Earth project aims to 'simulate everything'

By Gareth Morgan Technology reporter

The Living Earth Simulator will collect data from billions of sources

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It could be one of the most ambitious computer projects ever conceived.

An international group of scientists are aiming to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth - from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on Milton Keynes' roads.

Nicknamed the Living Earth Simulator (LES), the project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world.

"Many problems we have today - including social and economic instabilities, wars, disease spreading - are related to human behaviour, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding regarding how society and the economy work," says Dr Helbing, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who chairs the FuturICT project which aims to create the simulator.

Knowledge collider

Thanks to projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator built by Cern, scientists know more about the early universe than they do about our own planet, claims Dr Helbing.

What is needed is a knowledge accelerator, to collide different branches of knowledge, he says.

"Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century."

The result would be the LES. It would be able to predict the spread of infectious diseases, such as Swine Flu, identify methods for tackling climate change or even spot the inklings of an impending financial crisis, he says.

Is it possible to build a social science equivalent to the Large Hadron Collider?

But how would such colossal system work?

For a start it would need to be populated by data - lots of it - covering the entire gamut of activity on the planet, says Dr Helbing.

It would also be powered by an assembly of yet-to-be-built supercomputers capable of carrying out number-crunching on a mammoth scale.

Although the hardware has not yet been built, much of the data is already being generated, he says.

For example, the Planetary Skin project, led by US space agency Nasa, will see the creation of a vast sensor network collecting climate data from air, land, sea and space.

In addition, Dr Helbing and his team have already identified more than 70 online data sources they believe can be used including Wikipedia, Google Maps and the UK government's data repository Data.gov.uk.

Drowning in data

Integrating such real-time data feeds with millions of other sources of data - from financial markets and medical records to social media - would ultimately power the simulator, says Dr Helbing.

The next step is create a framework to turn that morass of data in to models that accurately replicate what is taken place on Earth today.

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“Start Quote

We don't take any action on the information we have”

End Quote Pete Warden OpenHeatMaps

That will only be possible by bringing together social scientists and computer scientists and engineers to establish the rules that will define how the LES operates.

Such work cannot be left to traditional social science researchers, where typically years of work produces limited volumes of data, argues Dr Helbing.

Nor is it something that could have been achieved before - the technology needed to run the LES will only become available in the coming decade, he adds.

Human behaviour

For example, while the LES will need to be able to assimilate vast oceans of data it will simultaneously have to understand what that data means.

That becomes possible as so-called semantic web technologies mature, says Dr Helbing.

Today, a database chock-full of air pollution data would look much the same to a computer as a database of global banking transactions - essentially just a lot of numbers.

But semantic web technology will encode a description of data alongside the data itself, enabling computers to understand the data in context.

What's more, our approach to aggregating data stresses the need to strip out any of that information that relates directly to an individual, says Dr Helbing.

The Living Earth Simulator aims to predict how diseases spread

That will enable the LES to incorporate vast amounts of data relating to human activity, without compromising people's privacy, he argues.

Once an approach to carrying out large-scale social and economic data is agreed upon, it will be necessary to build supercomputer centres needed to crunch that data and produce the simulation of the Earth, says Dr Helbing.

Generating the computational power to deal with the amount of data needed to populate the LES represents a significant challenge, but it's far from being a showstopper.

If you look at the data-processing capacity of Google, it's clear that the LES won't be held back by processing capacity, says Pete Warden, founder of the OpenHeatMap project and a specialist on data analysis.

While Google is somewhat secretive about the amount of data it can process, in May 2010 it was believed to use in the region of 39,000 servers to process an exabyte of data per month - that's enough data to fill 2 billion CDs every month.

Reality mining

If you accept that only a fraction of the "several hundred exabytes of data being produced worldwide every year… would be useful for a world simulation, the bottleneck won't be the processing capacity," says Mr Warden.

"Getting access to the data will be much more of a challenge, as will figuring out something useful to do with it," he adds.

Simply having lots of data isn't enough to build a credible simulation of the planet, argues Warden. "Economics and sociology have consistently failed to produce theories with strong predictive powers over the last century, despite lots of data gathering. I'm sceptical that larger data sets will mark a big change," he says.

"It's not that we don't know enough about a lot of the problems the world faces, from climate change to extreme poverty, it's that we don't take any action on the information we do have," he argues.

Regardless of the challenges the project faces, the greater danger is not attempting to use the computer tools we have now - and will have in future - to improve our understanding of global socio-economic trends, says Dr Helbing.

"Over the past years, it has for example become obvious that we need better indicators than the gross national product to judge societal development and well-being," he argues.

At it's heart, the LES is about working towards better methods to measure the state of society, he says, which would account for health, education and environmental issues. "And last but not least, happiness."

Source

~~~~~~

Commentary

We have enough valuable data to judge the measures they described in their last paragraphs.

We can accurately measure which states have the greatest healthcare and survival rates, as a factor of cost, satisfaction, and quality.

The statistics and data are there, and have been read widely, so i don't understand why they seem to be playing this ignorance game.

Maybe they aught to head over to Gapminder.com, and learn a thing or two about trends and statistical data about our world.

No police in Mexico town after last officer kidnapped

The US border region is the centre of Mexico's drug smuggling operations

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MEXICO'S DRUGS WAR

• Charting Mexico's violence
• Q&A: Mexico's drug violence
• 'No alternative' to Mexico's drug war
• Battling the cartels

The Mexican border town of Guadalupe has been left with no police force after the last officer was kidnapped.

Erika Gandara's house was set on fire by unidentified gunmen before she was abducted last week, according to the state prosecutor's office.

All her colleagues had resigned or were killed in the region's drug war.

More than 30,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 when the President announced a crackdown on the cartels.

Ms Gandara, 28, had patrolled the town of 9,000 inhabitants on her own since June.

"Nobody wants to go into policing here, and the budget just isn't there anyway," she told AFP news agency earlier this year.

Guadalupe is about 5km (3 miles) away from the US border and 60km (40 miles) from Ciudad Juarez, the centre of drug smuggling operations into the United States.

It is also close to the hamlet of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerreror, where a 20-year-old college student got the job of police chief in October because no one else applied.

The Mexican government has sent soldiers to patrol Guadalupe and to investigate the kidnapping of Ms Gandara.

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Latin America sees uncertain 2011

By Robert Plummer Business reporter, BBC News

What will be the South American Way in 2011?

As the year is coming to an end, Latin America is preparing for 2011 amid uncertainty over the future direction of some of the region's biggest economies.

Brazil begins the new year with a new president, while Argentina will see in 2011 without a new budget.

Mexico's very integrity as a state is threatened by drug-trafficking gangs. For its part, Peru is recalling darker times as the daughter of an authoritarian ex-leader prepares to run for the presidency.

But at least the region should emerge fully from recession, with the worst performing country, Venezuela, expected to return to growth.

BRAZIL

With Dilma Rousseff due to be inaugurated as president on 1 January, the announcement of who will fill her key economic posts has failed to calm markets' fears over future policy.

Brazil still has many social problems to tackle

Since analysts have begun to talk about "unsustainable" levels of public spending, they were not exactly heartened to hear that the man responsible, Finance Minister Guido Mantega, is to remain in the job.

To stop the economy overheating as the government pumped money into it, Central Bank head Henrique Meirelles was forced to raise interest rates, which now stand at 10.75%.

But Ms Rousseff wants to bring rates down in a hurry, so Mr Meirelles is to be replaced by the bank's current head of financial regulation, Alexandre Tombini.

Even so, Ms Rousseff may not get the desired result. Mr Tombini helped devise the inflation targeting policy that has favoured high interest rates during the eight years of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's presidency.

In fact, the markets reckon he will have to put rates up still further, perhaps as early as his first monetary policy committee meeting on 18 and 19 January, although another rise would only put more upward pressure on the already overvalued real.

At the same time, the need for social spending on the government's poverty-fighting Bolsa Familia programme has not gone away.

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Business horizons

The year behind us, the year ahead

• Read reviews and predictions

And don't forget that Ms Rousseff first came to prominence as head of the government's continuing $290bn accelerated growth programme (PAC), designed to remedy what she describes as "years of stagnation" in the country's infrastructure.

ARGENTINA

Argentines spent much of this year speculating about who would be the government's presidential candidate in the October 2011 election.

Would it be the current president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner? Or would her husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner - perceived as the true power behind the throne - return to the fray?

Finally, with a year to go before the vote, the succession was definitively resolved: Mr Kirchner died of a heart attack at the age of 60.

The legacy of General Peron lives on in Argentina

In an already fragmented political landscape - where parties claiming to represent General Juan Peron's legacy provide not just the government, but also much of the opposition - this was a serious blow.

If the current tide of sympathy for President Fernandez lasts, she may well be re-elected. But since the Kirchners' interventionist economic policies have always been more opportunistic than strategic, much could go wrong in the meantime.

Ms Fernandez will certainly enjoy near-total economic power in 2011, since Argentine deputies' failure to pass a budget for next year allows her to rule by decree.

However, inflation is currently believed to be running at more than 25%, despite official statistics indicating less than half that figure.

Argentina has just renewed contact with the International Monetary Fund, after years of hostility, in an effort to devise a new and more accurate inflation index. But unless the true rate actually falls, a slowdown in growth predicted for 2011 could make life difficult.

MEXICO

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stirred up controversy in September when she compared drug cartel violence in Mexico to the Colombian insurgency of the 1980s.

While President Barack Obama moved swiftly to quash the comparison, some commentators said the main issue raised by Mrs Clinton's remarks was why it had taken her so long to notice.

Keeping Mexican drug shipments out of the US is a tough task

The problem for the US is that its economy is deeply intertwined with Mexico's, through their common membership of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

In past US recessions, the rule has been that when Wall Street sneezes, Mexican businesses can end up in intensive care.

Right now, Mexico's legitimate economy is proving resilient, with manufacturing performing well, especially the car industry.

But the continued weakness of the US is expected to mean lower growth south of the border in 2011, prompting the Mexican central bank to keep interest rates on hold at 4.5%, with a possibility of cuts next year.

Unfortunately, US demand for Mexico's illegitimate exports, without which there would be no Mexican drug cartels, is not expected to slacken any time soon.

PERU

Although his country has the highest projected 2010 growth rate among Latin America's major economies (8.3%, according to the IMF), Peru's president, Alan Garcia, has just a 34% approval rating.

Admittedly, that is far better than the 5% rating that he had at the end of his first presidential term, from 1985 to 1990.

But that earlier term was an unmitigated disaster that saw the country's GDP shrink by one-fifth and the number of people in poverty rise by five million.

The Peruvian and Chilean leaders are both free-marketeers

This time, Mr Garcia has presided over boom, not bust. Yet the gains have not been equally distributed among Peru's population: while urban coastal areas have benefited, the rural highlands remain impoverished.

Mr Garcia's last presidential stint was followed by a decade of authoritarian rule under Alberto Fujimori, who rebuilt Peru's economy and saved it from the Maoist Shining Path insurgency, but rode roughshod over the country's democratic process.

Mr Garcia is not eligible to run again in the April 2011 presidential election. However, Mr Fujimori's daughter, Keiko, is hoping to win the post for her Fuerza 2011 party.

She and Mr Fujimori's own successor, Alejandro Toledo, are vying with a former mayor of Lima, Luis Castaneda, in opinion polls.

All three front-runners are drawn from the right or centre-right. As a result, the victor is likely to join Chile's Sebastian Pinera and Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos, both elected during 2010, in South America's small band of non-leftist leaders.

VENEZUELA

Next year, President Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian republic is likely to rejoin its neighbours in returning to growth after the global recession.

By any objective standards, however, Venezuela has had a miserable year, with easily the worst economic performance in the region, not to mention the highest inflation at about 30% a year.

State-run cafes in Venezuela charge a "fair" price, not a "market" price

And since state control of the economy has been growing during this period, with more and more firms being taken over, Mr Chavez and his allies have fewer people to blame.

The president has not yet carried out his threat to nationalise food and drink giant Polar, the largest company still in private hands.

But the government's ability to manage food production and distribution is questionable after scandals involving thousands of tonnes of rotting food that were imported by state-run retailer Pdval, but never distributed.

Even the oil industry, responsible for more than 90% of Venezuela's foreign currency inflows and 50% of government revenues, is suffering. While state oil company PDVSA has diversified into social programmes, it has become less efficient at its core business of actually producing oil.

In 2011, expect sluggish growth in Venezuela and perhaps another devaluation of the bolivar.

But you can also expect most foreign firms to shun a country in which anything can be expropriated at the drop of a revolutionary beret.

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How to Win Friends: Have a Big Amygdala?

By Maia Szalavitz Tuesday, December 28, 2010 |

Got a big social network? Then you probably have a large amygdala, according to a new study that found a connection between the size of this brain region and the number of social relationships a person has. The complexity of those relationships — as measured by the number of people who occupied multiple roles in a social network such as being simultaneously a friend and a co-worker — was also linked with amygdala size.

The findings are in line with past animal studies that have shown that species with larger social groups have relatively larger amygdalas, when brain and body size are taken into account, compared with less social animals. "Our question was, could we see this variation within a single species?" says lead author Lisa Barrett, director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University. (More on Time.com: Where Does Fear Come From? (Hint: It's Not the Creepy Basement)

Understanding the relationship between the size of an individual's amygdala and his or her social relationships could help lead to treatments for a variety of conditions that involve difficulties with social connections, such as depression or autism.

So what does the amygdala actually do? "[It's] strongly connected with almost every other structure in brain. In the past, people assumed it was really important for fear. Then they discovered it was actually important for all emotions. And it's also important for social interaction and face recognition," Barrett says. "The amygdala's job in general is to signal to the rest of brain when something that you're faced with is uncertain. For example, if you don't know who someone is, and you are trying to identify them, whether it is a friend or a foe, the amygdala is probably playing a role in helping you to perform all of those tasks."

Barrett says it is commonly assumed that the size of a structure reflects its computational capacity, noting that if your larger amygdala easily allows you to identify people you've met before at a cocktail party, you will have a much easier time connecting and socializing. "You can imagine that might be one thing someone with big amygdala might be better at and that might lay the foundation for easier formation of social bonds," she says. (More on Time.com: Why That Rich Guy is Being So Nice to You)

The research, which was published in Nature Neuroscience, found a moderate correlation between amygdala size and the number and complexity of social relationships in 58 healthy adults aged 19 to 83.

Interestingly, however, amygdala size was not related to the quality of those relationships or to whether or not people enjoyed socializing. "We looked at measures of 'How much do you enjoy social interaction?' and 'Are you satisfied with your social support?' and that was not related to amygdala volume," says Barrett.

Prior research has shown that people with autistic spectrum disorders have smaller amygdalas, which could help explain their social problems. But these studies cannot determine cause or effect — whether having a small amygdala makes socializing difficult, or whether lack of social interaction shrinks the amygdala — or whether both factors interact and result in a smaller brain region. For example, it may be that the amygdala requires a certain amount of social experience in order to develop properly; not receiving that, it may remain small but capable of further growth given the right social exposure. (More on Time.com: Forget the Joneses: How Envy Drives Destructive Behavior)

"This study represents an important initial study in human neurosociology — the study of the neurobiology of human living groups. The findings, while preliminary, suggest that the structure and functional capacity of our brain is influenced by the nature, quality and quantity of relational connections we — and our extended relational community — have," says Dr. Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy who was not associated with the research. (Full disclosure: Perry and I have co-authored two books.)

While this study did not look at the size of people's online social networks, the researchers plan to include those measures in future research to determine their influence.

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Bangladeshi TV station told not to show hangman series

By Salim Mia BBC News, Dhaka

The hangman said he carried out the officially sanctioned killings to reduce his time in jail

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A television channel in Bangladesh has been ordered to stop broadcasting interviews with the country's most famous hangman, officials say.

They say that the government has ordered the three-part show off air because it could frighten children.

The hangman, who has hanged nine people in his 21 years in prison, has requested anonymity.

But he told the BBC that the programmes on the private channel, Banglavision, were mainly about his lifestyle.

The prison authorities wrote to Banglavision requesting them not to broadcast the programme, which "might affect the tenderness of the children and the mentality of the mass people of the country".

Trained in jail

So far only one part of the series has been broadcast.

The letter wrtten to the TV station from the prison authorities said that it was in the public interest for the programmes not to be broadcast.

Programmes in Bengali on Banglavision are broadcast in many countries in Europe, the Middle East and the US.

"The motive of our programme was not a campaign against capital punishment or in favour of capital punishment," said Banglavision Head of News Mostofa Feroz.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

It was just an offbeat story about the lifestyle of a hangman inside the jail”

End Quote Mostofa Feroz Head of news, Banglavision TV

"It was just an offbeat story about the lifestyle of a hangman inside the jail. I do not understand how it breaches the jail code.

"A released man cannot be stopped from talking to the media - it is against the freedom of media and his freedom of rights," he said.

The hangman started working as an executioner seven years ago and was trained for the job while serving a 30-year murder sentence - passed down when he was aged only 16 - for murder.

He was released early in August after getting 18 months' time off for working as a hangman.

Bangladesh has executed 411 people since the country gained independence in 1971. All hangmen are prisoners or former convicts who have trained in jail for the job.

The unnamed hangman told the BBC that he carried out the hangings to reduce his time in jail.

"Although I did not like to hang anyone in the gallows, I did it to decrease the span of my jail term. For each hanging, I got two months' exemption from my 30-year jail term," he said.

The hangman said that his most memorable hangings were those of the killers of the country's first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

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Why don't Chinese spend more money?

Posted by Michael Schuman Monday, December 27, 2010 at 6:40 am

If anyone on the planet can afford to head down to the neighborhood mall and indulge in a shopping spree, you'd think it would be the Chinese. After all, they live in an economy that routinely posts growth rates of 9% or higher, resulting in surging incomes and boundless job opportunities. While much of the world experienced GDP contractions and dramatic spikes in unemployment during the Great Recession, China, supported by massive stimulus programs, barely missed a beat. In theory, as income increases, and the prospects for future earnings become brighter, families should be more willing to postpone savings and spend now.

But in China, just the opposite is happening. It's still proving difficult to convince the average Chinese to part with his or her money, even though his or her stash of cash is bigger than ever. Sure, Chinese consumers are spending more and more each year on items like cars and appliances. But simultaneously, the urban Chinese household saves twice as much of its income today as 20 years ago – from 15% in the early 1990s to over 30% in recent years. Oddly, as Chinese incomes have grown, so has their propensity to save.

The fact that Chinese are saving more is of great importance to all of us. Getting the Chinese to spend is necessary to restore the global economy to true health. If the world is to “rebalance” – or eliminate the massive surpluses and deficits that underpinned the Great Recession – consumers in surplus nations like China need to spend more. If they did, China would import greater quantities of stuff from the rest of the world and reduce its giant trade surplus, while simultaneously shifting China's sources of growth away from its unhealthy dependence on investment (in sectors like property). However, the role of consumer spending in China's economy has been heading in the wrong direction. Private consumption accounted for 46% of GDP in 2000; by 2009, that ratio had fallen to about 35%. Very simply, the sources of Chinese growth aren't rebalancing, and without that, the entire global economy can't rebalance either.

Why won't the Chinese loosen their wallets? A new study by economists Marcos Chamon, Kai Liu and Eswar Prasad sheds some light on the financial calculations of the average Chinese. After studying Chinese statistical surveys of household incomes dating back to the 1980s, they conclude that even though Chinese incomes have increased, so has the uncertainty Chinese feel about their income, due to the market-oriented nature of Chinese reforms. And as a result of that heightened uncertainty, Chinese are more inclined to save a larger proportion of their income even in a rapid-growth economy.

This study shows just how much more spending power the Chinese have gained over the years. From 1989 to 2006, average annual household income almost tripled, from RMB12,830 to 32,040 in real terms. (To give you an idea, at current exchange rates, that's a jump from about $1,900 to $4,800.) That increase in income is without question a result of the dismantling of the Communist command economy in China, a process started by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. Those reforms expanded the role of the private sector, gave the average Chinese more freedom over how they work, and opened up the economy to the world through foreign investment and trade.

But those same capitalist reforms have also made the life of the average Chinese riskier. Instead of permanent employment at state-owned or collective enterprises (SOCEs), Chinese workers are more likely to have jobs in the private sector where job security is not as guaranteed. In the sample used in this study, the proportion of workers employed in the SOCE sector fell dramatically from 81% in 1989 to 64% in 2006. Even for those workers still employed by SOCEs, the terms of employment are not as secure as they used to be. State companies in China have gone through their own painful process of market reform, to make them more competitive with private firms and more profitable. Jobs in those state enterprises are no longer locked in for life either, while wages are linked more to performance and productivity. Here's a bit from the study:

The transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy may have resulted in an increase in firm-level volatility related in part to state enterprise restructuring and an increase in the link between wages and firm-level performance. Wages paid to workers may be increasingly tied to firm performance and more reflective of individual productivity due to tightening of budget constraints on SOCEs, increased competition and more openness to foreign trade.

On top of that, Chinese workers have also had to adjust to a new pension scheme. Pensions were once paid by enterprises, but in 1997, a national system was introduced with “individual accounts” that hold retirement contributions from both employer and employee. This new system seems to have caused Chinese workers to fret that they won't have enough of a nest egg for their golden years – and likely with good reason. Retired workers are probably seeing reduced pension payments compared to their pre-retirement income in the new system compared to the old.

The result of these changes to the Chinese economy is a U-shaped savings pattern. Savings rates are higher among younger people – who feel the need to set aside a “buffer” of savings for protection against greater income uncertainty – and older folks – who are beefing up savings for their retirement. Here's more from the study:

Higher income uncertainty and pension reforms can together explain much of the rise in average savings among urban households in China…Moreover, the calibrated response to saving rates implies changes to the cross-section of savings over time that are sharper among households at the two ends of the age distribution of household heads. Even 10 years after the initial increase in uncertainty and pension reform, we estimate the youngest and the oldest households save 5 percentage points more than before those changes, compared to only 2.5-3.5 percentage points more for those in their late thirties-early forties.

The Chinese government is fully aware of the impact market reform has had on income security, and thus on the country's efforts to rebalance its economy, and policymakers are striving to address it by building up the confidence of the Chinese consumer. The government, for example, is undertaking a massive investment in healthcare to convince Chinese they don't have to save as much to cover possible medical bills. But the process of making Chinese feel secure enough to spend will be slow. Whatever Chinese policymakers do, they can't eliminate the greater degree of risk inherent in an economic system based on free enterprise. Short of returning to the old socialist system of worker protection, the average Chinese family is going to have to adjust to the new realities of a market-oriented economy – both the potential upside (greater income potential, more job choice) and the downside (less job security, fewer automatic benefits). Remember, many of these market-based reforms are still very new to the Chinese (10-15 years old), so they're just not accustomed to the level of uncertainty that comes with capitalism. In other words, the Chinese are in the process of dealing with the kind of risks that Americans have faced for centuries.

The Chinese are thus saving more to protect themselves. That may be wise for their own personal security, but not necessarily all that great for the world economy. Confidence in the future, even one as bright as China's, won't be created overnight, whatever Chinese policymakers attempt to do. So don't expect the Chinese consumer to swoop in and save the world economy, and least not these days, when it badly needs saving.

Source

~~~~~~~~~

Commentary

I've read articles about this before and the facts really do support these conclusions.

Per capita, the Chinese are horrible at spending.

When that changes is anyone's guess. But as mentioned, we can't simply assume they'll change overnight, especially since they've been trending in the opposite direction.

These signs are most telling when you look at Chinese ghost towns built by the government for people to move into suburbia, and yet they stand there nearly empty.

They also have a huge income disparity, something surprising for a once strong communistic political policy.

Strike over massive Bolivia fuel price rises begins

Soldiers and military vehicles provided alternative means of transport for some

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• Country profile: Bolivia
• Timeline: Bolivia

Transport workers in Bolivia have begun an indefinite strike, called in protest at an increase of more than 70% in the price of fuel.

Commuters struggled to reach the main cities, and army lorries were used to help people get to work.

The Bolivian government withdrew its heavy subsidies for petrol and diesel on Sunday, saying it was not prepared to keep fuel prices artificially low.

It said much of Bolivia's oil was being smuggled out of the country.

But the drivers' confederation, which groups together bus and lorry operators, said the price rise would have a negative impact that would be widely felt.

"This won't just affect the transport sector, this will affect everyone because all prices will rise," said spokesman Franklin Duran.

The country's vice-president said that it no longer made economic sense to subsidise an industry whose profits were flowing out of Bolivia.

"The subsidy of hydrocarbon products, which has gone up from $80m in 2005, to $380m in 2010 [...] instead of going to the exterior - instead of being an open vein of Bolivians that nourishes foreign interests - [...] should stay in the country to benefit Bolivians," said Alvaro Garcia Linera.

Fuel prices in the impoverished South American country, which had been frozen for almost a decade, will now rise by 73% for low-octane petrol and 83% for diesel.

The government has said it will compensate for the fuel price rise by increasing public sector wages and freezing utility bills.

But the sudden embracing of free market principles will be a tough test of support for the country's left-wing President Evo Morales, correspondents say.

Source

Mid-life crisis for Amnesty?

By Sir John Tusa Radio 4: Amnesty at 50

Peter Benenson's letter writing to dictators formed the foundations of Amnesty

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To understand Amnesty International at all, you need to think of this: an ordinary citizen sits in an ordinary home, writing an extraordinary letter on behalf of somebody they don't know, to a dictator who doesn't care.

The letter says: "We know you have imprisoned X. We know they are illegally detained. Be warned. We will go on writing until you have freed them."

The absurd act of faith that writing letters about prisoners of conscience might have an effect on the most hardened of dictators was first made by one man 50 years ago - the British lawyer, Peter Benenson.

He was so incensed at the imprisonment of two Portuguese students for a trivial insult to a dictator, that it stirred him to set up an international campaign on behalf of all political prisoners.

Incredibly, it caught on.

Political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, were acutely of their time in the 1960s, in a world thick with dictatorship and totalitarianism - fascist dictatorships in Spain, Portugal and much of Latin America, despots aplenty in Africa, communism from East Germany through the Soviet Union to China. The letters started to flow in all directions, as well as the evidence of their impact.

Prisoners released

Within three years of its foundation, Amnesty members had "adopted" 770 prisoners and no fewer than 140 were released.

By 1970, Amnesty could claim 2,000 prisoners released, membership in the tens of thousands and acceptance by the international community.

It was Amnesty's three-year campaign against torture that led to the unanimous UN adoption of the Declaration against Torture in 1975.

Continue reading the main story

Moving forward

Stephen Hopgood, the author of Keepers of the Flame - Understanding Amnesty sets out his vision of the future for Amnesty under new Secretary General, Shalil Shetty.

"He is a continuation of the reforming trend, so he is a Secretary General that will want to take Amnesty even more into social, economic and cultural rights.

"The individual casework focus may be kept less on those core traditional issues of prisoners of conscience and torture. The international human rights movement is so broad now and so much focused on issues of poverty, social exclusion etc, that I would expect to see more of that work.

"He has also been brought in undoubtedly to try to realise the great dream of Amnesty, which is a truly global membership.

"Throughout 50 years, it singularly failed to establish any serious membership outside western, northern, southern Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.

"Mr Shetty is an Indian Secretary General. One of his main goals will be to try to decentralise Amnesty.

"It has long been a dream to move it away from London. Peter Benenson the founder, when he left, wanted it moved."

And the awards kept pouring in, such as the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977. As Amnesty's profile grew, so did its ambitions.

In 1985, it took on the plight of refugees, in 1989 the death penalty. By 1996 Amnesty was campaigning for a permanent International Criminal Court.

Amnesty's own rhetoric grew - by 2001 it spoke of pursuing the "full spectrum of human rights", including economic, social and cultural rights. By 2009, it decided to campaign against "poverty, insecurity and exclusion".

But Amnesty's very success has brought problems with it that surround the organisation on its 50th anniversary.

Mission creep?

To campaign for prisoners of conscience is one thing, very tangible. To enlarge the campaign to concern itself with "prisoners of poverty" makes it so large and all-embracing as to be virtually meaningless.

Has it become a body more concerned with feeling good rather than doing good? Has it fallen foul of "mission creep"?

The broader remit is both a good and a bad thing, according to documentary film maker, Roger Graef, whose promotional fundraising work helped make Amnesty a household name.

He welcomes Amnesty's involvement in more causes but also has worries.

"I don't think the image you convey with the brand of Amnesty is anything like as clear as it was for the people who are behind bars for speaking out against oppression.

"The proposition was so clear and irresistible for anybody who had a conscience that even the dictators were moved by the letters."

The controversies have multiplied in recent years, particularly the way it campaigned against Guantanamo Bay, highlighting the rendition of detainees and their treatment in Guantanamo Bay.

When Amnesty UK began using the released Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg as more than a victim of ill treatment, rather a representative of human rights, it provoked a full-scale row.

Gita Saghal, Amnesty's long standing head of gender, protested publicly and left the organisation.

Amnesty UK faced criticism over its relationship with Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg

She charged that Amnesty was soft towards non-state organisations, however violent they might be; and that with Moazzam Begg, it failed to follow its own advice on "making the distinction between supporting what he went through in Guantanamo and treating him as a human rights advocate".

More problematically, in a letter responding to supporters of Ms Saghal, Amnesty UK used the phrase "defensive jihad" as if the organisation itself condoned any violence that might be committed under its terms. Even supporters of Amnesty think the phrase was incautiously used.

Throughout this time, Amnesty UK has played a straight bat, explaining that a full internal inquiry revealed nothing that required significant change in the way it behaved or presented itself.

"Amnesty has been a tremendous defender of victims of state abuses where there have been few such about," says human rights lawyer, Conor Gearty. He argues that is what Amnesty should do because that is where it is most needed. Other bodies will inevitably come under scrutiny

"What is very dangerous," he says, "is if Amnesty or any other human rights organisation allows itself to be persuaded that it needs to police the actions of third parties on an equal level."

Secular church

Striking the balance sheet on Amnesty at 50 is a complex activity.

Its new Secretary General, Shalil Shetty, finds a big agenda awaiting his attention.

It is still largely a Northern, white-liberal body with its roots in Christianity, Judaism, and Quakerism. Its members are mostly in Britain, the United States and Holland.

It is rather like a secular church, though many would feel uncomfortable with such a thought. Even its friends say it is a bit colonial too. Can it be truly internationalised?

More simply, is Amnesty trying to do too much? Is it now simply: too much about everything?

Does it need to reconnect to the original single simple improbable vision of its founder Peter Benenson?

Fifty years ago he believed that ordinary people could do good by personal acts of faith, by bearing witness through an act of conscience; he believed that if you wrote your letter someone else might be set free?

The idea still retains its original power.

Amnesty at 50 can be heard on BBC Radio 4 at 8pm on Tuesday 28 December 2010 and after on BBC iPlayer

Source

Bombay Stock Exchange launches Islamic index

Backers say that the index would "unlock the potential for Sharia investments in India".

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in the Indian city of Mumbai has launched a new index which consists of companies that meet the Islamic legal code.

The Tasis Shariah 50 was formed using guidelines from an Indian Shariah advisory board.

Studies have found that most Muslims in India are excluded from the country's formal financial sector.

That is because Islamic law does not allow investment in companies that sell goods like alcohol, tobacco or weapons.

Neither does it allow investment in companies that derive significant profit from interest.

The index is intended to be the basis for other Shariah-compliant financial products.

'Come and invest'

BSE Managing Director and Chief Executive Madhu Kannan said that the new index would attract Islamic and other "socially responsible" investors both in India and overseas.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

All Muslim countries of the Middle East and Pakistan put together do not have as many listed Sharia-compliant stocks as are available on the BSE”

End Quote Tasis Director of Research and Operations Shariq Nisar

"This index will create increased awareness of financial investments among the masses and help enhance financial inclusion," he said in a statement.

Companies included in the index have been screened by Tasis, which is based in Mumbai and whose board members include Islamic scholars and legal experts.

"Before anyone can attract investors, we need to put in place institutional infrastructure, and having an index to track Shariah-compliant stock is important," MH Khatkhatay, senior adviser to Tasis, told the Reuters news agency.

"If you have an ETF (exchange traded fund), for example, you need an index, or if overseas investors want to invest in Shariah index in India, this is an invitation for people to come and invest."

Tasis said the index would "unlock the potential for Sharia investments in India".

"The BSE has the largest number of listed Sharia-compliant stocks in the world," said Shariq Nisar, director of research and operations at Tasis.

"All Muslim countries of the Middle East and Pakistan put together do not have as many listed Sharia-complaint stocks as are available on the BSE."

Stocks will be reviewed every month to ensure they continue to meet the criteria - any which do not will be removed, officials say.

Source

Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Hunter, gatherer, vegetarian masterchef?

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals.

Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in their teeth.

The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.

The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. Chemical analysis of their bones suggested they ate little or no vegetables.

This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined due to an Ice Age.

But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Researchers found fossilised grains of vegetable material in their teeth and some of it was cooked.

Although pollen grains have been found before on Neanderthal sites and some in hearths, it is only now there is clear evidence that plant food was actually eaten by these people.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what”

End Quote Professor Alison Brooks George Washington University

Professor Alison Brooks, from George Washington University, told BBC News: "We have found pollen grains in Neanderthal sites before but you never know whether they were eating the plant or sleeping on them or what.

"But here we have a case where a little bit of the plant is in the mouth so we know that the Neanderthals were consuming the food."

More like us

One question raised by the study is why the chemical studies on Neanderthal bones have been wide of the mark. According to Professor Brooks, the tests were measuring proteins levels, which the researchers assumed came from meat.

"We've tended to assume that if you have a very high value for protein in the diet that must come from meat. But... it's possible that some of the protein in their diet was coming from plants," she said.

This study is the latest to suggest that, far from being brutish savages, Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought.

Source

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Commentary

People have known for a while that we weren't feral beasts roaming the land.

This is just further proof of that.

New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'

By Neil Bowdler Science reporter, BBC News

In the prototype, sunlight heats a ceria cylinder which breaks down water or carbon dioxide

Continue reading the main story

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• Solar power lights up the world
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A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun's energy into fuel.

The machine uses the Sun's rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.

Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.

Details are published in the journal Science.

The prototype, which was devised by researchers in the US and Switzerland, uses a quartz window and cavity to concentrate sunlight into a cylinder lined with cerium oxide, also known as ceria.

Ceria has a natural propensity to exhale oxygen as it heats up and inhale it as it cools down.

If as in the prototype, carbon dioxide and/or water are pumped into the vessel, the ceria will rapidly strip the oxygen from them as it cools, creating hydrogen and/or carbon monoxide.

Hydrogen produced could be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells in cars, for example, while a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can be used to create "syngas" for fuel.

It is this harnessing of ceria's properties in the solar reactor which represents the major breakthrough, say the inventors of the device. They also say the metal is readily available, being the most abundant of the "rare-earth" metals.

Methane can be produced using the same machine, they say.

Refinements needed

The prototype is grossly inefficient, the fuel created harnessing only between 0.7% and 0.8% of the solar energy taken into the vessel.

Most of the energy is lost through heat loss through the reactor's wall or through the re-radiation of sunlight back through the device's aperture.

But the researchers are confident that efficiency rates of up to 19% can be achieved through better insulation and smaller apertures. Such efficiency rates, they say, could make for a viable commercial device.

"The chemistry of the material is really well suited to this process," says Professor Sossina Haile of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). "This is the first demonstration of doing the full shebang, running it under (light) photons in a reactor."

She says the reactor could be used to create transportation fuels or be adopted in large-scale energy plants, where solar-sourced power could be available throughout the day and night.

However, she admits the fate of this and other devices in development is tied to whether states adopt a low-carbon policy.

"It's very much tied to policy. If we had a carbon policy, something like this would move forward a lot more quickly," she told the BBC.

It has been suggested that the device mimics plants, which also use carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to create energy as part of the process of photosynthesis. But Professor Haile thinks the analogy is over-simplistic.

"Yes, the reactor takes in sunlight, we take in carbon dioxide and water and we produce a chemical compound, so in the most generic sense there are these similarities, but I think that's pretty much where the analogy ends."

The PS10 solar tower plant near Seville, Spain. Mirrors concentrate the sun's power on to a central tower, driving a steam turbine

Daniel Davies, chief technology officer at the British photovoltaic company Solar Century, said the research was "very exciting".

"I guess the question is where you locate it - would you put your solar collector on a roof or would it be better off as a big industrial concern in the Sahara and then shipping the liquid fuel?" he said.

Solar technology is moving forward apace but the overriding challenges remain ones of efficiency, economy and storage.

New-generation "solar tower" plants have been built in Spain and the United States which use an array of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto tower-mounted receivers which drive steam turbines.

A new Spanish project will use molten salts to store heat from the Sun for up to 15 hours, so that the plant could potentially operate through the night.

Source

Brazil's Lula bids farewell at end of presidential term

Lula said Dilma would be a president worthy of the "new" Brazil

Continue reading the main story

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• Has Brazil voted for continuity?
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• Lula's legacy

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has hailed his eight-year record as leader of South America's biggest country, days before he steps down.

In a traditional Christmas address, President Lula said he had shown it was possible to govern in the interests of all Brazilians, not just the wealthy.

He urged Brazilians to back his successor, Dilma Rousseff, who takes over the presidency on 1 January.

President Lula, 65, is leaving office with approval ratings of over 80%.

"Today, all Brazilian men and women believe more in their country and themselves. This is a collective victory for all of us," he said in an emotional televised speech.

He listed his achievements in reducing poverty and promoting sustained economic growth, as well as slowing deforestation.

He also stressed major projects, including the construction of new hydroelectric power stations and the development of massive offshore oil fields, saying they would "change the course" of Brazilian history.

And he gave his full backing to his successor, his former chief-of-staff, Dilma Rousseff, saying he hoped she would make Brazil "one of the most egalitarian countries in the world".

Future plans

Lula, a former metalworker and trade unionist, did not reveal his plans after leaving the presidency.

"Don't ask about my future, because you have already given me a great present. Look instead to the future of Brazil, and believe in it," he said.

"I am leaving government to live life on the streets. Man of the people that I always was, I will be more of the people than ever before."

Lula had to stand down under Brazil's constitution after serving the maximum of two consecutive terms, but he has not ruled out standing for president again in the future.

Source

Deciphering 'Chinglish': "Tender Fragrant Grass, How Hardhearted to trample them"

Deciphering 'Chinglish': Your pictures

Source

Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow, Live at the 92nd St. Y -- 12/21/10

Jon Stewart Changes Fox News 9/11 Responders Bill Opinion

Once again, Jon Stewart makes the world a little brighter.

Thank you for your help, and keep struggling on our behalf, for the little guy.

Skywatchers set for lunar eclipse

The Moon could turn pink or blood red during the eclipse

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

• Lunar eclipse wows sky watchers
• Red Moon dives behind Earth

Skywatchers around the world are gearing up to observe a rare total lunar eclipse.

The best viewing conditions for the eclipse are from North and Central America, parts of northern Europe and East Asia.

Astronomers say the Moon could turn a pink or blood red hue during the eclipse, which begins early on Tuesday morning GMT.

It will be the first total lunar eclipse in three years.

The Moon is normally illuminated by the Sun. During a total lunar eclipse, the full Moon passes through the shadow created by the Earth blocking the Sun's light.

Some indirect sunlight will still manage to pierce through and give the Moon a ghostly colour.

The west coast of America will see the eclipse start on Monday night; observers in North and Central America will be able to view the whole event.

Total eclipse begins at 0741 GMT on Tuesday (0241 EST on Tuesday; 11:41 PST on Monday).

Western Europe will only see the start of the spectacle while western Asia will catch the tail end.

The totality phase - when the moon is entirely inside Earth's shadow - will last a little over an hour.

"It's perfectly placed so that all of North America can see it," said eclipse expert Fred Espenak of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Source

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Commentary

This coincides with the 14th-15th of Muharram for Muslims that are commemorating their sad occasion of Karbala.

Quite an eerie reminder of the sad tale, when the moon is colored blood red.

How Helsinki airport deals with snow and ice

Temperatures in Helsinki can drop to -25C

Helsinki airport had 188cm (six feet) of snow last winter but the last time it was forced to close because of the weather was in 2003.

That closure lasted for half an hour.

This winter planes have been taking off and landing as normal despite an unusually heavy snowfall in December - 65cm (more than two feet).

It looks as though there will be another snowy winter, like last year's, says Anika Kala, a spokesperson for the airport. But she says she's relaxed because the airport is "well prepared".

The preparation consists of good equipment, extra winter staff, and a choice of three runways.

While one runway is being cleared of snow or ice, the other two are open for business.

Snow storage

In exceptional circumstances, two runways may be closed. It takes a rare combination of heavy snow and high wind to close all three - as happened, briefly, seven years ago.

What about the equipment?

"We have 250 vehicles of different kinds," says Ms Kala.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

When it's zero degrees, it's moist and there will be ice”

End Quote Anika Kala Helsinki airport spokeswoman

"We have sweepers, snow ploughs, vehicles that blow snow from the runways, and friction testers that check the surface is fit for use."

The snow is removed to a special storage area within the airport perimeter. When that fills up, it is taken to other facilities outside.

Last winter 7,000 truckloads were carted off the runways, apron and taxi-ing areas.

Temperatures in Helsinki can drop to -25C - but Ms Kala explains that a good hard frost is much easier to deal with than a temperature of zero or -1C.

"When it's zero degrees, it's moist and there will be ice," she says.

"We have to take the ice away. We first use metal brushes, then, if necessary, we use chemicals."

The extra seasonal staff, about 50 of them, operate this equipment.

Snow desk

But there is also a dedicated "snow desk" that keeps in contact with the airlines, the ground handling team and air traffic control.

"They plan how much staff we need, how many vehicles - and they follow weather forecasts hour by hour," Ms Kala says.

She acknowledges that there is a big difference between Helsinki, which has a total of 600 landings and take-offs per day on its three runways, and Heathrow which has twice as many - on two runways - and five times as many passengers to deal with.

Running a big airport like Heathrow - which is privately owned by BAA - would be a bigger operation than running state-owned Helsinki airport.

But the principles for dealing with snow and ice, Ms Kala suggests, are probably the same.

Source

Shep Smith: I Would Have Published WikiLeaks In A Red Hot, New York Second

Shep Smith: I Would Have Published WikiLeaks In A Red Hot, New York Second

While Julian Assange twiddles his thumbs in jail and much of the media and most of Washington continues their full-blown, sometimes worrisome, meltdown over the WikiLeaks dump, Shep Smith is standing strong on the side of the leak.

Really strong.

Here's what he told Judge Napolitano earlier this afternoon.

What jumps off the page to me, as one who seeks information and disseminates it...when I see these documents I don't think bad guy who got it, I think 'oh my God, look how we're conducting ourselves.' ...I would have published [the documents] in a red hot New York second.

Is Shep the best anchor on cable TV? We post, you decide. [Yes.]

Meanwhile, when Napolitano notes that Assange isn't being afforded due process, Shep points out this isn't anything new "look at Gitmo." Vid below.

Woman who cannot feel fear may help in treating PTSD

Spiders did not worry the woman

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

• Libido problems 'brain not mind'

A woman who cannot feel afraid because of a missing structure in her brain could help scientists discover treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Research published in Current Biology showed the woman felt no fear in a variety of scary situations.

These included exposure to snakes and spiders, horror films and a "haunted house".

The woman feels other emotions but said as an adult, she had never felt afraid.

She is the first known case of someone who is unable to process fear.

Researchers at the University of Iowa said her inability to feel frightened was because she is missing a structure in her brain called the amygdala.

The structure has long been associated with emotional learning - experiments in animals have shown that removing it makes them fearless.

However, it has never been observed in a human before.

Tarantula risk

The woman experienced fear as a child and knows that some situations should be frightening.

As an adult she has been in various frightening situations, including being threatened with a knife and held at gunpoint.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

It is quite remarkable that she is still alive”

End Quote Justin Feinstein Iowa University

These did not make her afraid.

Researchers at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, observed and recorded the woman's responses in situations that would make most people feel fear.

She watched a series of horror films, went to a reputedly haunted house and to an exotic pet store - where she handled dangerous snakes and asked to handle a tarantula.

She showed no fear in any of the situations and had to be prevented from touching the tarantula because of the high risk of being bitten.

When asked why she wanted to touch something that she knows is dangerous, she replied that she was overcome with curiosity.

Lead researcher Justin Feinstein said: "Because she is missing her amygdala, she is also missing the ability to detect and avoid danger in the world.

"It is quite remarkable that she is still alive."

Adam Perkins, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London who specialises in researching the causal basis of anxiety and fear looked at the research.

He said the study was interesting because it suggested the amygdala is the neural seat of fear - and specifically responsible for generating feelings of fear, rather emotions in general.

The researchers hope that by studying the woman they can understand how the brain processes fear.

This could be useful in treating patients suffering from PTSD - such as soldiers who have been serving in conflict areas.

Mr Feinstein added: "Their lives are marred by fear and they are often-times unable to even leave their home due to the ever-present feeling of danger."

By studying the woman, researchers hope to create treatments that selectively target the brain areas that can sometimes allow fear to take over.

Source

Gasland - Rethink Review & Discussion

Regulation = Safety, by keeping the cops in play.

Deregulation = Creating safety hazards, no one out there to protect us.

Mother and Daughter Arrested for 'Dangerous Drug' Ibuprofen

A Georgia mother and daughter have been arrested for dealing and possession of a dangerous drug, respectively, after the daughter's stash of prescription-strength ibuprofen was discovered in her purse in school on Monday.

The 12-year-old girl, who was suffering from menstrual cramps, was busted for carrying a bottle of 11-and-a-half pills of ibuprofen in her purse, which the Baker Middle School searched. Another student had claimed the girl was carrying a knife, which was apparently not found. (More on Time.com: Federal Study Finds Teen Marijuana Use Up; Binge Drinking, Smoking Rates Down)

Baker Middle School's policy is to contact police if students are discovered with drugs. In addition to the drug charge, the girl was suspended from school for 10 days.

Although it is impossible to get high on any strength of ibuprofen — sold over-the-counter under the brand names Advil and Motrin in up to 200 mg doses — Georgia law considers higher-dose tablets, of 400 mg or 800 mg, to be "dangerous drugs," when possessed without a prescription.

The girl's mother told the school that she gave her daughter the ibuprofen.

Why anyone would believe that possibly burdening a 12-year-old with a criminal record for possession of any drug — let alone one that isn't psychoactive — and potentially locking up her mother for "drug distribution" would be a productive use of the criminal justice system, I can't say. Even suspending someone from school for this type of offense is ludicrous and counterproductive.(More on Time.com: FDA Warns Consumers to Stop Taking Sexual Enhancement Pills)

If adults don't demonstrate a sense of proportion or even common sense, how can we expect children to do so?

Source

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Commentary

If anyone in this country deserves a Presidential or Governor endorsed pardon, it is these two people.

Anyone and everyone should do their best to help this Mother and Daughter in their time of need.

This story personifies the very definition of oppression and injustice.

Ron Paul Catches Shutdown Fever: ‘I Don’t Think It Would Hurt One Bit’

Ron Paul Catches Shutdown Fever: ‘I Don’t Think It Would Hurt One Bit’

Earlier today, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) appeared on Fox News with 9/11-truther Andrew Napolitano. With funding for the federal government set to run out this weekend, Napolitano asked Paul if it was worth continuing to provide funding or if we should just “go on without the federal government for a little while?” Paul agreed, arguing that he didn’t think a government shutdown would hurt “one bit”:

NAPOLITANO: Would it be good fiscally and philosophically if the government did shut down for a few weeks and the American people could see life would go on without the federal government for a little while?

PAUL: I don’t think it would hurt one bit. If an individual can’t pay their rent on time, they might ask their landholder to say “look, I’ll be there next week.” They adjust. The owner and the renter adjust. This is the way the government should adjust. If they can’t pay their bills, wait. But they are afraid the world would panic and the world would come to an end. But it would be an admission that we’re in big trouble. But we are in big trouble. But to deny it and to continue to spend and continue to inflate and waiting for the bond bubble to burst, that doesn’t make sense to me.

Watch it:

Rather than simply speculate whether Paul is correct or not, we have a recent historical occurrence to look to for guidance: the federal government shutdown of 1995. During the nearly four-week shutdown, Social Security checks were not mailed, nor were Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements sent out. All non-essential government employees were sent home without pay. And according to a Center for American Progress report entitled “The Big Freeze”, the entire ordeal “cost the American taxpayer over $800 million and rattled the confidence of international investors in U.S. government bonds.”

The architect of that debacle, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, remains unperturbed about the damage caused during the shutdown. Appearing on Fox News this morning, Gingrich declared that the shutdown was “absolutely” worth the risks to the country because it helped Republicans win reelection:

HOST: Taking a look back and seeing what happened back in 1995, would say that it was worth it? It was worth the risk, not only to the country—

GINGRICH: Absolutely!

HOST: Absolutely? Why is that?

GINGRICH: Absolutely. For two reasons. First of all, as Republicans, no Republican majority in the House had been reelected since 1928, but when we stood firm against liberals and we said were prepared to really fight, all of our base said, you know, these folks are different, they’re not just normal politicians, they don’t just go to Washington to sell out. And we became the first House majority to be reelected since 1928.

Watch it:

These comments from Paul and Gingrich echo the demands being pushed by the Shutdown Caucus – a group of seven (and growing) GOPers pushing to shut down the federal government next year.

Source

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Commentary

This explains perfectly why Ron Paul is weak on Economic issues, even if he's strong on foreign policy.

He's an old Trickle down Reagan Conservative who has not sat in a modern economics class in more than 4 decades, so I can't blame him for his ignorance.

But shutting down the government is always a bad idea. In the end it costs more than it gains, unless of course you politically gain from the pain of millions of Americans.

That at the end of the day is oppression to suit your own greedy needs and should not be applauded.