Many government programs depend on political legerdemain and budget gimmickry.  Social Security and Medicare are prominent examples.  Most Americans believe Social Security and Medicare funds are locked in a vault somewhere, ready for withdrawals when they retire.  We are disquieted to learn these “Trust Funds”, as they are called, are not funds at all, but […]

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A study among Chinese factory workers shows exposure to high doses of Bisphenol A at their jobs resulted in an increase of erectile dysfuntion.
Compared to the other workers, men with high BPA exposure were about four times as likely to report trouble achieving erections, about seven times as likely to say they had difficulty ejaculating, […]

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One of the major causes of death in the world is malaria, but the World Health Organization estimates that 20 percent of the one million deaths from malaria are dying because the medicines that they are taking are substandard or outright counterfeits. If you include fake antibiotics and fake drugs used to treat tuberculosis, the […]

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President Obama was brought up in Asia, yet he seems clueless about Afghanistan, and of the geopolitical problems in this area.
The press is even worse, preferring the simplistic out of date explanations of the “Afghanistan is Viet Nam” meme, or the “Stop the war” meme, or stressing civilian casualties “reported” by Taliban linked sources without […]

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This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner would not receive at the White House the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who is on a visit this week to Washington. President Obama apparently wanted to avoid upsetting Chinese communist leaders before his official trip to China.
Unwelcome at the White House […]

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Congress has censored the gentleman (?) who interrupted the President’s speech last week by shouting Liar.
Good for them.
One of the most terrible things about politics during the Bush administration was that those who should have known better winked at the harsh and even paranoid voices that shouted hatred at him personally. And, alas, now it […]

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A lot of nonsense being written in the news about Conservative writer George Will deciding to throw in the towel in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is a mess. Big deal. It’s been a mess for a couple thousand years, and trying to “win” a war there and put in a crumpets and tea democracy is a bit delusional.
But […]

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Does Huntsman’s Road Through Beijing Lead To The Obama White House?
When President Barack Obama rang up Utah’s moderate Republican Governor Jon Huntsman a while back to feel him out about joining a Democratic administration, insiders say the first question out of his mouth went something like this: “So, are you going to run against me […]

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Years ago, when I worked in Africa, the light in my office started to fail. There was no electricity during the day, so we got our office light via old fashioned windows. My first thought was a storm: but there were no clouds. Although the sun was shining, everything seemed to be dim. A phrase […]

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Doctor Sally Satel has an editorial in the NYPost promoting giving payment to those who donate organs, or to their families.
She tells a variation of the usual spin: by allowing money to enter into the decision on whether to donate, we would increase organ donations. Ergo, it would help save the lives of many people.
Ah, […]

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My appointments diary for the week beginning 23rd April 1989 has a few brief entries in it. On Monday 24th I caught a flight at 10:10 in the morning from Kong Hong to Beijing and on Thursday 27th I flew back. In between there were a number of meetings in the Chinese capital with business […]

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Some Anthropology associations have been worried about the US Army recruiting trained anthropologists to help in the war on terror.
Part of this is because they remembered how anthropologist helped the US during the war in Southeast Asia, and they viewed the war around Viet Nam wrong (huh…fellahs, ever hear of the boat people? the Cambodian […]

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MEMO TO: Richard Feducci, Overlord of Finance
FROM: E Pluribus, Wondergod
SUBJECT: Five Year International Finance Plan
DATE: January 1, 2005
Happy New Year, Rich. Got some good news and some bad news. The bad news: We’re going to let the American economy crater. The good news: Everybody else’s will, too. The best news: By 2010, we’ll be on […]

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No, I’m not quoting the well worn joke: World ends, women and minorities affected most.
I’m just observing how the economic downturn is affecting those in our area of the Philippines.
One of my medical journals (registration required) says the World Health Organization is worried that the worldwide recession will result in people chosing to wait for […]

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 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, January 13, 2009, San Francisco – 

State Department’s Democracy Video Contest

State Department videos embarrass the U.S. among audiences abroad while the Department’s top promoter of Public Diplomacy 2.0 pushes to eliminate Voice of America radio journalism in favor of TV and Internet propaganda advertising and broadcasting based on […]

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After the reports that melamine contaminating baby formula in China had sickened thousands of children there, some parents felt that soy products for their beloved children was safer.
Well, think again.
As early as mid December, Health Canada was noting trace amounts of melamine in soy products, including some that were labled “organic”.
The level wasn’t high enough […]

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 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog, January 7, 2009, San Francisco – In yet another show of incredibly poor judgement combined with bad timing and ulterior bureaucratic motives resulting in a major waste of U.S. tax dollars, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a bipartisan body responsible for U.S. international broadcasts, had silenced Voice of America (VOA) radio […]

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The United States is considering banning imported honey from China because it is contaminated with the antibiotic Chloramphenicol. SFGate reports that in 1997, Chinese beekeepers used the antibiotic instead of destroying hives when their bees suffered from a bacterial infection, and that traces of the antibiotic continues to be found in honey imported from China. […]

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The list of food contaminated by melamine that originated from China keeps getting longer. The New England Journal of Medicine calls the presence of melamine in food a major public health product, claiming that it resulted in 294,000 children hospitalized for health problems in China, and that it may have sickened children in other parts […]

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After the Mumbai terror attack, it appears that Pakistan is falling apart.
The offer by the Taliban commander that they are ready to fight along with the Army is a matter of great concern as it indicates that Taliban and Pakistan army appear to be working together.
The two comments of Taliban  made recently, namely,  that they […]

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While the world is busy shipping in vital supplies including food and medicine to help the people of Zimbabwe, the UN reports that President Mugabe, who allowed the Harare area water system deteriorate because they “couldn’t afford” supplies, nevertheless managed to buy guns and other military weapons from China, smuggling them in from his friends […]

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 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, December 16, 2008, San Francisco – In The Huffington Post article, “Alhurra TV: Uncle Sam’s Boondoggle“ Dr.  Nancy Snow has pointed out a number of serious problems with the  U.S. government-funded Alhurra Arabic-language television program for the Middle East and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which manages Alhurra. Dr. Snow, […]

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Ah, the Minneapolis paper is telling us to reflect on Peace in Dafur this Christmas.
on Tuesday, a U.S. task force on preventing genocide presented a report to the public on the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the U.N. convention against genocide. The task force, chaired by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and former […]

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I am aghast at the latest headline spin insisting that generic drugs are just as good as the more expensive brands.
Why? Because the study cited doesn’t “prove” that at all.
From the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) abstract (summary):
We identified 47 articles covering 9 subclasses of cardiovascular medications, of which 38 (81%) were randomized […]

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 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog Commentary by Ted Lipien, November 26, 2008, San Francisco – Voice of America journalists and other employees who broadcast American news to the world are thankful for the pre-Thanksgiving Day news that Ted Kaufman (Edward E. Kaufman) was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat from Delaware vacated by his former boss, Vice President elect Joe Biden. […]

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Washington, D.C.–”We have to learn to live with volatility of gas and oil prices,” said Fatih Birol, Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency, presenting its “2008 World Energy Outlook” to a Capitol Hill audience today.  He expected volatility to increase, and he commented that half of the new oil needed for the report’s main […]

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The Killer Eggplants are coming…they should arrive in 2009.
I’m joking, of course.
But Science Daily News reports that scientists have developed a newer genetically modified eggplant, which is now in the testing phase and so far it has tested safe and nutritious.
If it passes the test, the new variety would allow farmers to grown eggplant without […]

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 FreeMediaOnline.org and Free Media Online Blog  November 8, 2008, San Francisco – Henry Loomis, who died Nov. 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., at age 89, was director of the Voice of America (VOA) during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. His obituary was published Nov. 8 in the Washington Post. During his tenure from 1958 to 1965, the VOA Charter […]

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The tainted food scandal of China has now spread from milk to other foods.
In Hong Kong, eggs from northern China tested positive for Melamine.  The Hong Kong Heatlh commissioner says that he suspects that animals have been fed melamine contaminated food, resulting in higher than normal levels of the chemical in the eggs.
But if this […]

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It has been reported recently in telegraph UK that a large scale fraud has been discovered in UK where the Credit Card swiping devices supplied by China were found to have been tampered with in such a manner that the swiped card data was being sent to China and Pakistan for cloning.
The incident reveals a […]

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