As sales to developing nations become ever more important to giant tobacco companies, they are stepping up efforts around the world to fight tough restrictions on the marketing of cigarettes.
Companies like Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco are contesting limits on ads in Britain, bigger health warnings in South America and higher cigarette taxes in the Philippines and Mexico. They are also spending billions on lobbying and marketing campaigns in Africa and Asia, and in one case provided undisclosed financing for TV commercials in Australia.
The industry has ramped up its efforts in advance of a gathering in Uruguay this week of public health officials from 171 nations, who plan to shape guidelines to enforce a global anti-smoking treaty.
This year, Philip Morris International sued the government of Uruguay, saying its tobacco regulations were excessive. World Health Organization officials say the suit represents an effort by the industry to intimidate the country, as well as other nations attending the conference, that are considering strict marketing requirements for tobacco.
Uruguay’s groundbreaking law mandates that health warnings cover 80 percent of cigarette packages. It also limits each brand, like Marlboro, to one package design, so that alternate designs don’t mislead smokers into believing the products inside are less harmful.
The lawsuit against Uruguay, filed at a World Bank affiliate in Washington, seeks unspecified damages for lost profits.
“They’re using litigation to threaten low- and middle-income countries,” says Dr. Douglas Bettcher, head of the W.H.O.’s Tobacco Free Initiative. Uruguay’s gross domestic product is half the size of the company’s $66 billion in annual sales.
Peter Nixon, a vice president and spokesman for Philip Morris International, said the company was complying with every nation’s marketing laws while selling a lawful product for adult consumers.
He said the company’s lawsuits were intended to combat what it felt were “excessive” regulations, and to protect its trademark and commercial property rights.
Cigarette companies are aggressively recruiting new customers in developing nations, Dr. Bettcher said, to replace those who are quitting or dying in the United States and Europe, where smoking rates have fallen precipitously. Worldwide cigarette sales are rising 2 percent a year.
But the number of countries adopting tougher rules, as well as the global treaty, underscore the breadth of the battleground between tobacco and public health interests in legal and political arenas from Latin America to Africa to Asia.
The cigarette companies work together to fight some strict policies and go their separate ways on others. For instance, Philip Morris USA, a division of Altria Group, helped negotiate and supported the anti-smoking legislation passed by Congress last year and did not join a lawsuit filed by R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard and other tobacco companies against the Food and Drug Administration. So far, it is not protesting the agency’s new rules, proposed last week, requiring graphic images with health warnings on cigarette packs.
But Philip Morris International, the separate company spun out of Altria in 2008 to expand the company’s presence in foreign markets, has been especially aggressive in fighting new restrictions overseas.
It has not only sued Uruguay, but also Brazil, arguing that images the government wants to put on cigarette packages do not accurately depict the health effects of smoking and “vilify” tobacco companies. The pictures depict more grotesque health effects than the smaller labels recommended in the United States, including one showing a fetus with the warning that smoking can cause spontaneous abortion.
In Ireland and Norway, Philip Morris subsidiaries are suing over prohibitions on store displays.
In Australia, where the government announced a plan that would require cigarettes to be in plain brown or white packaging to make them less attractive to buyers, a Philip Morris official directed an opposition media campaign during the federal elections last summer, according to documents obtained by an Australian television program, and later obtained by The New York Times.
The $5 million campaign, purporting to come from small store owners, was also partly financed by British American and Imperial Tobacco. The Philip Morris official approved strategies, budgets, ad buys and media interviews, according to the documents.
Mr. Nixon, the spokesman, said Philip Morris made no secret of its financing of that effort. “We have helped them, not controlled them,” he said.
Mr. Nixon said Philip Morris agreed that smoking was harmful and supported “reasonable” regulations where none exist.
“The packages definitely need health warnings, but they’ve got to be a reasonable size,” he said. “We thought 50 percent was reasonable. Once you take it up to 80 percent, there’s no space for trademarks to be shown. We thought that was going too far.”
These days in courts around the world, the tobacco giants find themselves on the defensive far more than playing offense. The W.H.O. and its treaty encourage governments and individuals to take legal action against cigarette corporations, which have encountered growing numbers of lawsuits from smokers and health care systems in Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, Nigeria, Poland and Turkey.
But in other parts of the world, notably Indonesia, the fifth-largest cigarette market, which has little regulation, tobacco companies market their products in ways that are prohibited elsewhere. In Indonesia, cigarette ads run on TV and before movies; billboards dot the highways; companies appeal to children through concerts and sports events; cartoon characters adorn packages; and stores sell to children.
Officials in Indonesia say they depend on tobacco jobs, as well as revenue from excise taxes on cigarettes. Indonesia gets some $2.5 billion a year from Philip Morris International alone.
“In the U.S., they took down billboards, agreed not to sponsor music events, no longer use the Marlboro cowboy,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “They now do all of those things overseas.”
The world’s second-biggest private cigarette maker, British American Tobacco, with $4.4 billion profits on $23 billion sales in the year ending June 30, is spending millions of dollars lobbying against anti-smoking health measures, like smoke-free air policies in the European Union.
A video on the company’s Web site says some of the proven methods of reducing smoking — like taxes and display bans — encourage a black market in cigarettes and that, in turn, would finance drug, sex and weapons traffickers and terrorists.
The six-minute video, in which actors play gangsters, one with an Eastern European accent, concludes, “Only the criminals benefit.”
The conference beginning on Monday in Punta del Este, Uruguay, will try to add specific terms to a public health treaty known as the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which since 2003 has been ratified by 171 nations. It would eventually oblige its parties to impose tighter controls on tobacco ingredients, packaging and marketing, expand cessation programs and smoke-free spaces and raise taxes — proven tactics against smoking.
President George W. Bush signed the treaty in 2004 but did not send it to the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is needed for ratification. President Obama hopes to submit it to the Senate next year, a White House spokesman said on Thursday.
One recommendation drawing fire from tobacco farmers would either restrict or prohibit the use of popular additives, like licorice and chocolate, to blended tobacco products that account for more than half of worldwide sales.
The International Tobacco Growers’ Association says that could threaten the makers of burley tobacco, an air-cured leaf that has long been sweetened with additives, costing millions of farmers their jobs and devastating economies worldwide.
“We all know the real objective here is to eliminate tobacco consumption,” says Roger Quarles, a Kentucky grower and president of the association.
NY TIMES DUFF WILSON
Aubrey Belford contributed reporting.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
FINALLY the right choice to move the peace forward!
Netanyahu Agrees to Halt Settlements
After much prodding by the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally budged on the issue of new settlements in the West Bank.
He agreed Saturday to push his cabinet to issue a construction moratorium for 90 days, thereby opening the door to further peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
And all it took was the United States' dangling a package of security incentives and $3 billion worth of fighter jets—all contingent on the ultimate signing of a peace agreement.
The deal was worked out by Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a seven-and-a-half hour meeting in New York this week, with the promise that the U.S. would not ask for any renewals of the construction freeze.
Still, more hard work awaits Netanyahu now as he tries to convince his cabinet to accept the terms.
Read it at The New York Times
After much prodding by the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally budged on the issue of new settlements in the West Bank.
He agreed Saturday to push his cabinet to issue a construction moratorium for 90 days, thereby opening the door to further peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
And all it took was the United States' dangling a package of security incentives and $3 billion worth of fighter jets—all contingent on the ultimate signing of a peace agreement.
The deal was worked out by Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a seven-and-a-half hour meeting in New York this week, with the promise that the U.S. would not ask for any renewals of the construction freeze.
Still, more hard work awaits Netanyahu now as he tries to convince his cabinet to accept the terms.
Read it at The New York Times
Karzai wants U.S. to reduce military operations in Afghanistan
(IT's time to come home! Editor note)
KABUL- President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday that the United States must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations in Afghanistan and end the increased U.S. Special Operations forces night raids that aggravate Afghans and could exacerbate the Taliban insurgency.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Karzai said that he wanted American troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes and that the long-term presence of so many foreign soldiers would only worsen the war. His comments placed him at odds with U.S. commander Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has made capture-and-kill missions a central component of his counterinsurgency strategy, and who claims the 30,000 new troops have made substantial progress in beating back the insurgency.
"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."
Karzai's comments come as American officials are playing down the importance of July 2011 - the date President Obama set to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan - in favor of a combat mission ending in 2014. The Afghan president has placed himself squarely in favor of a lighter military footprint as the administration reviews the progress of the Afghan war and debate intensifies about the pace of the withdrawal. Karzai says his troops are ready to take more responsibility for their own security.
In an hour-long interview with Post reporters and editors in his office in Kabul, Karzai said he was speaking out not to criticize the United States but in the belief that candor could improve what he called a "grudging" relationship between the countries. He described his own deep skepticism with American policy in Afghanistan - from last year's presidential election, which he said was manipulated by U.S. officials, to his conviction that government corruption has been caused by billions of American dollars funneled to unaccountable contractors. And he said Afghans have lost patience with the presence of American soldiers in their homes and armored vehicles on their roads.
Karzai has long been publicly critical of civilian casualties at the hands of U.S. and NATO troops and has repeatedly called for curtailing night raids into Afghan homes. Under Petraeus and his predecessor, such raids by U.S. Special Operations troops have increased sharply, to about 200 a month, or six times the number being carried out 18 months ago, said a senior NATO military official, who requested anonymity so that he could speak candidly about the situation. These operations capture or kill their target 50 to 60 percent of the time, the official said.
To American commanders, the nighttime strike missions are a crucial weapon to capture Taliban commanders, disrupt bomb-making networks and weaken the 30,000-man insurgency in Afghanistan. In the past three months, U.S. Special Operations troops have killed or captured 368 insurgent leaders. On each mission, Afghan commandos accompany U.S. troops and Afghan officers work with the Special Operations command at Bagram Airfield to choose targets, military officials said.
"We understand President Karzai's concerns, but we would not be as far along as we are pressuring the network had it not been for these very precision operations we do at night," the NATO military official said. "I don't see any near-term alternative to this kind of operation."
But Karzai was emphatic that U.S. troops must cease such operations, which he said violate the sanctity of Afghan homes and incite more people to join the insurgency. A senior Afghan official said that Karzai has repeatedly criticized the raids in meetings with Petraeus and that he is seeking veto power over the operations. The Afghan government does not have the type of legal arrangement that the Iraqi government has with U.S. forces to approve particular military operations.
"The raids are a problem always. They were a problem then, they are a problem now. They have to go away," Karzai said. "The Afghan people don't like these raids, if there is any raid it has to be done by the Afghan government within the Afghan laws. This is a continuing disagreement between us."
Karzai, who said during his inaugural speech last year that he would like to have full Afghan security control by 2014, said that the U.S. military "should and could" draw down its forces next year. He acknowledged that an abrupt withdrawal would be dangerous, but said that American soldiers should confine themselves more to their bases and limit themselves to necessary operations along the Pakistani border. He said he wanted the U.S. government to apply more pressure on Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan while focusing on development projects and civilian assistance in Afghanistan.
Although he did not say how many U.S. troops he would prefer in Afghanistan, Karzai said that at current levels "you cannot sustain that." There are about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
"It's not desirable for the Afghan people either to have 100,000 or more foreign troops going around the country endlessly," he said.
"We'd like to have a long-term relationship with America, a substantial relationship with America, that's what the Afghan people want. But we'd like the Afghan countryside - villages, homes, towns - not to be so overwhelmed with the military presence. Life has to be seen [as] more normal," he added.
Insurgents have stepped up their attacks this year to record levels. In the past two days, a car bomb exploded in Kabul and fighters attacked a NATO observation post at the Jalalabad airport in eastern Afghanistan. Saturday's early morning airport assault sparked a lengthy gun battle that left six insurgents dead, including two wearing explosive vests.
As the American military campaign has moved into high gear, U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned with the failure of the Afghan government to root out corruption and provide services to the people. Karzai deflected this criticism by arguing that much of his government's corruption problem comes from the American money that is pumped into the country outside the control of Afghan ministries and frittered away on private security firms that undermine the authority of Afghan security forces. During the Soviet occupation, he said, ministers lived in modest housing blocks and the foreign money flowed through the Afghan government.
"How come we are now so luxury-oriented today?" he asked. "The transparency of contracts is not there. Why is the U.S. government giving contracts to the sons and relatives of officials of the Afghan government? We don't do those contracts. I don't have an authority over a penny of those contracts. . . . and we've been protesting against this for years."
On the issue of negotiations with the Taliban, Karzai said that he met with Taliban leaders in "one or two" meetings about three months ago, but that the talks were in a nascent stage and amounted to little more than "the exchange of desires for peace."
He would not name the insurgents he has met but described them as "very high" level, and said that he believed that Taliban leader Mohammad Omar has been informed of the discussions.
"They feel the same way as we do here. That too many people are suffering for no reason. Their own families are suffering," he said, and it is this "national suffering they'd like to address with us."
Karzai said he was grateful to the American people for their support, particularly the flood of taxpayer money for new schools, roads, clinics and other development projects. But he questioned the Obama administration's motives. Karzai said he has become accustomed to the barrage of criticism against him and his family - allegations including graft and drug trafficking. The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, wrote in a cable last year that Karzai was not an adequate strategic partner and warned against sending troops to bolster such a troubled government.
"If a partner means a silent spectator of events conducted by Washington, if that kind of partner you seek, well, I'm not that partner," Karzai said. "Nor will be the Afghan people."
Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service
KABUL- President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday that the United States must reduce the visibility and intensity of its military operations in Afghanistan and end the increased U.S. Special Operations forces night raids that aggravate Afghans and could exacerbate the Taliban insurgency.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Karzai said that he wanted American troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes and that the long-term presence of so many foreign soldiers would only worsen the war. His comments placed him at odds with U.S. commander Gen. David H. Petraeus, who has made capture-and-kill missions a central component of his counterinsurgency strategy, and who claims the 30,000 new troops have made substantial progress in beating back the insurgency.
"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."
Karzai's comments come as American officials are playing down the importance of July 2011 - the date President Obama set to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan - in favor of a combat mission ending in 2014. The Afghan president has placed himself squarely in favor of a lighter military footprint as the administration reviews the progress of the Afghan war and debate intensifies about the pace of the withdrawal. Karzai says his troops are ready to take more responsibility for their own security.
In an hour-long interview with Post reporters and editors in his office in Kabul, Karzai said he was speaking out not to criticize the United States but in the belief that candor could improve what he called a "grudging" relationship between the countries. He described his own deep skepticism with American policy in Afghanistan - from last year's presidential election, which he said was manipulated by U.S. officials, to his conviction that government corruption has been caused by billions of American dollars funneled to unaccountable contractors. And he said Afghans have lost patience with the presence of American soldiers in their homes and armored vehicles on their roads.
Karzai has long been publicly critical of civilian casualties at the hands of U.S. and NATO troops and has repeatedly called for curtailing night raids into Afghan homes. Under Petraeus and his predecessor, such raids by U.S. Special Operations troops have increased sharply, to about 200 a month, or six times the number being carried out 18 months ago, said a senior NATO military official, who requested anonymity so that he could speak candidly about the situation. These operations capture or kill their target 50 to 60 percent of the time, the official said.
To American commanders, the nighttime strike missions are a crucial weapon to capture Taliban commanders, disrupt bomb-making networks and weaken the 30,000-man insurgency in Afghanistan. In the past three months, U.S. Special Operations troops have killed or captured 368 insurgent leaders. On each mission, Afghan commandos accompany U.S. troops and Afghan officers work with the Special Operations command at Bagram Airfield to choose targets, military officials said.
"We understand President Karzai's concerns, but we would not be as far along as we are pressuring the network had it not been for these very precision operations we do at night," the NATO military official said. "I don't see any near-term alternative to this kind of operation."
But Karzai was emphatic that U.S. troops must cease such operations, which he said violate the sanctity of Afghan homes and incite more people to join the insurgency. A senior Afghan official said that Karzai has repeatedly criticized the raids in meetings with Petraeus and that he is seeking veto power over the operations. The Afghan government does not have the type of legal arrangement that the Iraqi government has with U.S. forces to approve particular military operations.
"The raids are a problem always. They were a problem then, they are a problem now. They have to go away," Karzai said. "The Afghan people don't like these raids, if there is any raid it has to be done by the Afghan government within the Afghan laws. This is a continuing disagreement between us."
Karzai, who said during his inaugural speech last year that he would like to have full Afghan security control by 2014, said that the U.S. military "should and could" draw down its forces next year. He acknowledged that an abrupt withdrawal would be dangerous, but said that American soldiers should confine themselves more to their bases and limit themselves to necessary operations along the Pakistani border. He said he wanted the U.S. government to apply more pressure on Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan while focusing on development projects and civilian assistance in Afghanistan.
Although he did not say how many U.S. troops he would prefer in Afghanistan, Karzai said that at current levels "you cannot sustain that." There are about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
"It's not desirable for the Afghan people either to have 100,000 or more foreign troops going around the country endlessly," he said.
"We'd like to have a long-term relationship with America, a substantial relationship with America, that's what the Afghan people want. But we'd like the Afghan countryside - villages, homes, towns - not to be so overwhelmed with the military presence. Life has to be seen [as] more normal," he added.
Insurgents have stepped up their attacks this year to record levels. In the past two days, a car bomb exploded in Kabul and fighters attacked a NATO observation post at the Jalalabad airport in eastern Afghanistan. Saturday's early morning airport assault sparked a lengthy gun battle that left six insurgents dead, including two wearing explosive vests.
As the American military campaign has moved into high gear, U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned with the failure of the Afghan government to root out corruption and provide services to the people. Karzai deflected this criticism by arguing that much of his government's corruption problem comes from the American money that is pumped into the country outside the control of Afghan ministries and frittered away on private security firms that undermine the authority of Afghan security forces. During the Soviet occupation, he said, ministers lived in modest housing blocks and the foreign money flowed through the Afghan government.
"How come we are now so luxury-oriented today?" he asked. "The transparency of contracts is not there. Why is the U.S. government giving contracts to the sons and relatives of officials of the Afghan government? We don't do those contracts. I don't have an authority over a penny of those contracts. . . . and we've been protesting against this for years."
On the issue of negotiations with the Taliban, Karzai said that he met with Taliban leaders in "one or two" meetings about three months ago, but that the talks were in a nascent stage and amounted to little more than "the exchange of desires for peace."
He would not name the insurgents he has met but described them as "very high" level, and said that he believed that Taliban leader Mohammad Omar has been informed of the discussions.
"They feel the same way as we do here. That too many people are suffering for no reason. Their own families are suffering," he said, and it is this "national suffering they'd like to address with us."
Karzai said he was grateful to the American people for their support, particularly the flood of taxpayer money for new schools, roads, clinics and other development projects. But he questioned the Obama administration's motives. Karzai said he has become accustomed to the barrage of criticism against him and his family - allegations including graft and drug trafficking. The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, wrote in a cable last year that Karzai was not an adequate strategic partner and warned against sending troops to bolster such a troubled government.
"If a partner means a silent spectator of events conducted by Washington, if that kind of partner you seek, well, I'm not that partner," Karzai said. "Nor will be the Afghan people."
Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Gingrich to Conservatives: "We Have to Decide we're Going to Replace the Left" WILL THIS FAT LOSER NEVER LEAVE?
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics last month. Gingrich is considered a possible presidential candidate for 2012.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich urged his fellow conservatives on Thursday to take steps to "replace the left" by January 2021.
Speaking in Dallas, Gingrich said that Republicans should think in terms of a ten-year plan, according to CNN. Emphasizing that planning for just the next two years won't be enough, his plan may or may not include Gingrich running in 2012.
Gingrich has been quoted saying that he, along with his wife Callista, will announce early next year if he will throw himself into the ring for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
The former speaker of the House said his goals are beyond just taking the White House for Republicans in 2012.
"If we truly want a wave of change that ends a majority system that has been around since 1932, the wave can't be the Oval Office," Gingrich said to the conservative crowd. "The only way the presidency matters is if there's a wave of citizens."
He went on to urge conservatives to continue their quest for a return to power at all levels.
"Rejection doesn't fix a center-left coalition," the former Republican congressman from Georgia said. "We have to decide we're going to replace the left."
Gingrich's speech also lambasted Democrats' economic policy in his speech, further fueling speculation that he may run against President Obama .
"The choice we want to offer in 2012 is very straight," Gingrich said, according to CNN. "If you think your children ought to have food stamps, you have a party you should vote for. And if you think your children ought to have a paycheck and own their own business, you have a party you ought to vote for."
Gingrich is currently on tour this week supporting his new book, "Valley Forge," a historical novel about George Washington. By the end of November, the book tour will have made stops in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Iowa, all important states come election season.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich urged his fellow conservatives on Thursday to take steps to "replace the left" by January 2021.
Speaking in Dallas, Gingrich said that Republicans should think in terms of a ten-year plan, according to CNN. Emphasizing that planning for just the next two years won't be enough, his plan may or may not include Gingrich running in 2012.
Gingrich has been quoted saying that he, along with his wife Callista, will announce early next year if he will throw himself into the ring for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
The former speaker of the House said his goals are beyond just taking the White House for Republicans in 2012.
"If we truly want a wave of change that ends a majority system that has been around since 1932, the wave can't be the Oval Office," Gingrich said to the conservative crowd. "The only way the presidency matters is if there's a wave of citizens."
He went on to urge conservatives to continue their quest for a return to power at all levels.
"Rejection doesn't fix a center-left coalition," the former Republican congressman from Georgia said. "We have to decide we're going to replace the left."
Gingrich's speech also lambasted Democrats' economic policy in his speech, further fueling speculation that he may run against President Obama .
"The choice we want to offer in 2012 is very straight," Gingrich said, according to CNN. "If you think your children ought to have food stamps, you have a party you should vote for. And if you think your children ought to have a paycheck and own their own business, you have a party you ought to vote for."
Gingrich is currently on tour this week supporting his new book, "Valley Forge," a historical novel about George Washington. By the end of November, the book tour will have made stops in Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Iowa, all important states come election season.
Friday, November 12, 2010
George Soros His Big Sarah Palin Connection
Glenn Beck's George Soros Expose Missed One Surprising Thing: His Big Sarah Palin Connection
Glenn Beck's epic takedown of George Soros left out something interesting.
One of Sarah Palin's top aids, Randy Scheunemann, has been on Soros' payroll for years.
From Salon:
Given Soros' alleged role plotting to destroy the United States, Beck and his Fox viewership might be surprised to learn that one of Sarah Palin's top aides, [Scheunemann], has been on Soros' payroll for years.
It's weird that Beck didn't mention this.
One, because it would only help further his conspiracy theory: that Soros is plotting to break the US economy the same way he broke the British pound.
And if Soros is surreptitiously backing Palin, and she might become President... Then the U.S. will come to an even quicker, more destructive end!
Before anyone gets too worried that this actually might happen, know that it was the Soros-backed Open Society that funded Scheunemann, and that they gave the money to him to lobby for free rights in Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi, who was voted into power years ago, is still under house arrest.
Scheunemann and a partner have since 2003 been paid over $150,000 by one of Soros' organizations for lobbying work, according to federal disclosure forms reviewed by Salon. The lobbying, which has continued to the present, centers on legislation involving sanctions and democracy promotion in Burma.
Glenn Beck's epic takedown of George Soros left out something interesting.
One of Sarah Palin's top aids, Randy Scheunemann, has been on Soros' payroll for years.
From Salon:
Given Soros' alleged role plotting to destroy the United States, Beck and his Fox viewership might be surprised to learn that one of Sarah Palin's top aides, [Scheunemann], has been on Soros' payroll for years.
It's weird that Beck didn't mention this.
One, because it would only help further his conspiracy theory: that Soros is plotting to break the US economy the same way he broke the British pound.
And if Soros is surreptitiously backing Palin, and she might become President... Then the U.S. will come to an even quicker, more destructive end!
Before anyone gets too worried that this actually might happen, know that it was the Soros-backed Open Society that funded Scheunemann, and that they gave the money to him to lobby for free rights in Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi, who was voted into power years ago, is still under house arrest.
Scheunemann and a partner have since 2003 been paid over $150,000 by one of Soros' organizations for lobbying work, according to federal disclosure forms reviewed by Salon. The lobbying, which has continued to the present, centers on legislation involving sanctions and democracy promotion in Burma.
Media Matters: weekly update on why I hate FOX NEWS? Channel
Why are Fox News employees allowed to plug their financial interests without disclosure?
Last December, Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson interviewed New York Yankee Derek Jeter and, as the New York Times wrote, "lavished praise on the Yankee shortstop." At no point did Fox News disclose to viewers that Carlson's husband is Jeter's agent.
Afterward, Fox News reportedly told the Times that a disclosure should have been made, and a network source claimed management was "stunned" by the way the interview was handled.
Yet on matters weightier than baseball, Fox News has consistently shown it has little interest in asking its on-air talent to disclose their financial interests in the topics they discuss.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal noted that Glenn Beck has been doing "live-read" advertisements on his radio program -- which is not produced by Fox News -- for FreedomWorks. On Fox News, Glenn Beck prominently featured the organization and its president in an October show. Beck never mentioned his financial connections with FreedomWorks. Video of the appearance, along with a "partner with Glenn Beck" promotion, is currently featured on the front page of FreedomWorks' website
Beck's help for radio sponsors doesn't stop there. As Media Matters' Zachary Pleat noted, Beck has done paid radio ads for Food Insurance, and turned those radio ads into monologues for his Fox News show about rising commodities prices (without the explicit pitch for the company).
Beck's had practice doing this radio-to-television shilling: As Media Matters documented last year, Goldline International has an "exclusive" sponsorship deal with Beck's radio program. While Goldline sponsors advertisements on his radio program, Beck tells Fox News viewers to invest in gold to "protect" themselves from a possible economic collapse. (Such radio sponsorships are reportedly appropriate for Fox News hosts, though being a "paid spokesman" and getting paid individually by a company is not.)
Fox News contributors also directly discuss and promote their clients on-air. Take the cases of Fox Newsers Doug Schoen and Frank Luntz. On October 15, Schoen criticized the Democrats' strategy of making a campaign issue out of U.S Chamber of Commerce's funding sources. On October 6, Luntz applauded an ad by the Chamber and said the group has "done some of the best advertising across the country."
At no point did Fox News mention that Schoen and Luntz work for -- and presumably are paid by -- the Chamber. Luntz's website touts the Chamber as one of his clients.
The Schoen/Luntz situation isn't unique. In April of 2009, for instance, Fox News military analyst Tom McInerney -- last seen raising questions about Obama's birth certificate -- criticized the Obama administration's decision to procure only four more F-22 fighters. At no point did Fox News disclose that McInerney may have had a financial reason to be upset about the F-22 decision: he reportedly served as a consultant for the Northrop Grumman Corp., which is a major subcontractor on the F-22.
During the health care debate, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News - and elsewhere - to criticize the public option and regulation of insurance companies. Fox News and other media outlets have neglected to mention that Gingrich runs and reportedly profits from the Center for Health Transformation, a for-profit organization that receives annual membership fees from several major health insurance companies. In other words, Gingrich was speaking against policies that would have hurt companies that were paying his group.
Fox News contributor Rick Santorum appeared on the network repeatedly to discuss health care reform without disclosing that he serves on the board of directors for Universal Health Services, a Fortune 500 health care company headed by Republican and public option opponent Alan B. Miller. Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros also repeatedly discussed health care reform on the network. Her corporate biography states that she is a "Vice President with Sloane and Company where she specializes in crisis communications, healthcare, and public affairs clients." (The firm's website does not specifically state which clients Tantaros works with.)
The disclosure problem extends to Fox News guests. In March, America Live's Megyn Kelly hosted a "fair and balanced" debate that featured Chris Wilson, who trashed health care reform and was identified as a "GOP pollster and strategist." At no point did Kelly point out that Wilson polls for companies that would be affected by the health care bill he criticized. Fox News also failed to disclose the conflicting interests of anti-healthcare reform interviewees Frank Donatelli, Mary Grealy, and former Sen.-turned Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lobbyist John Breaux (D-LA).
And there can be no conversation about conflict-of-interest problems without mentioning Fox News contributor Dick Morris. In at least two Beck-like schemes, Morris has received financial payments from GOP-aligned groups advertising on his email newsletter, and then repeatedly promoted and fundraised for those two groups on Fox News without disclosing the payments.
Fox News was "stunned" about Jeter and Carlson, but is apparently unconcerned about Morris. In 2008, questions were raised about Morris promoting the National Republican Trust PAC, which has paid him at least $24,000. Fox News offered no response to a reporter's inquiry, instead deferring questions to Morris.
Unfortunately, while Fox News may have some of the most prominent conflict-of-interest disclosure problems on television, concern shouldn't be limited just to them. Media Matters has regularly called out non-Fox News outlets for similar failures, and the Times article noting the Fox & Friends conflict also reported on disclosure failures by NBC's Today.
In February, The Nation found that since 2007, "at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials -- people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests -- have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them."
Last December, Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson interviewed New York Yankee Derek Jeter and, as the New York Times wrote, "lavished praise on the Yankee shortstop." At no point did Fox News disclose to viewers that Carlson's husband is Jeter's agent.
Afterward, Fox News reportedly told the Times that a disclosure should have been made, and a network source claimed management was "stunned" by the way the interview was handled.
Yet on matters weightier than baseball, Fox News has consistently shown it has little interest in asking its on-air talent to disclose their financial interests in the topics they discuss.
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal noted that Glenn Beck has been doing "live-read" advertisements on his radio program -- which is not produced by Fox News -- for FreedomWorks. On Fox News, Glenn Beck prominently featured the organization and its president in an October show. Beck never mentioned his financial connections with FreedomWorks. Video of the appearance, along with a "partner with Glenn Beck" promotion, is currently featured on the front page of FreedomWorks' website
Beck's help for radio sponsors doesn't stop there. As Media Matters' Zachary Pleat noted, Beck has done paid radio ads for Food Insurance, and turned those radio ads into monologues for his Fox News show about rising commodities prices (without the explicit pitch for the company).
Beck's had practice doing this radio-to-television shilling: As Media Matters documented last year, Goldline International has an "exclusive" sponsorship deal with Beck's radio program. While Goldline sponsors advertisements on his radio program, Beck tells Fox News viewers to invest in gold to "protect" themselves from a possible economic collapse. (Such radio sponsorships are reportedly appropriate for Fox News hosts, though being a "paid spokesman" and getting paid individually by a company is not.)
Fox News contributors also directly discuss and promote their clients on-air. Take the cases of Fox Newsers Doug Schoen and Frank Luntz. On October 15, Schoen criticized the Democrats' strategy of making a campaign issue out of U.S Chamber of Commerce's funding sources. On October 6, Luntz applauded an ad by the Chamber and said the group has "done some of the best advertising across the country."
At no point did Fox News mention that Schoen and Luntz work for -- and presumably are paid by -- the Chamber. Luntz's website touts the Chamber as one of his clients.
The Schoen/Luntz situation isn't unique. In April of 2009, for instance, Fox News military analyst Tom McInerney -- last seen raising questions about Obama's birth certificate -- criticized the Obama administration's decision to procure only four more F-22 fighters. At no point did Fox News disclose that McInerney may have had a financial reason to be upset about the F-22 decision: he reportedly served as a consultant for the Northrop Grumman Corp., which is a major subcontractor on the F-22.
During the health care debate, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News - and elsewhere - to criticize the public option and regulation of insurance companies. Fox News and other media outlets have neglected to mention that Gingrich runs and reportedly profits from the Center for Health Transformation, a for-profit organization that receives annual membership fees from several major health insurance companies. In other words, Gingrich was speaking against policies that would have hurt companies that were paying his group.
Fox News contributor Rick Santorum appeared on the network repeatedly to discuss health care reform without disclosing that he serves on the board of directors for Universal Health Services, a Fortune 500 health care company headed by Republican and public option opponent Alan B. Miller. Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros also repeatedly discussed health care reform on the network. Her corporate biography states that she is a "Vice President with Sloane and Company where she specializes in crisis communications, healthcare, and public affairs clients." (The firm's website does not specifically state which clients Tantaros works with.)
The disclosure problem extends to Fox News guests. In March, America Live's Megyn Kelly hosted a "fair and balanced" debate that featured Chris Wilson, who trashed health care reform and was identified as a "GOP pollster and strategist." At no point did Kelly point out that Wilson polls for companies that would be affected by the health care bill he criticized. Fox News also failed to disclose the conflicting interests of anti-healthcare reform interviewees Frank Donatelli, Mary Grealy, and former Sen.-turned Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lobbyist John Breaux (D-LA).
And there can be no conversation about conflict-of-interest problems without mentioning Fox News contributor Dick Morris. In at least two Beck-like schemes, Morris has received financial payments from GOP-aligned groups advertising on his email newsletter, and then repeatedly promoted and fundraised for those two groups on Fox News without disclosing the payments.
Fox News was "stunned" about Jeter and Carlson, but is apparently unconcerned about Morris. In 2008, questions were raised about Morris promoting the National Republican Trust PAC, which has paid him at least $24,000. Fox News offered no response to a reporter's inquiry, instead deferring questions to Morris.
Unfortunately, while Fox News may have some of the most prominent conflict-of-interest disclosure problems on television, concern shouldn't be limited just to them. Media Matters has regularly called out non-Fox News outlets for similar failures, and the Times article noting the Fox & Friends conflict also reported on disclosure failures by NBC's Today.
In February, The Nation found that since 2007, "at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials -- people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests -- have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them."
Glenn Beck's Anti-Semitic Attacks
Anti-Semitism, like all ideologies, tells a story about the world. It’s a story about almost occult Jewish power, about cabals that manipulate world events for their own gain. In classic anti-Semitic narratives, Jews control both the elites and the masses; they’re responsible for the communist revolution and the speculative excesses of capitalism. Their goal is to undermine society so that they can take over.
Through the lens of anti-Semitism, social division, runaway inflation, and moral breakdown all make sense because they all have the same cause. Nazi propaganda called Jews drahtzieher—wire-pullers. They constitute a power above and beyond ordinary government authority. “There is a super-government which is allied to no government, which is free from them all, and yet which has its hand in them all,” Henry Ford wrote in The International Jew.
Glenn Beck and George Soros. (AP Photos) If you know this history, you’ll understand why Glenn Beck’s two-part “exposé” on George Soros, whom Beck calls “The Puppet Master,” was so shocking, even by Beck’s degraded standards. The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before.
“There is a crisis collapsing our economy—George Soros,” Beck said on Tuesday’s show. “When the administration and progressives look for a savior to step in and save the day—George Soros… He’s pulled no punches about the end game. It’s one world government, the end of America's status as the prevailing world power—but why?” Because, Beck suggests, Soros wants to rule us all like a God: “Soros has admitted in the past he doesn't believe in God, but that's perhaps because he thinks he is.”
Soros, a billionaire financier and patron of liberal causes, has long been an object of hatred on the right. But Beck went beyond demonizing him; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He described Soros as the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a “shadow government” that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment. Obama is his “puppet,” Beck says. Soros has even “infiltrated the churches.” He foments social unrest and economic distress so he can bring down governments, all for his own financial gain. “Four times before,” Beck warned. “We’ll be number five.”
Beck went beyond demonizing Soros; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It’s true, of course, that Soros has had a hand in bringing down governments—communist, authoritarian governments. Beck seems to be assuming a colossal level of ignorance on the part of his viewers when he informs them, “Along with currencies, Soros also collapses regimes. With his Open Society Fund… Soros has helped fund the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia. He also helped to engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. So what is his target now? Us. America.”
Beck’s implication is that there was something sinister in Soros’ support for anti-communist civil society organizations in the former Soviet Union. Further, he sees such support as evidence that Soros will engineer a communist coup here in the United States. This kind of thinking only makes sense within the conspiratorial mind-set of classic anti-Semitism, in which Jews threaten all governments equally. And as a wealthy Jew with a distinct Eastern European accent, Soros is a perfect target for such theories.
To inoculate himself against charges of anti-Semitism, Beck hurled them at Soros, pointing out that he’s an atheist and a critic of Israel. He accused Soros of helping Nazis steal Jewish property as a teenager and of feeling no remorse about it. In fact, when Soros was 14 in Nazi-occupied Hungary, his father bribed an agriculture official to pretend that the boy was his Christian godson. Soros once had to accompany his protector to inventory a confiscated Jewish estate. Asked by 60 Minutes if he felt guilty about it, he said no, because he wasn’t at fault. The slander that he was a Nazi collaborator has proliferated on the right ever since.
It’s entirely possible that Beck has waded into anti-Semitic waters inadvertently, that he picked up toxic ideas from his right-wing demimonde without realizing their anti-Jewish provenance. Early on Wednesday’s show, Beck cited the “Prime Minister of Malaysia” on Soros’ villainy. As Media Matters pointed out, he was almost certainly talking about former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Maybe he doesn’t know that Mohamad also said, “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew.”
“There’s a difference between first-degree murder and vehicular homicide, which is intentionality,” says J.J. Goldberg, a columnist and former editor in chief of The Forward, America’s leading Jewish newspaper. Goldberg wasn’t convinced that Beck meant to attack Jews. Nevertheless, he described the show as “as close as I’ve heard on mainstream television to fascism.”
On Thursday morning, the Anti-Defamation League, which exists to combat anti-Semitism, finally condemned Beck. Earlier, I’d criticized the group for its silence, a change that Todd Gutnick, the ADL’s director of media relations, fiercely disputed. “Sometimes the ADL likes to consider what it’s going to say before it says it,” he said. “In this case we wanted to see the totality of what he was doing on the air before speaking out.”
In a statement, Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director and a Holocaust survivor himself, expressed outrage over Beck’s charges about Soros’ behavior as a boy in Nazi-occupied Hungary, which Beck made on television on Tuesday and again on the radio Wednesday. “Glenn Beck’s description of George Soros’ actions during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top,” said Foxman. “For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say—inaccurately—that there’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, as part of a broader assault on Mr. Soros, that’s horrific… To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant.”
Michelle Goldberg is a journalist based in New York.
She is the award-winning author of The New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World.
Through the lens of anti-Semitism, social division, runaway inflation, and moral breakdown all make sense because they all have the same cause. Nazi propaganda called Jews drahtzieher—wire-pullers. They constitute a power above and beyond ordinary government authority. “There is a super-government which is allied to no government, which is free from them all, and yet which has its hand in them all,” Henry Ford wrote in The International Jew.
Glenn Beck and George Soros. (AP Photos) If you know this history, you’ll understand why Glenn Beck’s two-part “exposé” on George Soros, whom Beck calls “The Puppet Master,” was so shocking, even by Beck’s degraded standards. The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before.
“There is a crisis collapsing our economy—George Soros,” Beck said on Tuesday’s show. “When the administration and progressives look for a savior to step in and save the day—George Soros… He’s pulled no punches about the end game. It’s one world government, the end of America's status as the prevailing world power—but why?” Because, Beck suggests, Soros wants to rule us all like a God: “Soros has admitted in the past he doesn't believe in God, but that's perhaps because he thinks he is.”
Soros, a billionaire financier and patron of liberal causes, has long been an object of hatred on the right. But Beck went beyond demonizing him; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He described Soros as the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a “shadow government” that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment. Obama is his “puppet,” Beck says. Soros has even “infiltrated the churches.” He foments social unrest and economic distress so he can bring down governments, all for his own financial gain. “Four times before,” Beck warned. “We’ll be number five.”
Beck went beyond demonizing Soros; he cast him as the protagonist in an updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It’s true, of course, that Soros has had a hand in bringing down governments—communist, authoritarian governments. Beck seems to be assuming a colossal level of ignorance on the part of his viewers when he informs them, “Along with currencies, Soros also collapses regimes. With his Open Society Fund… Soros has helped fund the Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia. He also helped to engineer coups in Slovakia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. So what is his target now? Us. America.”
Beck’s implication is that there was something sinister in Soros’ support for anti-communist civil society organizations in the former Soviet Union. Further, he sees such support as evidence that Soros will engineer a communist coup here in the United States. This kind of thinking only makes sense within the conspiratorial mind-set of classic anti-Semitism, in which Jews threaten all governments equally. And as a wealthy Jew with a distinct Eastern European accent, Soros is a perfect target for such theories.
To inoculate himself against charges of anti-Semitism, Beck hurled them at Soros, pointing out that he’s an atheist and a critic of Israel. He accused Soros of helping Nazis steal Jewish property as a teenager and of feeling no remorse about it. In fact, when Soros was 14 in Nazi-occupied Hungary, his father bribed an agriculture official to pretend that the boy was his Christian godson. Soros once had to accompany his protector to inventory a confiscated Jewish estate. Asked by 60 Minutes if he felt guilty about it, he said no, because he wasn’t at fault. The slander that he was a Nazi collaborator has proliferated on the right ever since.
It’s entirely possible that Beck has waded into anti-Semitic waters inadvertently, that he picked up toxic ideas from his right-wing demimonde without realizing their anti-Jewish provenance. Early on Wednesday’s show, Beck cited the “Prime Minister of Malaysia” on Soros’ villainy. As Media Matters pointed out, he was almost certainly talking about former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. Maybe he doesn’t know that Mohamad also said, “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew.”
“There’s a difference between first-degree murder and vehicular homicide, which is intentionality,” says J.J. Goldberg, a columnist and former editor in chief of The Forward, America’s leading Jewish newspaper. Goldberg wasn’t convinced that Beck meant to attack Jews. Nevertheless, he described the show as “as close as I’ve heard on mainstream television to fascism.”
On Thursday morning, the Anti-Defamation League, which exists to combat anti-Semitism, finally condemned Beck. Earlier, I’d criticized the group for its silence, a change that Todd Gutnick, the ADL’s director of media relations, fiercely disputed. “Sometimes the ADL likes to consider what it’s going to say before it says it,” he said. “In this case we wanted to see the totality of what he was doing on the air before speaking out.”
In a statement, Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director and a Holocaust survivor himself, expressed outrage over Beck’s charges about Soros’ behavior as a boy in Nazi-occupied Hungary, which Beck made on television on Tuesday and again on the radio Wednesday. “Glenn Beck’s description of George Soros’ actions during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top,” said Foxman. “For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say—inaccurately—that there’s a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, as part of a broader assault on Mr. Soros, that’s horrific… To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant.”
Michelle Goldberg is a journalist based in New York.
She is the award-winning author of The New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World.
Cindy McCain is smarter and has a bigger heart than her silly husband!
Cindy McCain does video opposing DADT, accuses 'our government' of sending signal that bullying is okay - her hubbie is the lead defender of DADT
John McCain is leading the filibuster against the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" "repeal" legislation in the Senate (it's not an actual repeal, but we'll leave that for another time). Today, Cindy McCain joined a number of celebrities in a video about gay youth suicide and bullying. Mrs. McCain's part of the video condemned DADT and then accused our government of sending bullies a message that what they do is okay.
The woman basically accused her husband of sharing the blame for gay kids killing themselves.
I'm astonished. And impressed as hell.Posted by John Aravosis
John McCain is leading the filibuster against the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" "repeal" legislation in the Senate (it's not an actual repeal, but we'll leave that for another time). Today, Cindy McCain joined a number of celebrities in a video about gay youth suicide and bullying. Mrs. McCain's part of the video condemned DADT and then accused our government of sending bullies a message that what they do is okay.
The woman basically accused her husband of sharing the blame for gay kids killing themselves.
I'm astonished. And impressed as hell.Posted by John Aravosis
ATTENTION Cat Lovers!
Scientists learn physics behind how cats drink water without getting wet
As all cat lovers know well, Felis domestica is a marvel of balance, subtlety and other hidden elegances.
Prepare to learn of another remarkable attribute: Four researchers have painstakingly filmed, analyzed and determined how it is that a cat can drink water while (unlike a dog) keeping its chin and whiskers pleasingly dry.
The answer involves an exquisite demonstration of physics: The cat, in effect, balances the forces of gravity against the forces of inertia, and so quenches its thirst.
While a dog curls its tongue like a ladle to collect the water and then pull up what it can, a cat curves its tongue under and slightly back, leaving the top surface of the tip of the tongue to lightly touch the liquid. The cat then raises its tongue rapidly, creating an upward mini-stream of water. The cat snaps its mouth shut and the water is captured before the countervailing force of gravity pulls it down.
An average house cat, the team found, can make four of these mini-streams per second.
"What we found is that the cat uses fluid dynamics and physics in a way to absolutely optimize tongue lapping and water collection," said Jeffrey Aristoff, now at Princeton University but who was one of the four researchers who began the study out of curiosity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Nobody had ever studied it before, so nobody knew how the water went from the bowl into the cat's mouth," he said. Not surprisingly, they found that cats lap at precisely the rate that would get them the most water for the effort expended. The team's results are described in an article released Thursday by the journal Science.
As with most basic scientific research, the ultimate usefulness of this knowledge is uncertain. But it is not, the researchers say, hard to imagine some downstream applications, perhaps in robotics.
Something as complex as a cat drinking water doesn't get unraveled and turned into a paper at the nation's top science journal overnight. It was almost four years ago that Roman Stocker, an associate professor at MIT's department of civil and environmental engineering, became interested in how his cat, Cutta Cutta (or "Stars Stars" translated from an Australian aboriginal language), drank. His enthusiasm spread to Aristoff, Sunghwan Jung, now an engineer at Virginia Tech, and Pedro Reis, a physicist who works on the nature of soft solids at MIT.
"Science allows us to look at natural processes with a different eye and to understand how things work, even if that's figuring out how my cat laps his breakfast," Stocker said. "It's a job, but also a passion, and this project for me was a high point in teamwork and creativity. We did it without any funding, without any graduate students, without much of the usual apparatus that science is done with nowadays."
The four researchers went to several zoos to observe and film tigers, jaguars, lions and ocelots, and went to YouTube to find videos of bobcats, cheetahs, leopards and lionesses drinking in the wild.
They found the same basic drinking mechanism in all the cats, though the larger ones (with larger tongues) slowed their lapping to best take advantage of the physics at play - that is, the balance between upward movement of the water set off by the cat's tongue (the inertia) and the gravity pulling the water down. A lion, Aristoff said, laps about two times per second.
"In the beginning of the project, we weren't fully confident that fluid mechanics played a role in cats' drinking," said Jung, whose research focuses on soft bodies, such as fish, and the fluids surrounding them. "But as the project went on, we were surprised and amused by the beauty of the fluid mechanics involved in this system."
Aristoff explained the dynamics at work: You're in the shower and turn on the hot water. The steam starts to rise, and that upward flow lowers the pressure levels at your knees. The result is that the inside of the shower curtain will billow in toward you, unless you have some weight attached to the curtain to stop it. That interplay of motion and pressure parallels the dynamic that quenches the cat's thirst.
Although the work on cat drinking was done for professional pleasure - it wasn't funded by a grant, and the only expense was high-quality video cameras - the researchers said there could be useful implications gleaned from their "fundamental" research.
Engineers, for example, are moving into the field of "soft robots" and are working on the basic properties of nonmetallic parts that may play a role. Aristoff said there's great interest in creating robots that can walk on water, and this research could help.
This new cat-drinking research follows by 70 years related work done by Harold "Doc" Edgerton, who first used strobe lights to capture stopped action on film. His photography, which uncovered some of the secrets of how cats drink, was featured in an Academy Award-winning short called "Quicker'n a Wink." The four current-day researchers used equipment at an MIT center for high-speed photography named after Edgerton, who was a much-honored MIT professor of electrical engineering for five decades.
As all cat lovers know well, Felis domestica is a marvel of balance, subtlety and other hidden elegances.
Prepare to learn of another remarkable attribute: Four researchers have painstakingly filmed, analyzed and determined how it is that a cat can drink water while (unlike a dog) keeping its chin and whiskers pleasingly dry.
The answer involves an exquisite demonstration of physics: The cat, in effect, balances the forces of gravity against the forces of inertia, and so quenches its thirst.
While a dog curls its tongue like a ladle to collect the water and then pull up what it can, a cat curves its tongue under and slightly back, leaving the top surface of the tip of the tongue to lightly touch the liquid. The cat then raises its tongue rapidly, creating an upward mini-stream of water. The cat snaps its mouth shut and the water is captured before the countervailing force of gravity pulls it down.
An average house cat, the team found, can make four of these mini-streams per second.
"What we found is that the cat uses fluid dynamics and physics in a way to absolutely optimize tongue lapping and water collection," said Jeffrey Aristoff, now at Princeton University but who was one of the four researchers who began the study out of curiosity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Nobody had ever studied it before, so nobody knew how the water went from the bowl into the cat's mouth," he said. Not surprisingly, they found that cats lap at precisely the rate that would get them the most water for the effort expended. The team's results are described in an article released Thursday by the journal Science.
As with most basic scientific research, the ultimate usefulness of this knowledge is uncertain. But it is not, the researchers say, hard to imagine some downstream applications, perhaps in robotics.
Something as complex as a cat drinking water doesn't get unraveled and turned into a paper at the nation's top science journal overnight. It was almost four years ago that Roman Stocker, an associate professor at MIT's department of civil and environmental engineering, became interested in how his cat, Cutta Cutta (or "Stars Stars" translated from an Australian aboriginal language), drank. His enthusiasm spread to Aristoff, Sunghwan Jung, now an engineer at Virginia Tech, and Pedro Reis, a physicist who works on the nature of soft solids at MIT.
"Science allows us to look at natural processes with a different eye and to understand how things work, even if that's figuring out how my cat laps his breakfast," Stocker said. "It's a job, but also a passion, and this project for me was a high point in teamwork and creativity. We did it without any funding, without any graduate students, without much of the usual apparatus that science is done with nowadays."
The four researchers went to several zoos to observe and film tigers, jaguars, lions and ocelots, and went to YouTube to find videos of bobcats, cheetahs, leopards and lionesses drinking in the wild.
They found the same basic drinking mechanism in all the cats, though the larger ones (with larger tongues) slowed their lapping to best take advantage of the physics at play - that is, the balance between upward movement of the water set off by the cat's tongue (the inertia) and the gravity pulling the water down. A lion, Aristoff said, laps about two times per second.
"In the beginning of the project, we weren't fully confident that fluid mechanics played a role in cats' drinking," said Jung, whose research focuses on soft bodies, such as fish, and the fluids surrounding them. "But as the project went on, we were surprised and amused by the beauty of the fluid mechanics involved in this system."
Aristoff explained the dynamics at work: You're in the shower and turn on the hot water. The steam starts to rise, and that upward flow lowers the pressure levels at your knees. The result is that the inside of the shower curtain will billow in toward you, unless you have some weight attached to the curtain to stop it. That interplay of motion and pressure parallels the dynamic that quenches the cat's thirst.
Although the work on cat drinking was done for professional pleasure - it wasn't funded by a grant, and the only expense was high-quality video cameras - the researchers said there could be useful implications gleaned from their "fundamental" research.
Engineers, for example, are moving into the field of "soft robots" and are working on the basic properties of nonmetallic parts that may play a role. Aristoff said there's great interest in creating robots that can walk on water, and this research could help.
This new cat-drinking research follows by 70 years related work done by Harold "Doc" Edgerton, who first used strobe lights to capture stopped action on film. His photography, which uncovered some of the secrets of how cats drink, was featured in an Academy Award-winning short called "Quicker'n a Wink." The four current-day researchers used equipment at an MIT center for high-speed photography named after Edgerton, who was a much-honored MIT professor of electrical engineering for five decades.
Krazyhammer FINALLY gets one right! CONGRATS there is still hope.
Why President Obama is right about India
Much grousing about the expense of President Obama's India trip. This is silly and vindictive. The one thing this country owes its leader is to spare no expense in protecting him. Especially when his first stop is Mumbai, scene of one of the most savage and sustained terror attacks in modern times.
It is protested that Britain's prime minister took a British Air flight when he traveled here in July. So what? To be blunt about it: A once-imperial middle power flies commercial; America flies colossal. Why do you think we built that 747 flying palace emblazoned with the presidential insignia - if not to land to awestruck crowds wherever it goes?
There was grumbling about the White House taking over every room at Mumbai's five-star Taj Mahal Palace hotel. What is the Secret Service to do? Allow suites to be let to, say, groups of Pakistani madrassa instructors?
I will admit that Indian authorities went somewhat overboard when they cut down the coconuts surrounding the Gandhi museum in Mumbai. I am no expert on this, having never been subject to a coconut attack, but it seems to me that a freefalling coconut is no match for an armored car built to withstand anything short of a small nuclear device. Now perhaps the enemy, always racing one step ahead of us, is working on the dreaded RPC - the rocket-propelled coconut. I'm not privy to all the intelligence here, and, try as I may, I could get nothing out of the Coconut Desk at CIA. Nonetheless, to this outsider, the anti-coconut measures seemed a bit excessive.
But I digress. The only alternative to drawing down the Treasury to move the president around safely is for him not to go at all. And that's not an alternative. Presidential visits are the highest form of diplomacy, and the symbolism alone carries enormous weight. No one remembers what Nixon did in China; what changed the world is that Nixon went to China.
The India visit was particularly necessary in light of Obama's bumbling overenthusiasm in his 2009 trip to China in which he lavished much time, energy and praise upon his hosts and then oddly tried to elevate Beijing to a G-2 partnership, a kind of two-nation world condominium. Worse, however, was Obama suggesting a Chinese role in South Asia - an affront to India's autonomy and regional dominance, and a signal of U.S. acquiescence to Chinese hegemony.
This hegemony is the growing source of tension in Asia today. Modern China is the Germany of a century ago - a rising, expanding, have-not power seeking its place in the sun. The story of the first half of the 20th century was Europe's attempt to manage Germany's rise. We know how that turned out. The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China's expansion.
Nor is this some far-off concern. China's aggressive territorial claims on resource-rich waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are already roiling the neighborhood. Traditionally, Japan has been the major regional counterbalance. But an aging, shrinking Japan can no longer sustain that role. Symbolic of the dramatic shift in power balance between once-poor China and once-dominant Japan was the resolution of their recent maritime crisis. Japan had detained a Chinese captain in a territorial-waters dispute. China imposed a rare-earth mineral embargo. Japan capitulated.
That makes the traditional U.S. role as offshore balancer all the more important. China's neighbors from South Korea all the way around to India are in need of U.S. support of their own efforts at resisting Chinese dominion.
And of all these countries, India, which has fought a border war with China, is the most natural anchor for such a U.S. partnership. It's not just our inherent affinities - being democratic, English-speaking, free-market and dedicated to the rule of law. It is also the coincidence of our strategic imperatives: We both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China.
Which is why Obama's dramatic call for India to be elevated to permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council was so important. However useless and obsolete the United Nations, a Security Council seat carries totemic significance. It elevates India, while helping bind it to us as our most strategic and organic Third World ally.
China is no enemy, but it remains troublingly adversarial. Which is why India must be the center of our Asian diplomacy. And why Obama's trip - coconuts and all - was worth every penny.
WASHINGTON POST Charles Krauthammer
Much grousing about the expense of President Obama's India trip. This is silly and vindictive. The one thing this country owes its leader is to spare no expense in protecting him. Especially when his first stop is Mumbai, scene of one of the most savage and sustained terror attacks in modern times.
It is protested that Britain's prime minister took a British Air flight when he traveled here in July. So what? To be blunt about it: A once-imperial middle power flies commercial; America flies colossal. Why do you think we built that 747 flying palace emblazoned with the presidential insignia - if not to land to awestruck crowds wherever it goes?
There was grumbling about the White House taking over every room at Mumbai's five-star Taj Mahal Palace hotel. What is the Secret Service to do? Allow suites to be let to, say, groups of Pakistani madrassa instructors?
I will admit that Indian authorities went somewhat overboard when they cut down the coconuts surrounding the Gandhi museum in Mumbai. I am no expert on this, having never been subject to a coconut attack, but it seems to me that a freefalling coconut is no match for an armored car built to withstand anything short of a small nuclear device. Now perhaps the enemy, always racing one step ahead of us, is working on the dreaded RPC - the rocket-propelled coconut. I'm not privy to all the intelligence here, and, try as I may, I could get nothing out of the Coconut Desk at CIA. Nonetheless, to this outsider, the anti-coconut measures seemed a bit excessive.
But I digress. The only alternative to drawing down the Treasury to move the president around safely is for him not to go at all. And that's not an alternative. Presidential visits are the highest form of diplomacy, and the symbolism alone carries enormous weight. No one remembers what Nixon did in China; what changed the world is that Nixon went to China.
The India visit was particularly necessary in light of Obama's bumbling overenthusiasm in his 2009 trip to China in which he lavished much time, energy and praise upon his hosts and then oddly tried to elevate Beijing to a G-2 partnership, a kind of two-nation world condominium. Worse, however, was Obama suggesting a Chinese role in South Asia - an affront to India's autonomy and regional dominance, and a signal of U.S. acquiescence to Chinese hegemony.
This hegemony is the growing source of tension in Asia today. Modern China is the Germany of a century ago - a rising, expanding, have-not power seeking its place in the sun. The story of the first half of the 20th century was Europe's attempt to manage Germany's rise. We know how that turned out. The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China's expansion.
Nor is this some far-off concern. China's aggressive territorial claims on resource-rich waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are already roiling the neighborhood. Traditionally, Japan has been the major regional counterbalance. But an aging, shrinking Japan can no longer sustain that role. Symbolic of the dramatic shift in power balance between once-poor China and once-dominant Japan was the resolution of their recent maritime crisis. Japan had detained a Chinese captain in a territorial-waters dispute. China imposed a rare-earth mineral embargo. Japan capitulated.
That makes the traditional U.S. role as offshore balancer all the more important. China's neighbors from South Korea all the way around to India are in need of U.S. support of their own efforts at resisting Chinese dominion.
And of all these countries, India, which has fought a border war with China, is the most natural anchor for such a U.S. partnership. It's not just our inherent affinities - being democratic, English-speaking, free-market and dedicated to the rule of law. It is also the coincidence of our strategic imperatives: We both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China.
Which is why Obama's dramatic call for India to be elevated to permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council was so important. However useless and obsolete the United Nations, a Security Council seat carries totemic significance. It elevates India, while helping bind it to us as our most strategic and organic Third World ally.
China is no enemy, but it remains troublingly adversarial. Which is why India must be the center of our Asian diplomacy. And why Obama's trip - coconuts and all - was worth every penny.
WASHINGTON POST Charles Krauthammer
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