Cochrane On Snake Oil

• Chinese Water Snake Oil Contains More EPA than the Environmental Protection Agency
• But Beware of Clark Stanley’s Snake Oil
  
• Tie-Dyed Retreads
• Obama’s October Shock
• Secret Death Panel Revealed
• Iran Sorties Warships Into Caribbean
• Israel Number 3 Arms Exporter
• Secret panel can put Americans on “kill list’
• Crab Nebulla Making Waves Again.

Some of those original itinerant “snake oil” salesmen may have peddled actual Chinese snake oil, and those who did may not have been fraudulent after all.

For centuries snake oil has been a folk remedy in Chinese medicine, used primarily to treat joint pain such as arthritis and bursitis. Its introduction to the U.S. most likely occurred with the arrival of Chinese laborers who came to build the Transcontinental Railroad in the mid 1800s. They may have offered snake oil to fellow workers as relief for suffering long days of physical toil.

Richard Kunin​ , a California psychiatrist with a background in neurophysiology research, became intrigued with the idea of snake oil in the 1980s. He had been following early research on the importance of omega-3 fatty acids for health and it dawned on him that the much maligned snake oil might be a particularly rich source. Omega-3’s proliferate in cold-blooded creatures that live primarily in cooler environments because the fats don’t harden in chilly water like omega-6 fatty acids do (hence, the high level of omega-3’s in cold-water fish such as salmon). “Snakes and fish share one thing, they’re both cold-blooded animals,” Kunin says.

Kunin visited San Francisco’s Chinatown to buy such snake oil and analyze it. He also acquired two live rattlesnakes and extracted their fat sacks. According to his 1989 analysis published in the Western Journal of Medicine, Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), one of the two types of omega-3 fatty acids most readily used by our bodies. In comparison, the rattlesnakes had only 8.5 percent EPA. And salmon, one of the most popular food sources of omega-3’s, contains a maximum of 18 percent EPA, lower than that of snake oil.

Research since the 1980s has demonstrated the necessity-and efficacy-of omega-3 fatty acids. These acids not only reduce inflammation, such as arthritis pain, but also improve cognitive function and reduce blood pressure, cholesterol and even depression. “Because of their chemical structure, omega-3’s behave very differently in cell membranes than any other fat,” says Susan Allport, author of The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do To Replace Them. “They’re much more dynamic, they move around much more, so they allow a lot to happen in the cell membranes. And that’s where enzymes do their work. So these fats allow enzymes to work.”

Maybe snake oil did cure some folks.

Allen “Al” Davis. Owner of the NFL Oakland Raiders franchise died at home Saturday morning. He was 82.

Based on an article by Cliff Kincaid for Accuracy in Media Progressive TV and radio star Thom Hartmann took time off from covering Van Jones and his “Rebuild the Dream” movement on Wednesday to briefly talk to this columnist about his relationship with the Vladimir Putin regime of Russia. The conversation quickly went sour when Hartmann objected to questions about how much he is being paid by Moscow. He grabbed my video camera, covering the lens briefly in the process, and stomped away, objecting to “gotcha” questions. As for Van Jones, he refused to sign a copy of his Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) manifesto when asked to autograph it. “No thank you,” he sternly said before asking, “Who are you?,” looking at my name badge, and walking away to the next adoring crowd of Van Jones groupies. Jones, a “former” communist, is the new face of the progressive movement that is backing the “Occupy Wall Street” protests and is trying to guarantee President Obama a second term. He was fired as Obama’s “green jobs czar” when the truth about his extremist background and statements started to emerge in reports originally by blogger Trevor Loudon and then Glenn Beck on Fox News.

While Jones made remarks in his own conference speech about losing his White House job, he also mocked Beck, noting that he had lost his program on the Fox News Channel. Progressives demanded Beck’s ouster after he began exposing billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros, a major funder of the liberal-left. Soros, who operates an off-shore hedge fund with mysterious sources of cash, has just failed in his effort to have the European Court of Human Rights lift his conviction in an insider trading case in France. The STORM document is about the history of a communist group that Jones led and whose members traveled to Cuba. He has, however, tried to leave his communist past behind as he reinvents himself as an American patriot trying to “rebuild the American dream.” At almost every stage of his career, he has been supported by money from Soros. During an extended interview, Joelle Fishman of the Communist Party USA talked about Jones’s leadership in this new phase of the progressive movement and how the conference welcomed socialists and communists. She said the Communist Party, which usually fields a presidential candidate, will not run anyone against Obama in 2012. Communist literature was openly displayed at the conference and the Democratic Socialists of America, a group which backed Obama’s political career from the start, had an information table. Judith LeBlanc, who runs a group called Peace Action and is one of the vice-chairs of the Communist Party, was introduced on stage as one of Van Jones’s “partners” in the “rebuild the American dream” movement. Hartmann, a leader of Progressive Democrats of America, has a show distributed nationwide by Russia Today (RT) television and Free Speech TV. He apparently didn’t grasp the irony of trying to silence a recording device while touting the virtues of the First Amendment. Hartmann spoke to me after participating in a “Taking Back the Media” panel discussion during the Take Back the American Dream Conference sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future. Hartmann was hailed in an official press release as a key part of Free Speech TV’s exclusive live coverage of the conference, which was held in Washington, D.C. Oct. 3-5. An affiliate of the Campaign for America’s Future, the Institute for America’s Future, is heavily subsidized by Soros. The head of Free Speech TV is Don Rojas, former press secretary to communist Maurice Bishop, the leader of the Caribbean island of Grenada before President Reagan ordered its liberation by American troops in 1983. Rojas, in a taped interview, spoke fondly of the days when he worked for Grenada’s revolutionary government, even signing a copy of an address Bishop had made to the sixth summit of the non-aligned movement in Havana, Cuba, in 1979. Rojas said he helped to write the speech and was in Havana at the time. He signed it, “Forward Ever, Backward Never,” an inspirational quotation from Bishop which was supposed to capture the essence of the revolutionary process. Rojas was captured, arrested, and then deported from Grenada by U.S. forces. Today, however, his channel is called the “anti-Fox” network and claims carriage on 200 cable affiliates, Dish Network and DirecTV, reaching 35 million homes. Free Speech TV has been promoting the “Occupation of Wall Street” protests and also distributes Al-Jazeera. Rojas says he has applied for cash from the Soros-funded Open Society Institute (OSI). “We are knocking on the OSI’s door as we speak,” he said. In the speech, Bishop had talked about the “revolutionary process” which “has seen the emergence of successful and progressive revolutions in countries like Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Laos, and Kampuchea and, most recently Nicaragua and Iran, has had a vital impact on the balance of forces in today’s world.” Kampuchea, the communist word for the country of Cambodia, saw a takeover by the communist Khmer Rouge, after America’s defeat in Vietnam, that took the lives of about two million people in a bloody genocide. Iran was taken over by radical Islamists, who remain in charge and are working to obtain nuclear weapons in order to destroy the state of Israel and threaten the U.S. “Long live the Cuban revolution!” was one of the concluding phrases in the Bishop speech. While Rojas talked openly about his service to Bishop and Castro, AFL-CIO official Karen Nussbaum was close-mouthed in regard to her trip to Cuba in 1970 as a member of the Venceremos Brigades to the communist-controlled island. “No,” she curtly replied, when asked to talk about a trip that reportedly included a meeting with Castro himself. Asked why she wouldn’t talk about it, she said it was “not relevant.” Nussbaum was on a panel discussing feminism that was organized by the Rockefeller Fund. A published report about Nussbaum’s trip to Cuba said she “was impressed with Castro and with Cuban socialism.” In an oral history of her days as a young radical, Nussbaum talked about the large number of Weathermen in the brigades to Cuba. The Weathermen became a terrorist group, the Weather Underground, after being brainwashed and trained in guerrilla warfare in Cuba by Castro’s intelligence operatives. Nussbaum heads the AFL-CIO’s three-million-strong Working America affiliate. Her boss, AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, was a featured speaker at the Take Back the American Dream Conference and referred to the protests on Wall Street, saying that: “It’s our time” and calling Van Jones “my friend.”

Someones  should expose whoever is paying the bills for busses, food, an anti WSJ broadsheet  and such that is picking up and such for the anti-Wallstreet protest.  Eight were arrested in sleepy Santa Barbara Wednesday for occupying a park after its 10PM closing

Obama’s shock troops are marching in the streets. Occupy Wall Street - a movement composed of communists, anarchists, socialists and anti-globalization student radicals - is spreading. Protests have swelled in cities including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia and even sleepy Santa Barbara. Some of the protestors are being paid for their mayhem.

The protesters are calling for wealth redistribution, fees on bank profits and massive tax increases on the rich. Many are demanding a socialist revolution - the confiscation of private property and nationalization of the economy. They are the heirs of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.

Bob Beckel said on Fox News he supports the protest and protesters. Nancy Pelosi gushes her approval as has Senator Harry Reid, and Obama has done as much as a sitting President can to insight civil unrest as he can without being arrested himself.

Leftist radicals, such as Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, have endorsed the anti-capitalist movement. Both men have glorified authoritarian communist regimes - Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and the old Soviet Union. Their hatred for America has found expression in the rabble on the streets of New York and Washington. Actress Roseanne Barr even has called for the return of the “guillotine.” She wants bankers to be sent to “re-education camps,” and if they still refuse to hand over their profits, they should be beheaded, she says. This is the language of revolutionary terror and Marxist violence. Mr. Obama has said he “sympathizes” with the protesters - especially their anger at Wall Street and “fat-cat” bankers. For years, he has demonized billionaires and millionaires, jet owners and corporate America. His divisive, irresponsible rhetoric has laid the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street.

The protest’s main players all have ties to the Obama administration. Its primary organizer is former Obama “green-jobs czar” Van Jones. Mr. Jones is a self-avowed communist and follower of Saul Alinsky, the radical community organizer who also was Mr. Obama’s intellectual mentor. Mr. Jones said October is the month of the long-awaited “progressive offensive” - the watershed moment when students, labor unions, socialists and civil rights activists coalesce into an anti-Tea Party to blunt Middle America’s growing opposition to Mr. Obama.

Occupy Wall Street also is being supported by MoveOn.org. The group was one of the first to back Mr. Obama’s presidential candidacy when he was still an obscure senator from Illinois. The protests are being funded by socialist billionaire George Soros - a key Obama ally. And the protesters are being joined by big labor, the administration’s most powerful constituency.

Hence, Occupy Wall Street is not a spontaneous uprising of disenchanted citizens frustrated with corporate plutocracy and capitalist excess. Rather, it is a planned, manufactured attempt to prop up Mr. Obama’s failed presidency. It is a page taken straight from the Alinsky playbook: Demonize bankers and businessmen in order to divert attention from the real source of our economic woes, Mr. Obama’s policies.

The president inherited a recession, and he has deepened it. His out-of-control spending and trillion-dollar deficits have brought us to the brink of bankruptcy. America’s debt credit rating has been downgraded. Growth has slowed to less than 1 percent. Unemployment has risen above 9 percent. Inflation is rising as consumer confidence declines. Obamacare is strangling job creation and business investment. Mr. Obama has waged war upon the private sector. If those students are truly angry about joblessness and a bleak future, they should direct their fury at the president.

Instead, they mouth leftist pieties. They are a spoiled, dependent and illiterate generation that believes it is entitled to government handouts, state coddling and permanent prosperity. They don’t wish to be self-reliant and make their own way; rather, they want others - successful, productive members of society - to transfer their hard-earned money to subsidize their indolence. They are the kind of deadbeats the welfare state eventually produces - lazy, whining and shameless.

Alinsky argued that an economic crisis inevitably fosters a political crisis. The key for the hard left was to take advantage of our misery to seize power and impose a socialist regime. By sowing street mayhem, Occupy Wall Street is hoping to demoralize and distract Middle America into believing big business is the evil culprit for the financial collapse. The very opposite, however, is true. Meddlesome government intervention caused the housing bubble, the subprime mortgage debacle and the reckless bank lending practices that triggered the Great Recession. The way out is not more statism; it is less. Only a vibrant free market can restore economic recovery and stimulate job growth.

The protesters are not interested in real solutions. They are political activists masquerading as concerned citizens. Progressives are desperate to keep Obama in office. This is why the president is deliberately encouraging Occupy Wall Street. He hopes to create enough bedlam and then target Republicans, the Tea Party and the rich. He is pursuing the Alinsky strategy of divide and conquer, pitting interest groups and different classes against each other.

Obama has unleashed class hatred and racial hostility in the pursuit of state socialism. It is clear that his 2008 campaign slogan of “hope and change” was really a thinly veiled rallying cry, not to save the nation, but to precipitate the downfall of American capitalism.

On a blog site dedicated to Obama’s buddy and Weatherman Underground terror bomber Bill Ayers are the following charges in support of the Occupy Wall Street protesters including:

They (American businesses) have:

•1. taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process..

•2. taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

•3. perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

•4. poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

•5. profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

•6. continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

•7. held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

•8. consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

•9. influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

•10. spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

•11. sold our privacy as a commodity.

•12. used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

•13. deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

•14. block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

•15. block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping,

•16. purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

•17. accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

•18. perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

•19. participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

•20. create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

A REUTERS report says America’s enemies, including Americans,  like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secret panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.

The panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant Immam with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman declined to discuss anything about the secret process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.

The White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of President Barack Obama’s toughness toward militants who threaten the United States. But the process that led to Awlaki’s killing has drawn fierce criticism from both the political left and right.

In an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor George W. Bush’s expansive use of executive power in his “war on terrorism,” is being attacked in for using similar tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed intelligence assessments.

Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.

Conservatives criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its rationale for killing a citizen without due process.

Some details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing.

The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that we follow international law,” Ruppersberger said.

Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.

They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

They confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice Department, were consulted before Awlaki’s name was added to the target list.

Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.

Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to “protect” the president.

Officials confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in the drone attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of Inspire, a glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a propaganda and recruitment vehicle.

But rather than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan was in the wrong place at the wrong time, officials said. Ruppersberger appeared to confirm that, saying Khan’s death was “collateral,” meaning he was not an intentional target of the drone strike.

When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.

Officials said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone “from inspirational to operational.” That meant that instead of just propagandizing in favor of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate directly in plots against American targets.

“Let me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally involved in lethal terrorist activities,” Daniel Benjamin, top counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.

The Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning terrorist attacks.

But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.

For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a Detroit courtroom earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-plot charges, he proclaimed, “Anwar is alive.”

But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.

Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee’s computer showed what an investigator described as ” operational contact” between Britain and Yemen.

Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother’s side when the messages were dispatched. British media reported that in one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly said, “Our highest priority is the US … With the people you have, is it possible to get a package or a person with a package on board a flight heading to the US?”

U.S. officials contrast intelligence suggesting Awlaki’s involvement in specific plots with the activities of Adam Gadahn, an American citizen who became a principal English-language propagandist for the core al Qaeda network formerly led by Osama bin Laden.

While Gadahn appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the United States, officials said he had not been specifically targeted for capture or killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a loudmouth not directly involved in plotting attacks.

Gaile Owens, 58, was released from the Tennessee Prison for Women where she had been on death row for 25-years convicted of hiring a man who beat her hudband to death with a tire iron. Her sentence was commutted and she was parolled after a review showed others convicted of hiring a murderer got lesser sentences. The murdered now 68-year old still awaits execution.

The unprecedented route for the Islamic Republic would take Iranian warships through the Suez Canal and into the warm waters of the Caribbean, a total nautical distance of approximately 9000 miles. According to MEMRI, Iranian media sources claim:

“In this new and feasible mission, the ships of the navy of the Iranian Army will sail west, towards the Strait of Gibraltar, after they enter the Mediterranean. Subsequently, they will enter the Atlantic Ocean, and from there they must traverse the long distance to their destination off Cuba, in the Gulf of Mexico, and Central and South America.”

Iranian Naval chief Sayyari has previously threatened on Iranian state TV to send a fleet of warships into the Atlantic armed with “Nour” long-range anti-ship cruise missiles. The proposed Iranian flotilla would be an extension of Iran’s presence in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean.

Noor is a long-range anti-ship cruise missile manufactured by Iran, based on the Chinese C-802.

Noor has a range of 200km and is powered by Toloue-4, an Iranian version of the French Microturbo TRI 60 engine. It is reported that Noor can achieve its maximum range without the need for an OTHT (Over-The-Horizon Targeting) system.

This is an offensive weapons sytesm deigned to attack warships.

The Vatican city is the smallest country in the world at only .2 square miles.

Israel is now the world’s No. 3 arms exporter, trailing only U.S. and Russia. Israel has become the No. 3 weapons supplier in the world, a report said. The Congressional Research Service said Israel became the third biggest arms exporter in the world in 2010. In a report, CRS said Israel followed only the United States and Russia and signed agreements for $2 billion worth of orders last year.

The report, titled “Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 2003-2010,” did not cite Israel’s major defense clients in 2010. But author Richard Grimmett said Israel beat out such major suppliers as Britain, China, France and Italy in arms transfer agreements.

CRS reported that 2010 was an exceptional year for Israeli defense exports. Over the last eight years, Israel was ranked the No. 9 supplier with total exports of $6.7 billion, following such countries as Germany, Canada and Sweden.

Israel was also ranked No. 9 in arms delivery, with $1.1 billion. The three leading weapons deliverers were identified as the United States, Russia and Germany.

The report said Israel was also a major supplier to so-called developing nations, including India. CRS said Israel, ranked No. 8, signed weapons orders worth $8.2 billion from 2003 through 2010.

Last year, Israel, trailing China, was said to have signed $700 million worth of defense accords with developing states. CRS said Israel dropped from the sixth largest supplier to developing states to eighth in 2007.

In June 2011, the Israeli Defense Ministry said defense exports for the previous year reached $7.2 billion. The figure topped exports in 2009, reported at $6.9 billion.

The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the Kola Superdeep Borehole, in Russia. It reached a depth of 12,261 meters (about 40,226 feet or 7.62 miles). It was drilled for scientific research and gave up some unexpected discoveries, one of which was a huge deposit of hydrogen - so massive that the mud coming from the hole was “boiling” with it.

Gamma rays are pulsing from the neutron star at the heart of the Crab Nebula with energies far higher than theoretical pulsar models can explain. The Crab Nebula, which is some 6,500 light-years from Earth, was formed when a massive star exploded in a supernova event that was observed on Earth in the year 1054.

The new determinations have astrophysicists scrambling to explain what’s going on and how such enormous energy is generated.

The nebula was observed by John Bevis in 1731; it corresponds to a bright supernova recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers about a thousand years ago. Called a guest star it could be observed with the naked eye for at least two years after it first appeared. Even after 7,500 years it continues to expand and with this new determination interest has been renewed.

We are practically walking petri dishes, rife with bacterial colonies from our skin to the deepest recesses of our guts. All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to a microbiologist at the University of Idaho

Vladimir Putin, who is running for another 6-year term as Russia’s President turned 59 on Friday holding a party for himself at one of his luxurious Moscow residences with his old friends Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Watch as Russia slidses back into the totalitarian state of old.

The Missile Defense Agency said the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) succeeded in a test to intercept multiple targets. The agency said THAAD, produced by Lockheed Martin, tracked and intercepted two different targets on Oct. 5.

“During the test, THAAD system engaged and simultaneously intercepted one short-range and one medium-range class ballistic missile target,” the agency said.

“It was, by far, THAAD’s most challenging flight test to date and demonstrates the system’s advanced capabilities.” L-M vice president Tom McGrath said.

THAAD has been sought by several Middle East allies of the United States, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates. But L-M acknowledged that Abu Dhabi has shelved the procurement of THAAD until at least next year.

The flight test, conducted near Hawaii, began with a THAAD missile that intercepted a short-range ballistic missile target. Shortly after, a second THAAD intercepted a sea-launched missile.

“THAAD is the only missile defense system that can intercept missiles both inside the atmosphere and outside the atmosphere,” MDA spokesman Rick Lehner said. “Other missile defense technologies do either one or the other.”

If a tiger loses all his hair, he’ll still be striped. Tiger stripes are like fingerprints, each individual cat’s markings are unique. And they’re not just hair, the stripes are in their skin. Seems to be a thing with cats, since your house cat’s fur markings are also skin deep!. It’s the same for domestic house  cats

While China has been hailed as a savior of the world - and in particular, a “white knight” for the many debt-ridden economies in the European Union - a major sector of the Chinese economy is defaulting at an alarming rate.

Since early summer, thousands of the country’s once vibrant small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for close to 60 percent of GDP and create 80 percent of China’s jobs, have gone under. In Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, the country’s famous capitalist haven, dozens of “red bosses” simply vanished last month without paying either their creditors or their employees.

Despite the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration’s tight control over many aspects of the economy, SMEs - all of which are run by private businessmen - are outside the state plans. Since they cannot compete with state-owned firms for loans from government-controlled banks, most private entrepreneurs borrow from “underground banks” at interest rates ranging from 30 percent to 100 percent per annum. China’s central bank estimated that the underground bank market was worth 2.4 trillion yuan as of early last year, or 5.6 percent of China’s total lending.

What makes the situation worse is that while China’s private businessmen are known for their savviness and resilience, most of them have used the loans to speculate on the housing market. The downturn in real-estate and related sectors, however, means that some of the most successful SMEs have gone bust.

Even more disturbing is the fact that the bulk of the lenders in the underground market are so-called trust companies that have links with either official banks or senior cadres. The result is that not only the trust companies but the government-controlled banks have gone into trouble due to the pile-up of non-performing loans (NPLs). No wonder that the stock prices of China’s big four commercial banks, - including Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which is among the world’s largest companies - have tumbled in the past two months.

The situation is so dire that Premier Wen Jiabao, dubbed “firefighter-in-chief,” rushed to Wenzhen earlier this week. Wen pledged at least rhetorical support for the struggling SMEs.

“Small enterprises should be a priority of bank credit support and enjoy more tax preferences from the government,” said Wen. “Banks should increase their tolerance of NPL ratio of small enterprises, set targets for the expansion of loans to small companies and reduce the small businesses’ cost of securing credit.”

Analysts say that the central government faces a tough dilemma. On the one hand, Beijing is unlikely to change its year-long policy of reining in credit so as to curb inflation. While the consumer price index rose by 6.2 percent last August, the actual inflation rate is estimated by private economists to be much higher.

On the other hand, the massive closure of SMEs means unemployment - and social unrest.

China already suffers from more than 100,000 instances of riots and disturbances a year. Given that the 18th CCP Congress, which will witness a wholesale changing of the leadership, is just a year away, Beijing will pull out all the stops to uphold socio-political stability.

The myriad socio-economic woes afflicting the party-and-state apparatus will in turn constrict Beijing’s ability to yield to pressure from the U.S. and European governments to speed up the appreciation of the renminbi. Raising the value of the rmb is seen as hurting exports, particularly those of SMEs that are already victims of heavy indebtedness