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Health Care Around the World: Why American Health Care for Uninsured is Like that Of 3rd World Nations

11-07-09 7:39 P GMT-08
Interview with TR Reid on the 4 methods of health care in the world and the types of insurance and other bundled medical programs in the developed world found in the nations of the world.

Neda's Mother: She Was Like an Angel

11-07-09 7:16 P GMT-08
Her mom, talks about Neda's life. New: Neda found it impossible to get work because she was divorced.

Why negative thinking makes the world a better place

11-07-09 5:32 P GMT-08
Writer's brush with positive thinking program illustrates how focusing on a positive outlook can hurt in the long run. 'come to think of it, positive thinking started out as a busineess ploy, didn't it? A ploy by already powerful and rich white men to ingnore the harm their business practices have on the world. Maybe they should go back to the EST scam. Oh yeah.that was for underlings. h/t @R_A_W at Twitter.com

Jake Tapper Interviews Roland Hedley Jr. On Twitter

11-07-09 7:03 A GMT-08
Over his new book based on his Twitter posts. (Has to be a first.) The Insufferably sufferable journalist opens up to the ABc's Political Punch columnist, or not. Now I know what I want for Christmas.

Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer's Beliefs Are an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre

11-06-09 9:19 P GMT-08
Fort Hood and it's vicinity have have a lot of problems with killings and low morale. The fact that Hasan did not act until the day before he was to be deployed shows his actions were more about being denied his right to avoid war than because of his religious beliefs. Hat tip @ontd_political at Twitter.com for link

New book tells how Right Wing and business push mainstream news media into a right wing bias.

11-05-09 4:18 A GMT-08
Calls liberal bias of news media "and urban legend" and shows how the right forces news media to back up their own propaganda. Hat tip Twitter colleagues, probably either @maafa or @mparent77772

Meg Whitman's radio whoppers

11-02-09 5:04 P GMT-08
Right Now Ms. Whitman is a California concern, but such things go on in your state as well, and it's good to see some reporting on them which we do this far from the election. Beside should she win the governor's seat she's likely to be running for president by 2016 at the latest.

ROFLMAO Slate Imagines Barack Obama's Facebook Wall

11-02-09 4:26 A GMT-08
Must read. No registration required.

Users of Roan Plateau in CO Want Oil and Gas Drillers to Back Off

11-02-09 3:54 A GMT-08
My question is how many of those same people were at the GOP convention or at least in solidarity with the chant "drill baby drill". Just a bit ironic, don't you think?

Scott Roeder As John Brown? I can't begin to say all the things wrong with that

10-30-09 3:12 P GMT-08
While John Brown was helping fight off pro-slavery murderers in Kansas, the predecessors of Scott Roeder were probably there too, on the other side. And the David and Goliath fight was an arranged battle, not a cowardly assassination against an unarmed man attending church.

A Liberal's Hit List: Limbuagh's Crew Misses Hoax and Treats Obama Thesis Satire as Truth

10-25-09 7:11 A GMT-08
Yeah, so Limbaugh got scammed. Well it is important,because though his listeners call him a comedian, they treat him like a news reporter (a similar lack of skepticism is found in Glenn Beck fans. Therefore with Limbaugh and Beck, who make lots of money and can afford quality help it's almost criminal that they don't avail themselves of them. Apparently though TV advertisers are more sensitive to the standards of a show host. After Limbaugh spread racism a few years ago, a concerted effort was made by a large number of liberals to get his advertisers to give him the heeve ho, without much of the success that one group has had getting advertisers to drop Glenn Beck due to his racist remarks. Hat tip @crewislife at Twitter.com

Can You Get a Six Figure Job from the Unemployment Line?

10-25-09 12:27 A GMT-08
I think it would take many years of training and experience. Who's going to hire someone to totally screw Americans unless they know that person is without scuples or compassion. Still Pett's cartoon makes a good point.

"Swine" Flu Declared a National Emergency

10-24-09 9:22 P GMT-08
Order will allow hospitals to place separate H1N1 emergency rooms further from main hospitals. Too bad our government (including Congress) can't fight the oligarchy created by campaign donations from the wealthy as quickly and effectively.

New Book Coming Out in November on Sarah Palin "Going Rouge"

10-22-09 7:17 A GMT-08
No, actually I spelled that correctly. A book about Sarah Palin will be out the same day as her book. The only thing that scares me about the former governor is that we laughed so hard at Ronald Reagan until one day we woke up and he was the president-elect. Hat tip shadowfax_rulz at twittercom

Sci American Podcast: Racist Jokes Are Only Funny to People Who Think They're True

10-20-09 5:31 P GMT-08
Scroll down on Sci Am 60 Second Psych page to which I've linked to It's Funny Because It's True" link. If I link straight to the podcast itself it is likely to bring up ITunes or other player. So Rush Limbaugh is only a comedian. Only? Not exactly.

Support Creative Commons with donation or by purchasing Shepard Fairey T Shirt

10-20-09 3:52 P GMT-08
With all his problems Mr. Fairey seems to have given time to design an emblem for a T Shirt for Creative Commons. Click on notice on Creative Commons page. (Linkblog wouldn't accept link to purchase page.)

BadTux: US Isn't Innovating and Has Done Little Real R&D for 30 Years

10-18-09 5:28 P GMT-08
The only good news is that competing nations aren't inovating either, just developing 30 year old ideas and tweaking current products. (And, of course this isn't really good news.) Read the original. I'm not a tech person myself and probably can't explain even the sunrise as well as BadTux can.

Radio host Tom Joyner's Great Uncles' Murder Convictions Overturned

10-17-09 6:00 A GMT-08
With the help of Henry Gates Jr. (yes, the Harvard professor) radioman Joyner learned that his great uncles were executed for the death of a Civil War Soldier. South Carolina overturned their convictions today, after reexamining the case. Details at link

Why Don't Reporters Ask the GOP When They Are Going to Stop Being Obstructionists?

10-16-09 7:51 P GMT-08
They should ask Republicans when they are going to cooperate so we can get beyond the health care issue (which would help people in New Orleans too) and back to helping this nation recover from the triplet disasters of war, Katrina non recovery, and economic melt down that they and the Bush administration left behind. Liberal Media, My A..

Fox News: Limbaugh Urged to Sue For Defamation Over Losing Place in Team Bidding

10-16-09 6:18 A GMT-08
I guess CNN and MSNBC can then sue him for ten times the defamation jabs Limbaugh often throws their way. But shouldn't the suit be at the man who published the claim in a book? And wasn't the time to claim back when the book was published? Is Limbaugh an idiot who didn't know this was printed in a book?

Democratic Hero, Rep. Alan Grayson Attracts Carpetbagging Republican Opponent

10-16-09 4:59 A GMT-08
I guess the GOP believes there are a lot of Central Floridiians that want to die quickly if they get sick. Nasty bugger Armando Guttierez Jr. is moving from South Florida, says all the property he owns around Lakeland gives him local creds. Isn't that the Republican't way. You are what you own.

AP: Limbaugh dropped from group seeking to buy Rams

10-15-09 1:20 A GMT-08
Ha Ha! Now "The Ego" really has landed!!

"Bash America" becoming the brand of the GOP?

10-13-09 6:28 P GMT-08
Lady ends asking if this is the same thing Democrats did to Bush. Not really because Obama hasn't started any illegal wars lately. There is a difference.

Dylan Ratigan: The Cost of Corporate Communism

10-11-09 4:33 P GMT-08
My synopsis: In the end we have a relatively small group of Americans controlling the government which in turn favors them right back. Industries grow old and inefficient, but are retained because of the largess of the government they control. But in this case, the power emanates from corporations who then use the government as their own piggy bank. Pls read for yourself and see if I'm right.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Overrated Optimism: The Peril of Positive Thinking

10-11-09 4:14 P GMT-08
It turns out that positive thinking is a type of arrogance and foolishness which requires ignorance of reality.

Rush Limbaugh Agrees with Taliban, Iran

10-11-09 6:53 A GMT-08
Also, we heard recently that Limbaugh had lost 90 lbs. Looks like he's found it.

France floats law requiring Photoshopped images carry a warning

10-10-09 9:45 P GMT-08
Good. If they don't ban it, they should carry a warning. The Ralph Lauren ad that got attention recently should have had one that warned about making one want to burn one's eyes out.

Apple, others Drop Out of Chamer of Commerce

10-10-09 9:41 P GMT-08
Finally the CoC steps even on the toes of big comapnies that were for it protecting their rights to profits, and efforts to block unions before they realized what a nut house it was over cliimate change. CoC response illustrates their r/w nuttiness.

Why Have Mainstream Media Neglected the Recession's Human Costs?

10-10-09 9:25 P GMT-08
One word Ms. Vanden Heuvel: Oligarchy You do show how the media tends to promote the needs and problems of the wealthy and business. Kudos

The Real Model Photoshopped by the Ralph Lauren Folk

10-09-09 4:41 P GMT-08
Word in comments at Boing Boing says the Ralph Lauren people stretched her body when she gained a few pounds leading manipulators to stretch her body to lose them. But they must have gone much further. I've seen women who look like the photoshop, but they are often very ill. The real model is beautiful even in a pound adding photo. See at link.

The Above Linkblogs Might Contain "Borrowed" links.

Linkblogs do not substantially contribute traffic to my blog that I can discover. They all go offsite, and are often accessed from my blog. It's possible to access them from the RSS according to my settings. Still, even if I were to get ads clicking on a linkblog from the RSS won't drive more people to my blog than otherwise because they leave my resources. (Note to self, do more posts, less LBs with sources I find). I explain because I sometimes borrow links from people at Twitter, and often forget who put them up. (To fellow Twitterers: If you have a link to your blog, I will point it there, but Twitter, being impermanent, cannot hold your link for people to discover from there. I only 'borrow' them to get news out to as many people as I can who might not have seen the reports and videos found by the smart people I follow at Twitter or find in search rooms.

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Who Are the Real Pirates of the African Horn? Not Who You Might Think

posted 01-05-09
Taiwanese Fishing Trawler
Caught in 2007 by Somali pirates
The crew was mostly mainland Chinese.  China, just one of the many nations announcing such hypocritical plans  has announced they will send a battleship to combat Somali pirates.
Picture allowed as Navy handout for noncommercial use.  Small boat approaching trawler is a US Navy craft arriving with humanitarian and medical assistance for the recently released crew.

Until recently, I was ignorant of the true reasons for Somali piracy, considering it just one of those regrettable things that happen in or near Africa arising from poverty and unemployment, and I didn't know of the fact that the Islamic Courts Government had stopped the practice in it's tracks, proving that any strong government is better than a weak on in the region, at least for the fight against piracy.

A couple months ago I started hearing via BBC reports that the big problem is that many other nations have actually been stealing the fish in Somali waters by sending big trawlers, etc. to the weak nation's waters, which continue to over-fish them.  This is a mass theft has gone on since the early nineties after the last united government in the nation.  Somalis also complain of pollutants also being dumped by foreign boats, and say that the foreigners used weapons and the threat of ramming to chase small Somali fishermen away from their own waters.

One source reports that  the Somali pirates were at first simply trying to  drive out the illegal parties who were draining their waters of its fish and, in fact, most of the boats caught by pirates even now are large commercial fishing vessels Somali waters.

Some of the toxic wastes have come ashore, making even living difficult for everyday Somalis.

Of course, people, in such a poorly governed nation as Somalia is now, seeing a lot of money to be made versus having their livelihood stolen,  often do go for what they can get.  But we should remember the original cause of this or we'll get another Israel-Palestine type problem where mainstream won't report on the reality at all.

Another BBC analysis I heard the other day said that a strong government in Somalia would be able to keep other nations from overfishing, and dumping in its territory and extract payments from the rich countries working in it's waters.  This would allow Somalia to build a strong security force and take care of it's people.  To begin with they could control piracy and that's what the Islamic courts did.

What we really need is to truly educate ourselves on the subject and pass it along, not simply accept the premise that the Somali pirates are the only or the worst bad guys in the picture.

From   I've gotten one list  of the
countries fishing in  Somali waters.  I was listening to the BBC report while driving and couldn't write their list down

GO reports:

Vessels from France, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Belize and Honduras exploit Somalia's fish stocks with virtual impunity, says Dr Clive Schofield's paper, Plundered Waters: Somalia's Maritime Resource Insecurity.


I remember the BBC listing India as one of the nations that fish in the territorial waters off the Horn of Africa nation as well.

reports at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ar120/somalia.html that the so-called Belize vessels are actually French and Spanish fishers under the Belize flag, and I do remember the BBC report mentioning something European nations' vessels are fishing under the flags of others in Somalia's territorial waters. 

So who are the real pirates, or at least the first, and the worst ones since they, like the profit Nathan's rich man, are stealing from the poor? 

The fact that every American doesn't understand the root causes of the Somalia piracy problem is mostly a failure of mainstream news, but also it does help to get outside its bounds.  If you can't catch "PRI The World" on the radio weekdays, it can be podcast for free via ITunes delivered podcast. 

Wikipedia on exclusive economic zones from the Convention of the Sea (used via the online encyclopedia's permission with attribution policy)

Exclusive economic zones (EEZs) 
Extend 200 nautical miles from the baseline. Within this area, the coastal nation has sole exploitation rights over all natural resources. The EEZs were introduced to halt the increasingly heated clashes over fishing rights, although oil was also becoming important. The success of an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 1947 was soon repeated elsewhere in the world, and by 1970 it was technically feasible to operate in waters 4000 metres deep. Foreign nations have the freedom of navigation and overflight, subject to the regulation of the coastal states. Foreign states may also lay submarine pipes and cables.

Sorry about breaking in like this when there is such a crisis in Gaza, but each time I've tried to do a report on this in the last few months something comes up.

Two news reports on rich nations' plans to combat piracy by sending warships to the Horn areas are almost comical in their hypocrisy:

China View reports that French combat vessels had stopped pirates and that other nations including China were sending war vessels to the area in " ".

and even funnier is a report at Horseed a newssite set up by members of the Somali diaspora and learning fast how not to embarass those with the most money " "

In fact I started writing this report in response to a party writing a poorly informed post by some guy about the French warship actions.

Lets see if I can get a current mainstream or BBC report on the problem.

Checking Google News, I can only find one report that will talk about the fish stealing form the UK Independent " ".  It also has a short history of classic piracy, and informs us that a lot of the illegal dumping was actually radioactive material as was shown when some of the barrels were washed up by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami.

I've found a couple of reports by searching at the Beeb itself.  Given what I've heard through the radio program I mentioned above I'd have expected more, but will take what I can get:

January 2000:

A transcript of an oral report by BBC World offers only a few sentences in " "

Excerpt of transcript:

Many foreign vessels fish in Somali waters illegally, so militia groups have taken it upon themselves to tax those who do.

Pirate fisherman provide cheap fish for home markets and Somali pirates support their towns and villages.

In the BBC Documentary mpg file linked from that page there are a couple more sentences on the problem, but that's all. They do admit that $600 million US dollars worth of fish are taken from Somali waters by other nations each year. But he Beeb also pretends that exclusive economic regions of the ocean start at 12 miles. Let China find oil and start drilling 25 miles off any UK territory and we'll see them sing a different tune. 

 

PNG map of Gulf of Aden region
Map Gulf of Aden
Note that the Gulf never reaches 400 miles (643.7km--the key in the lower left corner is in kilometers instead of miles) wide making every point of passage to or from the Red Sea either in the exclusive economic zone of Yemen or Somalia
Map courtesy of Wikipedia under freely licensed permission with Wikipedia's usual request for attribution. Roll over picture for url of Wiki source
Some reports noted that even those ships passing for other reasons through the Gulf of Aden should pay passage fees to either Yemen or Somalia.  If one nation's two hundred miles conflicts with another nation's oceanic exclusive economic zone the area is divided exactly at halfway between the two countries.

 

I've found a longer report on the UN Special Envoy to Somalia's report on illegal fishing and dumping in the waters surrounding the beleaguered land at "".

Excerpt:  

"It is a disaster off the Somali coast, a disaster (for) the Somali environment, the Somali population," he added.

Ould Abdallah said the phenomenon helps fuel the endless civil war in Somalia as the illegal fishermen are paying corrupt Somali ministers or warlords for protection or to secure fake licenses.

East African waters, particularly off Somalia, have huge numbers of commercial fish species, including the prized yellowfin tuna.

Foreign trawlers reportedly use prohibited fishing equipment, including nets with very small mesh sizes and sophisticated underwater lighting systems, to lure fish to their traps.

"I am convinced there is dumping of solid waste, chemicals and probably nuclear (waste).... There is no government (control) and there are few people with high moral ground," Ould Abdallah added.

Allegations of waste dumping off Somalia by European companies have been heard for years, according to Somalia watchers. The problem was highlighted in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when broken hazardous waste containers washed up on Somali shores.

But world attention has recently focused on piracy off Somalia
 
Of course, because that's costing the rest of us money.

 

 

 

 

 

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