Eideard

 
Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse are two of my favorite footballers – even if they play for Newcastle United. Demba Ba in particular has a shot like a cannon.

But, I got to thinking about the difference in sophistication likely between the UK and the US. Americans get all woo-hoo over Tim Tebow and his Christian prayer pose. That’s just as common among athletes in Europe. Except oftimes those athletes aren’t Christian – they’re Muslim. Their celebration means as much to them as do the poses of Christian athletes.

So – you think there aren’t any Muslims in the NFL? Think, again. Do you think maybe it’s been suggested that for their own safety they shouldn’t kneel and face in the direction of Mecca when they score a touchdown? Tell us what you think would happen?

The first international drug treaty was signed a century ago this week. So what was the war on drugs like in 1912?

Today it is taken for granted that governments will co-operate in the fight against the heroin and cocaine trade. But 100 years ago, narcotics passed from country to country with minimal interference from the authorities. That all changed with the 1912 International Opium Convention, which committed countries to stopping the trade in opium, morphine and cocaine.

Then, as now, the US stood in the vanguard against narcotics. While the UK’s position is unequivocal today, a century ago it was an unenthusiastic signatory, says Mike Jay, author of Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century.

The real concern a century ago was over alcohol, he argues. “There was a big debate over intoxication as there was concern about the heavy, heavy drinking culture of the 19th Century…”

And opium use was viewed in the mid-19th Century in a very different way from modern beliefs about drug use. It was possible to walk into a chemist and buy not only opium and cocaine, but even arsenic…

“There were opium dens where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new,” wrote Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

But the fashion in drugs was changing from the “downer” of opium to the “upper” of cocaine – hence Arthur Conan Doyle making Sherlock Holmes a cocaine injector…

But in the US, cocaine came to be associated with street gangs, alongside racist propaganda that the drug sent black men insane and put white women at risk…So these domestic concerns helped drive the international agreement in the form of the 1912 treaty. But while it tackled the trade, in the UK at least, the authorities were slow to crack down on individual users…

In reality, there was no “drug scene” in Britain back then, says Jay. What existed was confined to a few streets in Soho and a handful of dealers in Limehouse. And once the drug laws came in banning cocaine and opium, the problem was easily contained by the police…

“The baby boomers were the first generation in history to become real global consumers. People were suddenly going to Morocco to smoke hash, or hitching with lorry drivers who were using amphetamines.”

So the floodgates opened. Where once the authorities were fighting relatively small groups of offenders in a tiny drugs subculture, now they must fight millions of users and powerful international cartels.

RTFA for an understanding of laws and “wars” on drugs in the time when the community of users was small, coppers ruled the streets – instead of gangbangers – and profit hadn’t yet driven drugs into a global economy.

Not that today’s governments seem to be any more capable of understanding changing circumstances.

Scientists have improved the sight of two people who were almost blind by injecting their eyes with stem cells from embryos.

The two women, both registered as blind, saw their vision improve in a matter of weeks after being given the embryo-derived cells in the US safety trial.

The breakthrough holds out the hope of a cure in the future for age-related macular degeneration, which currently affects some 500,000 people in Britain…

This is the first peer-reviewed scientific report showing that cells derived from human embryonic stem cells can be transplanted safely into a patient with no sign of complications…

“Although the study is limited to safety considerations, very small in scope, and at a very early stage, this is nonetheless a ground breaking moment for embryonic stem cell therapies” said Professor Daniel Brison.

Meanwhile, a British man has become the first European to be treated with embryonic stem cells, at the Moorfield Eye Hospital in London, which is running a parallel trial.

Both the women in the US study arm suffer from forms of macular degeneration – worsening central vision – that are caused by retinal cells dying…

Each patient had a single eye injected with about 50,000 retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells that had been derived from embryonic stem cells. In this way, vision in one eye could be compared against vision in the other…

“While this is primarily a safety trial, we will have the opportunity to monitor engraftment of retinal cells and to assess any impact on sight.”

The use of embryonic stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell, is controversial because it requires the destruction of human embryos…which frightens religious moralists.

President George W Bush stopped federal funding of such research, but this ban was lifted by President Obama in 2009.

RTFA for a fair amount of detail. Certainly it’s early days and trials designed solely to test the safety of the procedure. But, don’t spend too much time telling the volunteers they’re being immoral as they experience improvement in their vision.

Science that provides qualitative and immediate medical benefits won’t find too many religious foot soldiers lining up to prevent continuing trials — excepting among seriously sectarian fanatics.

Iran says it will put on display a series of foreign spy drones that it claims to have obtained, including four Israeli and three US unmanned aircraft…the exhibition will be held “in the near future”, and that foreign ambassadors based in Tehran and local journalists would be invited.

“The latest domestically manufactured electronic warfare equipment will also be put on show at the exhibition,” the newspaper said. “The foreign unmanned aircraft that Iran has are four Israeli and three US drones…”

Last week, Iran’s elite revolutionary guards put on show a US unmanned aerial vehicle, believed to be an RQ-170 Sentinel drone, which they claimed to have brought down electronically. However, military experts have questioned the veracity of Iranian claims, while the US insists that the drone malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.

There was one Pentagon flunkie today who claimed Iran only had a replica of an RQ-170.

Mystery surrounds how Iran got their hands on the aircraft and whether it was genuinely intact, as shown on Iranian TV. Nato said earlier this month that a surveillance drone flying over western Afghanistan went missing and could be the one that entered Iranian airspace along the country’s eastern border. Iran says it downed the drone near the eastern city of Kashmar, some 140 miles from the country’s border with Afghanistan…

Iranian officials also promised to reverse-engineer the drone and decode its technical information. Iran has claimed that Russia and China have requested to see the drone.

The other two US drones were brought down by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps over the Persian Gulf in January, according to the Tehran Times report…

The Christian Science Monitor has published an interview with an Iranian engineer who claimed to be involved in the Islamic regime’s capturing of the US drone. The engineer said Iranian electronic warfare specialists brought down the drone by exploiting a navigational weakness in its GPS system.

Americans are well enough accustomed to our imperial bluster. There really isn’t any need to reassure the “patriots” – and those who oppose our arrogant tread across the landscape of the world will be ignored as usual. An area where true bipartisanship is foreign policy can be guaranteed.

France’s metal thieves, renowned for targeting motorways and football stadiums and causing mayhem on railways for copper, bronze or brass have turned their attentions to a new prey: cemeteries.

In the early hours of Monday morning, an “organised group” of criminals pillaged the cemetery of an eastern French village, ripping metal crosses, ornaments and even the doors of funereal vaults in the worst such case in France.

Residents of Hoerdt, population 4,500, in Alsace were appalled to discover 375 tombs had been stripped of all their metal objects when they came to pay their respects to departed loved ones on Monday. “I think it’s horrible,” said Agnès, whose father was buried in the cemetery last week and whose tomb was targeted. “It’s deplorable, there’s no more respect. If it’s for money than My God where are we heading?,” she asked.

“Crosses, metal palm fronds, vases, steles – a third of our cemetery’s 900 tombs have been plundered,” mayor Denis Riedinger told The Daily Telegraph…

The mayor was personally affected as robbers had ripped off the metal cross from his father’s tomb in the site a couple of hundred yards from the town’s edge. “This is plain metal theft, there is no ideological connotation,” he said. My disgust has now given way to anger that a few individuals in search of a quick profit are capable of plunging an entire village into shock…”

Metal theft is nothing new in France, but, as elsewhere, soaring metal prices have led to a steep rise in reported robberies – up 123 per cent in the past three years…”At first it was the work of itinerant delinquents, teams who roamed the country. Now, in fifty per cent of cases it is the work of sedentary inhabitants who steal from their own region,” said Colonel Stéphane Ottavi of the OCLDI police unit in charge of tracking such crimes…

Thousands of bronze vases have been stolen from cemeteries across the US in recent months, including the theft of a three-foot copper sword from Abraham Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield.

In the UK, a recent outbreak of metal thefts has seen brass band instruments, door numbers from houses, manholes and the railings from a baby’s grave been swiped.

When you catch the creeps – throw away the key. Cells are exactly the right place for criminals engaged in theft like this – stealing from families, from the public, from history. Put them to work at appropriate, menial tasks.

Invading a truck in Massachusetts

The price of a couple’s Hertfordshire house has dropped by more than £250,000 because Japanese knotweed has invaded it, according to an independent surveyor.

With its value falling from an estimated £305,000 to £50,000, experts have told owners Matthew Jones and Sue Banks from Broxbourne that, unless action is taken, it will be impossible to sell.

They have been told 10ft of soil needs to be removed from beneath the foundations to remove the plant.

The invasive weed was discovered in the garden of their new-build house in April 2009 after they had been living there for about a month.

A couple of months later it was found growing in the dining room…

Mr Jones, 38, explained that he first discovered the climbing plant outside one evening after it had made its way from a nearby field over the garden fence.

“I was out in the garden and I noticed some stems coming through the lawn,” he said.

“They were like asparagus tips but they had a reddish tinge to them. I had never seen anything like that before so I didn’t touch it, I went to bed and in the morning it had grown a couple of inches.”

Broxbourne Borough Council sent an environmental specialist along who identified Japanese knotweed straight away and advised the couple to contact a solicitor immediately.

Just two months later it had forced its way into the house through the flooring and skirting boards.

Experts have advised that demolishing the house and removing the soil will provide a permanent eradication.

Right now, they’re stuck in the middle of negotiations with the homebuilder over warranties that supposedly are standard in the UK – but, you can guess happy the contractor is about sorting out a problem of this magnitude.

Boy Scouts of America leaders knew for years about incidents involving a Canadian pedophile who preyed on boys in the U.S. but failed to stop him as he moved back to Canada, where he continued his abuse. The organization sometimes even helped him go undetected by authorities, an investigation by CBC-TV’s The Fifth Estate and the Los Angeles Times has found.

Scouts Canada learned of his inappropriate behaviour in the 1980s and kicked him out, but nearly a decade passed before police charged him with crimes.

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Richard Turley was involved with the Scouts across California and British Columbia, molesting at least eight scouts…

When Turley was shown the 1979 confidential U.S. file created by the Scouts on him, however, he shook his head in amazement that officials had not contacted police…

“That probably would have put a stop to me years and years ago,” said Turley in an interview at an Alberta motel where he works as a manager and handyman…And yet I went back to the Scouts again and again as a leader and offended against the boys until they came forward…”

It was not until 1995 that police began their first large-scale investigation into Turley – 16 years after the Boy Scouts of America created a “perversion file” and nearly a decade after its Canadian counterpart put him on their “confidential list.”

In the end, it was not the Scouts organization that informed Saanich, B.C., police, but rather a suspicious girlfriend.

Turley was convicted in 1996 of sexually abusing four boys, three of whom were scouts, but later admitted to having at least a dozen victims…

Seattle-based lawyer Tim Kosnoff, who has viewed the U.S. “perversion files,” says historically the U.S. Boy Scouts “routinely” chose not to notify police when aware of child molesters, instead noting them in their own secret files.

The scouts in the US and Canada aren’t alone in this foolishness, of course. The leadership of any organization – civic, religious, sport or social – that decides that uncomfortable publicity might inhibit intake to their fiefdom and therefore they should keep crap behavior like this confidential is not just absurd, it’s criminal.

The victims of sexual predators haven’t much of a stake in the reputations of these groups. Just their own handicapped lives. RTFA for the long career of a pedophile who was barely slowed by lax officialdom even after being convicted of kidnapping. This may be old history. Doesn’t mean that folks don’t need to be reminded.

The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.

The “restricted” draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.

The agreement acknowledges that there will be occasions when people are delayed or prevented from flying because they are wrongly identified as a threat, and gives them the right to petition for judicial review in the US federal court. Well, isn’t that special?

The 15-year retention period is likely to prove highly controversial as it is three times the five years allowed for in the EU’s PNR (passenger name record) regime to cover flights into, out of and within Europe. A period of five and a half years has just been negotiated in a similar agreement with Australia. Germany and France raised concerns this week about the agreement and the unproven necessity for the measure.

Britain has already announced its intention to opt in to the European PNR plan, in which the home secretary, Theresa May, played a key role, and is expected to join the US agreement this summer…

The US Senate passed a resolution last week saying it “simply could not accept” any watering down by European ministers of data-sharing, describing it as “an important part of our layered defences against terrorism”. Senators said it was an important tool in the security agencies’ “identifying possible threats before they arrive in our country”.

But the European parliament, which would have to approve it, has demanded proof that such a PNR agreement is necessary, and said it should in no circumstances be used for data-mining or profiling…

This draft agreement appears to give the Americans all they have asked for…

The data to be collected includes 19 separate items relating to each airline passenger, including their billing details, contact numbers, the names of those they are travelling with and how much baggage they have, as well their itinerary.

Well, we certainly are assured our government cares enough about our safety and security that they are willing to keep an eye on us for years and years. I feel safer, now. Don’t you?

Britain is withdrawing its troops Sunday from Iraq, ending a role that began with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, British defense officials said…

“We now look forward to a strong, long-term defense relationship with Iraq,” Fox told the House of Commons when he announced Wednesday that British troops would leave the country.

The announcement effectively ended Britain’s role in Iraq, a role that was widely unpopular in the United Kingdom. About 179 British troops were killed during operations in Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Britain when the war began, protesting the deployment of British troops to join then-President George Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing.” At the height of the war, more than 46,000 British troops were deployed primarily in and around the southern port city of Basra.

In 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered an inquiry into the UK’s participation in the war.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair testified during the inquiry that Iraq needed to be confronted over its ambitions to develop weapons of mass destruction… Supreme liar and flunky.

Britain ended its combat operations in Iraq in 2009 but maintained a small contingent, primarily members of the Royal Navy, to train Iraqi sailors and marines at the southern Iraqi port city of Umm Qasr…

Britain will leave behind a small contingent to protect its personnel at its embassy in Baghdad…

The legacy of the Brits in Iraq will always be colored by their colonial history.

Why should anyone remember us with more fondness than, say, a Ukrainian remembers the Germans?

China could overtake the United States as the world’s dominant publisher of scientific research by 2013, according to an analysis of global trends in science by the Royal Society. The report highlighted the increasing challenge to the traditional superpowers of science from the world’s emerging economies and also identified emerging talent in countries not traditionally associated with a strong science base, including Iran, Tunisia and Turkey…

“The scientific world is changing and new players are fast appearing. Beyond the emergence of China, we see the rise of South-East Asian, Middle Eastern, North African and other nations,” said Chris Llewellyn Smith, director of energy research at Oxford University and chair of the Royal Society’s study.

“The increase in scientific research and collaboration, which can help us to find solutions to the global challenges we now face, is very welcome. However, no historically dominant nation can afford to rest on its laurels if it wants to retain the competitive economic advantage that being a scientific leader brings…”

Projecting beyond 2011, the Royal Society said that the landscape would change “dramatically”. “China has already overtaken the UK as the second leading producer of research publications, but some time before 2020 it is expected to surpass the US.” It said this could happen as soon as 2013.

China’s rise is the most impressive, but Brazil, India and South Korea are following fast behind and are set to surpass the output of France and Japan by the start of the next decade.

The quality of research is harder to measure, so the Royal Society used the number of times a research paper had been cited by other scientists in the years after publication as a proxy. By this yardstick, the US again stayed in the lead between the two periods 1999-2003 and 2004-2008, with 36% and 30% of citations respectively. The UK stayed in second place with 9% and 8% in the same periods. China’s citation count went from virtually nil to a 4% share.

The overall spread of scientific subjects under investigation has remained the same. “We had expected to see a shift to bio from engineering and physics [but] overall, the balance has remained remarkably stable,” said Llewellyn Smith. “In China, [the rise] seems to be in engineering subjects whereas, in Brazil, they’re getting into bio and agriculture…”

Llewellyn Smith welcomed the internationalisation of science. “Global issues, such as climate change, potential pandemics, bio-diversity, and food, water and energy security, need global approaches. These challenges are interdependent and interrelated, with complicated dynamics that are often overlooked by policies and programmes put in place to address them,” he said.

Of course, another significant difference in the rate of growth in science around the world will be how the home nation, people and politicians, accept the science as a national treasure – and allot a portion of direction and leadership to the scientific community.

The processes we witnessed in the growth of the Age of Reason in the UK and Europe will very likely serve as models parallel to this new age. Except in the United States.