of negative argument that might work, against George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. The negatives of Obama aren’t clear, and the racially-tinged line Bill Clinton tried in South Carolina backfired.
The Chesapeake trifecta isn’t the end of Clinton. But it may be the beginning of the end. If she can’t win in the coming Wisconsin (February 19th) and Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island primaries on March 4 she may not be able to win at all.
Yesterday wasn’t Clinton’s last stand. That may come on March 4. Between now and then, Hillary’s team will be huddled in the bunker, mentally defeated, hostage to Obama’s smile.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. He is the author of "In the Words of our Enemies"(Regnery,2007) and (with Edward Timperlake) of "Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States" (Regnery, 2006) and "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" (Regnery, 2004). E-mail him at jbabbin@eaglepub.com.
Posted: 02/13/2008
No, Virginia, you weren’t Hillary Rodham Custer’s last stand. But standing as Barack Obama’s sixth-in-a-row primary or caucus victory, Hillary’s loss in Virginia is a clear setback. The later results in DC and Maryland confirmed a Chesapeake Bay trifecta for Obama that split Clinton’s most reliable voting blocks right down the middle.
Clinton isn’t done, at least yet. Her all-out campaigns in Texas and Ohio between now and their March 4 primaries will determine whether Obama can score a TKO against the Clinton machine, and the Clintons won’t go quietly.
After yesterday’s losses Clinton’s campaign is reeling. The disorganization attendant to firing campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle after the Tsunami Tuesday and weekend losses, the Clinton campaign is less a campaign for votes than a huddled mass in a bunker. There the old Clinton machine is re-forming for a guerilla war against Obama that may last until the August convention in Denver.
The fact that Clinton replaced Doyle with her old White House henchman Maggie Williams is one proof of the imploding Clinton organization.
Maggie, for those who are just tuning in, was one of Hillary’s most faithful “fixers” while Bill was president. The July 1993 suicide of White House lawyer and Hillary confidante Vince Foster was the first display of Williams’ skills. Williams -- with Hillary’s other fixers, Bernie Nussbaum and Patsy Thomasson -- searched Foster’s office at the time of his death. And, as the New York Daily News reminded us a few days ago, a uniformed Secret Service officer testified under oath that he saw Williams leaving Foster’s office carrying documents at just about the time the Justice Department was about to search Foster’s papers. The papers Williams left with were never turned over to the Justice Department.
Williams is also famous for receiving improperly, in the White House, a $50,000 check for the Democratic National Committee from Johnny Chung. Chung later pled guilty to campaign law violations and testified to Congress that he funneled $300,000 of Communist Chinese government money to the Clinton campaign.
The Tuesday setback for Hillary cuts much deeper than the voter turnouts or delegate counts. It is in the large 63%-36% margin in Virginia and in the split that Obama made in some of Clinton’s most faithful voting blocks. Not only did he capture a huge percentage of the Virginia black vote (probably more than 80-20) but Obama also received about 50% of the white vote and nearly the same margin of women as Clinton did. Obama also garnered about 53% of senior citizens’ votes, and 59% of the low-income vote. There’s no good news for Clinton in any of this.
It appears that most of the voting blocks she and Bill have always been able to rely on are sundered.
The DC vote -- which Obama won by an overwhelming 72%-26% -- was no surprise because of Obama’s strength among black voters who predominate in DC. But the Maryland vote -- about 48%-41% for Obama – was more interesting, and all the more damaging to Clinton.
The large margin of Obama’s victory in Virginia was equaled in Maryland and DC, and the same splits in the voting blocks were evident.
According to Fox News, the Maryland vote was dominated by women’s turnout, more than 60% of the total. But Maryland women went for Obama 58%-39% over Clinton. They split the white vote (Clinton 49% and Obama 47%) but Obama also seized the senior vote 51%-44% over Clinton.
Some of us, myself included, thought last year that Obama was in the race for the experience. Still a very young 46, Obama seemed an unlikely competitor for the Clinton machine. But the voters had a different idea. His ability to turn voters on and get them to the polls is formidable.
One of HUMAN EVENTS' editors voted in the city of Occoquan in the early morning hours. He reported that the line was long, and many black voters were present. One was overheard remarking on the “new” voting machines being used. But those same machines had been used for the past three elections. People who have not voted before, or haven’t voted in years, are turning out for Obama.
His victory speech last night showed why. He took Martin Luther King, Jr.s’ “dream” theme and turned it into an emotional – though substance-free -- appeal for a mandate from the voters. It may be enough to sink Hillary. And John McCain.
“Change”, to the Clintons, means rounding up the usual suspects. At least those who aren’t in jail or on the lam. For the Old Team to overcome this long string of defeats will require a reinvention of the Clinton campaign methodology that has worked for decades and is now failing. Obama’s sustained string of victories has Clinton badly off balance.
Clinton campaigns also triangulate expertly, taking the steam out of the opponent’s arguments. But plagiarizing “Change” -- as Hillary did in South Carolina and Florida -- didn’t work either. Obama chants ‘change’ without ascribing meaning to it, leaving Hillary trying to triangulate a cloud. And the last Clinton tactic -- appealing to reliable voting blocks with individual pander ploys -- is trumped by Obama’s personality. People aren’t listening to the wonk when the young charismatic speaks.
The Clintons used surrogates successfully to attack, with every line of negative argument that might work, against George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. The negatives of Obama aren’t clear, and the racially-tinged line Bill Clinton tried in South Carolina backfired.
The Chesapeake trifecta isn’t the end of Clinton. But it may be the beginning of the end. If she can’t win in the coming Wisconsin (February 19th) and Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island primaries on March 4 she may not be able to win at all.
Yesterday wasn’t Clinton’s last stand. That may come on March 4. Between now and then, Hillary’s team will be huddled in the bunker, mentally defeated, hostage to Obama’s smile.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. He is the author of "In the Words of our Enemies"(Regnery,2007) and (with Edward Timperlake) of "Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States" (Regnery, 2006) and "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" (Regnery, 2004). E-mail him at jbabbin@eaglepub.com.
Pelosi’s Reckless Gamble on FISA
by Jed Babbin
Posted: 02/19/2008
With great fanfare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her agenda for her first 100 hours last January. One of the seven things she promised to do was to enact all the remaining recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. One year later, with few of those items accomplished, Pelosi is gambling recklessly that terrorists will miss the opportunities given them by the House’s failure to pass essential fixes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
When the 9-11 Commission’s report came out in July 2004, its most scathing criticism of the intelligence community was for failing to “connect the dots:” to cooperate in gathering, analyzing and using the information we have on terrorists’ intentions and capabilities. The “connect the dots” mantra was the basis for legislative reorganizations of the intelligence community, including the creation of the new Director of National Intelligence to coordinate all the agencies and the role of the new Department of Homeland Security in analyzing intelligence on terrorist threats.
But before you “connect the dots” you have to gather them. The National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program, created in secret by presidential order, was enormously successful in intercepting cell phone calls, e-mails and other electronic communications between terrorists and their sympathizers. It resulted in the gathering of huge amounts of data and the interdiction of a number of terrorist attacks. It has also helped battlefield operations in Iraq and Afghanistan because the separation of national intelligence gathering assets and armed forces operations has -- wisely -- been almost completely eliminated.
That NSA top secret program suffered two damaging blows. First, its effectiveness was reduced when the New York Times published its existence, despite direct pleas from the White House. Second, a secret decision by the FISA court this time last year imposed a new requirement that a FISA court warrant be obtained before NSA could listen to communications even between foreigners overseas if the communication passed through US-located computers and switching equipment.
The decision effectively blocked surveillance on new “targets” -- people, specific telephone numbers and e-mail addresses -- without FISA warrants. The effect on our intelligence gathering was so devastating that in April 2007, DNI Adm. Mike McConnell went in person to the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence leaders -- Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Christopher (“Kit”) Bond (R-Mo.) -- and asked for urgent action to fix the problem. Working through partisan wrangling took until August 3, when a patchwork fix was passed on the eve of a Congressional recess.
In the interim, Sen. Bond told me in an interview last Friday, we had, “…gone about four months without being able to go after any new targets.” Now -- because Pelosi blocked the vote and allowed the August fixes to expire -- we’re back to where we were last April: unable to gather intelligence from new “targets.” It’s a license for bin Laden and his terrorists to communicate without fear of interception.
Nancy Pelosi and the most of the House Democrats are erasing the dots, not helping intelligence analysts to connect them. Last week Pelosi blocked a vote by which the House would have passed the bipartisan Senate version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reforms legislation essential to fixing the problem created by the FISA court and keeping the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program going. Pelosi did that despite a letter she received from most of the “Blue Dog” Democrats telling her they’d vote for the Senate bill. Added to Republican numbers, the Blue Dogs’ votes would have enabled Pelosi to pass the bill on a simple majority vote.
Instead, she killed the effort, the House recessed and the August patchwork FISA legislation expired on Saturday.
The House’s failure comes at a critical time. Imad Mugniyeh, one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, was killed in Syria last week. His terrorist network, Iranian-backed Hizballah, has threatened revenge against the US and Israel, but NSA is left nearly blind to new intelligence targets. Pakistan -- after the Bhutto assassination -- is holding an election this week that al-Queda and the Taliban want to disrupt. And they may, without NSA interference.
And what of that SEAL platoon -- maybe trying to capture or kill a high-value target or rescue a kidnapped US soldier -- left waiting for six or eight hours, lacking critical information while someone writes a FISA warrant for a new intelligence target? House liberals don’t care.
Cong. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) -- ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -- focused on these threats while his Democratic counterparts were content to ignore them. Hoekstra told me, “So just as they are gearing up their planning as to how they’re going to retaliate, we are going blind. You throw in a few Danish cartoons, you throw in al-Quaeda in Iraq saying ‘we want to attack Israel,’ …and I would not have wanted going home yesterday afternoon after not having done anything.”
Short-term extensions of the August fixes are no longer an option. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) told me Friday, “For 6 months, the communications companies have been waiting for us to fix this retroactive liability problem. They have 40 lawsuits against them. They have fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, their CEO’s, to their board of directors, they can’t cooperate much longer. And what’s going to happen if we don’t get it fixed is the program is going to go away. Because these are not government employees, you can’t order them to do it.”
McConnell added, “These are people who are volunteering to help. And as a result of the litigation morass, which has affected so many parts of our country, they are not going to be able to justify this much longer to their boards of directors or to their shareholders.”
The best explanation for Pelosi’s refusal to pass the Senate bill through the House is the Democrats’ craving for political donations from the trial lawyers. As Sen. McConnell told me, “It’s more important to [the Democrats] for these companies to be in court, thereby enriching their plaintiff lawyer buddies, than for these terrorists to be in jail.”
So while Usama bin Laden figures out how to use his new iPhone, Congress is vacationing. They have time to do that, but not to correct what the FISA court broke, and protect the telecom companies -- and their employees -- from the 40 or so lawsuits brought against them for helping NSA gather intelligence.
HPSCI Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) was at a Clinton fundraiser last week when the FISA bills were being considered in the House. According to a House source Reyes miscounted the votes and assured Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md) that the short-term extension offered last week would pass. Reyes was surprised when some House Dems voted with Republicans to defeat it.
Incompetent Democratic leadership coupled with their MoveOn.org-like attitude toward national security may prove a deadly combination for Americans at home and our soldiers abroad.
The Democrats are saying that they didn’t have enough time to act. Since last April? Sen. Bond pointed out that, “The House spent the past week investigating baseball players…If only al-Queda were on steroids, perhaps the House leadership would be more interested in acting on FISA.”
Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. He is the author of "In the Words of our Enemies"(Regnery,2007) and (with Edward Timperlake) of "Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States" (Regnery, 2006) and "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" (Regnery, 2004). E-mail him at jbabbin@eaglepub.com.
Posted: 02/19/2008
With great fanfare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her agenda for her first 100 hours last January. One of the seven things she promised to do was to enact all the remaining recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. One year later, with few of those items accomplished, Pelosi is gambling recklessly that terrorists will miss the opportunities given them by the House’s failure to pass essential fixes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
When the 9-11 Commission’s report came out in July 2004, its most scathing criticism of the intelligence community was for failing to “connect the dots:” to cooperate in gathering, analyzing and using the information we have on terrorists’ intentions and capabilities. The “connect the dots” mantra was the basis for legislative reorganizations of the intelligence community, including the creation of the new Director of National Intelligence to coordinate all the agencies and the role of the new Department of Homeland Security in analyzing intelligence on terrorist threats.
But before you “connect the dots” you have to gather them. The National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program, created in secret by presidential order, was enormously successful in intercepting cell phone calls, e-mails and other electronic communications between terrorists and their sympathizers. It resulted in the gathering of huge amounts of data and the interdiction of a number of terrorist attacks. It has also helped battlefield operations in Iraq and Afghanistan because the separation of national intelligence gathering assets and armed forces operations has -- wisely -- been almost completely eliminated.
That NSA top secret program suffered two damaging blows. First, its effectiveness was reduced when the New York Times published its existence, despite direct pleas from the White House. Second, a secret decision by the FISA court this time last year imposed a new requirement that a FISA court warrant be obtained before NSA could listen to communications even between foreigners overseas if the communication passed through US-located computers and switching equipment.
The decision effectively blocked surveillance on new “targets” -- people, specific telephone numbers and e-mail addresses -- without FISA warrants. The effect on our intelligence gathering was so devastating that in April 2007, DNI Adm. Mike McConnell went in person to the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence leaders -- Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Christopher (“Kit”) Bond (R-Mo.) -- and asked for urgent action to fix the problem. Working through partisan wrangling took until August 3, when a patchwork fix was passed on the eve of a Congressional recess.
In the interim, Sen. Bond told me in an interview last Friday, we had, “…gone about four months without being able to go after any new targets.” Now -- because Pelosi blocked the vote and allowed the August fixes to expire -- we’re back to where we were last April: unable to gather intelligence from new “targets.” It’s a license for bin Laden and his terrorists to communicate without fear of interception.
Nancy Pelosi and the most of the House Democrats are erasing the dots, not helping intelligence analysts to connect them. Last week Pelosi blocked a vote by which the House would have passed the bipartisan Senate version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reforms legislation essential to fixing the problem created by the FISA court and keeping the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program going. Pelosi did that despite a letter she received from most of the “Blue Dog” Democrats telling her they’d vote for the Senate bill. Added to Republican numbers, the Blue Dogs’ votes would have enabled Pelosi to pass the bill on a simple majority vote.
Instead, she killed the effort, the House recessed and the August patchwork FISA legislation expired on Saturday.
The House’s failure comes at a critical time. Imad Mugniyeh, one of the world’s most-wanted terrorists, was killed in Syria last week. His terrorist network, Iranian-backed Hizballah, has threatened revenge against the US and Israel, but NSA is left nearly blind to new intelligence targets. Pakistan -- after the Bhutto assassination -- is holding an election this week that al-Queda and the Taliban want to disrupt. And they may, without NSA interference.
And what of that SEAL platoon -- maybe trying to capture or kill a high-value target or rescue a kidnapped US soldier -- left waiting for six or eight hours, lacking critical information while someone writes a FISA warrant for a new intelligence target? House liberals don’t care.
Cong. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) -- ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -- focused on these threats while his Democratic counterparts were content to ignore them. Hoekstra told me, “So just as they are gearing up their planning as to how they’re going to retaliate, we are going blind. You throw in a few Danish cartoons, you throw in al-Quaeda in Iraq saying ‘we want to attack Israel,’ …and I would not have wanted going home yesterday afternoon after not having done anything.”
Short-term extensions of the August fixes are no longer an option. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) told me Friday, “For 6 months, the communications companies have been waiting for us to fix this retroactive liability problem. They have 40 lawsuits against them. They have fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, their CEO’s, to their board of directors, they can’t cooperate much longer. And what’s going to happen if we don’t get it fixed is the program is going to go away. Because these are not government employees, you can’t order them to do it.”
McConnell added, “These are people who are volunteering to help. And as a result of the litigation morass, which has affected so many parts of our country, they are not going to be able to justify this much longer to their boards of directors or to their shareholders.”
The best explanation for Pelosi’s refusal to pass the Senate bill through the House is the Democrats’ craving for political donations from the trial lawyers. As Sen. McConnell told me, “It’s more important to [the Democrats] for these companies to be in court, thereby enriching their plaintiff lawyer buddies, than for these terrorists to be in jail.”
So while Usama bin Laden figures out how to use his new iPhone, Congress is vacationing. They have time to do that, but not to correct what the FISA court broke, and protect the telecom companies -- and their employees -- from the 40 or so lawsuits brought against them for helping NSA gather intelligence.
HPSCI Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) was at a Clinton fundraiser last week when the FISA bills were being considered in the House. According to a House source Reyes miscounted the votes and assured Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md) that the short-term extension offered last week would pass. Reyes was surprised when some House Dems voted with Republicans to defeat it.
Incompetent Democratic leadership coupled with their MoveOn.org-like attitude toward national security may prove a deadly combination for Americans at home and our soldiers abroad.
The Democrats are saying that they didn’t have enough time to act. Since last April? Sen. Bond pointed out that, “The House spent the past week investigating baseball players…If only al-Queda were on steroids, perhaps the House leadership would be more interested in acting on FISA.”
Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. He is the author of "In the Words of our Enemies"(Regnery,2007) and (with Edward Timperlake) of "Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States" (Regnery, 2006) and "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" (Regnery, 2004). E-mail him at jbabbin@eaglepub.com.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Swiss Fondue Recipe and History
By Sara Gray
Truly epic, fondue history starts with a recipe in Homer's Iliad (Song XI). Doesn't it stand to reason that the mixture described of Pramnos wine, grated goat's cheese and white flour was a fondue?
Well, whether that's what Homer was describing or not, fondue history states that the warm cheese dish originated in Switzerland but more specifically in the Canton of Neuchatel.
According to history experts, fondue consists of at least two varieties of cheeses that are melted with wine and a bit of flour. It's served communally out of pot called a "caquelon". Long forks are used by each guest to spear a cube of bread then the bread is dipped into the cheese and eaten.
How did cheese fondue get started?
Well, before we get into the nitty gritty of cheese fondue, let's back up for a second. The word fondue is a derivative of the French word, fondre, which means "to melt". However, this is only a part of how the word fondue is used today.
In doing my research of fondue history,"fondue" has a much broader meaning. It refers to foods that are dunked, heated, or cooked in sauce, oil, or broth in a fondue (or similar) pot. We know now, of course, that the Swiss take credit for the neighborly cuisine. They created it out of necessity, not because someone with too much time on their hands came up with a great idea for eating together!
Before the invention of the refrigerator, cheese and bread were made in the summer and fall to last through the winter. Both became extremely hard and inedible in that state. The bread became so much like concrete that it literally had to be chopped with an axe!
The Swiss realized that if hard-as-rock cheese was heated with wine over a fire, it softened and became deliciously edible. Bread that was too dried out to eat by itself, became soft and pliable when dunked in the melted cheese.
Once a necessity, the cooking method of fondue became a social custom of making the best of the long, cold Swiss winters by huddling around the fire with friends or family with a large pot of cheese and some hard bread. It's a tradition that has stood the years and travelled across the continents.
Fondue history states that the cooking method of fondue dates back to the 18th century when both cheese and wine were important industries in Switzerland. The simple-to-prepare meal used ingredients that were found in most average homes.
Most recipes we see for "traditional" Swiss style fondue are a combination of two cheeses used, Gruyere and Emmenthaler. They are combined because either cheese alone would make for a mixture that was too sharp or too bland.
Most recipes call for the cheeses to be melted in a dry white wine. This helps to keep the cheese from the direct heat as it melts, as well as to add flavor. Kirsch (a clear cherry brandy) was added if the cheese itself was too young to produce the desired tartness. Adding garlic gives the flavoring a good mellow taste, while the flour or cornstarch assists in keeping the cheese from separating.
Here's a delicious and easy recipe for traditional Swiss Fondue: What you'll need:
2 cups shredded process Swiss cheese (1/2 lb unshredded)
1 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp pepper
1 cup buttermilk
1 clove garlic
Dry white table wine
Cooked ham cubes
Toast triangles
Serve this version of Swiss fondue with ham cubes and toast triangles that are made ahead for swirling in the cheese mixture. You can also use fresh fruits such as apple and pear slices.
Start by tossing the cheese with cornstarch, salt, dry mustard, nutmeg, and pepper. Heat the buttermilk with the garlic in a double boiler or over hot water in the fondue pot. When thoroughly heated, remove the garlic and add the cheese mixture. Stir it until the cheese melts and is blending smoothly.
Heat the wine up a little and add gradually to the mixture, 2 Tbsp at a time. This keeps the fondue at a dipping consistency. Serve your guest and make sure each has a fondue fork to use with the ham cubes and fruit. Once you swirl the ham in the cheese mixture, place it on top of the toast triangle and eat until you can eat no more. Delicious!
Important: Feel free to republish this article on your website. However, you are not allowed to modify any part of its content and all links should be kept active.
For more great info on Fondue and other types of appetizers and appetizer meals, visit http://www.easy-appetizer-recipes.com.
Sara Gray is an avid lover of appetizers and has created a great website called Easy Appetizer Recipes found at http://www.easy-appetizer-recipes.com where you can find delicious ideas for all kinds of appetizers, raclette grilling, tapas small plates, snacks and soups.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sara_Gray
Truly epic, fondue history starts with a recipe in Homer's Iliad (Song XI). Doesn't it stand to reason that the mixture described of Pramnos wine, grated goat's cheese and white flour was a fondue?
Well, whether that's what Homer was describing or not, fondue history states that the warm cheese dish originated in Switzerland but more specifically in the Canton of Neuchatel.
According to history experts, fondue consists of at least two varieties of cheeses that are melted with wine and a bit of flour. It's served communally out of pot called a "caquelon". Long forks are used by each guest to spear a cube of bread then the bread is dipped into the cheese and eaten.
How did cheese fondue get started?
Well, before we get into the nitty gritty of cheese fondue, let's back up for a second. The word fondue is a derivative of the French word, fondre, which means "to melt". However, this is only a part of how the word fondue is used today.
In doing my research of fondue history,"fondue" has a much broader meaning. It refers to foods that are dunked, heated, or cooked in sauce, oil, or broth in a fondue (or similar) pot. We know now, of course, that the Swiss take credit for the neighborly cuisine. They created it out of necessity, not because someone with too much time on their hands came up with a great idea for eating together!
Before the invention of the refrigerator, cheese and bread were made in the summer and fall to last through the winter. Both became extremely hard and inedible in that state. The bread became so much like concrete that it literally had to be chopped with an axe!
The Swiss realized that if hard-as-rock cheese was heated with wine over a fire, it softened and became deliciously edible. Bread that was too dried out to eat by itself, became soft and pliable when dunked in the melted cheese.
Once a necessity, the cooking method of fondue became a social custom of making the best of the long, cold Swiss winters by huddling around the fire with friends or family with a large pot of cheese and some hard bread. It's a tradition that has stood the years and travelled across the continents.
Fondue history states that the cooking method of fondue dates back to the 18th century when both cheese and wine were important industries in Switzerland. The simple-to-prepare meal used ingredients that were found in most average homes.
Most recipes we see for "traditional" Swiss style fondue are a combination of two cheeses used, Gruyere and Emmenthaler. They are combined because either cheese alone would make for a mixture that was too sharp or too bland.
Most recipes call for the cheeses to be melted in a dry white wine. This helps to keep the cheese from the direct heat as it melts, as well as to add flavor. Kirsch (a clear cherry brandy) was added if the cheese itself was too young to produce the desired tartness. Adding garlic gives the flavoring a good mellow taste, while the flour or cornstarch assists in keeping the cheese from separating.
Here's a delicious and easy recipe for traditional Swiss Fondue: What you'll need:
2 cups shredded process Swiss cheese (1/2 lb unshredded)
1 1/2 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp pepper
1 cup buttermilk
1 clove garlic
Dry white table wine
Cooked ham cubes
Toast triangles
Serve this version of Swiss fondue with ham cubes and toast triangles that are made ahead for swirling in the cheese mixture. You can also use fresh fruits such as apple and pear slices.
Start by tossing the cheese with cornstarch, salt, dry mustard, nutmeg, and pepper. Heat the buttermilk with the garlic in a double boiler or over hot water in the fondue pot. When thoroughly heated, remove the garlic and add the cheese mixture. Stir it until the cheese melts and is blending smoothly.
Heat the wine up a little and add gradually to the mixture, 2 Tbsp at a time. This keeps the fondue at a dipping consistency. Serve your guest and make sure each has a fondue fork to use with the ham cubes and fruit. Once you swirl the ham in the cheese mixture, place it on top of the toast triangle and eat until you can eat no more. Delicious!
Important: Feel free to republish this article on your website. However, you are not allowed to modify any part of its content and all links should be kept active.
For more great info on Fondue and other types of appetizers and appetizer meals, visit http://www.easy-appetizer-recipes.com.
Sara Gray is an avid lover of appetizers and has created a great website called Easy Appetizer Recipes found at http://www.easy-appetizer-recipes.com where you can find delicious ideas for all kinds of appetizers, raclette grilling, tapas small plates, snacks and soups.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sara_Gray
Not Sure On Fantasy Lingerie - Then Throw A Fantasy Lingerie Party
By Amanda Cotterill
Nurse uniforms are perhaps the best known fantasy lingerie. They are easy to find and fairly inexpensive. Nurse uniforms come in a wide variety of styles, some of which are perfect for Halloween parties and other get-togethers, while others are suitable only for the bedroom. However, there is an entire world of fantasy lingerie with which you may be less familiar. To broaden your knowledge, why not gather your girlfriends together for a fantasy lingerie party? Here is what you need to know to throw a bash your friends are not likely to forget.
The Occasion
No occasion is really necessary to throw a great lingerie party. However, an upcoming occasion will give the party a theme and a focus. Bridal showers, birthdays, and many other celebrations lend themselves particularly well to a fantasy lingerie party.
The Place
Although a sexy lingerie party could be thrown almost anywhere, if you have the funds consider renting a hotel suite. Make it a girls' weekend away, perhaps in the nearest big city.
The Rules
Fantasy lingerie can be expensive. Have each girl buy one costume to bring. Set rules on the purchase to make it into a game, whether you set a dollar limit or a ban on well-known costumes such as nurse uniforms and French Maid costumes.
The Party
Open some wine or a bottle of your favourite liquor, and then bring on the costumes! Depending on your friends' preferences, you may want to model the costumes or simply hold them up for inspection. If you and your friends happen to be the same size, you could even have a white elephant exchange of costumes. However, sexy lingerie should fit well, so this will not work for groups of women of differing sizes.
At this point, you and your friends will begin to share stories about the shop where the purchase was made and the general experience of buying the item. Many women are uncomfortable with the idea of fantasy lingerie, and the relaxed party setting is the perfect place to explore the concept. Your friends will provide support, advice and honesty, making you more comfortable with the idea of fantasy lingerie.
A fantasy lingerie party is a wonderful and unusual event for women of all ages. Whether you and your friends are naturally wild and looking for even more extreme ideas or normally conservative and hoping to branch out a bit, a fantasy lingerie party can broaden your horizons and give you a new perspective. Combined with a girls' weekend away, it can also provide great memories and fabulous stories to tell your grandchildren someday.
Nurse uniforms and French maid costumes are extremely popular styles of sexy lingerie. If you would like to branch out a bit, however, consider throwing a fantasy or sexy lingerie party. You will have the chance to learn while creating memories to last forever.
Amanda Cotterill has been involved in the sexy lingerie uk market for many years. This article outlines the benefits of women wearing fantasy lingerie as if that needed much explaining! Please include this credit if you use this article.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amanda_Cotterill
Nurse uniforms are perhaps the best known fantasy lingerie. They are easy to find and fairly inexpensive. Nurse uniforms come in a wide variety of styles, some of which are perfect for Halloween parties and other get-togethers, while others are suitable only for the bedroom. However, there is an entire world of fantasy lingerie with which you may be less familiar. To broaden your knowledge, why not gather your girlfriends together for a fantasy lingerie party? Here is what you need to know to throw a bash your friends are not likely to forget.
The Occasion
No occasion is really necessary to throw a great lingerie party. However, an upcoming occasion will give the party a theme and a focus. Bridal showers, birthdays, and many other celebrations lend themselves particularly well to a fantasy lingerie party.
The Place
Although a sexy lingerie party could be thrown almost anywhere, if you have the funds consider renting a hotel suite. Make it a girls' weekend away, perhaps in the nearest big city.
The Rules
Fantasy lingerie can be expensive. Have each girl buy one costume to bring. Set rules on the purchase to make it into a game, whether you set a dollar limit or a ban on well-known costumes such as nurse uniforms and French Maid costumes.
The Party
Open some wine or a bottle of your favourite liquor, and then bring on the costumes! Depending on your friends' preferences, you may want to model the costumes or simply hold them up for inspection. If you and your friends happen to be the same size, you could even have a white elephant exchange of costumes. However, sexy lingerie should fit well, so this will not work for groups of women of differing sizes.
At this point, you and your friends will begin to share stories about the shop where the purchase was made and the general experience of buying the item. Many women are uncomfortable with the idea of fantasy lingerie, and the relaxed party setting is the perfect place to explore the concept. Your friends will provide support, advice and honesty, making you more comfortable with the idea of fantasy lingerie.
A fantasy lingerie party is a wonderful and unusual event for women of all ages. Whether you and your friends are naturally wild and looking for even more extreme ideas or normally conservative and hoping to branch out a bit, a fantasy lingerie party can broaden your horizons and give you a new perspective. Combined with a girls' weekend away, it can also provide great memories and fabulous stories to tell your grandchildren someday.
Nurse uniforms and French maid costumes are extremely popular styles of sexy lingerie. If you would like to branch out a bit, however, consider throwing a fantasy or sexy lingerie party. You will have the chance to learn while creating memories to last forever.
Amanda Cotterill has been involved in the sexy lingerie uk market for many years. This article outlines the benefits of women wearing fantasy lingerie as if that needed much explaining! Please include this credit if you use this article.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amanda_Cotterill
Can China Stop the Future Industrial Revolution and Civil Unrest By Raiding Gun Factories?
By Lance Winslow
China has always been into history and this time they seem to be studying the history of other great civilizations like the United States and Europe and watching for signs that an Industrial Revolution might be on its way. They are also watching the present periods and how international terrorism cans on spawn problems from within.
It is no wonder in fact did the Chinese government is very much watching the Internet and attempting to watch information flow both in and out of the country. Additionally, they are worried that their citizens might have guns. The Chinese police have claimed to have raided over 100 underground small arms and gun factories in their attempts to stop illegal weapons trade within their own country.
China and the Chinese government is taking no chances when it comes to a possible peasant revolution, Industrial Revolution or large-scale civil conflict. One Chinese news agency reported that they collected over 115,000 guns at 113 locations and found over 350 explosives factories resulting in this seizing of 2500 tons of explosives. And they arrested over 4500 people. Wow.
Perhaps the biggest question is; was this a matter of stopping a future revolution and a chance to put more control over the people to stay in power longer? Or was this really a matter of going after criminals, gun-runners and terrorists? Of course we will never know except with the Chinese government allows out into the media and that is the story.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow
China has always been into history and this time they seem to be studying the history of other great civilizations like the United States and Europe and watching for signs that an Industrial Revolution might be on its way. They are also watching the present periods and how international terrorism cans on spawn problems from within.
It is no wonder in fact did the Chinese government is very much watching the Internet and attempting to watch information flow both in and out of the country. Additionally, they are worried that their citizens might have guns. The Chinese police have claimed to have raided over 100 underground small arms and gun factories in their attempts to stop illegal weapons trade within their own country.
China and the Chinese government is taking no chances when it comes to a possible peasant revolution, Industrial Revolution or large-scale civil conflict. One Chinese news agency reported that they collected over 115,000 guns at 113 locations and found over 350 explosives factories resulting in this seizing of 2500 tons of explosives. And they arrested over 4500 people. Wow.
Perhaps the biggest question is; was this a matter of stopping a future revolution and a chance to put more control over the people to stay in power longer? Or was this really a matter of going after criminals, gun-runners and terrorists? Of course we will never know except with the Chinese government allows out into the media and that is the story.
"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/. Lance is a guest writer for Our Spokane Magazine in Spokane, Washington
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lance_Winslow
China Heritage
By Steve Kevin
With history and culture as old as civilization itself, China is as complex as the DNA code of each of the 1.3 billion (and counting) Chinese populating the earth. Hence, we will not attempt on a crash course of the Chinese menu, but we will have a taste of its popular and most sought-after offerings.
Forbidden City
Constructed during the Ming and Qing dynasty eras, native Chinese call it Gu Gong while the tourism board and guests alike now call it the Palace Museum. It holds the record for being the largest palace complex in the world, sprawling over 74 hectares of property located at the very heart of Beijing.
A UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site since 1987, it served both as a residence and as a seat of power to a total of 24 emperors, fourteen from the Ming dynasty and ten from the Qing dynasty. An imperial palace for a period of almost five centuries, it is composed of two divisions, namely, the Inner Court and the Outer Court. The former is located in the northern half of the compound and used as the royal residence of the emperor and his family while the latter is the southern half and served as the seat of imperial power of the ruler of China.
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is an ancient fortress with its own history of construction that spans across dynasties from the Western Zhou dynasty in 1100 BC to the Qin dynasty in 206 BC. The citadel that meanders through 6,700 kilometers of mountains and valleys, and grasslands and deserts from west to east, was refurbished and fortified by the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1644.
A UNESCO World Heritage since 1987, it is one of the world's greatest wonders and believed to be the only human construction on earth that is visible from outer space. A tourist who has never set foot on the Great Wall has never been to China.
Stone forest
Sculpted by nature's own hands, the enchanting Stone Forest located in Lunan Yi Nationality Autonomous County is acclaimed as the First Wonder of the World. It is a group of several patches of limestone formations interspersed with scenic oasis spots covering an area of 96,000 acres.
The fabled Stone Forest has a rich collection of legends and myths pertaining to its origin. However, geologists simply say that it used to be an expansive sea which dried up and the result of millions of years of erosion.
For hotels in China please visit: TopStarHotels.co.uk. For other options: Cyprus Florence
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Kevin
With history and culture as old as civilization itself, China is as complex as the DNA code of each of the 1.3 billion (and counting) Chinese populating the earth. Hence, we will not attempt on a crash course of the Chinese menu, but we will have a taste of its popular and most sought-after offerings.
Forbidden City
Constructed during the Ming and Qing dynasty eras, native Chinese call it Gu Gong while the tourism board and guests alike now call it the Palace Museum. It holds the record for being the largest palace complex in the world, sprawling over 74 hectares of property located at the very heart of Beijing.
A UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site since 1987, it served both as a residence and as a seat of power to a total of 24 emperors, fourteen from the Ming dynasty and ten from the Qing dynasty. An imperial palace for a period of almost five centuries, it is composed of two divisions, namely, the Inner Court and the Outer Court. The former is located in the northern half of the compound and used as the royal residence of the emperor and his family while the latter is the southern half and served as the seat of imperial power of the ruler of China.
The Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is an ancient fortress with its own history of construction that spans across dynasties from the Western Zhou dynasty in 1100 BC to the Qin dynasty in 206 BC. The citadel that meanders through 6,700 kilometers of mountains and valleys, and grasslands and deserts from west to east, was refurbished and fortified by the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1644.
A UNESCO World Heritage since 1987, it is one of the world's greatest wonders and believed to be the only human construction on earth that is visible from outer space. A tourist who has never set foot on the Great Wall has never been to China.
Stone forest
Sculpted by nature's own hands, the enchanting Stone Forest located in Lunan Yi Nationality Autonomous County is acclaimed as the First Wonder of the World. It is a group of several patches of limestone formations interspersed with scenic oasis spots covering an area of 96,000 acres.
The fabled Stone Forest has a rich collection of legends and myths pertaining to its origin. However, geologists simply say that it used to be an expansive sea which dried up and the result of millions of years of erosion.
For hotels in China please visit: TopStarHotels.co.uk. For other options: Cyprus Florence
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Kevin
The Presidents of the United States
For President's Day, check out the profiles of all the Presidents in our country's history.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Mad Cow Disease: Should the USDA Do More?
By Laura Sayre December 2007/January 2008
Current testing methods may not provide sufficient protection from mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Since 1996, strong evidence has accumulated linking outbreaks of mad cow disease to a fatal neurological disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In cattle herds, the disease seems to appear when “meat byproducts” (beef tallow, bone meal and other cheap protein sources) are added to a herd’s feed. The evidence shows humans can contract the disease when they eat infected beef.
But the debate among federal regulators, meat processors, ranchers and consumer advocacy groups about how best to contain the threat of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), continues to evolve.
In December 2003, inspectors in Washington state discovered the first domestic case of mad cow disease (the animal was later determined to be from Canada). Within days, 53 countries worldwide shut their doors to U.S. beef. A study by the Kansas Department of Agriculture places national beef industry losses at $3.2 to $4.7 billion for 2004 alone.
Yet when Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a processor in Kansas, attempted to implement a 100 percent testing policy to screen cattle for mad cow disease in its facility, the USDA ordered it to stop. The USDA contends that such testing may provide a false sense of security because most cattle are too young to show symptoms at the time of slaughter. Critics argue that the USDA is opposing more testing because if more infected cattle are found, it will again cause huge losses for the beef industry.
Feeding beef byproducts to cattle was implicated in Great Britain’s mad cow outbreak in the 1980s and ’90s, but the United States didn’t ban this practice until 1997. Canada instituted a similar ban the same year, but has discovered 11 cases since, one as recently as last May.
Global efforts to stop the spread of mad cow continue, but they’re complicated by the fact that scientists still have a lot to learn about the disease. A 2004 survey by the Consumers Union found that 88 percent of Americans think all beef entering the food supply should be tested, but the USDA maintains that its small sampling program is sufficient.
In recent months, a number of countries have lifted their embargoes on U.S. beef imports, but regaining consumer confidence may take more time.
Current testing methods may not provide sufficient protection from mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
Since 1996, strong evidence has accumulated linking outbreaks of mad cow disease to a fatal neurological disease in humans called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In cattle herds, the disease seems to appear when “meat byproducts” (beef tallow, bone meal and other cheap protein sources) are added to a herd’s feed. The evidence shows humans can contract the disease when they eat infected beef.
But the debate among federal regulators, meat processors, ranchers and consumer advocacy groups about how best to contain the threat of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), continues to evolve.
In December 2003, inspectors in Washington state discovered the first domestic case of mad cow disease (the animal was later determined to be from Canada). Within days, 53 countries worldwide shut their doors to U.S. beef. A study by the Kansas Department of Agriculture places national beef industry losses at $3.2 to $4.7 billion for 2004 alone.
Yet when Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a processor in Kansas, attempted to implement a 100 percent testing policy to screen cattle for mad cow disease in its facility, the USDA ordered it to stop. The USDA contends that such testing may provide a false sense of security because most cattle are too young to show symptoms at the time of slaughter. Critics argue that the USDA is opposing more testing because if more infected cattle are found, it will again cause huge losses for the beef industry.
Feeding beef byproducts to cattle was implicated in Great Britain’s mad cow outbreak in the 1980s and ’90s, but the United States didn’t ban this practice until 1997. Canada instituted a similar ban the same year, but has discovered 11 cases since, one as recently as last May.
Global efforts to stop the spread of mad cow continue, but they’re complicated by the fact that scientists still have a lot to learn about the disease. A 2004 survey by the Consumers Union found that 88 percent of Americans think all beef entering the food supply should be tested, but the USDA maintains that its small sampling program is sufficient.
In recent months, a number of countries have lifted their embargoes on U.S. beef imports, but regaining consumer confidence may take more time.
Many People Still Think Of Alpaca As An Exotic Pet - Not As Livestock
By Elijah Marks
My one year anniversary running an alpaca farm is Monday, 12-31-07. When I first set up my farm, I had a hard time getting insurance.
My insurance company told me Alpaca was an exotic pet and they could not insure my farm. I finally got insurance through the farm bureau for my farm. Even though I already had my alpaca insured through a livestock insurer, my old insurance company would not insure my property because I had alpaca on it and they thought alpaca was an exotic pet.
As a result of investing in Alpaca, I saved huge money off my taxes. The US Government considers alpaca to be livestock. Horses on the other hand are considered to be recreational animals which doesn't help reduce taxes. When my farm purchased livestock, it was considered a capital expenditure, and directly offset my income. For example, I made 100,000 USD last year.
I bought $64,000 USD worth of Alpaca which reduced my net income to 36,000! without even considering other tax write offs that come with breeding livestock and running a farm.
After I got my real estate tax bill, which tripled after I bought the farm. I went in to the county and filed an application in Goochland county Virginia for what they called land use. This required me to certify the layout and use of my 25 acre farm. I have 12 Alpaca now, and some pasture for them to feed on.
I also submitted a forestry plan for the remaining portion of my land. I am taking down trees and planting new ones. Of course my application was approved as I submitted hard facts to the county. As a result my Real estate Taxes were lowered from thousands a year to $160 a year.
Virginia is profarming. In Virginia there are laws regarding farming which set the maximum amount per acre that can be assessed on a farmer based on his specific use of the land. Last year assessments for agricultural use of any kind were set by Virginia in the $500 range regardless of what kind of farming you are doing. Livestock farming, livestock pasture and tree farming is what I do. farming is not a hobby and my alpaca are not pets.
Elijah Marks is an alpaca farmer and operates Furbelow Farms in Goochland County Virginia. Furbelow Farms breeds and sells Alpaca, & Alpaca fiber. Elijah is available to help others becoming alpaca farmers. Please visit us at http://www.furbelowfarms.com or email elijahmarks@gmail.com or go to google and do a search for: Goochland Alpacas
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elijah_Marks
My one year anniversary running an alpaca farm is Monday, 12-31-07. When I first set up my farm, I had a hard time getting insurance.
My insurance company told me Alpaca was an exotic pet and they could not insure my farm. I finally got insurance through the farm bureau for my farm. Even though I already had my alpaca insured through a livestock insurer, my old insurance company would not insure my property because I had alpaca on it and they thought alpaca was an exotic pet.
As a result of investing in Alpaca, I saved huge money off my taxes. The US Government considers alpaca to be livestock. Horses on the other hand are considered to be recreational animals which doesn't help reduce taxes. When my farm purchased livestock, it was considered a capital expenditure, and directly offset my income. For example, I made 100,000 USD last year.
I bought $64,000 USD worth of Alpaca which reduced my net income to 36,000! without even considering other tax write offs that come with breeding livestock and running a farm.
After I got my real estate tax bill, which tripled after I bought the farm. I went in to the county and filed an application in Goochland county Virginia for what they called land use. This required me to certify the layout and use of my 25 acre farm. I have 12 Alpaca now, and some pasture for them to feed on.
I also submitted a forestry plan for the remaining portion of my land. I am taking down trees and planting new ones. Of course my application was approved as I submitted hard facts to the county. As a result my Real estate Taxes were lowered from thousands a year to $160 a year.
Virginia is profarming. In Virginia there are laws regarding farming which set the maximum amount per acre that can be assessed on a farmer based on his specific use of the land. Last year assessments for agricultural use of any kind were set by Virginia in the $500 range regardless of what kind of farming you are doing. Livestock farming, livestock pasture and tree farming is what I do. farming is not a hobby and my alpaca are not pets.
Elijah Marks is an alpaca farmer and operates Furbelow Farms in Goochland County Virginia. Furbelow Farms breeds and sells Alpaca, & Alpaca fiber. Elijah is available to help others becoming alpaca farmers. Please visit us at http://www.furbelowfarms.com or email elijahmarks@gmail.com or go to google and do a search for: Goochland Alpacas
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elijah_Marks
Dairy Collectibles of Western Canada
Bob Snyder
Milk bottles, the first obvious dairy collectible, first appeared in Western Canada about 1905 or so. Prior to that milk was dispensed by dipper into the customer's container. The development of the automatic bottle manufacturing machine made good bottles of consistent quality available at reasonable cost. These bottles were designed to be sealed with paper caps, which have also become collectibles. In eastern Canada, other styles of bottles were in use earlier. These included bottles with a hinged sealing device known as a lighting closure. To my knowledge they were not used in the west.
Many dairies operated in each of the four western provinces and collecting the milk bottles of each province is a challenge. Many smaller dairies used only plain bottles, perhaps differentiating their product with their own printed caps. In Alberta for example, I am aware of 80 dairies who used milk bottles with their names on them. Of those, some of the earlier larger ones in Edmonton were Edmonton City Dairy (1906), Warren Huff, later Jasper Dairy (1907) and Woodland Dairy (1908).
In the west usually only three sizes of bottle were used: quart, pint and half- pint. A few dairies in the Vancouver area (Assodated Dairies, Spencer Dairies, Steve's) used one-quarter pint bottles. The cream-top bottle was used by Edmonton City Dairy, Purity Dairy (Saskatchewan), Palm Dairies, and City Dairy (Winnipeg).
The earliest bottle style used was the empire or bowling pin shape. These were followed by the stubby bottles before manufacturers and dairies standardized on the common round bottle, taller and with longer necks than the stubbies. Dairies first used this later style with embossed labels and later with many colorful varieties of applied colour labels. By the 1950's, some dairies moved to square bottles with the same wide mouth as the round bottles and then lastly to the light weight square bottle with a narrow mouth.
Milk bottles, the first obvious dairy collectible, first appeared in Western Canada about 1905 or so. Prior to that milk was dispensed by dipper into the customer's container. The development of the automatic bottle manufacturing machine made good bottles of consistent quality available at reasonable cost. These bottles were designed to be sealed with paper caps, which have also become collectibles. In eastern Canada, other styles of bottles were in use earlier. These included bottles with a hinged sealing device known as a lighting closure. To my knowledge they were not used in the west.
Many dairies operated in each of the four western provinces and collecting the milk bottles of each province is a challenge. Many smaller dairies used only plain bottles, perhaps differentiating their product with their own printed caps. In Alberta for example, I am aware of 80 dairies who used milk bottles with their names on them. Of those, some of the earlier larger ones in Edmonton were Edmonton City Dairy (1906), Warren Huff, later Jasper Dairy (1907) and Woodland Dairy (1908).
In the west usually only three sizes of bottle were used: quart, pint and half- pint. A few dairies in the Vancouver area (Assodated Dairies, Spencer Dairies, Steve's) used one-quarter pint bottles. The cream-top bottle was used by Edmonton City Dairy, Purity Dairy (Saskatchewan), Palm Dairies, and City Dairy (Winnipeg).
The earliest bottle style used was the empire or bowling pin shape. These were followed by the stubby bottles before manufacturers and dairies standardized on the common round bottle, taller and with longer necks than the stubbies. Dairies first used this later style with embossed labels and later with many colorful varieties of applied colour labels. By the 1950's, some dairies moved to square bottles with the same wide mouth as the round bottles and then lastly to the light weight square bottle with a narrow mouth.
Airliners.net
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No Time For Recess
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, February 15, 2008 4:20 PM PT
National Security: House Democrats have committed what may be an unconstitutional abrogation of responsibility in the area of national defense. Congress is taking another vacation as it leaves us vulnerable to terrorism.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly was in a hurry last week for the House of Representatives to begin its umpteenth break — which one this time? Valentine's Day recess? — so she could get to her daughter's wedding as early as possible.
But there are thousands of Americans whose presence was missed from their own loved ones' weddings and other family events over the past 6 1/2 years because our enemies in the global war on terror took their lives on Sept. 11, 2001.
For Pelosi and her fellow Democrats to blow out of town without acting to stop the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) from expiring on Saturday, so lawmakers can for 12 days indulge in their personal leisure activities, goes beyond the usual outrages for which this 110th Congress has become infamous. Indeed, it rises to the level of betrayal of the Constitution.
Each member of Congress takes an oath solemnly swearing he or she "will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program has clearly protected us against our enemies, foreign and domestic, in remarkable fashion in the years since 9/11 — with not one single attack on the homeland since that dreaded day.
For Pelosi's Democrats to be lounging around as that program is disabled by the FISA expiration deadline is to say to each and every American: "We care more about our own comforts than about our obligations under the Constitution to protect you."
Congress has had nearly seven months to renew and update this vital law. Yet just look at what the House of Reprehensibles was wasting its time with last week, when it should have been working night and day on FISA.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., turned the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he chairs into a weird version of the old game show "To Tell The Truth," with baseball's Roger Clemens and his ex-trainer playing the panelists. Waxman himself even regretted the pointless exercise afterward.
As distressing as it is to find baseball's finest players failing the youths who idolize them (not to mention themselves) with their cheating and lying, national security is an infinitely more pressing concern.
The Senate-passed bill that Pelosi and House Democrats consider less important than wedding receptions and steroids abuse got a bipartisan majority of 68 votes in the Senate last week. Much of it was written by a liberal Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The bill gives U.S. intelligence agencies "the tools they need to track down terrorists," as Rockefeller noted. It also provides retroactive immunity to telecom carriers being sued for assisting in the terrorist surveillance program.
Firms such as AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon face lengthy litigation, and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, spearheaded by the ACLU all because they helped save lives.
As Rockefeller — a foe of most of the president's policies in the global war on terror — pointed out, "The companies believed their cooperation was necessary, legal and would help stop future terrorist attacks."
To Pelosi's Democrats, they're all just corporate shills for the administration and deserve to be harassed and bankrupted.
Human life, the Constitution, protection for corporate heroes doing their bit in the war on terrorism — to most of the current crop of congressional Democrats, none of those things is as important as taking another one of their precious vacations.
National Security: House Democrats have committed what may be an unconstitutional abrogation of responsibility in the area of national defense. Congress is taking another vacation as it leaves us vulnerable to terrorism.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly was in a hurry last week for the House of Representatives to begin its umpteenth break — which one this time? Valentine's Day recess? — so she could get to her daughter's wedding as early as possible.
But there are thousands of Americans whose presence was missed from their own loved ones' weddings and other family events over the past 6 1/2 years because our enemies in the global war on terror took their lives on Sept. 11, 2001.
For Pelosi and her fellow Democrats to blow out of town without acting to stop the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) from expiring on Saturday, so lawmakers can for 12 days indulge in their personal leisure activities, goes beyond the usual outrages for which this 110th Congress has become infamous. Indeed, it rises to the level of betrayal of the Constitution.
Each member of Congress takes an oath solemnly swearing he or she "will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." The National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance program has clearly protected us against our enemies, foreign and domestic, in remarkable fashion in the years since 9/11 — with not one single attack on the homeland since that dreaded day.
For Pelosi's Democrats to be lounging around as that program is disabled by the FISA expiration deadline is to say to each and every American: "We care more about our own comforts than about our obligations under the Constitution to protect you."
Congress has had nearly seven months to renew and update this vital law. Yet just look at what the House of Reprehensibles was wasting its time with last week, when it should have been working night and day on FISA.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., turned the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he chairs into a weird version of the old game show "To Tell The Truth," with baseball's Roger Clemens and his ex-trainer playing the panelists. Waxman himself even regretted the pointless exercise afterward.
As distressing as it is to find baseball's finest players failing the youths who idolize them (not to mention themselves) with their cheating and lying, national security is an infinitely more pressing concern.
The Senate-passed bill that Pelosi and House Democrats consider less important than wedding receptions and steroids abuse got a bipartisan majority of 68 votes in the Senate last week. Much of it was written by a liberal Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The bill gives U.S. intelligence agencies "the tools they need to track down terrorists," as Rockefeller noted. It also provides retroactive immunity to telecom carriers being sued for assisting in the terrorist surveillance program.
Firms such as AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon face lengthy litigation, and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, spearheaded by the ACLU all because they helped save lives.
As Rockefeller — a foe of most of the president's policies in the global war on terror — pointed out, "The companies believed their cooperation was necessary, legal and would help stop future terrorist attacks."
To Pelosi's Democrats, they're all just corporate shills for the administration and deserve to be harassed and bankrupted.
Human life, the Constitution, protection for corporate heroes doing their bit in the war on terrorism — to most of the current crop of congressional Democrats, none of those things is as important as taking another one of their precious vacations.
Democrats' Health Plan Not So Harmless
By BENJAMIN ZYCHER Posted Thursday, February 14, 2008 4:30 PM PT
Sen. Hillary Clinton's proposal for reform of the health care system makes a promise: "If you are happy with your current health care coverage, keep your existing coverage."
That coverage usually is provided by private insurance companies, which retain a prominent role also in Sen. Barack Obama's reform plan.
Ostensibly, the Democratic candidates recognize the importance of private insurance options, and the proposals add a Medicare-like government insurance option to provide enhanced competition driven by supposedly lower administrative costs.
The larger reality is very different: The government option would crush competition and render meaningless the Democratic promise to preserve choice.
That is because the proposals would lead inexorably to a single-payer (government) system of health insurance in which private coverage would become extinct.
The proposals would implement a requirement ("individual mandate") that some or all individuals obtain insurance coverage, and that most employers offer coverage or pay a tax ("pay or play").
Small employers and lower-income individuals would get a tax subsidy. Coverage would be guaranteed for all ("guaranteed issue") and premiums would be set largely without regard to health status ("community rating").
Each plan, whether issued by private insurers or the government, would have to offer benefits as comprehensive as those offered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).
Why would private options evaporate under such a system?
Consider first small businesses, which arrange coverage for many fewer policyholders than is the case for large companies.
Small groups thus cannot spread their risks as widely, and for other reasons as well are more costly to serve. As a result, their plans tend to offer benefit packages worth around 30% less than those offered by large groups.
Because Democratic plans would require small groups to offer benefit packages similar to those in the FEHBP program, the insurance costs of small businesses that continue to offer coverage to their employees could be expected to rise by at least 30%. Few small businesses would make that choice.
First, the subsidies directed to small employers are unlikely to reduce their cost of providing FEHBP-equivalent private coverage below the pay-or-play tax, which almost certainly would be determined by the cost of the government option supposedly enjoying lower administrative costs.
Accordingly, most small businesses would elect to pay the tax and set their employees loose on the insurance market. To compensate employees for their lost coverage, businesses would likely give them salary increases equal to the insurance premiums the businesses had been paying for private coverage.
That salary increase wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of private coverage as comprehensive as that of the FEHBP, as required by the proposals. And so the employees would be induced to choose the supposedly more-efficient government option.
If, however, the subsidies for small employers were large enough to induce them to offer the more comprehensive coverage, then the cost estimates for the Democratic proposals would turn out to be too low.
Moreover, costs will increase substantially as expanded subsidies for one group induce others to demand bigger slices of an expanding federal health-insurance pie.
After all, FEHBP benefits are 15% or so richer than those of Medicare; why should Medicare beneficiaries accept packages worth less than those offered everyone else?
For large groups, the benefits of existing plans are about the same as those in the FEHBP. Accordingly, employers' decisions on whether to assume the cost of private insurance or to incur the pay-or-play tax would hinge on a simple cost comparison.
Again, given the claim that the government option offers substantial administrative savings, it would be politically difficult for Congress to impose a pay-or-play tax that exceeds the purported cost of the government coverage.
Moreover, a Democratic Congress favoring government-provided insurance would be tempted to hide its actual costs. As such, just as with small employers, it makes economic sense for large businesses to shift employees onto the government plan.
And so the Democratic promise that those who prefer private coverage will be able to keep it, and that the health-insurance market would continue to enjoy the broader economic advantages offered by a private system, borders on the naive or the cynical.
Why does this outcome matter?
Because governments have interest groups, not patients, and thus face powerful political pressures to squeeze both providers and patients in response to the budget demands of others.
The inevitable result is waiting lists, denial of coverage, underinvestment in medical technologies and the long-run degradation of health care quality observed under all single-payer systems.
The more "universal" the coverage, the greater the budget pressures, and so the more powerful the forces yielding reduced health-care quality.
That's why single-payer "universal" coverage is the enemy of health care, and it's the inevitable outcome of the Democratic proposals.
Zycher is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
Sen. Hillary Clinton's proposal for reform of the health care system makes a promise: "If you are happy with your current health care coverage, keep your existing coverage."
That coverage usually is provided by private insurance companies, which retain a prominent role also in Sen. Barack Obama's reform plan.
Ostensibly, the Democratic candidates recognize the importance of private insurance options, and the proposals add a Medicare-like government insurance option to provide enhanced competition driven by supposedly lower administrative costs.
The larger reality is very different: The government option would crush competition and render meaningless the Democratic promise to preserve choice.
That is because the proposals would lead inexorably to a single-payer (government) system of health insurance in which private coverage would become extinct.
The proposals would implement a requirement ("individual mandate") that some or all individuals obtain insurance coverage, and that most employers offer coverage or pay a tax ("pay or play").
Small employers and lower-income individuals would get a tax subsidy. Coverage would be guaranteed for all ("guaranteed issue") and premiums would be set largely without regard to health status ("community rating").
Each plan, whether issued by private insurers or the government, would have to offer benefits as comprehensive as those offered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP).
Why would private options evaporate under such a system?
Consider first small businesses, which arrange coverage for many fewer policyholders than is the case for large companies.
Small groups thus cannot spread their risks as widely, and for other reasons as well are more costly to serve. As a result, their plans tend to offer benefit packages worth around 30% less than those offered by large groups.
Because Democratic plans would require small groups to offer benefit packages similar to those in the FEHBP program, the insurance costs of small businesses that continue to offer coverage to their employees could be expected to rise by at least 30%. Few small businesses would make that choice.
First, the subsidies directed to small employers are unlikely to reduce their cost of providing FEHBP-equivalent private coverage below the pay-or-play tax, which almost certainly would be determined by the cost of the government option supposedly enjoying lower administrative costs.
Accordingly, most small businesses would elect to pay the tax and set their employees loose on the insurance market. To compensate employees for their lost coverage, businesses would likely give them salary increases equal to the insurance premiums the businesses had been paying for private coverage.
That salary increase wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of private coverage as comprehensive as that of the FEHBP, as required by the proposals. And so the employees would be induced to choose the supposedly more-efficient government option.
If, however, the subsidies for small employers were large enough to induce them to offer the more comprehensive coverage, then the cost estimates for the Democratic proposals would turn out to be too low.
Moreover, costs will increase substantially as expanded subsidies for one group induce others to demand bigger slices of an expanding federal health-insurance pie.
After all, FEHBP benefits are 15% or so richer than those of Medicare; why should Medicare beneficiaries accept packages worth less than those offered everyone else?
For large groups, the benefits of existing plans are about the same as those in the FEHBP. Accordingly, employers' decisions on whether to assume the cost of private insurance or to incur the pay-or-play tax would hinge on a simple cost comparison.
Again, given the claim that the government option offers substantial administrative savings, it would be politically difficult for Congress to impose a pay-or-play tax that exceeds the purported cost of the government coverage.
Moreover, a Democratic Congress favoring government-provided insurance would be tempted to hide its actual costs. As such, just as with small employers, it makes economic sense for large businesses to shift employees onto the government plan.
And so the Democratic promise that those who prefer private coverage will be able to keep it, and that the health-insurance market would continue to enjoy the broader economic advantages offered by a private system, borders on the naive or the cynical.
Why does this outcome matter?
Because governments have interest groups, not patients, and thus face powerful political pressures to squeeze both providers and patients in response to the budget demands of others.
The inevitable result is waiting lists, denial of coverage, underinvestment in medical technologies and the long-run degradation of health care quality observed under all single-payer systems.
The more "universal" the coverage, the greater the budget pressures, and so the more powerful the forces yielding reduced health-care quality.
That's why single-payer "universal" coverage is the enemy of health care, and it's the inevitable outcome of the Democratic proposals.
Zycher is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
Iran's Mirages
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Thursday, February 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Nuclear Terror: The illusions created by a politicized intelligence report and pacifist wishful thinking don't change the reality of Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration has just provided expanded evidence.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wonders why the publicly released portion of last December's National Intelligence Estimate, contending that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003, placed so much emphasis on the building of nuclear warheads.
After all, Bolton reasons, that's a small task compared with the years of uranium enrichment that Tehran has steadfastly refused to abandon in the face of U.N. sanctions.
"The way it was written was intended to have a profound policy impact," according to Bolton, who believes the NIE's timing has gone a long way toward tying President Bush's hands on action against the Islamofascist terror state. The ex-ambassador says Iran is "now freer than ever to pursue nuclear weapons."
Even dovish European government officials and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei's International Atomic Energy Agency have scoffed at the foolishness of this latest NIE.
So the Bush Administration in recent weeks has been trying to repair some of the damage of that faulty report by providing intelligence to the IAEA on the specifics of Iran's nuclear program, in hopes that the agency will confront Tehran and ask for details as it investigates Iran's shady past nuclear activities.
ElBaradei's so-called "nuclear watchdog" agency was, diplomats tell the Associated Press, given expanded information on Iran's already-known work ranging from missile trajectories to the optimum altitude for warhead explosions to the molding of uranium metal for a warhead.
Also reportedly detailed: Iran's secret "Green Salt Project" coordinating its uranium processing, high explosives testing and re-entry vehicles for warheads. These aren't innocent projects.
It has been strange to see governments which have been so quick to attack U.S. intelligence on the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq now turn and accept it — hook, line and sinker — on Iran.
But one world leader more firmly grounded in reality is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who, after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said: "Nothing that we know has changed our attitude on this issue."
According to Olmert, "Sometimes you don't need intelligence services. You just need to analyze what you know, what everyone knows, and it's very obvious and very simple."
Olmert asked questions that leaders of every country that values the safety of its people should be asking: "Tell me, why does Iran need enriched uranium at a time when they are supplied by Russians the nuclear fuel for the civilian projects?
"What else do they plan, for which they need the most sophisticated ballistic missiles?"
And he called Iran "a force that is talking explicitly about using the power in order to liquidate other countries, and I think this is a good enough reason why we should focus on Iran and do everything to prevent Iran from having nuclear capacity."
Compare that kind of realism with Sen. Barack Obama's complaints to Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show" that the Bush administration "has not done the diplomatic work that needs to be done to contain Iran."
Just how much "tough diplomacy" will stop a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead? No doubt the Obama or Clinton administration will launch a government program to find out.
Nuclear Terror: The illusions created by a politicized intelligence report and pacifist wishful thinking don't change the reality of Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Bush administration has just provided expanded evidence.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wonders why the publicly released portion of last December's National Intelligence Estimate, contending that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons program in 2003, placed so much emphasis on the building of nuclear warheads.
After all, Bolton reasons, that's a small task compared with the years of uranium enrichment that Tehran has steadfastly refused to abandon in the face of U.N. sanctions.
"The way it was written was intended to have a profound policy impact," according to Bolton, who believes the NIE's timing has gone a long way toward tying President Bush's hands on action against the Islamofascist terror state. The ex-ambassador says Iran is "now freer than ever to pursue nuclear weapons."
Even dovish European government officials and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei's International Atomic Energy Agency have scoffed at the foolishness of this latest NIE.
So the Bush Administration in recent weeks has been trying to repair some of the damage of that faulty report by providing intelligence to the IAEA on the specifics of Iran's nuclear program, in hopes that the agency will confront Tehran and ask for details as it investigates Iran's shady past nuclear activities.
ElBaradei's so-called "nuclear watchdog" agency was, diplomats tell the Associated Press, given expanded information on Iran's already-known work ranging from missile trajectories to the optimum altitude for warhead explosions to the molding of uranium metal for a warhead.
Also reportedly detailed: Iran's secret "Green Salt Project" coordinating its uranium processing, high explosives testing and re-entry vehicles for warheads. These aren't innocent projects.
It has been strange to see governments which have been so quick to attack U.S. intelligence on the threat from Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq now turn and accept it — hook, line and sinker — on Iran.
But one world leader more firmly grounded in reality is Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who, after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said: "Nothing that we know has changed our attitude on this issue."
According to Olmert, "Sometimes you don't need intelligence services. You just need to analyze what you know, what everyone knows, and it's very obvious and very simple."
Olmert asked questions that leaders of every country that values the safety of its people should be asking: "Tell me, why does Iran need enriched uranium at a time when they are supplied by Russians the nuclear fuel for the civilian projects?
"What else do they plan, for which they need the most sophisticated ballistic missiles?"
And he called Iran "a force that is talking explicitly about using the power in order to liquidate other countries, and I think this is a good enough reason why we should focus on Iran and do everything to prevent Iran from having nuclear capacity."
Compare that kind of realism with Sen. Barack Obama's complaints to Jay Leno on the "Tonight Show" that the Bush administration "has not done the diplomatic work that needs to be done to contain Iran."
Just how much "tough diplomacy" will stop a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear warhead? No doubt the Obama or Clinton administration will launch a government program to find out.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
From Russia With Love
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Wednesday, February 13, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Military Threats: Putin sends America, its allies and our next commander in chief a warning by buzzing a U.S. carrier and violating Japanese airspace. In a confrontation with Moscow, would an Obama or Clinton blink?
We already know the Democrats are vehemently opposed to U.S. national missile defense plans. So are the Russians, particularly regarding our plans for European missile defense with 10 missile interceptors in Poland and tracking radars in the Czech Republic.
On Feb. 1, Poland announced it had reached an agreement in principle with the U.S. on plans to install a missile defense system on Polish territory. The Poles see this as part of an opportunity to modernize their military and become a stronger U.S. and NATO ally. The Russians see this as a threat and are not amused.
U.S.-Moscow relations have deteriorated to their lowest point since President Reagan won the Cold War. This situation is largely due to a resurgent Russia's ambitions and our determination to defend America and its allies against missile attack, starting with the threats from North Korea and Iran.
"We are being forced to take retaliatory steps," Putin has said.
One of those steps has been the resumption of long-range bomber patrols. Putin claimed that after Moscow suspended such flights in 1992, "other nations haven't followed our example. This has created certain problems for Russia's security."
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow felt helpless and almost irrelevant as it watched China's ascendancy and NATO's expansion to include former members of the Warsaw Pact. Now, flush with energy revenues, Russia is intent on proving its military and geopolitical relevance, creating certain problems for American and Western security.
Russia has resented what it perceived as being dismissed as a spent force. As the London Sunday Telegraph reports, Russia plans to spend heavily on the new Tu-160 supersonic strategic bomber, which can launch cruise missiles; the Su-34 Fullback all-weather fighter-bomber designed to attack heavily defended targets; and a fifth-generation fighter, the Sukhoi T-50, scheduled to become Russia's front-line fighter in 2008.
Last Saturday, four Russian Tupolev-95 bombers took off in the middle of the night from an airfield at Ukrainka. Two of them headed for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its escort, the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.
As two of the bombers got within cruise-missile range of the American ships, 500 miles away, four F/A-18 Hornets were launched from the Nimitz and intercepted them 50 miles out. One Tu-95 was escorted as it flew 2,000 feet above the Nimitz. The other Tupolev was followed as it circled at a distance of 58 miles.
One of the Tupolevs from Ukrainka also flew over the rocky Japanese island of Sofugan for three minutes. The Japanese are full participants in U.S. missile defense plans, having acquired U.S. Aegis destroyers armed with the Standard-3 anti-missile system as well as the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries.
The Japanese Self-Defense Force scrambled 24 aircraft, including F-15 fighters and an E-767 radar plane. They were joined by F/A-18s from the Nimitz on patrol in the western Pacific. Japan has never signed a peace treaty to formally end World War II with Moscow, and four islands seized by the Soviets in 1945 off Japan's northern coast remain in dispute.
The Cold War may just be coming back with a vengeance. As Putin said when he announced the resumption of long-range bomber patrols: "Combat duty has begun." Will an Obama or a Clinton have the courage Reagan showed when he deployed Pershing missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet SS-20 threat?
Not likely. More probably we will see what Barack Obama calls "aggressive personal diplomacy," by which we bargain away our missile defense for a handful of beads while making nice with the thugs who plan to launch missiles against us.
Military Threats: Putin sends America, its allies and our next commander in chief a warning by buzzing a U.S. carrier and violating Japanese airspace. In a confrontation with Moscow, would an Obama or Clinton blink?
We already know the Democrats are vehemently opposed to U.S. national missile defense plans. So are the Russians, particularly regarding our plans for European missile defense with 10 missile interceptors in Poland and tracking radars in the Czech Republic.
On Feb. 1, Poland announced it had reached an agreement in principle with the U.S. on plans to install a missile defense system on Polish territory. The Poles see this as part of an opportunity to modernize their military and become a stronger U.S. and NATO ally. The Russians see this as a threat and are not amused.
U.S.-Moscow relations have deteriorated to their lowest point since President Reagan won the Cold War. This situation is largely due to a resurgent Russia's ambitions and our determination to defend America and its allies against missile attack, starting with the threats from North Korea and Iran.
"We are being forced to take retaliatory steps," Putin has said.
One of those steps has been the resumption of long-range bomber patrols. Putin claimed that after Moscow suspended such flights in 1992, "other nations haven't followed our example. This has created certain problems for Russia's security."
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow felt helpless and almost irrelevant as it watched China's ascendancy and NATO's expansion to include former members of the Warsaw Pact. Now, flush with energy revenues, Russia is intent on proving its military and geopolitical relevance, creating certain problems for American and Western security.
Russia has resented what it perceived as being dismissed as a spent force. As the London Sunday Telegraph reports, Russia plans to spend heavily on the new Tu-160 supersonic strategic bomber, which can launch cruise missiles; the Su-34 Fullback all-weather fighter-bomber designed to attack heavily defended targets; and a fifth-generation fighter, the Sukhoi T-50, scheduled to become Russia's front-line fighter in 2008.
Last Saturday, four Russian Tupolev-95 bombers took off in the middle of the night from an airfield at Ukrainka. Two of them headed for the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its escort, the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.
As two of the bombers got within cruise-missile range of the American ships, 500 miles away, four F/A-18 Hornets were launched from the Nimitz and intercepted them 50 miles out. One Tu-95 was escorted as it flew 2,000 feet above the Nimitz. The other Tupolev was followed as it circled at a distance of 58 miles.
One of the Tupolevs from Ukrainka also flew over the rocky Japanese island of Sofugan for three minutes. The Japanese are full participants in U.S. missile defense plans, having acquired U.S. Aegis destroyers armed with the Standard-3 anti-missile system as well as the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries.
The Japanese Self-Defense Force scrambled 24 aircraft, including F-15 fighters and an E-767 radar plane. They were joined by F/A-18s from the Nimitz on patrol in the western Pacific. Japan has never signed a peace treaty to formally end World War II with Moscow, and four islands seized by the Soviets in 1945 off Japan's northern coast remain in dispute.
The Cold War may just be coming back with a vengeance. As Putin said when he announced the resumption of long-range bomber patrols: "Combat duty has begun." Will an Obama or a Clinton have the courage Reagan showed when he deployed Pershing missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet SS-20 threat?
Not likely. More probably we will see what Barack Obama calls "aggressive personal diplomacy," by which we bargain away our missile defense for a handful of beads while making nice with the thugs who plan to launch missiles against us.
Protecting Heroes
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Wednesday, February 13, 2008 4:20 PM PT
War On Terror: The Democratic Congress takes forever to pass a key law authorizing terrorist surveillance and shielding the telecom companies that facilitate it — proving again its incompetence on national security.
After nearly seven months of pointless delay, the U.S. Senate has finally passed, by 68 to 29, an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the government to keep the tools it needs to continue to foil future terrorist attacks.
The measure also grants immunity from civil lawsuits to telecommunications firms that aided the National Security Agency in post-9/11 surveillance. (An attempt to remove the telecom protection from the bill by Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin failed, 67 to 31.)
Senate passage of the FISA renewal — and by such a resounding margin — is another victory for President Bush, who simply refuses to act like the lame duck the big media insist he is. With a congressional recess impending, however, the House Democratic leadership now seems poised to delay acting on the Senate bill.
The ingratitude of so many congressional Democrats for a program that has saved so many lives, and their irresponsibility in making us vulnerable to future attack, is incomprehensible.
Still, Democratic senators as liberal as Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia voted against their party colleagues. (As Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Rockefeller knows more than most about the effectiveness of NSA surveillance; Mikulski is an intelligence panel member too.)
Rockefeller defended the telecom carriers, who could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in lengthy litigation for their good-faith cooperation to help prevent terrorism.
Yet the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, was one of the 31 Democrats who voted not to protect those heroic companies from the more than 40 lawsuits pending against them. (Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York missed the votes.)
The American Civil Liberties Union, the force behind those lawsuits, outrageously called those firms "accomplices" in crimes against the Fourth Amendment.
They, Sen. Obama and all the other radicals who insist on us being unshielded from terrorism should be reminded of the first words of that fourth part of our Bill of Rights: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons" — a right that thousands of Americans lost bloodily less than 6 1/2 years ago.
War On Terror: The Democratic Congress takes forever to pass a key law authorizing terrorist surveillance and shielding the telecom companies that facilitate it — proving again its incompetence on national security.
After nearly seven months of pointless delay, the U.S. Senate has finally passed, by 68 to 29, an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allowing the government to keep the tools it needs to continue to foil future terrorist attacks.
The measure also grants immunity from civil lawsuits to telecommunications firms that aided the National Security Agency in post-9/11 surveillance. (An attempt to remove the telecom protection from the bill by Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin failed, 67 to 31.)
Senate passage of the FISA renewal — and by such a resounding margin — is another victory for President Bush, who simply refuses to act like the lame duck the big media insist he is. With a congressional recess impending, however, the House Democratic leadership now seems poised to delay acting on the Senate bill.
The ingratitude of so many congressional Democrats for a program that has saved so many lives, and their irresponsibility in making us vulnerable to future attack, is incomprehensible.
Still, Democratic senators as liberal as Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia voted against their party colleagues. (As Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Rockefeller knows more than most about the effectiveness of NSA surveillance; Mikulski is an intelligence panel member too.)
Rockefeller defended the telecom carriers, who could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in lengthy litigation for their good-faith cooperation to help prevent terrorism.
Yet the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, was one of the 31 Democrats who voted not to protect those heroic companies from the more than 40 lawsuits pending against them. (Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York missed the votes.)
The American Civil Liberties Union, the force behind those lawsuits, outrageously called those firms "accomplices" in crimes against the Fourth Amendment.
They, Sen. Obama and all the other radicals who insist on us being unshielded from terrorism should be reminded of the first words of that fourth part of our Bill of Rights: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons" — a right that thousands of Americans lost bloodily less than 6 1/2 years ago.
Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman
'If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record.'?
--Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman
--Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman
Food Stamps in Greenville, South Carolina
'Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.'?
--Department of Social Services,?Greenville,?South Carolina?
--Department of Social Services,?Greenville,?South Carolina?
Al Gore and Pollution
'It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.'?
--Al Gore, Vice President?
--Al Gore, Vice President?
Percy Spencer Was The Master Of The Microwave
Murray Coleman
Thu Jan 24, 6:08 PM ET
Problems were puzzles to Percy Spencer.
He just made sure to solve them.
His curiosity and determination to problem-solve led him into immortality. Spencer had a hand in the development of technologies such as modern radar. He's also considered the father of the microwave oven.
"Engineers with advanced degrees in engineering and physics couldn't solve the problems he did," said Norman Krim, who worked with Spencer at Raytheon Co.
Spencer was 3 when his father died, and his mother abandoned him shortly afterward. He lived with an aunt, who could find only itinerant mill jobs after her husband died. "Percy moved around a lot as a child, which taught him how to make friends and adapt quickly to different situations," said Krim, who has researched Spencer's life and helps maintain Raytheon's corporate archives.
By his early teens, the dirt-poor Spencer (1894-1970) had to hunt and fish just to survive.
Forced to quit school after the seventh grade, he went to work as an apprentice machinist.
But he didn't feel stuck; he saw an opportunity to learn. When his plant was wired for electricity, Spencer became fascinated with how systems worked. He learned electricity's ins and outs.
After the Titanic sank in 1912, he read reports about how wireless telegraphic technologies could help ships communicate. He joined the Navy to learn more. When he left in 1918, Spencer found work at a developer of wireless telegraphic systems. That went bankrupt, and he joined Raytheon, then an upstart in electronics, in 1925.
"His experience building things as a machinist and interest in electricity gave him a practical, hands-on understanding that separated him from his peers," said Tom Phillips, a former chief executive at Raytheon who also worked with Spencer. "Most scientists were good at solving theoretical problems. Percy knew what it actually would take to put those ideas into practice."
Hired as an engineer, Spencer adjusted radios to run on direct current rather than batteries.
Two years later, RCA came out with a powerful amplifier for radios. Before that, listeners had to use headphones. The new audio system put an enormous strain on Raytheon's rectifier tubes. "If they couldn't figure out a way to improve their rectifier tubes to work with higher voltages, Raytheon would've been out of business," said Krim.
The company's best minds couldn't come up with a solution. Spencer, however, kept experimenting until he found an answer.
The result was a new tube that saved the company. "People were just amazed," Krim recalled. "That's when people started to recognize how much determination he had to solve problems."
The new product helped Raytheon's sales jump to $1 million a year in 1927, more than three times what they'd been a year earlier. Spencer became head of the company's development lab, near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He wondered if he'd missed out on college. Spencer asked Krim if attending MIT would've made him a better engineer. Krim didn't hesitate. "My answer was that if he'd gone to MIT, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish everything he did," Krim said. "He had a gut feel of what was needed to make things work. That's something you just can't learn in college."
By the time war raged in Europe in 1940, Spencer had become well-known for his inventive skills. With German bombers turning London into a raging inferno at night, British scientists sought his input.
They'd developed experimental electronic equipment called microwave radar. Until then, radar signals had to be sent using huge towers. Microwaves meant transmission could be made and received by smaller equipment and adapted for planes and ships. That would let the British strike back at Germany.
But making such intricately engineered machines was highly labor-intensive, and Great Britain didn't have enough machinists.
A British delegation secretly met with Spencer to let him study the electronic tubes needed for the new radar. He came up with a simpler process that was faster and required fewer workers.
Spencer's innovations led to startling results. Raytheon was able to increase production of magnetron tubes from 17 per week to 2,600 a day. That caught military leaders' attention. The Navy started placing orders with Raytheon, which produced three-quarters of all magnetron tubes used by the Allied forces.
Later, Spencer received the Distinguished Service Medal -- the Navy's highest honor for civilians -- for his wartime contributions.
Shortly after World War II ended, Spencer noticed that a piece of chocolate in his pocket melted when he was near an electrical tube he was testing.
Inspired, he started tinkering. The result was the microwave oven. "Two months after the war ended, he filed his first patent for the microwave oven," said Phillips.
It took two more decades of tinkering before the concept became a hit. "At first, it was very big and used mainly in commercial kitchens for restaurants and ocean liners," said Phillips. "Not until 1965, when they were made smaller and targeted for home use, did they really take off."
This story originally ran June 28, 2005, on Leaders & Success.
Thu Jan 24, 6:08 PM ET
Problems were puzzles to Percy Spencer.
He just made sure to solve them.
His curiosity and determination to problem-solve led him into immortality. Spencer had a hand in the development of technologies such as modern radar. He's also considered the father of the microwave oven.
"Engineers with advanced degrees in engineering and physics couldn't solve the problems he did," said Norman Krim, who worked with Spencer at Raytheon Co.
Spencer was 3 when his father died, and his mother abandoned him shortly afterward. He lived with an aunt, who could find only itinerant mill jobs after her husband died. "Percy moved around a lot as a child, which taught him how to make friends and adapt quickly to different situations," said Krim, who has researched Spencer's life and helps maintain Raytheon's corporate archives.
By his early teens, the dirt-poor Spencer (1894-1970) had to hunt and fish just to survive.
Forced to quit school after the seventh grade, he went to work as an apprentice machinist.
But he didn't feel stuck; he saw an opportunity to learn. When his plant was wired for electricity, Spencer became fascinated with how systems worked. He learned electricity's ins and outs.
After the Titanic sank in 1912, he read reports about how wireless telegraphic technologies could help ships communicate. He joined the Navy to learn more. When he left in 1918, Spencer found work at a developer of wireless telegraphic systems. That went bankrupt, and he joined Raytheon, then an upstart in electronics, in 1925.
"His experience building things as a machinist and interest in electricity gave him a practical, hands-on understanding that separated him from his peers," said Tom Phillips, a former chief executive at Raytheon who also worked with Spencer. "Most scientists were good at solving theoretical problems. Percy knew what it actually would take to put those ideas into practice."
Hired as an engineer, Spencer adjusted radios to run on direct current rather than batteries.
Two years later, RCA came out with a powerful amplifier for radios. Before that, listeners had to use headphones. The new audio system put an enormous strain on Raytheon's rectifier tubes. "If they couldn't figure out a way to improve their rectifier tubes to work with higher voltages, Raytheon would've been out of business," said Krim.
The company's best minds couldn't come up with a solution. Spencer, however, kept experimenting until he found an answer.
The result was a new tube that saved the company. "People were just amazed," Krim recalled. "That's when people started to recognize how much determination he had to solve problems."
The new product helped Raytheon's sales jump to $1 million a year in 1927, more than three times what they'd been a year earlier. Spencer became head of the company's development lab, near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He wondered if he'd missed out on college. Spencer asked Krim if attending MIT would've made him a better engineer. Krim didn't hesitate. "My answer was that if he'd gone to MIT, he wouldn't have been able to accomplish everything he did," Krim said. "He had a gut feel of what was needed to make things work. That's something you just can't learn in college."
By the time war raged in Europe in 1940, Spencer had become well-known for his inventive skills. With German bombers turning London into a raging inferno at night, British scientists sought his input.
They'd developed experimental electronic equipment called microwave radar. Until then, radar signals had to be sent using huge towers. Microwaves meant transmission could be made and received by smaller equipment and adapted for planes and ships. That would let the British strike back at Germany.
But making such intricately engineered machines was highly labor-intensive, and Great Britain didn't have enough machinists.
A British delegation secretly met with Spencer to let him study the electronic tubes needed for the new radar. He came up with a simpler process that was faster and required fewer workers.
Spencer's innovations led to startling results. Raytheon was able to increase production of magnetron tubes from 17 per week to 2,600 a day. That caught military leaders' attention. The Navy started placing orders with Raytheon, which produced three-quarters of all magnetron tubes used by the Allied forces.
Later, Spencer received the Distinguished Service Medal -- the Navy's highest honor for civilians -- for his wartime contributions.
Shortly after World War II ended, Spencer noticed that a piece of chocolate in his pocket melted when he was near an electrical tube he was testing.
Inspired, he started tinkering. The result was the microwave oven. "Two months after the war ended, he filed his first patent for the microwave oven," said Phillips.
It took two more decades of tinkering before the concept became a hit. "At first, it was very big and used mainly in commercial kitchens for restaurants and ocean liners," said Phillips. "Not until 1965, when they were made smaller and targeted for home use, did they really take off."
This story originally ran June 28, 2005, on Leaders & Success.
February 7, 2008; Page A18 WSJ
Though it's sometimes hard to tell, the Bush Administration has another year left and a government to run in the interim. Is it too much to ask the Senate to do its job of advice and consent, and allow up-or-down votes on the more than 180 vacancies in the executive branch that remain in a state of suspended nomination?
Apparently so. Of the stalled appointees, most aren't even controversial in the usual Beltway sense. They wait for jobs in such caldrons of partisanship as the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Census Bureau. Also waiting are four Defense Assistant Secretaries, an Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security and an Undersecretary of Commerce. There are also 28 pending nominees to federal judgeships, including key appellate courts.
Three vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board have been held hostage since May to the whims of Banking Chairman Chris Dodd. Now that Mr. Dodd's historic Presidential campaign has shut down, presumably he can return to his real job. But the Senator doesn't consider the nominations to be priorities and has no plans to schedule a vote.
Majority Leader Harry Reid says the delay is in retaliation for stalled progress on pro-forma Democratic recommendations for agencies that are bipartisan by law, like the FCC or SEC. But the leadership is demanding that their nominees be seated immediately, before their background checks have cleared. And they've been negotiating in bad faith with the White House, often telling nominees that they won't be granted a vote unless they formally pledge to step down after President Bush leaves office. This is especially pointless since they'd serve at the pleasure of the next President anyway.
Democrats are also using these nominees as leverage to dictate executive branch policy and score election-year political points. One flagrant example concerns U.S. District Judge Mark Filip, who as Deputy Attorney General would run Justice's national-security portfolio. Dick Durbin has put a "hold" on Mr. Filip, despite the Illinois Senator's own admission that Mr. Filip has an "excellent reputation" for "independence." Mr. Durbin wants Justice to open a criminal probe of CIA interrogators who waterboarded three al Qaeda terrorists in the days after 9/11, or he won't lift the hold.
Mr. Bush will address these delays today. Democrats might think about the precedent they are setting for the next President.
Though it's sometimes hard to tell, the Bush Administration has another year left and a government to run in the interim. Is it too much to ask the Senate to do its job of advice and consent, and allow up-or-down votes on the more than 180 vacancies in the executive branch that remain in a state of suspended nomination?
Apparently so. Of the stalled appointees, most aren't even controversial in the usual Beltway sense. They wait for jobs in such caldrons of partisanship as the President's Council of Economic Advisers, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Census Bureau. Also waiting are four Defense Assistant Secretaries, an Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security and an Undersecretary of Commerce. There are also 28 pending nominees to federal judgeships, including key appellate courts.
Three vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board have been held hostage since May to the whims of Banking Chairman Chris Dodd. Now that Mr. Dodd's historic Presidential campaign has shut down, presumably he can return to his real job. But the Senator doesn't consider the nominations to be priorities and has no plans to schedule a vote.
Majority Leader Harry Reid says the delay is in retaliation for stalled progress on pro-forma Democratic recommendations for agencies that are bipartisan by law, like the FCC or SEC. But the leadership is demanding that their nominees be seated immediately, before their background checks have cleared. And they've been negotiating in bad faith with the White House, often telling nominees that they won't be granted a vote unless they formally pledge to step down after President Bush leaves office. This is especially pointless since they'd serve at the pleasure of the next President anyway.
Democrats are also using these nominees as leverage to dictate executive branch policy and score election-year political points. One flagrant example concerns U.S. District Judge Mark Filip, who as Deputy Attorney General would run Justice's national-security portfolio. Dick Durbin has put a "hold" on Mr. Filip, despite the Illinois Senator's own admission that Mr. Filip has an "excellent reputation" for "independence." Mr. Durbin wants Justice to open a criminal probe of CIA interrogators who waterboarded three al Qaeda terrorists in the days after 9/11, or he won't lift the hold.
Mr. Bush will address these delays today. Democrats might think about the precedent they are setting for the next President.
Daytona 500
It's the 50th anniversary of "The Great American Race," and this site has everything you need to know about the Daytona 500...
Saturday, February 16, 2008
sQuba
This recent picture released by Swiss car maker Rinspeed shows people aboard Rinspeed's new model, the sQuba, the first real submersible car that will be presented at the 2008 Geneva car show in March. The zero-emission electric sports car, with power supplied by rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries, can perform a submerged stabile flight at a depth of 10 meters.
(AFP/RINSPEED-HO)
(AFP/RINSPEED-HO)
Oxygen Bar
This undated picture shows a woman smelling concentrated oxygen inside the first oxygen bar in Paris. As oxygen bars begin to pop up across France, health authorities are beginning to question the merits or otherwise of sniffing O2.
(AFP/File)
(AFP/File)
Rancho la Puerta Yoga Class
Yoga instructor Hazel Stricker demonstrates during a class at the luxury health resort Rancho la Puerta, in this Dec. 8, 2006, file photo, in Tecate, Mexico. Destinations in Asia and river cruises in Europe are among the hottest new trends in travel as 2007 begins, while changes in passport regulations and a growing awareness of environmental issues may also affect where and how Americans vacation in the new year.
(AP Photo/David Maung/FILE)
(AP Photo/David Maung/FILE)
Jane "Hanoi' Fonda
Hanoi Jane's Broadcast from Hanoi,
on August 22, 1972 from the Hotel Especen;
Hanoi-Vietnam
The following public domain information is a transcript from the US Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile
Areas, HR 16742, 19-25 September, 1972, page 7671. (From the CompuServe Military Veteran's Forum)
[Radio Hanoi attributes talk on DRV visit to Jane Fonda; from Hanoi in English to American servicemen involved in the Indochina War,
1 PM GMT, 22 August 1972. Text: Here's Jane Fonda telling her impressions at the end of her visit to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam;
(follows recorded female voice with American accent)
This is Jane Fonda. During my two-week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I've had the opportunity to visit a great many places
and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life-workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses,
soldiers, militia girls, members of the women's union, writers.
I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.
In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me-the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.
I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam-these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.
I cherish the way a farmer evacuated from Hanoi, without hesitation, offered me, an American, their best individual bomb shelter while US bombs fell near by. The daughter and I, in fact, shared the shelter wrapped in each others arms, cheek against cheek. It was on the road back from Nam Dinh, where I had witnessed the systematic destruction of civilian targets-schools, hospitals, pagodas, the factories, houses, and the dike system.
As I left the United States two weeks ago, Nixon was again telling the American people that he was winding down the war, but in the rubble-strewn streets of Nam Dinh, his words echoed with sinister (words indistinct) of a true killer. And like the young Vietnamese woman I held in my arms clinging to me tightly-and I pressed my cheek against hers-I thought, this is a war against Vietnam perhaps, but the tragedy is America's.
One thing that I have learned beyond a shadow of a doubt since I've been in this country is that Nixon will never be able to break the spirit of these people; he'll never be able to turn Vietnam, north and south, into a neo-colony of the United States by bombing, by invading, by attacking in any way. One has only to go into the countryside and listen to the peasants describe the lives they led before the revolution to understand why every bomb that is dropped only strengthens their determination to resist.
I've spoken to many peasants who talked about the days when their parents had to sell themselves to landlords as virtually slaves, when there were very few schools and much illiteracy, inadequate medical care, when they were not masters of their own lives.
But now, despite the bombs, despite the crimes being created-being committed against them by Richard Nixon, these people own their own land, build their own schools-the children learning, literacy- illiteracy is being wiped out, there is no more prostitution as there was during the time when this was a French colony. In other words, the people have taken power into their own hands, and they are controlling their own lives.
And after 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders-and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism-I don't think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh.
[end of recording]
APOLOGY
In 1988, 16 years after her tour of Hanoi when she made her famous radio broadcast and had her picture taken behind the anti- aircraft guns that were shooting down US pilots, Jane Fonda appeared on 20/20 and was interviewed by Barbara Walters. The timing of the interview is interesting. Jane Fonda was making a movie in New England and the movie's production schedule was seriously interrupted by demonstrations from angry Vietnam Veterans. Jane Fonda's participation in the interview may have been an attempt to help appease the angry protestors.
Two versions of this interview exist, one an actual transcript, the other a press release.
The transcript reads:
Barbara Walters:
"There are still people who . . . I guess, feel you have never apologized. Would you like to just say something to them now?"
Jane Fonda:
"Well . . . it's not . . . I would like to say something not just to . . . the Vietnam veterans . . . in New England . . . but . . . to . . . to men who were in Vietnam who . . . who I hurt . . . or who's pain I caused to . . .deepen because of things I said . . . or did . . . I . . . I feel that I owe them an apology . . . my intentions were never to hurt them . . . or to make their situation worse, it was . . . it was the contrary . . . I was trying to help end the war . . . but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I . . . and I am very sorry . . . that I hurt them . . . and I want to apologize to them and to their families . . . "
This was released to the media:
"I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did," Fonda said. "I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families."
Jane 'Hanoi' Fonda
In 1970 while speaking to college students she was quoted as saying:"Its my fondest wish, that some day, every American will get down on their knees and pray to God that some day they will have the opportunity to live in a Communist Society."
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda regularly voices her anti-war views in the media...but uh oh...look who got drafted!
Ethanol Fetish Leaves Bellies Running On 'E'
By DAVID A. RIDENOUR Posted Monday, February 11, 2008 4:30 PM PT
The red-hot congressional love affair with the alternative fuel ethanol is starting to leave many supermarket customers feeling mighty blue these days as they pay inflated prices for grocery staples.
Even worse, it's likely to dramatically increase the cases of chronic hunger, malnutrition and starvation in the poverty-stricken nations of Africa and Southeast Asia in the months ahead.
With prices of some food staples soaring by upward of 40% as more farmers plant corn for ethanol rather than human food and animal feed, many environmental groups are raising the specter of global food shortages of apocalyptic proportions.
"We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history," said Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of a new report on ethanol and its effect on food prices.
The increased amount of acreage devoted to growing corn for ethanol, he observed, means the U.S. will ultimately export less grain — further harming poor nations that rely heavily on food imports for their basic sustenance.
Brown projected that the 800 million human beings current living in hunger will rise to 1.2 billion by 2025.
"The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before," Brown said. "As a result, the world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs."
Brown noted that wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on Dec. 17 pushed past $10 per bushel for the first time ever, while a bushel of soybeans traded at a historic high of $13.42 on Jan. 11.
The rising commodity prices are driven by hefty federal subsidies for U.S.-produced ethanol and huge tariffs of some $1.50 per gallon on cheaper ethanol imports from Brazil.
The subsidies and tariffs have triggered a rush to invest in America's new biofuel industry. Dozens of new ethanol plants are popping up across the agricultural states of the Midwest like mushrooms after a spring rain.
A region that once produced much of American's food and sent its surpluses to feed the world's hungry is now producing grain for automotive fuel — the beneficiary of earmarks from the Capitol Hill friends of prairie farmers.
"Nearly $93 billion in subsidies will flow to ethanol and biodiesel producers by 2012," says Tom Tanton, a fellow in environment studies at San Francisco's Pacific Research Institute. The subsidies will cover about 50% to 65% of ethanol's market value alone — sticking taxpayers for a tab they will have to pay again at the gas station pump.
Ironically, ethanol delivers an energy punch about 30% lower than standard gasoline's, so motorists will find their overall gas mileage plummeting even as they shell out more money.
That doesn't trouble Midwestern corn farmers, many of whom have doubled their incomes as the government-induced demand for ethanol has sent corn prices rocketing upward over the past few years.
Yet the House members and senators funding this boondoggle still insist it is an alternative green fuel that helps the nation's motor vehicle fleet spew less of the carbon dioxide that scientists say creates the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Well, maybe not. Ethanol is so corrosive that it cannot be transported by pipelines and must be hauled overland in tanker-trucks. Since the bulk of the ethanol is produced in the heartland and consumed on both coasts, the carbon dioxide emitted by tanker-trucks leaves a carbon footprint that crisscrosses the U.S. tens of thousands of times a day.
Those massive clouds of pollution have caught the attention of far more radical environmental groups than the relatively conservative Earth Policy Institute.
In late January, representatives of the Rainforest Action Network, Student Trade Justice Campaign and Food First met in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office to demand a moratorium on all federal incentives for ethanol and other biofuels.
Michael Brune, Rainforest Action's executive director, said politicians are misguided when they paint biofuels as "the fuels of the future." Such fuels, he said, shouldn't emit more greenhouse gases than gasoline, degrade priceless ecosystems and force poor people off their land. He noted that giant agribusinesses like ADM and Cargill are clearing tropical rain forests in Indonesia and New Guinea to grow biofuels for export to advanced countries.
Given the huge campaign contributions to federal lawmakers from biofuel companies, his words almost surely will fall on deaf ears when they reach Capitol Hill.
Ridenour is vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative, nonpartisan think tank on Capitol Hill.
The red-hot congressional love affair with the alternative fuel ethanol is starting to leave many supermarket customers feeling mighty blue these days as they pay inflated prices for grocery staples.
Even worse, it's likely to dramatically increase the cases of chronic hunger, malnutrition and starvation in the poverty-stricken nations of Africa and Southeast Asia in the months ahead.
With prices of some food staples soaring by upward of 40% as more farmers plant corn for ethanol rather than human food and animal feed, many environmental groups are raising the specter of global food shortages of apocalyptic proportions.
"We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history," said Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of a new report on ethanol and its effect on food prices.
The increased amount of acreage devoted to growing corn for ethanol, he observed, means the U.S. will ultimately export less grain — further harming poor nations that rely heavily on food imports for their basic sustenance.
Brown projected that the 800 million human beings current living in hunger will rise to 1.2 billion by 2025.
"The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before," Brown said. "As a result, the world is facing the most severe food price inflation in history as grain and soybean prices climb to all-time highs."
Brown noted that wheat trading on the Chicago Board of Trade on Dec. 17 pushed past $10 per bushel for the first time ever, while a bushel of soybeans traded at a historic high of $13.42 on Jan. 11.
The rising commodity prices are driven by hefty federal subsidies for U.S.-produced ethanol and huge tariffs of some $1.50 per gallon on cheaper ethanol imports from Brazil.
The subsidies and tariffs have triggered a rush to invest in America's new biofuel industry. Dozens of new ethanol plants are popping up across the agricultural states of the Midwest like mushrooms after a spring rain.
A region that once produced much of American's food and sent its surpluses to feed the world's hungry is now producing grain for automotive fuel — the beneficiary of earmarks from the Capitol Hill friends of prairie farmers.
"Nearly $93 billion in subsidies will flow to ethanol and biodiesel producers by 2012," says Tom Tanton, a fellow in environment studies at San Francisco's Pacific Research Institute. The subsidies will cover about 50% to 65% of ethanol's market value alone — sticking taxpayers for a tab they will have to pay again at the gas station pump.
Ironically, ethanol delivers an energy punch about 30% lower than standard gasoline's, so motorists will find their overall gas mileage plummeting even as they shell out more money.
That doesn't trouble Midwestern corn farmers, many of whom have doubled their incomes as the government-induced demand for ethanol has sent corn prices rocketing upward over the past few years.
Yet the House members and senators funding this boondoggle still insist it is an alternative green fuel that helps the nation's motor vehicle fleet spew less of the carbon dioxide that scientists say creates the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Well, maybe not. Ethanol is so corrosive that it cannot be transported by pipelines and must be hauled overland in tanker-trucks. Since the bulk of the ethanol is produced in the heartland and consumed on both coasts, the carbon dioxide emitted by tanker-trucks leaves a carbon footprint that crisscrosses the U.S. tens of thousands of times a day.
Those massive clouds of pollution have caught the attention of far more radical environmental groups than the relatively conservative Earth Policy Institute.
In late January, representatives of the Rainforest Action Network, Student Trade Justice Campaign and Food First met in front of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office to demand a moratorium on all federal incentives for ethanol and other biofuels.
Michael Brune, Rainforest Action's executive director, said politicians are misguided when they paint biofuels as "the fuels of the future." Such fuels, he said, shouldn't emit more greenhouse gases than gasoline, degrade priceless ecosystems and force poor people off their land. He noted that giant agribusinesses like ADM and Cargill are clearing tropical rain forests in Indonesia and New Guinea to grow biofuels for export to advanced countries.
Given the huge campaign contributions to federal lawmakers from biofuel companies, his words almost surely will fall on deaf ears when they reach Capitol Hill.
Ridenour is vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative, nonpartisan think tank on Capitol Hill.
What is it like inside Columbus?
Last Updated: Wednesday, 13 February 2008, 22:55 GMT
BBC News science correspondent David Shukman visits a replica of the Columbus module at the EADS Astrium plant at Bremen, Germany.
This is only a theory - it certainly isn't rocket science - but my first impression on stepping into the brightly-lit module is that it's so surprisingly large that it may even offer enough room to orbit a cat.
I had imagined braining myself and smashing my elbows on the same kind of sharp angles and awkward features you find in the bowels of a cramped submarine.
But Columbus, Europe's first and biggest research outpost in space, is actually roomier and better-designed than many labs you find in some universities on European soil.
Down each side are the racks of instruments and experimental stations - BioLab and the Fluids lab among them - with two more fixed in the ceiling, which for an Earth-bound visitor like me causes a mild pain in the neck to look at.
Apparently one of the lessons from the pioneering days of the Russian space station Mir is that astronauts do need to have a sense of "up" and "down" - so Columbus' layout is quite conventional.
But for someone prone to knock into things by accident, every surface is festooned with switches, and I can't help wondering how many will be inadvertently flicked by a weightless astronaut gliding by a high speed.
On a television screen, a video is playing showing spacesuited gravity-free characters drifting along on previous expeditions and, if I watch for long enough, I start to wonder why my own feet aren't levitating from the metal floor.
But then the PR man says it's time for lunch and we step outside, not into low Earth orbit, but into a foggy car park in the German winter.
BBC News science correspondent David Shukman visits a replica of the Columbus module at the EADS Astrium plant at Bremen, Germany.
This is only a theory - it certainly isn't rocket science - but my first impression on stepping into the brightly-lit module is that it's so surprisingly large that it may even offer enough room to orbit a cat.
I had imagined braining myself and smashing my elbows on the same kind of sharp angles and awkward features you find in the bowels of a cramped submarine.
But Columbus, Europe's first and biggest research outpost in space, is actually roomier and better-designed than many labs you find in some universities on European soil.
Down each side are the racks of instruments and experimental stations - BioLab and the Fluids lab among them - with two more fixed in the ceiling, which for an Earth-bound visitor like me causes a mild pain in the neck to look at.
Apparently one of the lessons from the pioneering days of the Russian space station Mir is that astronauts do need to have a sense of "up" and "down" - so Columbus' layout is quite conventional.
But for someone prone to knock into things by accident, every surface is festooned with switches, and I can't help wondering how many will be inadvertently flicked by a weightless astronaut gliding by a high speed.
On a television screen, a video is playing showing spacesuited gravity-free characters drifting along on previous expeditions and, if I watch for long enough, I start to wonder why my own feet aren't levitating from the metal floor.
But then the PR man says it's time for lunch and we step outside, not into low Earth orbit, but into a foggy car park in the German winter.
Friday, February 15, 2008
10 Ways to Spot a Fake US Navy Seal
Author: James Kara Murat Posted: 09-02-2008
It’s a fact, that the very name ‘Navy SEALs’ opens a whole lot of doors for an individual. Frauds are not averse to proclaiming themselves to be Navy SEALs to cheat people or to get a job they don’t truly deserve.
It’s very important that you check the antecedents of a person claiming to be a Navy SEAL. However, sometimes even the most rigorous cross-examination does not tell you whether the person is the real deal or not. Given below are 10 ways to spot a fake US Navy SEAL.
Camouflage Clothing Covered with Medals and Tridents
Smell a rat when the person is dressed up in camouflage clothing replete with numerous ribbons, tridents, and patches. No Navy SEAL is going to walk around in this type of clothing when not on duty. Moreover, a Navy SEAL will always shy away from an ‘in your face’ display of his SEAL credentials.
Always remember the fact that a trident has to be earned and a Navy SEAL does not have n number of tridents to his credit. The same is the case with those patches and symbols.
Doesn’t Know His Class Number
There is absolutely no way in the world that US Navy SEALs are going to forget their class number. Moreover, to cover up the person might tell you that he did not have to go through the BUD/S training routine.
Team 6
Just about everybody wants to be in Team 6, the elite team within the elite. A fake Navy SEAL will always tell you that he was in Team 6.
Doesn’t remember the Details
When asked for pointed details about places, names, dates, etc, a fake Navy SEAL will always tell you that such information is top secret and cannot be given out. This is quite true but there is quite a bit a real Navy SEAL will be able to tell you about his tour of duty or some such details
Emotional Glorification
Fake Navy SEALs can weave a good emotional story glorifying their valor. Very often they claim to have been taken prisoner and have supposedly faced tremendous hardships. Moreover, another likely story could be the wiping out of his entire platoon and his having escaped through sheer determination and courage.
Medal Talk
Keeps talking about his medals and a few also claim to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Remember, that US Navy SEALs don’t like talking about their accomplishments and the medals that they have earned.
Can’t Remember the Names of His Superiors
Forget about the names of his platoon officer or commanding officer, a fake Navy SEAL cannot even remember the name of his swim buddy. A sure giveaway!
Advertising Killings
Fake Navy SEALs think that this is one way they can appear to be brave. Yes, stay away from the people who claim to have killed scores of people on their mission. As can be imagined a real Navy SEAL will never take pride in having killed people.
No Female SEAL
You would be surprised at the amount of people taken in by a woman who claims to be or have been a US Navy SEAL. Bear in mind that there never have been any female Navy SEALs.
Know a Real SEAL to spot the Fake SEAL
Know a true blue Navy SEAL so that you can spot the fake without batting an eyelid.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/shopping-articles/10-ways-to-spot-a-fake-us-navy-seal-328698.html
About the Author:
This Article is written by James Kara Murat from USNavySealStore.com, the contributor of US Navy Seal Store. More information on the subject is at 10 Ways to Spot a Fake US Navy SEAL, and related resources can be found at US Navy Seal Information Portal.
It’s a fact, that the very name ‘Navy SEALs’ opens a whole lot of doors for an individual. Frauds are not averse to proclaiming themselves to be Navy SEALs to cheat people or to get a job they don’t truly deserve.
It’s very important that you check the antecedents of a person claiming to be a Navy SEAL. However, sometimes even the most rigorous cross-examination does not tell you whether the person is the real deal or not. Given below are 10 ways to spot a fake US Navy SEAL.
Camouflage Clothing Covered with Medals and Tridents
Smell a rat when the person is dressed up in camouflage clothing replete with numerous ribbons, tridents, and patches. No Navy SEAL is going to walk around in this type of clothing when not on duty. Moreover, a Navy SEAL will always shy away from an ‘in your face’ display of his SEAL credentials.
Always remember the fact that a trident has to be earned and a Navy SEAL does not have n number of tridents to his credit. The same is the case with those patches and symbols.
Doesn’t Know His Class Number
There is absolutely no way in the world that US Navy SEALs are going to forget their class number. Moreover, to cover up the person might tell you that he did not have to go through the BUD/S training routine.
Team 6
Just about everybody wants to be in Team 6, the elite team within the elite. A fake Navy SEAL will always tell you that he was in Team 6.
Doesn’t remember the Details
When asked for pointed details about places, names, dates, etc, a fake Navy SEAL will always tell you that such information is top secret and cannot be given out. This is quite true but there is quite a bit a real Navy SEAL will be able to tell you about his tour of duty or some such details
Emotional Glorification
Fake Navy SEALs can weave a good emotional story glorifying their valor. Very often they claim to have been taken prisoner and have supposedly faced tremendous hardships. Moreover, another likely story could be the wiping out of his entire platoon and his having escaped through sheer determination and courage.
Medal Talk
Keeps talking about his medals and a few also claim to have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Remember, that US Navy SEALs don’t like talking about their accomplishments and the medals that they have earned.
Can’t Remember the Names of His Superiors
Forget about the names of his platoon officer or commanding officer, a fake Navy SEAL cannot even remember the name of his swim buddy. A sure giveaway!
Advertising Killings
Fake Navy SEALs think that this is one way they can appear to be brave. Yes, stay away from the people who claim to have killed scores of people on their mission. As can be imagined a real Navy SEAL will never take pride in having killed people.
No Female SEAL
You would be surprised at the amount of people taken in by a woman who claims to be or have been a US Navy SEAL. Bear in mind that there never have been any female Navy SEALs.
Know a Real SEAL to spot the Fake SEAL
Know a true blue Navy SEAL so that you can spot the fake without batting an eyelid.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/shopping-articles/10-ways-to-spot-a-fake-us-navy-seal-328698.html
About the Author:
This Article is written by James Kara Murat from USNavySealStore.com, the contributor of US Navy Seal Store. More information on the subject is at 10 Ways to Spot a Fake US Navy SEAL, and related resources can be found at US Navy Seal Information Portal.
AAA's Tips For Driving This Winter
Submitted by anthonyf on Thursday, February 07 @ 19:33:34 EST
Winter is arguably the worst season for motorists. The snow and ice on roads makes it treacherous thus the risk of being involved in an accident is very high. AAA recently published its tips for motorists regarding winter driving.
One of the tips offered by AAA is for motorists to increase the gap between vehicles. In normal driving conditions, it is recommended that for city driving a car's length is recommended for the space between two vehicles. This space gives the driver enough time to put on the brakes if the vehicle in front stops or slow down. During winter, it is advisable for motorists to have at least a six-second gap between them and the vehicle ahead.
AAA also warns drivers to beware of places such as intersections, bridges, overpasses, and shaded areas as these areas are where ice most likely form. As ice is slippery and thus dangerous to drivers, drivers should exert caution when driving through said areas.
Driving during winter means that a driver should keep the vehicle's windshield free from snow. But drivers should not stop at improving their view of the road. AAA urges drivers to improve the visibility of their vehicles to other motorists. This can be done by clearing snow that could have accumulated all over the vehicle.
Also, drivers are encouraged by AAA to drive with the headlamps on low-beam. The light produced by a vehicle's headlamp at low-beam provides better lighting than when it is on high-beam. And obviously, high beam lights will not penetrate fog at some distance ahead of your vehicle.
The AAA also urges drivers to drive at speeds lower than the posted limit. This is because these speed limits are posted and applicable only in driving at ideal conditions. Also, motorists should take care in accelerating their vehicle. It is wise to refrain from sudden start or stops. Motorists should also exert caution when turning as sudden motions can cause the wheels to spin thus they can lose control of the vehicle.
During winter, skidding is the most common cause of accidents. AAA has this tip for such a predicament: "In a skid, ease off the accelerator. Carefully steer in the direction you want the car to go and straighten the wheel as soon as the car begins to go in the desired direction."
Motorists should remember these tips from AAA to keep themselves safe while driving during this season. Even Acura Legend performance parts are not guaranteed to keep one safe in an accident.
======================================
Anthony Fontanelle is a 35-year-old automotive buff who grew up in the Windy City. He does freelance work for an automotive magazine when he is not busy customizing cars in his shop.
Winter is arguably the worst season for motorists. The snow and ice on roads makes it treacherous thus the risk of being involved in an accident is very high. AAA recently published its tips for motorists regarding winter driving.
One of the tips offered by AAA is for motorists to increase the gap between vehicles. In normal driving conditions, it is recommended that for city driving a car's length is recommended for the space between two vehicles. This space gives the driver enough time to put on the brakes if the vehicle in front stops or slow down. During winter, it is advisable for motorists to have at least a six-second gap between them and the vehicle ahead.
AAA also warns drivers to beware of places such as intersections, bridges, overpasses, and shaded areas as these areas are where ice most likely form. As ice is slippery and thus dangerous to drivers, drivers should exert caution when driving through said areas.
Driving during winter means that a driver should keep the vehicle's windshield free from snow. But drivers should not stop at improving their view of the road. AAA urges drivers to improve the visibility of their vehicles to other motorists. This can be done by clearing snow that could have accumulated all over the vehicle.
Also, drivers are encouraged by AAA to drive with the headlamps on low-beam. The light produced by a vehicle's headlamp at low-beam provides better lighting than when it is on high-beam. And obviously, high beam lights will not penetrate fog at some distance ahead of your vehicle.
The AAA also urges drivers to drive at speeds lower than the posted limit. This is because these speed limits are posted and applicable only in driving at ideal conditions. Also, motorists should take care in accelerating their vehicle. It is wise to refrain from sudden start or stops. Motorists should also exert caution when turning as sudden motions can cause the wheels to spin thus they can lose control of the vehicle.
During winter, skidding is the most common cause of accidents. AAA has this tip for such a predicament: "In a skid, ease off the accelerator. Carefully steer in the direction you want the car to go and straighten the wheel as soon as the car begins to go in the desired direction."
Motorists should remember these tips from AAA to keep themselves safe while driving during this season. Even Acura Legend performance parts are not guaranteed to keep one safe in an accident.
======================================
Anthony Fontanelle is a 35-year-old automotive buff who grew up in the Windy City. He does freelance work for an automotive magazine when he is not busy customizing cars in his shop.
Devil May CAIR
Homeland Security: In a new court filing, federal prosecutors describe the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a supporter of terrorists. So why are Democrats still supporting the organization?
CAIR's boosters on the Hill, where it's headquartered just three blocks from the Capitol, have known for some time that several people in positions of power within the group have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country. Yet lawmakers have gone right on singing CAIR's praises and doing its bidding. That agenda includes suing John Doe witnesses, censoring critics of Islamism and denying the FBI antiterror tools.
These cheerleaders, who include a handful of Republicans (see box), also know by now that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-fundraising case last year. And that FBI wiretaps revealed that CAIR's founder, Omar Ahmad, and executive director, Nihad Awad, last decade attended a secret meeting in Philadelphia with Hamas leaders and other terrorist sympathizers.
In fact, Ahmad himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror case, which counts a CAIR founding director among its criminal defendants.
But now, in a separate case involving a senior CAIR official who trained to kill American soldiers in jihad, prosecutors are tying CAIR even closer to terror. In court papers filed in December, federal prosecutors described CAIR as not just an apologist or sympathizer, but a supporter of terrorists.
"From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders," the filing states, "CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists." The government also cited evidence "the conspirators used deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists."
Perhaps some members of Congress had been fooled by CAIR's deception. But now they have no excuse. Now Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who saluted CAIR's "important work," and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who applauded "CAIR's mission," know better.
The criminal briefing should also disabuse Rep. John Conyers, who's trumpeted CAIR's "long and distinguished history." Rep. John Dingell, who said "my office door is always open" to CAIR, now has an obligation to slam it shut.
No red-blooded American lawmaker wants to do anything that would facilitate the support of terrorists, not even Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who's gushed "CAIR has much to be proud of."
Continued support of CAIR plays right into its hands. Such endorsements are promptly posted on its Web site in an attempt to legitimize itself in the media. It also uses outreach events with the government as a kind of insurance policy against investigation.
But CAIR's tricks are wearing thin. Now it is resorting to thinly veiled threats, warning presidential candidates to avoid any "anti-Muslim rhetoric" or suffer a backlash at the polls. The group already attacked former GOP hopeful Rudy Giuliani for using the phrase "Islamic terrorism." Democrats, typically, have taken the hint. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama won't even describe the enemy as terrorists, let alone Islamic.
To continue to embrace CAIR and cater to its demands is the equivalent of legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which gave birth to Hamas and al-Qaida.
CAIR's boosters on the Hill, where it's headquartered just three blocks from the Capitol, have known for some time that several people in positions of power within the group have been directly connected to terrorism and have either been prosecuted or thrown out of the country. Yet lawmakers have gone right on singing CAIR's praises and doing its bidding. That agenda includes suing John Doe witnesses, censoring critics of Islamism and denying the FBI antiterror tools.
These cheerleaders, who include a handful of Republicans (see box), also know by now that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-fundraising case last year. And that FBI wiretaps revealed that CAIR's founder, Omar Ahmad, and executive director, Nihad Awad, last decade attended a secret meeting in Philadelphia with Hamas leaders and other terrorist sympathizers.
In fact, Ahmad himself was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror case, which counts a CAIR founding director among its criminal defendants.
But now, in a separate case involving a senior CAIR official who trained to kill American soldiers in jihad, prosecutors are tying CAIR even closer to terror. In court papers filed in December, federal prosecutors described CAIR as not just an apologist or sympathizer, but a supporter of terrorists.
"From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders," the filing states, "CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists." The government also cited evidence "the conspirators used deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists."
Perhaps some members of Congress had been fooled by CAIR's deception. But now they have no excuse. Now Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who saluted CAIR's "important work," and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who applauded "CAIR's mission," know better.
The criminal briefing should also disabuse Rep. John Conyers, who's trumpeted CAIR's "long and distinguished history." Rep. John Dingell, who said "my office door is always open" to CAIR, now has an obligation to slam it shut.
No red-blooded American lawmaker wants to do anything that would facilitate the support of terrorists, not even Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who's gushed "CAIR has much to be proud of."
Continued support of CAIR plays right into its hands. Such endorsements are promptly posted on its Web site in an attempt to legitimize itself in the media. It also uses outreach events with the government as a kind of insurance policy against investigation.
But CAIR's tricks are wearing thin. Now it is resorting to thinly veiled threats, warning presidential candidates to avoid any "anti-Muslim rhetoric" or suffer a backlash at the polls. The group already attacked former GOP hopeful Rudy Giuliani for using the phrase "Islamic terrorism." Democrats, typically, have taken the hint. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama won't even describe the enemy as terrorists, let alone Islamic.
To continue to embrace CAIR and cater to its demands is the equivalent of legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which gave birth to Hamas and al-Qaida.
Our Energy Deficit
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, February 08, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Energy: With a $160 billion stimulus package sitting on the president's desk and energy prices headed back up, it's high time to start talking about giving our economy a real, long-term boost by driving down the price of oil.
After OPEC members, including Saudi Arabia, said Friday that they won't pump more oil, the market sent the price of crude up $3 to $91.77 a barrel. So much for our policy of publicly begging the Saudi sheikhs to increase output.
The renewed jump in oil underscores the corner we've painted ourselves into. By refusing to drill in either ANWR or offshore, the U.S. can expect less energy, higher prices, growing vulnerability and a shrunken economy.
As recently as 1973, imports made up 36% of our total oil use; today, imports are two-thirds of our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil habit, and climbing fast. As Mitt Romney noted last week, we're sending nearly $400 billion overseas each year to buy oil.
This has made us uniquely vulnerable, to say the least, to the inherent political instability of the Mideast, Russia, Africa and Latin America — and to the OPEC oil cartel's anti-Western schemes.
But what can we do? Plenty. Start with getting more energy.
We have at least 40 billion barrels of crude and 250 trillion cubic feet of gas offshore, in ANWR and on federal lands — enough to replace nearly a quarter of our imports for several decades. Another 1.2 trillion barrels of oil lie in shale deposits across the Midwest.
Yet Congress has put more than 50% of the oil and 27% of the gas in the U.S. out of bounds. Just 19% of the Outer Continental Shelf can be developed. The National Petroleum Council estimates that we'll need $4 trillion in investments over the next 25 years just to keep pace with a forecast 30% jump in energy demand.
Apart from demonizing oil companies, Congress does nothing. This is madness, writ large.
As civil rights leader Roy Innis recently wrote, "Onshore and offshore public lands could hold enough oil to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years — and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years."
Here are some other things we could do, with little trouble and at fairly low cost, to boost energy supplies while cutting oil use:
• Take gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing older cars off the road: 20% of vehicles are responsible for 80% of the fuel waste and pollution. Why not scrap the oldest and dirtiest?
• Give people incentives to buy hybrid cars. They're getting better, but they're still expensive. We're spending billions to subsidize corn-based ethanol production, which has driven up prices for energy and food. Wouldn't it be wiser to subsidize hybrids?
• Recognize that nuclear power's time has come. We get just 18% of our electricity from nuclear power; France gets 80%. Other nations are building nuclear plants. So should we.
• Stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. After filling it to 700 million barrels of oil as promised, the 2005 Energy Act boosted the amount to 1 billion barrels. But, after we began adding more oil last August, oil prices surged. We should stop now.
No one thing will solve our energy problems. But many, taken together, can. The key is to think both supply and demand.
As we noted above, the "stimulus" package of $160 billion will deliver one-time checks to millions later this year. But the stimulus will end there. By cutting our oil use by 1 billion barrels a year — about 13% of our annual use of 7.5 billion — and getting oil prices from $90-plus to $65 a barrel, we could slash our oil import bill by $112 billion and its domestic costs by $225 billion.
That's real stimulus, the kind that would boost the economy, create millions of new jobs and kick the legs out from under inflation.
Those who say we need energy taxes are wrong — especially with our weakening economy. Besides, taxes don't add a bit of energy; they only hurt consumers and make all of us poorer.
Presidential candidate John McCain has in the past opposed drilling in environmentally sensitive areas. He could show some bold leadership by pushing an energy policy that actually produces more energy and cuts prices. It's the best stimulus we'll ever have.
Energy: With a $160 billion stimulus package sitting on the president's desk and energy prices headed back up, it's high time to start talking about giving our economy a real, long-term boost by driving down the price of oil.
After OPEC members, including Saudi Arabia, said Friday that they won't pump more oil, the market sent the price of crude up $3 to $91.77 a barrel. So much for our policy of publicly begging the Saudi sheikhs to increase output.
The renewed jump in oil underscores the corner we've painted ourselves into. By refusing to drill in either ANWR or offshore, the U.S. can expect less energy, higher prices, growing vulnerability and a shrunken economy.
As recently as 1973, imports made up 36% of our total oil use; today, imports are two-thirds of our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil habit, and climbing fast. As Mitt Romney noted last week, we're sending nearly $400 billion overseas each year to buy oil.
This has made us uniquely vulnerable, to say the least, to the inherent political instability of the Mideast, Russia, Africa and Latin America — and to the OPEC oil cartel's anti-Western schemes.
But what can we do? Plenty. Start with getting more energy.
We have at least 40 billion barrels of crude and 250 trillion cubic feet of gas offshore, in ANWR and on federal lands — enough to replace nearly a quarter of our imports for several decades. Another 1.2 trillion barrels of oil lie in shale deposits across the Midwest.
Yet Congress has put more than 50% of the oil and 27% of the gas in the U.S. out of bounds. Just 19% of the Outer Continental Shelf can be developed. The National Petroleum Council estimates that we'll need $4 trillion in investments over the next 25 years just to keep pace with a forecast 30% jump in energy demand.
Apart from demonizing oil companies, Congress does nothing. This is madness, writ large.
As civil rights leader Roy Innis recently wrote, "Onshore and offshore public lands could hold enough oil to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years — and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years."
Here are some other things we could do, with little trouble and at fairly low cost, to boost energy supplies while cutting oil use:
• Take gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing older cars off the road: 20% of vehicles are responsible for 80% of the fuel waste and pollution. Why not scrap the oldest and dirtiest?
• Give people incentives to buy hybrid cars. They're getting better, but they're still expensive. We're spending billions to subsidize corn-based ethanol production, which has driven up prices for energy and food. Wouldn't it be wiser to subsidize hybrids?
• Recognize that nuclear power's time has come. We get just 18% of our electricity from nuclear power; France gets 80%. Other nations are building nuclear plants. So should we.
• Stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. After filling it to 700 million barrels of oil as promised, the 2005 Energy Act boosted the amount to 1 billion barrels. But, after we began adding more oil last August, oil prices surged. We should stop now.
No one thing will solve our energy problems. But many, taken together, can. The key is to think both supply and demand.
As we noted above, the "stimulus" package of $160 billion will deliver one-time checks to millions later this year. But the stimulus will end there. By cutting our oil use by 1 billion barrels a year — about 13% of our annual use of 7.5 billion — and getting oil prices from $90-plus to $65 a barrel, we could slash our oil import bill by $112 billion and its domestic costs by $225 billion.
That's real stimulus, the kind that would boost the economy, create millions of new jobs and kick the legs out from under inflation.
Those who say we need energy taxes are wrong — especially with our weakening economy. Besides, taxes don't add a bit of energy; they only hurt consumers and make all of us poorer.
Presidential candidate John McCain has in the past opposed drilling in environmentally sensitive areas. He could show some bold leadership by pushing an energy policy that actually produces more energy and cuts prices. It's the best stimulus we'll ever have.
The former Mustansiriya University, Baghdad, Iraq
The medieval Mustansiriya University has survived the centuries and stands tribute to an era when Baghdad was at the center of culture and learning.Abbassid Castle, Baghdad, Iraq
This photograph shows the detailed tilework on the front portal of the Abbassid Castle in Baghdad.