They are bombarded by propaganda 24/7 from the likes of the BBC about how great the NHS is.
Lots of British people have swallowed the big lie. It's only when you ask people who got ill in countries with market based care to compare that they realise how much producer capture there is.
#3
I don't have the stamina to read through the comments. Whatever anyone thinks of NHS, we are not Brits and Obama is being impaled on his attempts to bring something like NHS to America.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
08/13/2009 15:36 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Why am I getting visions of Soylent Green? Some of the dialogue was:
Det. Thorn: You know what, Lieutenant.
Hatcher: What?
Det. Thorn: [tossing back Hatcher's wristwatch] I think it really is broken this time.
This administration is the biggest bunch of looters in the history of this country.
#1
I saw an interesting analysis the other day (might've been posted here, I don't recall) that seemed to show a correlation between the Fed's OMC activity and the recent market rally. The beginning of a ramping up of the Fed buying US debt exactly coincided with the beginning of the present rally and a brief period of a couple of weeks during which the Fed scaled back their purchases was the markets sell off. The hypothesis offered was that this rally is mostly due to newly printed money being injected into the markets. Caveat emptor of course.
Part of the answer may lie in a nice piece of work posted at ZeroHedge which notes that on POMO days that stock markets exhibited some statistically unlikely upward thrusts in the final few minutes of each associated trading day.
Under this scenario POMO money is being shuffled out of the endless thin-air vaults of the Fed and into the banking system where it needs to find something to do. One of those things, it seems, is to goose the stock market, especially late in the day.
They're running the Sting and the mark is those who are not part of the inner circle of the financial institutions and the tax payer who's going to be hammered again.
Anyone know, if the the offspring of one of these liaisons can claim US citizenship?(assuming, of course that the sperm came from a US citizen)
My jaw doesn't often drop, but this story had it heading for the basement:
Thousands of Canadians who are infertile in Canada have to place all their hopes on just 33 men who are Canadian sperm donors.
What? A nation of 30 million people has just 33 sperm donors? Apparently so. Now why would that be?
At one time Canada had two dozen sperm banks but when the Assisted Human Reproduction Act made it illegal to pay for sperm or egg donors they dried up in 2004.
Today there are very few men willing to give up their sperm for nothing.
Well, okay. But these 33 hard-workin' guys, there's still room for a bit of individual selection, right? Up to a point:
"Today, there is one South Asian donor for all of Canada," he says, noting that couples are often shocked at the limited choices.
One donor for thousands of wannabe parents? He must be working round the clock. Well, not quite. For Canadian womenfolk have now been reduced to the ultimate indignity:
Doctors and patients have had little choice but to use sperm and eggs from south of the border.
One of the biggest suppliers of donor sperm is Outreach Health Services which imports and distributes semen for assisted reproduction clinics across Canada. The company imports sperm from an agency that collects primarily from men in Georgia and northern Florida, where donors are paid about $100 per visit.
With so much sperm coming from the States, some estimate that up to 80 per cent of babies conceived in Canada through donor sperm have American DNA.
Wow. This isn't your father's War of 1812. The poor Canucks never saw it coming. Millions of Yank sperm leaping like salmon up the Ontario side of Niagara Falls.
A wait for semen seems pretty much the logical reductio of "free at the point of demand" health care. But, as Kathy Shaidle says, how can this go wrong? Canada, circa 2050: Eighty percent drawling rednecks demanding grits with their maple-creme donuts, and the remainder a vast tribe of intermarried step-siblings riddled with genetic disorders descended from "one South Asian donor."
#6
With the way the courts are, sperm donation could be a 18+ -year commitment.
Joke:
A guy is caught in the back seat with his girlfriend by her sheriff father. "Marriage or twenty years!". Guy chooses marriage. So they get married, have kids, job, vacations, etc...
Until one morning the wife comes down and sees her husband sitting alone in the dark kitchen staring off into space with a tear running down his cheek.
"What's wrong honey", she asks.
"Do you remember when we got married because your father caught us in the back seat?"
#9
IF they really want Canadian (tm) genetic material there's plenty of it floating around the back-country of New England and Louisiana. Of course, they may not be _that_ loyal to the crown.
Some of the most popular Urdu Columnists in Pakistan seem to function in a world of their own creationit challenges rational thinking.
By C.M. Naim
For the past five or six months Ive been reading fairly regularly the web pages of three Urdu newspapers from Pakistan: Jang, Nawa-i-Waqt and the Express. I glance at the headlines cursorily then immediately turn to the columnists. Most days, each of the three carries a minimum of six columnists. Some of them are big names; they frequently appear on TV shows, get regularly invited to the Presidents residence, and travel with the Prime Minister on important trips. These gentlemen never let you forget all that. One or two even give details of the food served on such occasionsthere is always plenty of food served, not just a cup of tea, when they visit with any dignitary.
Some of them repeatedly tell us how uniquely they know the history of everythinghow things actually happened, be it in Pakistan of here and now or any country in the past. They also inform us that had their advice been properly understood or taken, the disaster that followed in many cases could have been avoided. None of the sages has ever made a serious error of judgment. And if one of them ever makes a rare acknowledgment of that nature, it is always as a charge of betrayal on the part of some other party.
Conspiracy theories naturally abound in these columns, with three dependable conspirators: America, India (i.e. Bharat in Urdu; never Hindustan), and Israel. The labels may change and become CIA, RAW, and Mossad, or Nasara (the Christians), Hunud (the Hindus), and Yahud (the Jews), but their axis of evil remains unchanged. The alliteration of the last twohunud and yahudmakes them a favourite and indivisible pair; they generate an assertion that no one questions in Urdu in Pakistan.
In these columns one discovers that M. A. Jinnah and Muhammad Iqbal were never correctly understood by except the particular columnist. They also offer amazing bits of historyoften with a grand flourish. You can be sure to face something remarkable soon if the paragraph begins with the words: Tarikh gavaah hai History is My Witness. Fairly often a column might appear to have been written, not to communicate some idea or information, but for the sheer joy of writing those pretty words that, for plenty of Urduwalas, make it the sweetest language in the world.
Urdu newspapersor for that matter, the English language onesdo not seem to employ fact checkers or copy editors for their columnists; they seldom carry any correction except of the most minor kind. One, in fact, wonders if their editors read them. One can be quite certain that the English newspaper editors and columnists in Pakistan dont read them, not even if these Urdu columns appear in a sister publication brought out by their own publisher. In my limited experience of reading the columns in the Daily Times and the News fairly regularlyand in Dawn, infrequentlyI have not come across any column in English that commented in any fashion on some Urdu column or columnist. But the Urdu columnists are certainly read by a huge number of people, who save them and treat them as gospel truth. Recently one of them published a call for people to send him their saved cuttings of his column so that he could put together a book; in no time he had more than enough.
I must now offer some illustrations. But first I must hasten to add that not all Urdu columnists in Pakistan write in that manner. Quite a fewHameed Akhtar, Zaheda Hena, Munno Bhai, Tanwir Qaisar Shahid, Asghar Nadeem Sayyad, Abdullah Tariq Suhail, Kishwar Naheed, Rafeeq Dogar, to name my own favouritesconsistently write with clarity, sober reasoning, and in a manner that is both eloquent and passionate. As for the othersthe majoritymeet a few below.
Hamid Mir writes a regular column in Jang; he writes with passion but is usually quite careful. I was taken aback when I read his column on April 27. He gave it the title Children, True of Heart. In it he described a meeting he addressed where school children were present, and where one child stood up and told him something that he had not known before. The child pointed out, Mir wrote, that America was such a sworn enemy of Pakistan that when Pakistan was born in 1947, the United States refused to recognize it for two years. The U.S. did so, according to the child, because it expected Pakistan to collapse and disappear any day. Mr. Mir was so moved by the childs fervour and knowledge about Pakistan that he decided to write a column and acknowledge his ignorance of the truth that even a child knew. (In fact the U.S.A. recognized Pakistan on August 15, 1947, and opened an embassy the same day; the first American ambassador arrived six months later.)
Dr. A Q Khan of Kahuta fame writes regularly in both Jang and its sister English journal, The News. In his Urdu column on April 29, Dr. Khan claimed that President Obama had no authority of his own, that he was in fact totally controlled by the white men who stood to his right and left in photographs. He then asserted, without naming his sources, that President Obama had once asked that the Kaba should be destroyed, for that would put an end to all the conflicts the world was faced with. When I checked the English version I found it contained no mention of the Kaba. On inquiry, an editor at The News informed me that it had been deleted because it was based on hearsay. Apparently, hearsay was all right so long it was in Urdu.
Safir Ahmad Siddiqui, not a regular columnist, wrote a piece in Jang on May 17, denouncing any possible attempt on the part of the government to allow transit facilities to India in its trade with Afghanistan. Mr. Siddiqui reminded the readers: "what the Indians did to the Pakistanis POWs after the war of 1971-2 was of such cruel nature that historians forgot what Hitler and Mussolini had done in their prison camps." He then presented an analogy whose logic, not to mention factual accuracy, was mind-boggling. According to him Pakistan should learn something or other from Hitler and Poland. According to Mr. Siddiqui, Hitler wanted back his two lost seaports Alsace and Lorraine from Polandno, Im not making it upand resorted to force only when Poland refused him even transit facilities. Therefore, Mr. Siddiqui concluded, Pakistan should also refuse India any transit facility.
The difference between the Urdu and English sister papers nurtured by the same family of publishers also stood out in stark contrast with reference to the reporting on a fatwa issued by some convention of Sunni Ulema on May 17. According to Jang, the learned men of God had declared that it was haraam to commit suicide bombings, or cut the throats of Muslims. According to The News, however, the Sunni scholars had termed the suicide attacks and beheadings as haraam. The sages most likely meant what was said in English, but the Urdu version carried its own slant recklessly and never made it clear that the fatwa covered the necks of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Abdul Qadir Hasan is a top-slot columnist in The Expressdespite the name the paper is in Urdu. On May 17, he wrote:
"In 1948, 1965, and 1971, and now again in 2009 we are fighting a fourth war with India. In this war we fight not only India but also its two patrons, USA and Israel. This triad is bent on destroying us. And this war is much more dangerous than the first three wars. In those wars, armies faced and fought armies, but this time it is a clandestine war, in which one side consists of Bharat-trained and armed guerrillas, i.e. Taliban, and facing them on the other side stands the regular soldiers of Pakistan.
This theme, common to so many columnists, was given its most perfervid interpretation five days later (May 22) by Dr. Ajmal Niazi, who is a top-slot columnist in Nawa-i-Waqt. He entitled his column: ''Pakistan will be the battlefield of the Third World War. He made three powerful assertionshe did not use the word mubayyana (alleged) anywhere. (The word is rarely, if at all, used in Urdu columns.).
Seymour Hersh, Dr. Niazi claimed, had disclosed that Benazir Bhutto was killed at the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney, and by a death squad commanded by Gen. Stanley C Crystal. He further claimed that Z.A. Bhutto, Murtaza Bhutto, and Benazir Bhutto were all killed by the Americans. Finally, Dr. Niazi claimed that Benazir Bhutto had given an interview to Al-Jazira on Nov. 2, 2007, in which she had said that Osama bin Laden was already dead, and that he had been killed at the orders of Shaikh Umar Sa'id. But the Americans ordered [whom?] to have the remark deleted, because if bin Laden were already dead theythe Americanswould have had no reason to do what they did in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Having thus established to his own and his readers satisfaction a chain of reasoning, Dr. Niazi concluded his column with a scary flourish.
The Western and American media are in an uproar over Pakistans nuclear bombs, but they should also listen to me. Im telling them that if the nuclear weapons of Pakistan were put in any danger the third world war will immediately start. Then both India and Israel will cease to exist. What will the United States do then? The battlefield of World War III will be Pakistan.
Then there are the wonderful insiders exclusives about the great ones. Here is Mr. Majeed Nizami, the chief editor and owner of Nawa-i-Waqt and The Nation, in a letter to his main rival Jang (May 23), explaining a remark he reportedly had made.
The bomb-exploder prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif had called a meeting of some 60 or 70 journalists and editors to seek their advice before deciding to have the nuclear tests. Many people of I.A. Haqqanis ilk opposed the idea, and tried to frighten him by warning of America's wrath. He clearly seemed to waver. At that time I was indeed forced to speak to him firmly. Miyan Sahib, I said to him, explode the bomb otherwise the nation will explode you. We will explode you.' And Almighty Allah gave him the ability to explode the bomb. But before that could happen President Clinton phoned him five times, offered millions in bribe, and [finally even] threatened him [personally].
And here is a charming vignette from one of Mr. Mahmud Shams columnsI regret my failure to note the date; it was sometime in Maythat contained excerpts from his book of interviews.
Dr Fahmida Mirza has vacated her seat for me and taken another chair. Now I'm seated on the chair next to the Daughter of the East, the first Muslim woman Prime Minister in the Muslim World, the Life Chairperson of P.P.P., Honourable Benazir Bhutto. Also present are other senior journalists, TV anchorpersons, newspaper proprietors, and her party's senior leaders. She wants to know if she should take part in the elections... It's a good thing that she is seeking advice from people who are outside her party. Most of us want her to take part in the elections. She is asking each person individually. The tea has come, together with Chaat. She herself enjoys Chaat. Her dupatta keeps slipping, but she never lets it fall. I'm seeing her after many years and so my feelings are intense.
In this la-la land of column writing in Urdu in Pakistan three names stand out in my view: Irfan Siddiqui, Dr. Aamir Liaquat Husain, and Haroon-al-Rashid. All three are regular columnists for Jang. The first two surpass everyone in finding facts where facts may not exist; they also write with great verve in an Urdu that has all the flourishes and graces required in a ghazal. The third, Mr Haroon-al-Rashid, is in a class by himself. I cannot put into English his pyrotechnical Urdu and his riffs of free-association. He must be read in the original. But here is one sample each of Mr. Siddiquis and Dr. Husains insightful writings.
In a column in MayI apologize again for not noting the dateDr Husain first defended himself against the charges of faking his doctorate degree, then wrote:
Those who invoke the name of the Qaid-e-Azam should first show they have the same nafs [lower self in mystical thought]. He was educated in England, grew up surrounded by Western culture, and started his political life from the platform of a secular party. But when he became the leader of 'those who were his own' he never took removed his cap from his head or took off sherwani; he did not let his nafs rule over him for a moment; he did not use the broom of greed to sweep the yard of his desires (sic). He knew he was the leader of the Muslims, and so he always looked like them among them. He knew how to wear a suit much better than many who wear suits; he knew how to cross his legs and smoke cigars. He had seen such scenes many times in the durbar of the British, but he also understood that millions of people oppressed by the Hindus had whole-heartedly claimed him as their own. And so he gave all his wishes and desires the name of Pakistan, and never looked back to that Muhammad Ali who perhaps had some personal desires too.
And here is Mr Irfan Siddiqui on a topic that was hot for a couple of days in May. He wrote in his column in Jang (May 23):
President Zardari was in Washington. A schoolmistress named Hilary Clinton had him and the Clown of Kabul sit on her either side, and then lectured them. In every gathering, every meeting, and every function it was specially arranged that Hamid Karzai should be on the right hand [of the American dignitary] and President Zardari on the left. I do not recall any occasion in the past when an American Secretary of State conducted a meeting of two presidents in such a fashion.
Finally, since I come from India, I must point out that Urdu newspapers in India are in no way better. Their columns and editorials carry similar feats of conspiratorial thinking and convoluted reasoning. And in rhetorical passion they can match any Pakistani columnist. I have written about them in the past, most recently in 2007 in a note concerning the treatment meted out to Taslima Nasreen at Hyderabad
C.M. Naim is Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago
Posted by: john frum ||
08/13/2009 08:13 ||
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Link ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
