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No Amount of John Travolta-Brand Gatorade Can Cure This Hangover
The movie about drunks and their drunken ways keeps hitting the big time. As does the movie about white people in the jungle. Meanwhile, Eddie Murphy and John Travolta have both seen better days.
1) The Hangover — $33.4 million
Dude. Proving that word-of-mouth is more powerful movie mojo than any marketing trick, tool, or stratagem combined, this $35 million film has earned three times that much in just two weeks. Dropping only about 25% from last weekend's debut barnstorm, this thing is likely to keep going and going and going until it's earned over $200 million and everyone is fattened and wealthy and, yes, drunk. Would you have ever guessed that Heather Graham would be back in the top spot again? Or that Rachel Harris would ever be there for the first time? Or Mike Tyson? This is the stuff of comedy weirdo dreams and, oh lord yes, you can expect a long string of knock-offs. The K-Hole starring Breckin Meyer, anyone?
2) Up — $30.5 million
Lordy, this one can't be stopped either. Pic's already hauled in nearly $190 million, and it hasn't even opened overseas yet. Pixar has a proud history of stomping the international yard, and this flick ought to be no exception. Unless they can't get a good foreign guy to do a decent Ed Asner impression. Because that's really key. Also, Belgian people just don't like balloons. Don't ask them why. They just don't like 'em. And we all know how much the Japanese hate fat boy scouts. A lot.
3) The Taking of Pelham 123 — $25 million
Am I an idiot that I can't figure out just what the fuck subway car the thing is supposed to be? Is it on the 123 line? It doesn't look like it in the trailers. Maybe everyone else was confused too, because this movie just didn't open the way people had hoped it would. And it actually got some decent reviews. I guess the lesson is this: Denzel opens well in the spring or fall or winter, when he doesn't have slobby belching comedians and magic houses to contend with. And John Travolta? Well, I fear the era of John Travolta may have been mortally wounded around the time of Battlefield Earth and never quite recovered. That was when he finally teetered over the brink from kinda unhinged in a cool way (so great in Face/Off!) to just fucking weird and indulgent and completely unhinged in unpleasant way. That said, Old Dogs will do a billion dollars when it opens.
5) Land of the Lost — $9.6 million
Yeesh. This thing is basically dead now. With only some $35 million earned so far, the hundred-million-dollar movie will have to go big overseas (it won't—ferners don't really get our funny stuff) or do crazy on DVD (it won't—people will forget it even exists) to make any sorta profit. So, sad for everyone, but hopefully at least one good thing will come out of this. One hopes that the hideous trend that began maybe fifteen years ago of people looking at kitschy old TV shows and making movies out of them will end. I mean, yeah, The Brady Bunch Movie was kind of funny and... um... wait is that it? What am I forgetting? Lost in Space: Unbelievable trainwreck. Beverly Hillbillies: Un-fucking-watchable. Bewitched: Will, why? Starsky & Hutch: Maybe one funny joke. Miami Vice: Maybe sorta interesting, maybe also extremely boring. Basically what we're saying is: You sure you wanna do this, people producing The A Team?
6) Imagine That — $5.7 million
Buried by an almost completely-silent marketing campaign and then a raft of shitty reviews, the latest Eddie Murphy flop isn't even surprising. During his brief regaining of the BO crown—around the Nutty Professor/Dr. Doolittle age—Murphy's blend of crazy! and family seemed unstoppable. Now it's... entirely stoppable. Like less than $2,000 per screen on an opening weekend stoppable. I guess you have to respect Murphy for keepin' on plugging away. Maybe for every Imagine That or Meet Dave or Norbit there's also a... disappointing Oscar lose for Dreamgirls. Hey, at least you have The Incredible Shrinking Man and Beverly Hills Cop IV to look forward to, Eddie! At least there's... that.


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Persons using assistive technology might not be able to fully access information in this file. For assistance, please send e-mail to: firstname.lastname@example.com. Type 508 Accommodation and the title of the report in the subject line of e-mail.
Vital Signs: Risk for Overdose from Methadone Used for Pain Relief — United States, 1999–2010
On July 3, 2012, this report was posted as an MMWR Early Release on the MMWR website (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr).
Background: Vital statistics data suggest that the opioid pain reliever (OPR) methadone is involved in one third of OPR-related overdose deaths, but it accounts for only a few percent of OPR prescriptions.
Methods: CDC analyzed rates of fatal methadone overdoses and sales nationally during 1999–2010 and rates of overdose death for methadone compared with rates for other major opioids in 13 states for 2009.
Results: Methadone overdose deaths and sales rates in the United States peaked in 2007. In 2010, methadone accounted for between 4.5% and 18.5% of the opioids distributed by state. Methadone was involved in 31.4% of OPR deaths in the 13 states. It accounted for 39.8% of single-drug OPR deaths. The overdose death rate for methadone was significantly greater than that for other OPR for multidrug and single-drug deaths.
Conclusions: Methadone remains a drug that contributes disproportionately to the excessive number of opioid pain reliever overdoses and associated medical and societal costs.
Implications for Public Health Practice: Health-care providers who choose to prescribe methadone should have substantial experience with its use and follow consensus guidelines for appropriate opioid prescribing. Providers should use methadone as an analgesic only for conditions where benefit outweighs risk to patients and society. Methadone and other extended-release opioids should not be used for mild pain, acute pain, "breakthrough" pain, or on an as-needed basis. For chronic noncancer pain, methadone should not be considered a drug of first choice by prescribers or insurers.
U.S. physicians have used the synthetic opioid methadone as a treatment for heroin addiction since the 1960s and increasingly as a treatment for chronic noncancer pain since the mid-1990s (1). Individual states began to report increasing numbers of overdose deaths involving methadone in 2003 (2). Subsequently, rates of deaths and emergency department (ED) visits involving methadone have increased nationwide (3,4). Studies using medical examiner data suggested that more than three quarters of methadone overdoses involved persons who were not enrolled in programs treating opioid addiction with methadone and that most persons who overdosed were using it without a prescription (3). In November 2006, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning regarding careful prescribing of methadone because of the sharp rise in overdose deaths among patients receiving methadone for pain (5). FDA also revised the interval for the recommended starting dosage from 2.5–10 mg every 3–4 hours to 2.5–10 mg every 8–12 hours. In January 2008, on request of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), manufacturers voluntarily limited distribution of the largest (40 mg) formulation of methadone to authorized opioid addiction treatment programs and hospitals only, because this formulation was not approved for the treatment of pain (6).
Recent analyses have shown that methadone was involved in one in three opioid-related deaths in 2008 (7). Moreover, the involvement of methadone in drug overdose deaths, in toxic exposures quantified by poison centers, and in diversion to nonpatients is disproportionate to the number of methadone prescriptions for pain when compared with other opioid pain relievers (3,8). Analysis of ED data indicates that the estimated number of ED visits resulting from nonmedical use of methadone alone or in combination with other drugs in 2009 (n = 63,031) was significantly greater than the estimated number in 2004 (n = 36,806) (4). CDC reviewed national data on trends in methadone use and mortality and data from medical examiners on methadone mortality to determine whether additional recommendations for its safe use for pain treatment are necessary.
For this report, national death rates during 1999–2009 are based on the National Vital Statistics System multiple cause of death files (9). Methadone-related deaths were defined as those with an underlying cause of death classified by the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) external cause of injury codes as X40-X44, X60-X64, X85, or Y10-Y14 and an ICD-10 code (T40.3) for methadone poisoning. Methadone might have been listed alone or in combination with other drugs.
The amounts of opioid pain relievers distributed for 1999–2010 nationally and by state were obtained from the DEA's Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS).* Distributions of methadone to opioid treatment programs were not included. Annual numbers of prescriptions dispensed for methadone and other opioids in outpatient settings for 1999–2009 came from an analysis conducted by FDA in 2010 using a commercial prescription and patient measurement service (Vector One: National [VONA]) that can estimate the number of prescriptions for drugs dispensed by outpatient retail pharmacies in the United States (10).
Population-based counts of drug-related deaths for methadone and other opioids in 2009 came from 13 states in the Medical Examiner component of the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN): Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Vermont, and West Virginia.† State medical examiners provided information on all drug-related deaths, and CDC analyzed the deaths involving an opioid, whether in combination with other drugs or by itself. Opioid distribution data for these states were available from the ARCOS system and converted to morphine milligram equivalents (MME) using a standard reference (11).
Comparison of methadone to other major opioids in DAWN data was based on rates of death per 100 kg of opioid analgesic in MME. Drug-specific rates were compared using rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals with the rates for methadone as the referents.
The rate of overdose deaths involving methadone in the United States in 2009 was 5.5 times the rate in 1999 (Figure 1). The mortality rate peaked at 1.8 deaths per 100,000 persons in 2007 and then declined in parallel with the amount of methadone being distributed nationally in 2008 and 2009. The annual rate of methadone prescriptions for pain rose to 1.5 per 100 persons by 2008 and did not increase further in 2009. Methadone accounted for 4.4 million (1.7%) of the 257 million opioid prescriptions in 2009. However, in 2010, methadone accounted for 9.0% of all the MME of all major opioids tracked by ARCOS other than buprenorphine. This proportion varied by state from 4.5% in New Jersey to 18.5% in Washington (Figure 2).
Among the 13 DAWN Medical Examiner states, methadone accounted for 9.8% of the MME tracked by ARCOS. Methadone was involved in 31.4% of the 3,294 deaths involving these opioids, more than any opioid other than oxycodone in 2009 (Table). Among the 748 single-drug deaths, methadone was involved in 298 (39.8%), twice as many as any other opioid. The rate of methadone deaths per 100 kg sold in MME was significantly higher than that for any other opioid for both all deaths and single-drug deaths. The difference between methadone and other opioids was more pronounced in the analysis of single-drug deaths. Even if some of these deaths (e.g., 25%) had been attributable to methadone dispensed from opioid treatment programs, the differences between methadone and other opioids would remain significant. The methadone death rate was still significantly higher than the rate for any other opioid in both comparisons.
Conclusions and Comment
The primary advantages of using methadone over other opioids for pain treatment are its long duration of action, relatively low cost, and availability in liquid formulation for oral use. Its primary disadvantages are its long and unpredictable half-life and associated risk for accumulating toxic levels leading to severe respiratory depression; its multiple interactions with other drugs, including frequently abused drugs such as antianxiety agents; and its ability to cause major disturbances of cardiac rhythm (12).
Increased use of methadone since 1999 might have been prompted by growing costs of treating pain with opioids and increasing reports of abuse of other, more expensive, extended-release opioids (1). Overdose reports and interventions by FDA and DEA might have resulted in declines in the amount of methadone distributed and methadone-related fatal overdoses in 2008, although the number of methadone prescriptions did not decline. The parallel trends in the amount of methadone distributed for use as a pain reliever and in the methadone mortality rate are consistent with methadone prescribed as a pain reliever being the primary determinant of methadone mortality rates (1,3).
Data suggest that some of the current uses of methadone for pain might be inappropriate. According to an analysis conducted by FDA, the most common diagnoses associated with methadone use for pain in 2009 were musculoskeletal problems (such as back pain and arthritis) (46%), headaches (17%), cancer (11%), and trauma (5%). Most methadone prescriptions were written by primary care providers or mid-level practitioners (e.g., nurse practitioners) rather than pain specialists. Nearly a third of prescriptions appear to have been dispensed to patients with no opioid prescriptions in the previous month (i.e., opioid-naïve patients) (10).
The findings in this report are subject to at least five limitations. First, vital statistics underestimate the number of overdose deaths from specific drugs because the type of drug is not specified on many death certificates. Second, medical examiners in the DAWN system might have varying definitions of drug-related deaths. However, individual medical examiners likely apply the same definitions to all types of opioid analgesics. Third, assigning responsibility to any single drug in multidrug overdoses is difficult. However, this is not an issue in single-drug deaths, among which the highest risks for methadone were observed. Fourth, some deaths might have resulted from methadone provided in take-home doses by opioid treatment programs, but adjusting for such deaths in this analysis did not change the overall results. Finally, ARCOS data reflect distributions to retail outlets by state, but some drugs might have been used by residents of neighboring states.
This study and others suggest that methadone remains a drug that contributes disproportionately to opioid pain reliever overdoses and associated medical and societal costs. Additional warnings to prescribers about dosage are likely to have limited effect, given the high prevalence of use without a prescription among persons who overdose. The public health goal now should be to mount a concerted effort to reserve methadone for those pain-related conditions for which the benefits likely outweigh the risks to patients and society, such as use for cancer-related pain or palliative care. This will reduce the amount of methadone available for diversion and nonmedical use.
Methadone and other, extended-release opioids should not be used for mild pain, acute pain, "breakthrough" pain, or on an as-needed basis. For chronic noncancer pain, methadone should not be considered a drug of first choice. This is especially true for conditions for which the benefits of opioids have not been demonstrated, such as headache and low back pain. Only a small fraction of patients with intractable chronic headache treated with opioids experience long-term pain reduction or functional improvement (13). Evidence that any opioids are effective in chronic low back pain is limited (14). Additionally, methadone should not be prescribed to opioid-naïve patients, and, whenever possible, should not be prescribed to patients taking benzodiazepine antianxiety agents because of an increased risk for severe respiratory depression. Health-care providers who choose to prescribe methadone should have substantial experience with its use and follow consensus guidelines for appropriate opioid prescribing (15). Providers should instruct patients about the potential risks of methadone and how to store and dispose of it properly.
Public and private insurers and health-care systems can ensure that prescribers of methadone follow dosage guidelines by requiring authorization for starting doses for pain that exceed the recommended upper limit of 30 mg per day (5). Insurance formularies should not list methadone as a preferred drug for the treatment of chronic noncancer pain. Pharmaceutical companies should introduce a 2.5-mg formulation of methadone to facilitate treatment with the lowest recommended dosage.
Although interventions related to methadone use are urgently needed, government agencies, health-care providers, insurers, and other stakeholders must combine these interventions with measures that will address the problems of misuse and abuse of all opioid pain relievers. Interventions such as the use of prescription drug monitoring programs, appropriate screening and monitoring before prescribing opioid pain relievers, regulatory and law enforcement efforts, and state policies (e.g., "pill mill" laws) aimed at providers and patients involved in diversion of these drugs continue to be essential elements in addressing this public health emergency.
Reported by
Leonard J. Paulozzi, MD, Karin A. Mack, PhD, Christopher M. Jones, PharmD, Div of Unintentional Injury Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC. Corresponding contributor: Leonard J. Paulozzi, email@example.com.
Elizabeth Crane, PhD, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Svcs Admin.
- US Government Accountability Office. Methadone-associated overdose deaths: factors contributing to increased deaths and efforts to prevent them. [GAO-09-341] Washington, DC: US Government Accountability Office; 2009. Available at http://www.gao.gov/products/gao-09-341. Accessed May 15, 2012.
- Ballesteros MF, Budnitz DS, Sanford CP, Gilchrist J, Agyekum GA, Butts J. Increase in deaths due to methadone in North Carolina. JAMA 2003;290:40.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Data summary: methadone mortality, a 2010 reassessment. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 2010. Available at http://www.dpt.samhsa.gov/pdf/methadone_mortality_data_2010.pdf. Accessed April 17, 2012.
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Center for Behavioral Statistics and Quality. The DAWN report: methadone-related emergency department visits involving nonmedical use. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 2012. Available at http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k12/web_dawn_022/methadone_er_nonmedical.pdf. Accessed April 16, 2012.
- Food and Drug Administration. Public health advisory: methadone use for pain control may result in death and life-threatening changes in breathing and heart beat. Rockville, MD: Food and Drug Administration; 2006. Available at http://www.fda.gov/drugs/drugsafety/postmarketdrugsafetyinformationforpatientsandproviders/drugsafetyinformationforheathcareprofessionals/publichealthadvisories/ucm124346.htm. Accessed May 17, 2012.
- Drug Enforcement Administration. Advisory: methadone hydrochloride tables USP 40 mg (dispersible). Washington, DC: Drug Enforcement Administration; 2008. Available at http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/pubs/advisories/methadone_advisory.htm. Accessed May 15, 2012.
- Warner M, Chen L, Makuc D, Anderson R, Miniño A. Drug poisoning deaths in the United States, 1980–2008. NCHS Data Brief, no 81. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics; 2011. Available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db81.htm. Accessed April 16, 2012.
- Webster LR, Cochella S, Dasgupta N, et al. An analysis of the root causes for opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States. Pain Med 2011;12:S26–35.
- CDC. WONDER [Database]. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC; 2012. Available at http://wonder.cdc.gov. Accessed May 23, 2012.
- Governale L. Outpatient methadone utilization in the U.S., years 2000–2009. IMS Vector One: National, and SDI, Physician Drug and Diagnosis Audit. Methadone Mortality: A 2010 Reassessment Meeting; July 29–30, 2010; Washington, DC. Rockville, MD: Food and Drug Administration; 2010.
- VonKorff M, Saunders K, Ray GT, et al. De facto long-term opioid therapy for noncancer pain. Clin J Pain 2008;24:521–7.
- Sandoval JA, Furlan A, Mailis-Gagnon A. Oral methadone for chronic noncancer pain. Clin J Pain 2005;21:503–12.
- Saper JR, Lake A, Bain P, et al. A practice guide for continuous opioid therapy for refractory daily headache: patient selection, physician requirements, and treatment monitoring. Headache 2010;50:1175–93.
- Martell BA, O'Connor P, Kerns R, et al. Systematic review: opioid treatment for chronic low back pain: prevalence, efficacy, and association with addiction. Ann Int Med 2007;146:116–27.
- Chou R, Fanciullo GJ, Fine PG, et al. Clinical guidelines for the use of chronic opioid therapy in chronic noncancer pain. J Pain 2009;10:113–30.
* Information about the DEA's ARCOS system is available at http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/arcos.
† Information about the DAWN Medical Examiner system is available at http://www.samhsa.gov/data/2k11/dawn/2k9dawnme/html/dawn2k9me.htm.
Key Points
FIGURE 1. Rates of methadone distribution for pain, methadone-related overdose deaths, and methadone prescriptions for pain — United States, 1999–2010
Alternate Text: The figure above shows rates of methadone distribution for pain, methadone-related overdose deaths, and methadone prescriptions for pain in the United States during 1999-2010. The rate of overdose deaths involving methadone in the United States in 2009 was 5.5 times the rate in 1999.
FIGURE 2. Percentage of opioid distribution accounted for by methadone prescribed for pain, by state — United States, 2010
Alternate Text: The figure above shows the percentage of opioid distribution accounted for by methadone prescribed for pain, by state in the United States during 2010. In 2010, methadone accounted for 9.0% of all the morphine milligram equivalents of all major opioids tracked by the Drug Enforcement Administration's Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) other than buprenorphine. This proportion varied by state from 4.5% in New Jersey to 18.5% in Washington.
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text: The knowers, opposed to believers, various sects in the first ages of Christianity, who tried to accommodate Scripture to the speculations of Pythagʹoras, Plato, and other ancient philosophers. They taught that knowledge, rather than mere faith, is the true key of salvation. In the Gnostic creed Christ is esteemed merely as an eon, or divine attribute personified, like Mind, Truth, Logos, Church, etc., the whole of which eons made up this divine plerõma or fulness. Paul, in several of his epistles, speaks of this "Fulness (pleroma) of God." (Greek, Gnosʹticos.) (See Agnostics.)


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Bremerton gold medalist Nathan Adrian has joined with The Salvation Army to support the organization's Red Kettle Campaign.
The Salvation Army said Thursday the four-time Olympic champion will be making online and in-person appearances through the holiday season.
"I was first introduced to The Salvation Army thanks to my parents, who have been involved with them for a number of years in my hometown," Adrian said in a press release, "and I am honored to support an organization that is committed to helping people who are in need."
Adrian's father, Jim Adrian, and mother, Cecilia, have supported the Bremerton Salvation Army for many years. Jim Adrian was recently elected as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Salvation Army in Bremerton.
Nathan Adrian will take part in a Q & A with The Salvation Army, which will be posted on the organization's website, blog.SalvationArmyUSA.org; he will serve as honorary chairman for the organization's World Record Bell-Ringing contest; and support the organization's Rock the Red Kettle Concert in Los Angeles.
"Nathan is a true American champion, not just on the podium, but in the hearts and minds of young people who look up to him for inspiration," said Major George Hood, National Community Relations and Development Secretary for The Salvation Army.


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A wholesale grower Established in 1983, Green Lake Nursery sells to garden centers/retail nurseries, wholesale nurseries, landscape contractors, grounds maintenance companies, universities/colleges, cities, golf courses, and botanical gardens in North Texas. We offer outdoor perennials, seasonal color, along with ferns, groundcovers, succulents, grasses, xeric plants, and vines. Our extensive list of annuals and perennials well suited for this area has been developed through years of trial and study. Green Lake Nursery is located 15 minutes from Downtown Dallas, and offers routine deliveries throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with deliveries outside the area as needed. Along with well-adapted plants and friendly accommodating delivery service, Green Lake retains a keen and adept staff that holds the customer needs in the highest regard.


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We are a plumbing supply service company for retailers and distributors. This new website was designed to help both direct accounts of our company and end users to find and use the products they need. We have created a new catalog that is searchable by description, part number, upc or manufacturer!
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The BELLS are a group of four countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) who in their wisdom decided to adopt and then stick "come hell or high water" to a currency peg with to Euro. Thus was opened one of the more interesting and lively chapters in modern macroeconomic debate.
Now talk of some sort of ultimate inferno here may strike a pretty discordant note with many readers, since most of the economic chatter of recent days has centred on how the BELLS constitute a positive example, not to mention a most attractive alternative to all those dreadful sounding PIGS. According to GaveKal's François-Xavier Chauchat, for example, the BELLS should be seen as a ray of "Hope For EMU Peripherals", since just like the PIGS the BELLS have also had their own debt crisis, one which was so severe at the time that it put into question the very sustainability of their fixed exchange rate regimes. However, in these most fortunate of cases, the bad times are now well and truly behind us since a happy combination of IMF programmes and fiscal consolidation (coupled in Estonia's case with subsequent admission into the Euro group) eventually led them out of crisis, and without the need for any sort of sordid devaluation to boot. And then, as they say in Spanish "fueron felices y comieron perdices" (or to put it the English way, "they all lived happily ever after"). Or did they?
Well, on Chauchat's view, the BELL crisis was always more of a liquidity than a solvency one (see chart below) – and this despite the fact, which he notes, that Latvia was very often argued to be a modern equivalent of the Argentina of the late 1990s (an assertion which, he says, has ultimately proved to be wrong, although in fact on this particular solvency vs liquidity argument, the true test will be the ability of Latvia to pay back the 7.5 billion euro EU/IMF bailout loan, in full and on time, and especially the very onerous 2014/15 installments). From a macroeconomic perspective, however, the big issue was always one of just how the hell these countries were going to dig themselves out of the hole they had dug themselves into, and do so at the same time as staying on the peg.
A Profession That Is Losing Its Grip On Reality?
The view that the BELLS have somehow proved the monstrous regiment of professional macroeconomists totally wrong is now quite widespread (for a balanced and more nuanced version of the argument see this post by my fellow RGE Economonitor blogger Ed Dolan) , and indeed such sentiment may well form part of a much more general dispute between micro- and macroeconomists about how to find solutions to the present crisis. Only last week the Latvian Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis presented a book in Riga which he has co-authored with Anders Åslund of the Peterson Institute which has the rather assertive title: How Latvia Came through the Financial Crisis. The associated press release proudly states that a key lesson to be learnt from the resolution of Latvia's financial crisis is that "devaluation is neither the panacea nor the necessity that many economists make it out to be".
Not content with this statement our authors go even further, striking what some might consider to be a rather too "close up and personal" tone:
"Finally, the international macroeconomic discussion was not useful but even harmful. Whenever a crisis erupts anywhere in the world, a choir of famous international economists proclaim that it is "exactly" like some other recent crisis—the worse the crisis, the more popular the parallel. Soon, prominent economists led by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claimed that "Latvia is the new Argentina." A fundamental problem is their reliance on a brief list of "stylized facts," never bothering to find out the facts".
As a macroeconomist who has been deeply involved in the Latvian debate I have to say that if such statements weren't so foolish (and ill-befitting of the Prime Minister of any country) I would want to protest that they were extraordinarily condescending and even verging on being insulting. As someone who has spent hours and hours during this crisis perusing excel sheets and making charts trying to fathom what is going on in the BELLS (and in particular in Latvia) I have to say I certainly don't recognise myself in this paragraph, and if anyone could be bothered to take a look at that infamous Krugman piece they would find he was basing his argument not on some obscure set of stylised facts, but on my detailed analysis of the problem (right or wrong, but here it is - why the imf's decision to agree a Latvian bailout programme without devaluation is a mistake).
The funny thing is that, far from having learnt from the error of my ways, I still consider the original IMF decision to have been a mistake, although I would point out that I personally never suggested Latvia was like Argentina (another thing is to say that much of what is going on along Europe's periphery of late carries with it a distinct sense of Argentina deja vu), since I actually think that Argentina is an example of what not to do and that if you are looking for historical precedent for what should be going on in Latvia (read the BELLS) Turkey would be a much better role model. I also think that one of the conclusions we will eventually be able to draw from this whole sorry affair is that those who specialism is not macroeconomics would do better dedicating more of their precious time to trying to understand what we are saying rather than engaging in ill-informed ideological polemic. And I say this since I believe that the Latvians themselves deserve better. They may well not be able to avoid serving as guinea pigs, enabling macro- and microeconomists to see just who is right, but they surely don't merit being converted into yet another ideological football. Didn't we have enough of that during the Soviet years!
On the other hand, and before getting into the actual analysis, I want to stress that I personally am not advocating devaluation of the Lat at this point in time. Even though I still consider it a mistake not to have devalued, and an even bigger mistake on the part of the EU leadership not to have accepted the IMF proposal for immediate devaluation and Euro entry, I accept that the decision not to devalue represented the democratic will of the Latvian people (following the advice of the IMF given the EU response), and it was for precisely this reason that I declined to go to Latvian in August 2009 and speak at a meeting organised by the then governing People's Party, since I think I was only being asked to go there to cause trouble.
The difficult thing here is not to cause trouble (which is easy) but to find realistic solutions, which is why we need free and open debate.
Did Latvia's Internal Devaluation Cut Hard Enough And Deep Enough?
The point, I think, is this: if Latvia is not going to recover the competitiveness all agree it lost through a normal devaluation process (for whatever reason) then it needs to do so via the procedure which has become known as "internal devaluation" (a procedure which in an earlier era was known by the name of "wage and price deflation"), and indeed this is what the Latvians have attempted to do.
So the question now is has this worked? Or put another way, has the internal devaluation gone far enough and deep enough? The conventional wisdom has it that it has, but I, for one, am not convinced, and looking at the latest round of Latvian data serious questions arise as to whether the recovery is strong enough or sustainable in the longer term.
Growth started to return to these economies in the second half of 2010, but with capital inflows now well below pre-crisis levels they have now entered a lengthy and difficult adjustment process. With domestic demand well below earlier highs and still struggling, exports have now become the prime mover of economic growth. Since the recovery in external demand has produced a rapid return to earlier export peaks the impression of a return to earlier economic dynamism has been created. I think this interpretation of the recent strong export growth is misleading, since it is one thing to recover lost ground, and quite another to attract the FDI needed to seriously expand capacity and keep increasing exports beyond their pre crisis peak. Strong year-on-year increases in exports have moved headline GDP numbers forward, but as 2011 continues annual export growth rates will drop substantially, and may even get stuck at a snail's pace, meaning that the respective economies will be struggling to find growth, create jobs, and maintain the servicing of their external debt.
The most worrying piece of evidence I have found is the failure of capital investment to rebound alongside exports. In part this is understandable, since a lot of the earlier capital investment was in property, but this offers only part of the explanation, since for these economies to really take off as export driven strong new investment growth in plant and equipment will be needed. In order for these economies to attract investment in sufficient volume they will need to recover a large part of the competitiveness lost between 2005 and 2008, when wage growth far outpaced productivity gains. However, given the difficulties faced in lowering the exchange rate, they can only realistically try to recover lost ground through sustained productivity improvements, a lengthy and slow process, and in the meantime the debt and population ageing problems keep ticking away
In my opinion, and despite some early encouraging signs, it is far from self-evident that the so called "BELLS" (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are going to be able to export their way out of trouble in the way they need to (given the collapse of internal demand) with the current relative price structure. It is my considered opinion that the "internal devaluation" process may have been underambitious and allowed to come to a halt far too soon. And indeed, if we get to the point, this is why so much of the conventional macroeconomic wisdom and advice leans towards open devaluation, simply because it is hard to maintain the political consensus for long enough to carry out a deep and painful deflation adjustment, and indeed this is the lesson drawn from the 1930s that I was brought up on.
Export Dependency and An Ageing Workforce
In addition two major unresolved issues may leave a legacy, one which could weigh down any recovery and lead to more serious problems when the next recession eventually arrives. Many observers seem to forget that it is one thing navigating a leaky ship when you have the wind behind you, and quite another one going face-forward into a tempest.
In particular there are two things which preoccupy me about the present situation:
a) The existence of a substantial debt overhang the credit crunch which exists as a result
b) The demographic challenges the country faces, and in particular the impact of a rapidly ageing and declining population.
But before getting into this, let's take a serious look at the current state of play in the Latvian game.
Worrying Signs In Latvia
The first thing I notice when I start to go through the Latvian data is that despite a substantial improvement in exports:
GDP growth is currently slowing.
Latvian GDP expanded by a quarterly 1.5% in Q3 2010, by 0.9% in Q4 and by 0.2% in Q1 2011. Thus Latvian GDP has been steadily slowing, and this despite the fact that the export environment in the first three months of this year was exceptionally positive, and Latvian exports were booming. Latvian GDP fell by around 25% during the crisis, and has subsequently rebounded by 5% (over 5 quarters). We are far from a "V" shaped recovery, and pardon me if I mention it, but it is precisely the sort of thing most macroeconomists were imagining would happen.
Essentially the problem is that consumer demand has failed to recover, and if my analysis (about ageing and the debt overhang) is right then it will continue to fail to recover (all of this, incidentally, is what I argued would happen after the crisis broke out).
Industrial output languishes (partly because the non-tradeable sector is contracting as fast as the tradeable one is expanding).
While capital investment fails to recover:
Obviously a large part of the investment slump is due to the decline in consumption activity, but there is little sign of a serious pick-up in ex-construction investment, and anyway, outside of construction there was comparatively little investment going on in the period before the bust, and very little FDI.
So Where Is The Problem?
Basically the Latvian economy faces three main problems
i) a debt overhang
ii) a declining and ageing population
iii) a high level of unemployment, low rate of job creation, and a substantial wage differential with Western Europe which encourages young people to emigrate and drift west.
The first two problems put a serious brake on economic growth, and it is this that exacerbates the third problem, which then in its turn feeds back and aggravates the first two.
Cheap interest rates, supported by the peg and the prospect of Euro membership meant that Latvian households and corporates were able to get themselves heavily into debt. And debt in Euros (which is why the devaluation difficulty exists) - over 85% of Latvian mortgages are Euro denominated.
Now the Latvian economy is experiencing a sharp credit crunch, private sector credit which was increasing in 2007 at a rate of around 65% is now falling at a rate of 9% per annum.
Has The "Internal Devaluation" Been Called To A Halt Too Soon?
Claims that Latvia's internal devaluation has been deep and effective are widespread.The following claim from Commerzbank's Barbara Nestor is typical:
"The competitiveness adjustment has been substantial; labour costs fell 25% from the peak. The gap that opened up between productivity growth and labour costs in the boom years has already been closed. Exports responded sharply. Resources have not been switched among sectors, but production has been redirected from domestic use to exports".
The IMF itself is also pretty congratulatory. In this months press release announcing completition of the fourth review of the standby arrangement they state:
"Strong policy actions under the SBA have helped restore confidence, contributed to economic recovery, and enabled significant progress toward Latvia's goal of euro adoption. The government has continued to achieve substantial fiscal savings while also protecting the poorest through social safety net spending and a temporary public works jobs program, and is strengthening its active labor market policy efforts. Looking ahead, the government has committed to meet the Maastricht criteria for euro adoption and strengthen the financial sector, which should further enhance confidence and support a rebound in growth".
Or again in the joint IMF/EC Statement on Latvia on the Review Mission:
The Latvian economy is now showing clear signs of recovery, with economic growth of 3.3 percent expected this year, reflecting the Latvian authorities' continued implementation of their economic program. Their policy agenda for 2011 sets the stage for meeting the conditions for euro adoption in January 2014, and for sustaining the economic recovery
But is the Latvian economy showing clear and unequivocal signs of recovery? This is exactly the question I am asking here. Part of the issue is whether the competitiveness correction has so far been deep enough to ensure a higher level of competitiveness in the non-tradeable sectorer and a shift of resources from non-tradeable to tradeable. Certainly when the IMF programme was being contemplated, the extent of the correction needed and the difficult challenge which implementing it would involve was not doubted by anyone. Here's what the IMF had to say at the time of the staff report on the standby facility request (IMF emphasis):
In addition to maintaining the existing fixed (narrow-band) exchange rate, staff considered a number of alternative exchange rate options. These included, inter alia: (i) widening the current exchange rate bands to the full 15 percent range permitted under ERM2; and (ii) accelerated euro adoption at a depreciated exchange rate.
The main advantage of widening the bands is that it should eventually deliver a faster economic recovery. Although growth would be depressed in the short run by balance sheet effects, the economy might then bounce back more sharply, and a Vshaped recovery would likely start in 2010. This reflects a faster improvement in competitiveness since high pass-through (reflecting Latvia's openness to trade and liberalized movement of labor within the European Union) would be dampened by the negative output gap. Enhanced competitiveness would also reduce the current account deficit more quickly. This would come mainly from import compression, with a relatively slow response of Latvia's underdeveloped export sector, especially as the external environment is not as supportive as in previous devaluation-induced recoveries as Argentina, Russia or East Asia.
So at the time a 15% exchange rate adjustment was being contemplated. Did we get that? Well I personally don't think so. If we look at the CPI, the drop (from peak to trough) is only something like 3%.
In fact the producer price index fell a little further, maybe by about 12%.
But as can be seen, in both the CPI and the PPI case, since these indexes bottomed prices are now rising again. And indeed they are rising faster than is the case in those countries with which the Latvian currency is pegged (the Eurozone 17).
So in fact, and especially if we take as a point of reference the start of 2007, we can see that the actual price correction has been comparatively small, and indeed the position is once more deteriorating, even though output in the Latvian economy is over 20% below its pre-crisis peak. Is that really such a flexible situation?
A similar pattern emerges if we look at wage costs and productivity.
As we can see, despite having a relatively high standard of living Germany has managed to maintain unit labour costs relatively stationary over the last decade, due to rising productivity. Latvia evidently has not. This has nothing to do with being rich or poor, as can be seen from the years 2000 to 2004 Latvian living standards were rising, but they were rising in line with productivity, which is of course perfectly sustainable, and basically the pattern you want to see. Then from 2005 onwards the link was broken, and Latvian wages exploded in a way which was totally unsustainable. During 2008 and 2009 unit labour costs started to improve (in part because a lot of very unproductive workers in construction lost their jobs, the pattern in Spain is similar) but from the start of 2010 onwards the process has been in reverse gear again, and once more it is interesting to note that German labour costs (even though the economy is booming) are not following suit.
A lot of ink has been spilt writing about the large drop in wages in the public sector (possibly over 20%) but unfortunately public sector workers normally don't export, and if we come to look at private sector wages, and especially hourly wage rates, then we again find that the correction has not exactly been massive, and of course, inter-annual wage rates are once more starting to rise.
The rough and ready measure most macroeconomists like to use when it comes to competitiveness changes if the Real Effective Exchange Rate, and as we can see from the chart below, the loss of competitiveness (when compared in this case with Finland) since 2005 has been substantial. But then when we use REERs most people who really aren't that convinced that exchange rates matter tend to be not very impressed.
So let's try and put the argument another way. The real proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the real test of Latvian competitiveness is whether, now that it is totally export dependent, the Latvian economy will be able to produce sufficient economic growth and employment such that the weight of the debt can be steadily burnt down. And let us remember here the currency pegger's (or euro member's) catch 22: growth in nominal GDP is what matters when it comes to reducing debt, and nominal GDP is composed of real growth and inflation, so in a way inflation could be beneficial, but any inflation you have which is over the level of your countries of reference (the Euro Area 17) will lose you competitiveness in a way which reduces real growth, so you are up against a limit on both sides (deflation, which makes you more competitive, only compounds the debt problem) and possible the most appropriate characterisation of the situation would be "trapped".
The real problem now is that the credit-bust economies are totally export dependent for growth. What does this mean. Well let's take this simple and rough-and-ready expression:
GDP = Domestic Consumption + Investment + Government Spending + Net Trade
(Growth in Net Trade = Growth In Exports – Growth in Imports)
Which means growth in GDP = Growth in the sum of the above factors. Now we know that domestic consumption is in decline, and that investment in plant and equipment will only return in statistically interesting volumes to meet the needs of export growth. We also know that government spending is being reduced (that is what the IMF programme is centered on), so all we are left with for a real growth driver is exports.
But when we come to look at the SIZE of the Latvian export sector, we will see it is way to small for the job. The chart below comes from national accounts published by the Latvian statistics office, it shows GDP and value added in manufacturing industry. I think it is obvious that the proportion here is horribly small (only slightly over 10%), since even though Baltic economies generally are fairly open, many of the exports are in fact imports that have been reprocessed so actual proportion of their value produced in the country is not large. Germany by comparison (which is a modern economy, with reasonable living standards) has over 40% of GDP originating in value added in manufacturing. Yet this tiny part of the Latvian economy is now about to do the heavy lifting? It just doesn't make sense. Nor does it make sense that the IMF focus so much attention on reducing the fiscal deficit and virtually none on this issue, yet it is on resolving this issue that Latvia's economic future belongs.
There is another piece of evidence that Latvia's internal devaluation has eased up far to soon, and this comes from the current account. A great deal of praise was lauded on Latvia for the rapidity with which the current account went into surplus. In part this was the "ouch" effect, as financing dried up, people lost their jobs, and imports fell sharply. Exports, as we have seen, also improved, and this certainly helped. But there was another factor which we should also take into account, and that was what happened to the income account. This is composed of interest payments and returned profits and dividends. Now Latvia has a net external debt of not far short of 100% of GDP, and this involves a lot of interest payment. As is well known, most of this debt is denominated in Euros, and attached to Euribor interest rates, so of course, as the ECB brought rates down, interest payments came down in like fashion. At the same time, as the economy was contracting by 25% firms were producing a lot less in the way of profits, and there were far fewer dividends.
Now things are improving again, and as we can see in the chart below, the current account is once more moving back towards deficit. This is not a good sign.
So there we are, these are my causes of concern, and I think it is now over to those who already feel that the devaluation debate has been shown to be irrelevant to suggest what they think should be done next to put Latvia back on the "internal devaluation" track again. When I suggested at the start of this post that Latvia might be stuck in a peculiar kind of hell, possibly limbo would be a better term. Latvia's current situation is hardly comfortable. Unemployment is still very high, and new employment is only arriving in a trickle. Meantime the debts are still there, and the problems people are having paying them haven't gone away. In this sense a "restructuring bomb" is still ticking away under Latvia, and rather than continually crying victory maybe it would be better if more people (Prime Ministers included) dedicated a little more of their energy to trying to defuse it.
This post first appeared on my Roubini Global Econmonitor Blog "Don't Shoot The Messenger".


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Protest Karl Rove @ Goucher College!
Join the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore on
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 7 PM
Kraushaar Hall, Goucher College, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road, Towson, MD 21204
Max may have an extra ticket for the 8 PM talk. Let me know if you might be interested.
CIA Experiments on US Soldiers Linked to Torture Program
Sunday 13 September 2009
by: Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Report
Students at the US Air Force Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, the military's premier survival training program. (Photo: MOJO HD)
A number of new reports have, in recent weeks, highlighted evidence of illegal human experimentation on US-held "terrorism" prisoners undergoing torture. Those reports come on the heels of a "white paper" by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), "Aiding Torture: Health Professionals' Ethics and Human Rights Violations Demonstrated", in the May 2004 inspector general's report.
This article looks at those recent charges, and reveals that experiments by a CIA researcher on human subjects undergoing SERE training went unreported in the legal memos the Bush administration drafted to approve their torture program. It will also connect major military and intelligence figures to the SERE experiments and tie some of them to major science and "experimental" directorates at the CIA and Special Operations Command.
An article by veteran journalist William Fisher, looking at PHR's white paper, asks, "Did physicians and psychologists help the US Central Intelligence Agency develop a new research protocol to assess and refine the use of waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques?"
A column at Scientific American quotes PHR's medical adviser on the subject:
[PHR] also raises questions about the ethics of medical note-taking during some of the interrogations. "Medical doctors and psychologists colluded with the CIA to keep observational records about waterboarding, which approaches unethical and unlawful human experimentation," Scott Allen, lead study author and PHR medical advisor, said in a prepared statement.
Finally, a story in Wednesday's Guardian UK discussed the significance of the charges of unlawful human experimentation:
Human experimentation without consent has been prohibited in any setting since 1947, when the
After describing how "[h]ealth professionals in the Office of Medical Services and psychologist contractors engaged in designing and monitoring" torture, as "selecting and then rationalizing" the use of various harmful interrogation techniques, the PHR report goes on to say:
By requirement, all interrogations were monitored in real-time by health professionals. Previous reports, including the ICRC report, document allegations that a medical device called a pulse oximeter (a device to measure oxygen saturation in a subject's blood) was placed on the finger of a detainee to monitor the effectiveness of his respiration during waterboarding. In this way, medical professionals were used to calibrate physical and mental pain and suffering....
The possibility that health professionals monitored techniques to assess and improve their effectiveness, constituting possible unethical human experimentation, urgently needs to be thoroughly investigated.
An Experimental "
The CIA's Office of Medical Services was supposed to be in charge of monitoring "detainee" health under interrogation. However, their instructions, described in an annex to the CIA Inspector General report, exemplifies the dual nature of the "monitoring," as this example from the report shows:
If there is any possibility that ambient temperatures are below the thermoneutral range, they should be monitored and the actual temperatures documented. [2 or 3 redacted lines]
At ambient temperatures below 18 [degrees]C/64 [degrees]F, detainees should be monitored for the development of hypothermia. [Four redacted paragraphs]
Rather than make changes to ambient temperatures, to prevent harm to prisoners, medical professionals are instructed to monitor and document the situation. The torture techniques used by SERE are known to cause endocrine and metabolic disorders (see section on CIA research below), prisoners tortured and subjected to cold are at higher risk of hypothermia, which, for a normal person, can set in at an ambient temperature of 60 degrees F. The monitoring in this case seems to be as much about experimentation as it is any concern for a prisoner's health. (For what other possible reason could this section be mostly redacted?) Parallels to the experiments on hypothermia by Nazi scientists at Dachau are chilling, as is the fact that some of these scientists were later imported, along with their data, to the United States.
Questions were raised around possible human experimentation in an article last May at Firedoglake on "The Zubaydah Torture 'Experiment,'" noting, "Of the many fascinating details coming out of [the May 2009 Senate] Judiciary hearing ... the references to the application of an experiment by the ex-SERE CIA contractor, most likely James Mitchell, seemed especially important."
The experimentation was not limited to "high-value" CIA prisoners. Last April, another article at Firedoglake reported how the Senate Armed Services Committee report (PDF) on prisoner abuse described the creation of an experimental "battle lab" at Guantanamo, demonstrating support for the torture program from the main Army intelligence school at Ft. Huachuca.
According to the Levin report, in August 2002, "COL John P. Custer, then-assistant commandant of the US Army Intelligence Center and School at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona" conducted a review of interrogations operations at Guantanamo. Custer called
MG Dunlavey and later MG Miller referred to GTMO as a "
Later, Dunlavey denied using the term, and Miller testified he couldn't remember.
Pre-9/11 Experiments on SERE Torture
The experiments on the effects of SERE-torture techniques began even earlier - upon SERE trainees themselves. An April 2009 AlterNet article reported on the history of experimentation on soldier subjects undergoing SERE training. (SERE is a military program, the acronym standing for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape.) The article explained how the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and the CIA "ignored a wealth of other published information about the effects of SERE 'stress inoculation,'" citing a June 2000 article, "Assessment of Humans Experiencing Uncontrollable Stress: The SERE Course," in Special Warfare /(PDF). Special Warfare is "The Professional Bulletin of the
As shown in the charts on page 7, SERE stress caused significant changes in students' hormone levels. Recorded changes in cortisol levels were some of the greatest ever documented in humans. In some cases, the changes noted among the trainees were greater than the changes noted in patients undergoing heart surgery....
Changes in testosterone levels were similarly remarkable: In some cases, testosterone dropped from normal levels to castration levels within eight hours.
The AlterNet article also quoted from a May 2000 article in Biological Psychiatry, "Hormone profiles in humans experiencingmilitary survival training":
Conclusions: The stress of military survival training produced dramatic alterations in cortisol, percent free cortisol, testosterone, and thyroid indices. Different types of stressors had varying effects on the neuroendocrine indices. The degree of neuroendocrine changes observed may have significant implications for subsequent responses to stress.
Looking beyond more than physiological symptoms, other studies have looked at purely psychological data. Consider this oft-quoted study from the August 2001 edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, which looked at dissociative symptoms, such as depersonalization, derealization, psychic or emotional numbing and general cognitive confusion, produced in military subjects exposed to SERE torture techniques (emphasis added):
The current study was designed to assess the nature and prevalence of dissociative symptoms in healthy humans experiencing acute, uncontrollable stress during
Other research results include the effects of SERE-style torture upon the immune system and other biological markers. The findings regarding high levels of cortisol upon subjects was corroborated by a SERE psychologist at the Navy Brunswick, Maine, SERE school, who - according to an unclassified, undated Talking Paper from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency - found "empirical medical data ... [of] elevated levels of cortisol in the brain stem caused by stress levels incurred during water-boarding." The
SERE Research and the Development of the Torture Program
One of the lead researchers in a number of these studies is Yale psychiatrist Charles A. Morgan III. According to one source, "Over the past 10 years, Dr. Morgan has served as a Subject Matter Expert to the
Additionally, in the Information Science Board (ISB) document, "Educing Information" - which was heavily drawn upon by President Obama's task force on interrogations for recommendations on the interrogations issue - Dr. Morgan is identified as a member of the 11-person "Government Experts Committee," and listed as affiliated with the Intelligence Technology Innovation Center (ITIC). According to Intelligence Online, ITIC is "a research organization under the CIA's authority," which "answers directly to the CIA's Science and Technology directorate."
The Obama Interrogations Task Force recently made clear they found a lot to value in the ISB study:
The Task Force concluded... that the
Whatever the fate of the HIG, what is noteworthy here is that the Office of Technical Services (OTS), which was cited in the recently released 2004 CIA inspector general report as having vetted the aggressive SERE interrogation techniques, is, along with the ITIC, also a part of the Science and Technology directorate. OTS, formerly the Technical Services Division (or Technical Services Staff), was the branch of the CIA in charge of torture and assassination. It was also in charge of the experimental mind control and interrogation program known as MKULTRA.
Dr. Morgan's online profile states that between 1998 and 2002 he received over $400,000 in research grants from the Army and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for studies on "Psychobiological Assessment of High Intensity Military Training" and "Neuro endocrine assessment of Survival School Training." A 1977 Washington Post expose - those were the days of scandalous revelations surrounding the CIA's MKULTRA program - describes CIA use of ONR to funnel funds for secret experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. The same relationship was also explored during a 1977 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. This is not evidence that Morgan's research was paid for by the CIA, but along with his institutional affiliation, it is suggestive of possible CIA involvement.
While it is unknown to what degree the CIA was directly involved in the SERE research (outside of Dr. Morgan's affiliation), Special Operations Command reportedly was a major supporter.
The co-author of the Special Warfare article referenced above, and working with Dr. Morgan on a number of other SERE research papers looking at physiological and psychological effects of SERE techniques, was Gary Hazlett, a clinical psychologist with the Psychological Applications Directorate at US Army Special Operations Command. Moreover, Morgan and Hazlett cited "the approval and support [for their research] of Lieutenant General William Tangney, Major General Kenneth Bowra, Major General William G. [B]oykin and many others ..."
Maj. Gen. Bowra retired from the military in 2003, after serving as commanding general of Army Special Operations Command South, US Southern Command. Following the military, he went to work as senior program director with
The possible involvement of USJFCOM's J9 in research upon SERE follows upon the revelation, discussed above, that CIA's OTS, part of CIA's Science and Technology directorate, was heavily involved in the implementation of the SERE techniques for use by the CIA. While the use of the term "experimentation" appears to have a broad meaning in military usage, beyond that of conducting scientific experiments, given the charges surrounding human experimentation upon torture victims, any connections between these secretive "experimental" directorates and the SERE torture program, or research upon it, is worrisome.
Maj. Gen. Boykin was the controversial former commander of Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, who resigned over statements that indicated he saw the "war on terror" as a religious war. At the time, he was special operations commander at
Lt. Gen. Tangney is yet another former commanding general at Army Special Operations Command. Also retired from the military, he is currently senior vice president for intelligence, security, and special operations, at Future Technologies, Inc., a supplier of, among other things, a "well-developed global network of experienced intelligence, security and special operations professionals" working with Special Operations, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other military customers.
While Dr. Morgan appears to be well-connected among the military and intelligence elite, it is important to remember that there is no reason to conclude that Dr. Morgan or his co-researchers have ever been involved in torture or experiments meant to be used for torture. (We cannot say the same for CIA or military medical or psychological personnel, however.) In fact, it is possible that Dr. Morgan's research has led him to oppose coercive interrogation techniques, as his published research documents the debilitating effects of SERE torture, which, utilized against a prisoner, could only be considered cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, if not torture. (Although, at the 2007 convention of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Morgan indicated he was against the idea of removing psychologists from national security interrogations, which was being considered in a motion before APA at that time.)
A 2007 New York Times article quotes Dr. Morgan:
Many SERE veterans were appalled at the "reverse engineering" of their methods, said Charles A. Morgan III, a Yale psychiatrist who has worked closely with SERE trainers for a decade.
"How did something used as an example of what an unethical government would do become something we do?" he asked.
Dr. Morgan's comments appear to put him at odds with other members of the CIA's Science and Technology directorate, particularly those who work for OTS, as well as individuals within the Pentagon and Special Operations Command, who have been tied to elements of the US torture program.
The Suppression of Research on SERE in the OLC Memos
What is clear is that the CIA and the Pentagon had plenty of experimental evidence from the peer-reviewed, published research of Dr. Morgan and his associates (and possibly others), both before and after 9/11, that SERE techniques had serious, debilitating effects on individuals subjected to them. As this research is never cited in any of the Office of Legal Counsel memos issued to the CIA around their torture program, it appears such research was deliberately withheld from government attorneys as the CIA sought approval for the use of SERE-style torture. Nor was this obscure research, but had been funded by the government at a minimum of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and promoted by some of the Pentagon's highest generals.
The frenzied search for data on waterboarding, sleep deprivation, isolation, confinement in a small box etc., to submit to OLC attorneys making legal determinations on whether proposed interrogation techniques constituted torture, was a kabuki organized by the CIA. The OLC attorneys involved - John Yoo, Stephen Bradbury, Jay Bybee, and others - were witting or unwitting partners in suppression of CIA research on torture (as future investigations will disclose). Given the participation of members of the office of the vice president, particularly David Addington and Vice President Cheney himself, in the promulgation of the torture program, and the composition of the memos, it seems likely they were also involved in the suppression of this material. As a result, the memos produced authorizing the "enhanced interrogation techniques" were composed as the result of fraud and bad faith, the result of a criminal conspiracy to implement illegal torture techniques.
The public response to the recent "white paper" by Physicians for Human Rights shows there is great interest in following up on charges of human experimentation upon torture victims of the US government. The Congress and the Department of Justice should move swiftly to initiate full, open investigations and charges against those involved.
Jeffrey Kaye, a psychologist living in Northern California and a regular contributor to The Public Record, has been blogging at Daily Kos since May 2005, and maintains a personal blog, Invictus. Email Mr. Kaye at sfpsych at gmail dot com.
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Washington – Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli seems determined to use an attack on health care reform to bring us back to the 1830s.
Cuccinelli, to cheers from the Tea Party crowd, went to court this week to overturn the new law, which he says conflicts with a Virginia statute "protecting its citizens from a government-imposed mandate to buy health insurance."
"Normally, such conflicts are decided in favor of the federal government," he said, "but because we believe the federal law is unconstitutional, Virginia's law should prevail."
The Republican attorney general's move reveals how far into the past America's New Nullifiers want to push the nation. They don't just want to abandon a more than seven-decade-long understanding of the Constitution's interstate commerce clause that has allowed the federal government to regulate a modern, national economy. They also want to resurrect states' rights doctrines discredited by President Andrew Jackson during the nullification crisis of the 1830s and buried by the Civil War.
There are two issues here. One is whether the federal government can require individuals to buy health insurance. The other is the states' rights question. In a suit separate from Cuccinelli's, 13 state attorneys general — 12 Republicans and a conservative Democrat from Louisiana — also challenged the mandate. But their main argument is that the federal government cannot force states to pay for an expanded Medicaid program and take other steps the law requires.
It would take a rashly activist court to find the individual mandate unconstitutional because it is structured as a tax. No one will go to jail for not buying insurance. Starting in 2014, people who refuse will have to pay a penalty to the federal government, administered by the IRS. There are subsidies for those who cannot afford coverage on their own, as well as hardship exemptions.
The idea is simple: Most people without insurance currently receive at least some medical help, and the mandate is designed to get everyone paying into the system. One of the best defenses of a health insurance mandate came in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece published in April 2006.
"By law, emergency care cannot be withheld," this commentator wrote. "Why pay for something you can get free? Of course, while it may be free for them, everyone else ends up paying the bill, either in higher insurance premiums or taxes."
He concluded: "Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate. But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian."
That would be Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor is now trying to insist that the health plan with a mandate that he championed in his state — with the support of a legislator named Scott Brown — is oh-so-different from the bill President Obama signed this week. But Romney can't take back his own words.
Still, at least the quarrel over the mandate is about something relatively new. The old states' rights argument, if successful, could upend years of federal legislation. Will we have a system where states can pick and choose among federal laws? We want our elderly to get Medicare, and give us more highway money, but forget this health care expansion.
That sounds like the logic of the nullifiers of the 1830s, fighting to resist a federal tariff they thought was too high. Gov. Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, their leader, sounded rather like today's Tea Partiers. His state, he declared in 1832, was "inflexibly determined never to surrender her reserved rights, nor to suffer the constitutional compact to be converted into an instrument for the oppression of her citizens."
Andrew Jackson's response to the nullifiers is classic. He denounced "the strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution." He also wondered how a state could "retain its place in the Union, and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional."
OK, at least today the attorneys general are going to court before taking further action. But in the case of Cuccinelli, the very law he is relying on to justify his suit was passed by Virginia's Legislature in direct defiance of a federal bill they knew might be coming. Call it Nullification Light. It's no way to run a serious country, and it's a reckless approach to politics.
E.J. Dionne's e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.
(c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
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Clemson Hoops Falls At Maryland 72-59
COLLEGE PARK, MD (AP) — Sophomore Nick Faust had a season-high 18 points and Maryland won its fourth consecutive game over Clemson, 72-59 on Saturday. Freshmen Jake Layman and Shaquille Cleare scored 12 and 10 points, respectively, for the Terrapins (19-8, 7-7 Atlantic Coast Conference), who are 16-2 at home. Devin Booker scored 16 points for Clemson (13-13, 5-9), reaching double figures for the 11th time in 14 conference games. Jordan Roper also had 13 points and Milton Jennings scored 10 for the Tigers, who haven't beaten Maryland since 2010. The Terrapins outrebounded Clemson 39-29, matching their plus-10 average rebounding margin for the season, second best in the NCAA. Maryland, however, made just 6 of 16 free throws (37.5 percent). Former Maryland coach Charles "Lefty" Driesell was honored at halftime. Driesell, who coached the Terrapins from 1969 to 1986, compiled a 348-159 record, won an ACC title and led the Terrapins to eight NCAA tournament appearances. Copyright by STATS LLC and The Associated Press


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GreenTech Environmental
GreenTech Environmental innovates, develops, and manufactures high-quality electronic products that positively impact everyday the lives and health of people throughout the world – all while protecting the environment. Everything we do makes a difference. GreenTech Environmental stands for newest technologies created, distributed, and supported by an extraordinary group of people committed to providing you, our customers and consumers, lifelong service that amazes.


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The technology world's common problem:infertility
Infertility is a growing problem between couples and studies show that most of them have to face it.
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Rule #1 - Be Patient - Rule #2 - Don't ask when, if you don't contribute - Rule #3 - You have coding skills - LinuxMCE's small brother is available: http://www.agocontrol.com
You may have seen/received calls on your SIP device over the last couple of days (this isn't limited to Trixbox, FreePBX, or A@H, by the way - this is anything that speaks SIP) with a caller ID of 'John Doe <4000>'. This does seem to be a world first - It's someone, or something, actively scanning the entire internet for misconfigured SIP devices. There've been a lot of reports of this, as well as a lot of discussion on IRC. The most important thing is that most people don't have anything significant to worry about. The second thing is that it's going to happen again and again, as more people come up with this idea.


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Entire Houze is a construction company based in North London with 20 year experience in the building industry. Whether your house hasn't been lived in for a while and has become run down or you just fancy a change that will revive it and return it to its former beauty, our Neasden builders have the expertise and the people to make it happen with our house renovation service.
House Extensions
Loft Conversions
Kitchen Installation
Bathroom Installation
We offer FREE estimates and a site visit
Entire Houze is the leading building company in North London. We pride ourselves on our expertise and our customer reviews reveal that we offer quality services. We have a team of experienced builders in Neasden that are highly skilled in total home building works. Whether it's a loft conversion, extension, general refurbishment and more. We offer a site visit and a free estimate. Please have a look at our portfolio for our previous work and do not hesitate to contact us.
"I would like to take this opportunity to say that the quality of service offered by Haim, our first contact has been highly impressive. Every aspect of your service has been beyond reproach and every member of staff has been courteous, polite and reliable. Great word done on our house!"
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Note: This item is included with three others in the Futuristic Funk & Groove Pack. Further information about each item can be found in the links listed on that page.
"Futuristic Space Groove" is a funky, pop-friendly piece comprised of electric piano, acoustic drums, subtle organ, wet synth bass, whistling synth lead and a chorus and flanger-soaked electric guitar. Its synth-pop elements give it a near-future space-age feel while the more traditional instruments keep the piece grounded and give it a sense of authenticity.
The electric guitar and synth lead trade-off the melody in the chorus section and each takes a solo over a verse. Filter effects at the beginning and end of the piece provide some dynamics. "Futuristic Space Groove" could be useful for any project requiring either futuristic or general pop music assets.Thanks for listening.


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Fuel with a future
Unlike "standardised" fossil fuels, regenerative fuels require decades-long experience in regard to the chemical composition, size, moisture content and legal provisions.
An extremely wide variety of fuels can be used in our plants: The spectrum of fuels comprises wood biomass such as chips, shavings, landscaping residues, dry sawmill waste, pellets and saw dust. Even agrarian biomass like corn cobs, straw, cacao husks, miscanthus, olive pits, food waste, etc. can be included in the fuel spectrum of our custom solutions upon request. The combustion systems which are used are individually adapted to the respective fuel and provide an optimal burn-off of each combustion material.
> 1. Kohlbach boiler systems' versatile fuel spectrum
Boiler systems with versatile fuel spectrums are the familiar trademark of the Kohlbach product range. With robustness and durability our systems utilise the most heterogeneous (in terms of size and water content) wood fuels, which would result in significant operational limitations with conventional manufacturers. Our boiler systems are available for applications using wood-type biomass, such as bark, forest wood chips, energy wood chips, sawdust, reduction wood chips, pellets, industrial pellets or even suitable wood from landscaping operations, wood waste from the sawmill industry and from wood-working operations. All natural wood waste and wood residues per Austrian standard M 7133 and EN 14961 are ideal for use in Kohlbach boilers that have been designed specifically for this. Please contact us as our boiler systems will be individually tailored to your fuel specification. In addition we are also happy to investigate alternative special fuels for mixing in with your conventional biomass fuel.
> 2. Alternative special fuels for Kohlbach individual solutions
The versatility and robustness of Kohlbach boiler systems also enables their individual adaptation to use particular alternative fuels or to admix them in with conventional wood fuels. Upon request we would be happy to carry out an advance investigation for you by means of fuel analysis and/or test operation on a testing system, into the options for adaptation of the system technology for use with alternative special fuels - other than standard wood fuel.
Kohlbach has a multitude of reference systems that have been specially equipped and adapted to use such special fuels, for example - corn cobs, straw, cacao husks, straw pellets, miscanthus, misc. agrarian waste, sanding dust, etc.
Such special fuels are characterised by very high ash content, increased nitrogen, chlorine or sulphur content, slagging components, etc. and require Kohlbach's particular experience in system development, in particular with respect to combustion behaviour, emissions and fouling behaviour. With our comprehensive know-how you can tap in to the additional economic advantages away from expensive standard fuels and this often also solves a cost-intensive disposal problem or obstructive space problem at your facility.
We would be happy to inform you of corresponding references and to provide you with advice and practical support for preliminary studies, analyses of special fuels with respect to composition and combustion behaviour, process-related configuration, planning and design of the adaptations. Our systems can be equipped with enhanced filter technology, SNCR processes or downstream SCR systems for NOx reduction, re-burning zones for extended gas retention times to minimise pollutants or systems for ash fractionation for you as required.
We would be delighted to advise you personally:
> Contact
> 3. Fuels that cannot be used
Kohlbach systems and technologies are well known for their particular versatility and reliable robustness. However, there are fuels for which our systems have not been constructed and for which we do not adapt our systems for reasons of company philosophy. These fuels must not be used under any circumstances and we also do not supply any systems for them. Such fuels include: coal, natural gas, crude oil and other fossil fuels as well as food products, construction waste and chemically treated wood, waste, toxic waste and plastics.


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Germany's CESAR crowned king of rovers in ESA's Robotics Challenge
(PhysOrg.com) -- A robot rover designed by a Bremen university team has won an ESA contest to retrieve soil samples from a lunar-style terrestrial crater. Eight student teams fielded rovers during the event, their progress monitored by an advanced 3-D viewer already flight-tested in space and planned for eventual deployment on the Moon.
Craters surrounding the Moon's poles are a top 21st Century science target. Lunar researchers believe these craters may be 'cold traps', preserving ancient water ice deposits. Such ice would not only be an invaluable time capsule, it would also support manned lunar settlements. But the only way to verify the ice is there is to go fetch it, which is where rovers come in.
The bleak pumice landscape of Minas de San José within Tenerife's Teide National Park stood in for the Moon during the inaugural ESA Lunar Robotics Challenge (LRC). Built within strict size, weight and power constraints, the rovers had to descend down the steep 40° slopes of a 15-metre deep crater, grab 0.1 kg of specifically selected soil then carry it out again – all the while in darkness.
Working from a trailer camp 2000 metres up, each five-strong team was confronted with some distinctly non-lunar weather including heavy rain and clouds. In the event only one rover managed to complete the assignment –Bremen's three-wheeled CESAR (Crater Exploration and Sample Return) robot, duly judged LRC winner on 26 October.
The rovers were not the only hardware undergoing field testing. "The location was an excellent place to exercise the capabilities of the Erasmus Recording Binocular (ERB)," explained Massimo Sabbatini of ESA's Human Spaceflight Directorate. "This innovative high-resolution stereo-video recorder will become part of the standard toolset of astronauts when surveying lunar areas."
Despite being more than 2000 km away from the European mainland the test site was kept linked with the internet by a satellite ground station provided by ESA's Telecom Directorate, which enabled remote team members to follow the event and even debug rover software as needed.
Francesco Feliciani of ESA's Telecom Directorate said: "The successful live transmission of the videos streams from the LRC proves that the technology is ready to be used in real life applications."
The broadband-quality transmission was made possible by the ESA co-funded AmerHis regenerative payload hosted aboard Hispatsat's Amazonas spacecraft. AmerHis works as an internet router in the sky.
Stefano Badessi also of ESA Telecom commented: "Our satellite terminal allowed those team members who could not be on the Teide in person to watch how their teammates were faring."
Jury member Richard Fisackerly paid particular attention to the control stations teams employed to communicate with their rovers. As part of ESA's Aurora Programme developing technology for manned and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars, Fisasckerly plans to apply the student experience into terminals planned for lunar astronauts to interact with robot assistants.
Adverse weather conditions affected preliminary trials and also meant two of the rovers – fielded by the University of Pisa and Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna – were forced to perform the Challenge in daytime rather than at night.
This being so, the jury decided against formally ranking the teams but did compile a scoreboard to give feedback on strategic choices. LRC judge and organiser Gianfranco Visentin said: "We hope that this information will increase the wisdom of the teams for future competitions."
Also affecting scoreboard figures, the University of Surrey's SELENE proved unable to take part due to a mechanical failure while Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna's pESApod was shorted out by rainfall.
Lucio Scolamiero, member of the jury and co-proposer of the LRC, declared "Only six months ago most of the rovers were only at drawing board level. What the student teams have done in such a short time has been a challenge in itself, they all deserve to be considered winners of this challenge".
The eight rover teams will share their experiences on 14 November at a special session concluding ESA's 10th Workshop on Advanced Space Technologies for Robotics and Automation.
Provided by ESA


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Running Time: 137 minGenre: Action, Crime, ThrillerWriter: Chris Morgan, Gary Scott Thompson (characters)Director: James WanActors: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jason Statham, Michelle RodriguezRated PG-13Synopsis: Dominic and his crew thought they'd left the criminal mercenary life behind. They'd defeated international terrorist Owen Shaw and went their separate ways. But now, Shaw's brother, Deckard Shaw, is out killing the crew one by one for revenge. Worse, a Somalian terrorist called Jakarde and a shady government official called "Mr. Nobody" are both competing to steal a computer terrorism program called "God's Eye," that can turn any technological device into a weapon. Torretto must reconvene with his team to stop Shaw and retrieve the God's Eye program while caught in a power struggle between the terrorist and the United States government.
Google Search


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What's going on here?
When trying to open Default Trace files on Windows 7 and SQL Server 2008 I got the "You don't have permission to open this file" error. My first and second thoughts were "How can this be, I'm an administrator!?". SO the first thing I tried was reading the files using fn_trace_gettable in SSMS. This works, what is different between SSMS and Profiler? Nothing that I can think of.
What's Next?
First step, check permissions on the folder, yup, full control. Second step, turn off inheritance. Third step, bang head on desk! So off to google/bing I went. I found this post by the SQL Server PSS team, , which told me about the issue, but not a good way to solve it. I can't just grant rights to each file because the Default Trace rolls over and creates new files, I need rights all the time. Then I found this post, which says the owner of the files needs to copy and paste them out to a another shared folder. While not the most helpful idea for my situation I tried it, and it worked! I'm still annoyed at this point because I don't want to have to move the files to read them.
Finally, a solution
Once again it is Twitter to the rescue. I tweeted my problem and got a pretty quick response from Brian Kelley (Twitter|Blog) asking about OS and if I ran Profiler as Administrator. I answered Win 7 and Yes, I was mistaken on the Yes it turns out. I thought because the account I was running under had administrative privileges that I was running as administrator. This is not the case in Vista, Win 7, and Windows Server 2008 when UAC is on. With UAC on you still need to run Profiler using elevated privileges by right-clicking and selecting "Run As Administrator". That is the answer. I should also note that Ken Simmons (Twitter|Blog) also produced this answer. Jonathan Kehayias (Twitter|Blog) also chimed in to let me know that you can set individual applications to always run as administrator by right-clicking, selecting Properties, Compatibility, and checking the Run as Administrator box. All of this in about 20 minutes and this is after I spent at least an hour fighting with it and searching the internet for a solution!
I really need to get a better understanding of UAC, and believe it or not, Twitter works!