Officers out of order...

What's that pretty logo I hear you ask...deafening silence...well, it's green, has a crescent moon ...and is that a UK "Bobbie's" helmet?...yes it is; it's the logo of the Association of Muslim Police. Yesterday's Times Online (Yard quizzes three Muslim officers in hunt for terrorist sleepers) told us: "SCOTLAND YARD has placed one of its Muslim officers on restricted duties while it investigates intelligence that he may have attended a terror camp linked to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan."

That may seem all well and good: the Met police checking up and investigating anything suspicious...funny then that this is what the representative said:

Tahir Butt, secretary of the AMP [The Association of Muslim Police], has raised the cases with senior management. He said that a policy which targeted Muslims and not other religions would be “wholly inappropriate”. This is where I'd put the "Doh!/ hand slapping forehead" smilie. I suppose as the representative he has to come out with that sort of ridiculous bunkum - he gets paid for it.

Now, another well paid fool (IMHO!) is Trevor Phillips but I agree with him when last month he said "UK needs more Muslim police." Britain's police and security services should recruit more Muslims, according to the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). However, even though I agree with the thought I find it difficult to come up with a solution; it should be remembered that he said what he did the week after this story about corruption and Muslim Police hit the headlines.

"One Muslim officer with the Met said: "It is like saying black officers are more likely to be muggers. Today it is Muslim officers who are treated as the Uncle Toms. How can they say to the Muslim community 'trust us', when they don't even trust their own Muslim officers" and "Superintendent Dal Babu, chairman of the Association of Muslim Officers, said the report had racist undertones. "We are gravely concerned about its contents and the message it sends to recruits and potential recruits," he said."...all well and good and the sort of response you'd expect, especially when you consider that "The document was written as an attempt to investigate why complaints of misconduct and corruption against Asian officers are 10 times higher than against their white colleagues."...10...ten times!!??

So, they are more likely to be corrupt and should be investigated only if everyone else is...does that seem right, especially considering the dangerous times we find ourselves living in?

Out of order isn't just about the Muslim/terrorist concerns. Follow the link through the AWP logo and you'll see all the associations in the righthand column: Black, Gay, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Turkish (and Cypriot Turk), Christian, Catholic (aren't they Christian?), Women, Senior Women...(most have there own logo too...the gay rainbow one is nice, projects stern, law-enforcement images...NOT!) nobody it seems wants to be just A Police Officer; the funniest thing though, and I quote:
Definition of 'black': The term 'black' does not refer to skin colour but is used to describe all people of African, African Caribbean or Asian origin.
...so those Chinese, Sikhs, Hindus etc are "black"? Really? Whatever. I believe that any police service should be checked and rechecked and checked again as much as any situation warrants; so if that means the Muslims in the UK are in the spotlight, they must learn to live with it.

S.O.

Officers out of order...

What's that pretty logo I hear you ask...deafening silence...well, it's green, has a crescent moon ...and is that a UK "Bobbie's" helmet?...yes it is; it's the logo of the Association of Muslim Police. Yesterday's Times Online (Yard quizzes three Muslim officers in hunt for terrorist sleepers) told us: "SCOTLAND YARD has placed one of its Muslim officers on restricted duties while it investigates intelligence that he may have attended a terror camp linked to Al-Qaeda in Pakistan."

That may seem all well and good: the Met police checking up and investigating anything suspicious...funny then that this is what the representative said:

Tahir Butt, secretary of the AMP [The Association of Muslim Police], has raised the cases with senior management. He said that a policy which targeted Muslims and not other religions would be “wholly inappropriate”. This is where I'd put the "Doh!/ hand slapping forehead" smilie. I suppose as the representative he has to come out with that sort of ridiculous bunkum - he gets paid for it.

Now, another well paid fool (IMHO!) is Trevor Phillips but I agree with him when last month he said "UK needs more Muslim police." Britain's police and security services should recruit more Muslims, according to the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). However, even though I agree with the thought I find it difficult to come up with a solution; it should be remembered that he said what he did the week after this story about corruption and Muslim Police hit the headlines.

"One Muslim officer with the Met said: "It is like saying black officers are more likely to be muggers. Today it is Muslim officers who are treated as the Uncle Toms. How can they say to the Muslim community 'trust us', when they don't even trust their own Muslim officers" and "Superintendent Dal Babu, chairman of the Association of Muslim Officers, said the report had racist undertones. "We are gravely concerned about its contents and the message it sends to recruits and potential recruits," he said."...all well and good and the sort of response you'd expect, especially when you consider that "The document was written as an attempt to investigate why complaints of misconduct and corruption against Asian officers are 10 times higher than against their white colleagues."...10...ten times!!??

So, they are more likely to be corrupt and should be investigated only if everyone else is...does that seem right, especially considering the dangerous times we find ourselves living in?

Out of order isn't just about the Muslim/terrorist concerns. Follow the link through the AWP logo and you'll see all the associations in the righthand column: Black, Gay, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Turkish (and Cypriot Turk), Christian, Catholic (aren't they Christian?), Women, Senior Women...(most have there own logo too...the gay rainbow one is nice, projects stern, law-enforcement images...NOT!) nobody it seems wants to be just A Police Officer; the funniest thing though, and I quote:
Definition of 'black': The term 'black' does not refer to skin colour but is used to describe all people of African, African Caribbean or Asian origin.
...so those Chinese, Sikhs, Hindus etc are "black"? Really? Whatever. I believe that any police service should be checked and rechecked and checked again as much as any situation warrants; so if that means the Muslims in the UK are in the spotlight, they must learn to live with it.

S.O.

Ophidiophobic or only occasional Ophidiophobia?...

The word ophidiophobia comes from the Greek words "ophis" which refers to snakes and [of course] "phobia" meaning fear. Fear of snakes is much more prevalent than most animal phobias, partially due to the fact that snakes [are f***ing scary and] have been able to survive in almost all climates and terrain be it jungle, forest, farm land, mountain...land or sea.

Although this post was inspired by SNAKES ON A PLANE, Samuel L Jackson's latest action thriller, I have had many personal experiences that promote my own ophidiophobia -more below. Back to the film: it is already a cult hit - "weeks before it is due to be shown in cinemas. During production it was decided that some scenes should be re-shot and others added to give the movie a harder edge. The impetus for the re-edit came from fans' comments on the internet. The studio heard them and they let it happen," said Jackson. It is a curious and perhaps unique example of internet buzz shaping the final look of a movie - one that no one, not even film critics, has yet seen."

As Borys Kit, from The Hollywood Reporter, told us "In this case, it wasn't the usual reshoot, hastily assembled to fix a nagging story problem. Instead, the studio decided to create new scenes that would take the movie from PG-13 into R-rated territory.The second round of filming also came about because of intense and growing fan interest in the movie, which was directed by David R. Ellis and is not scheduled to be released until Aug. 18.

"Snakes" stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent who has to fight a planeload of snakes unleashed by an assassin bent on killing a witness in protective custody. Sight unseen, the movie has grown from something of a joke into a phenomenon slithering untamed throughout the Internet.

This is clearly one of those films you'll either be dying to see or won't even dare read about; the fear is almost tangible and has been studied in depth: here Ker Than, a Staff Writer of LiveScience , tells us "An evolutionary arms race between early snakes and mammals triggered the development of improved vision and large brains in primates, a radical new theory suggests. The idea, proposed by Lynne Isbell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, suggests that snakes and primates share a long and intimate history, one that forced both groups to evolve new strategies as each attempted to gain the upper hand. Abstract and access to the article by L.A. Isbell here.

"If snake and primate history are as intimately connected as Isbell suggests, then it might account for other things as well. "Snakes and people have had a long history; it goes back to long before we were people in fact," he said. "That might sort of explain why we have such extreme attitudes towards snakes, varying from deification to "ophidiphobia,"...

Other recent research is connected to this, for instance: Ottmar Lipp from The School of Psychology, The University of Queensland: "Of snakes and flowers: does preferential detection of pictures of fear-relevant animals in visual search reflect on fear-relevance?" and "The role of the amygdala in human fear: automatic detection of threat" by Arne Ohman of The Psychology Section, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute and Hospital in Sweden.

All the above could of course stem from previous work published in National Geographic several years ago: "This time difference, according to the researchers, suggests that the feared objects 'popped out' from the display and were detected more automatically. In a related experiment, the researchers found that people who had indicated on a questionnaire that they were afraid of snakes or spiders identified the fear-inducing images even faster than they identified the objects that did not evoke fear. This quicker response by people with a phobia about snakes and spiders is an emotional reaction that enables them to better avoid the objects they fear, the researchers said.

Even 'harmless' snakes like the grass snake pictured here can cause problems if you've a weak heart! Back to my own experiences, which you presume to be more like this, [...warning: please don't follow the links if you are a bit sacred and likely to have nightmares! Also, please don't read on if you don't like rude language :-)...] (although I'm no Mark O'Shea seen here with a 12ft green anaconda in the Venezuelan Llanos) almost on a daily-ish basis they would involve rattlers and anacondas. ...motherfucker! That's one big motherfucking snake, as Samuel L.J. would say.

S.O.

Ophidiophobic or only occasional Ophidiophobia?...

The word ophidiophobia comes from the Greek words "ophis" which refers to snakes and [of course] "phobia" meaning fear. Fear of snakes is much more prevalent than most animal phobias, partially due to the fact that snakes [are f***ing scary and] have been able to survive in almost all climates and terrain be it jungle, forest, farm land, mountain...land or sea.

Although this post was inspired by SNAKES ON A PLANE, Samuel L Jackson's latest action thriller, I have had many personal experiences that promote my own ophidiophobia -more below. Back to the film: it is already a cult hit - "weeks before it is due to be shown in cinemas. During production it was decided that some scenes should be re-shot and others added to give the movie a harder edge. The impetus for the re-edit came from fans' comments on the internet. The studio heard them and they let it happen," said Jackson. It is a curious and perhaps unique example of internet buzz shaping the final look of a movie - one that no one, not even film critics, has yet seen."

As Borys Kit, from The Hollywood Reporter, told us "In this case, it wasn't the usual reshoot, hastily assembled to fix a nagging story problem. Instead, the studio decided to create new scenes that would take the movie from PG-13 into R-rated territory.The second round of filming also came about because of intense and growing fan interest in the movie, which was directed by David R. Ellis and is not scheduled to be released until Aug. 18.

"Snakes" stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent who has to fight a planeload of snakes unleashed by an assassin bent on killing a witness in protective custody. Sight unseen, the movie has grown from something of a joke into a phenomenon slithering untamed throughout the Internet.

This is clearly one of those films you'll either be dying to see or won't even dare read about; the fear is almost tangible and has been studied in depth: here Ker Than, a Staff Writer of LiveScience , tells us "An evolutionary arms race between early snakes and mammals triggered the development of improved vision and large brains in primates, a radical new theory suggests. The idea, proposed by Lynne Isbell, an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis, suggests that snakes and primates share a long and intimate history, one that forced both groups to evolve new strategies as each attempted to gain the upper hand. Abstract and access to the article by L.A. Isbell here.

"If snake and primate history are as intimately connected as Isbell suggests, then it might account for other things as well. "Snakes and people have had a long history; it goes back to long before we were people in fact," he said. "That might sort of explain why we have such extreme attitudes towards snakes, varying from deification to "ophidiphobia,"...

Other recent research is connected to this, for instance: Ottmar Lipp from The School of Psychology, The University of Queensland: "Of snakes and flowers: does preferential detection of pictures of fear-relevant animals in visual search reflect on fear-relevance?" and "The role of the amygdala in human fear: automatic detection of threat" by Arne Ohman of The Psychology Section, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute and Hospital in Sweden.

All the above could of course stem from previous work published in National Geographic several years ago: "This time difference, according to the researchers, suggests that the feared objects 'popped out' from the display and were detected more automatically. In a related experiment, the researchers found that people who had indicated on a questionnaire that they were afraid of snakes or spiders identified the fear-inducing images even faster than they identified the objects that did not evoke fear. This quicker response by people with a phobia about snakes and spiders is an emotional reaction that enables them to better avoid the objects they fear, the researchers said.

Even 'harmless' snakes like the grass snake pictured here can cause problems if you've a weak heart! Back to my own experiences, which you presume to be more like this, [...warning: please don't follow the links if you are a bit sacred and likely to have nightmares! Also, please don't read on if you don't like rude language :-)...] (although I'm no Mark O'Shea seen here with a 12ft green anaconda in the Venezuelan Llanos) almost on a daily-ish basis they would involve rattlers and anacondas. ...motherfucker! That's one big motherfucking snake, as Samuel L.J. would say.

S.O.

Options on opiates...

...although not literally opiates, (although heroin does get a mention later) this is the South American equivalent - as in drug and addiction equivalent, not in effects as they are widely different.

Cocaine is extracted from the plant called Erythroxylon coca, and other species containing lesser quantities of ‘cocaine’, and is a local anesthetic and central nervous system stimulant. It can be taken by chewing on coca leaves, smoked, inhaled ("snorted") or injected; E.coca is to cocaine as poppies/opium are to heroin/morphine (morphine is the active ingredient in opium).
By the turn of the twentieth century, the addictive properties of cocaine had become clear to many; in 1903, the American Journal of Pharmacy stressed that most cocaine abusers were “bohemians, gamblers, high- and low-class prostitutes, night porters, bell boys, burglars, racketeers, pimps, and casual laborers.”….nice. It was finally made illegal in 1914 but the law incorrectly referred to cocaine as a narcotic, and this misclassification still exists today: as stated above, cocaine is a stimulant, not a narcotic: a narcotic is an addictive drug that reduces pain and induces sleep (and may alter mood or behavior) - such state is narcosis - derived from the Greek word narkotikos.

Early Spanish explorers noticed how the native people of South America were able to fight off fatigue by chewing on coca leaves. This led eventually to a medical account of the coca plant being published in 1569 and almost 3 centuries later , in 1860 - after several failed attempts mainly due to lack of chemical technologies - Albert Neiman, a PhD student at Göttingen Uni in Germany, isolated cocaine from the coca leaf and described the anesthetic action of the drug; his dissertation titled Über eine neue organische Base in den Cocablättern (On a New Organic Base in the Coca Leaves), is now in the British Library…he got his PhD too!

Afterwards, various medicinal wines became available and later, in the USA, John Pemberton developed a non-alcoholic version, Coca Cola, a drink that contained cocaine and caffeine; no coke in ‘Coke’ since 1906.

In 1879 cocaine began to be used to treat morphine addiction and was introduced into clinical use as a local anaesthetic in Germany in 1884, about the same time as Sigmund Freud published his work Über Coca, in which he wrote that cocaine causes:

...exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person...You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work....In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug....Long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue...This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleasant after-effects that follow exhilaration brought about by alcohol....Absolutely no craving for the further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even after repeated taking of the drug...

He recommended cocaine for a variety of illnesses and for alcohol and morphine addictions with the conclusion that many of his patients went on to become addicted to cocaine....a Freudian slip!

In 1909, the great explorer Ernest Shackleton and his teams in Antarctica took cocaine tablets, the brand was “Forced March”, clearly marketed to fight fatigue; as did Captain Scott a year later on his ill-fated journey to the South Pole

The following, which I read and saved was reported in The Observer last year; not really sure why I chose to post it now, especially with what Augustus has been telling us lately - perhaps it's the surroundings I find myself in. Anyway, the article:

"This is when your lungs get fucked,' the cook splutters as he unscrews the top of a plastic bottle and carefully pours hydrochloric acid into the brown liquid. Gun tucked in his waistband, he reacts nervously to any sound, even the chickens rooting through the undergrowth. We have been told to run if any shooting starts but are not sure where to. At the bottom of the bowl, the acid and the brown liquid start to turn white. A minute in the microwave, and we have a kilo of cocaine."

"We are in the depths of the Peruvian jungle watching coca leaves being converted into one of the most potent commodities on the planet. Using a few leaves, lime, alcohol and acid, cocaine costs about £500 a kilo to make. By the time it reaches the streets of Soho, supplemented with anything from aspirin to powdered glass, it weighs two kilos and is worth around £35,000, a profit of more than £34,000. "

Read the rest here: The White Stuff, Sunday January 9, 2005 The Observer. "Celebrated documentary-maker Angus Macqueen spent 18 months on the cocaine trail across Latin America from the dirt-poor valleys of Peru to the shanty towns of Rio. Here he recalls the journey that revolutionised his views and explains why he believes 'the dandruff of the Andes' should be sold in Boots."
The final few paragraphs:
"Just as with Colombia's civil war, all the social problems cannot be laid at the door of cocaine. But the white stuff feeds huge amounts of criminal money into the conflict. The picture, though not on the same scale, is much the same on British and American inner-city streets.
When we read about the rise of gun crime, the phrase 'drugs-related' is rarely far away as rivals battle for a piece of that £34,000-per-kilo profit. This journey has left me thinking the politically unthinkable. With an election looming, the Blair government has made the war on drugs a populist law-and-order priority, once again conflating the taking of drugs with the crime and violence that surrounds them. But it is the war itself that is the problem. The politicians rightly warn that demand will go up if it is legalised. It is not good but not the nightmare they summon up: neither cocaine nor heroin is a cancer. In quantities it destroys your nose and is bad for your brain, but it very rarely kills - unlike that other addictive plant we can use legally: tobacco. Nor is it a direct cause of violence, like alcohol. "
"Let's be honest. People try drugs, whether in the form of alcohol or pills, because they are fun. Tens of thousands of UK citizens regularly consume cocaine; hundreds of thousands more use other illegal drugs, completely discrediting the law. In his book Cocaine, Dominic Streatfield quotes the monetarist Milton Friedman: 'I do not think you can eradicate demand. The lesson we have failed to learn is that prohibition never works. It makes things worse not better.'
Streatfield quotes the extraordinary statistics involved in fighting cocaine and drugs. Here are a couple: over the past 15 years, the US has spent £150 billion trying to stop its people getting hold of drugs. In Britain and the US almost 20 per cent of the prison population is inside for drugs offences. So what is left? We can muddle on or we can legalise cocaine - and indeed all drugs. "
"This won't solve the social ills of poverty or inequality here or in Latin America but it would remove vast sums of money from the criminal world. We should allow the farmers to grow coca and sell it for decent prices direct to government-controlled factories which can produce a high-quality product. And then it should be sold over the counter from registered chemists such as Boots to anyone over 18 at a reasonable, taxed price that does not encourage a black market. At least then we will know it is pure. Then we must attack demand by using some of the millions saved to invest in education drives that are honest. Look how effective a generation of anti-smoking education has been in bringing the public behind stringent restrictions on smoking in public, but not an outright ban." "Yes, more people will try these drugs and there will be tragedies. But 30 years of the war on drugs have achieved almost nothing except to make a few people fantastically rich, to arm our inner cities, to criminalise a generation of users, and to leave tens of thousands of Latin Americans dead. As our cocaine maker in Peru happily told us, 'People want our cocaine because it is good and, for a while at least, makes them happy.' "
S.O. (as usual, all the pictures are links)

Options on opiates...

...although not literally opiates, (although heroin does get a mention later) this is the South American equivalent - as in drug and addiction equivalent, not in effects as they are widely different.

Cocaine is extracted from the plant called Erythroxylon coca, and other species containing lesser quantities of ‘cocaine’, and is a local anesthetic and central nervous system stimulant. It can be taken by chewing on coca leaves, smoked, inhaled ("snorted") or injected; E.coca is to cocaine as poppies/opium are to heroin/morphine (morphine is the active ingredient in opium).
By the turn of the twentieth century, the addictive properties of cocaine had become clear to many; in 1903, the American Journal of Pharmacy stressed that most cocaine abusers were “bohemians, gamblers, high- and low-class prostitutes, night porters, bell boys, burglars, racketeers, pimps, and casual laborers.”….nice. It was finally made illegal in 1914 but the law incorrectly referred to cocaine as a narcotic, and this misclassification still exists today: as stated above, cocaine is a stimulant, not a narcotic: a narcotic is an addictive drug that reduces pain and induces sleep (and may alter mood or behavior) - such state is narcosis - derived from the Greek word narkotikos.

Early Spanish explorers noticed how the native people of South America were able to fight off fatigue by chewing on coca leaves. This led eventually to a medical account of the coca plant being published in 1569 and almost 3 centuries later , in 1860 - after several failed attempts mainly due to lack of chemical technologies - Albert Neiman, a PhD student at Göttingen Uni in Germany, isolated cocaine from the coca leaf and described the anesthetic action of the drug; his dissertation titled Über eine neue organische Base in den Cocablättern (On a New Organic Base in the Coca Leaves), is now in the British Library…he got his PhD too!

Afterwards, various medicinal wines became available and later, in the USA, John Pemberton developed a non-alcoholic version, Coca Cola, a drink that contained cocaine and caffeine; no coke in ‘Coke’ since 1906.

In 1879 cocaine began to be used to treat morphine addiction and was introduced into clinical use as a local anaesthetic in Germany in 1884, about the same time as Sigmund Freud published his work Über Coca, in which he wrote that cocaine causes:

...exhilaration and lasting euphoria, which in no way differs from the normal euphoria of the healthy person...You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work....In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug....Long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue...This result is enjoyed without any of the unpleasant after-effects that follow exhilaration brought about by alcohol....Absolutely no craving for the further use of cocaine appears after the first, or even after repeated taking of the drug...

He recommended cocaine for a variety of illnesses and for alcohol and morphine addictions with the conclusion that many of his patients went on to become addicted to cocaine....a Freudian slip!

In 1909, the great explorer Ernest Shackleton and his teams in Antarctica took cocaine tablets, the brand was “Forced March”, clearly marketed to fight fatigue; as did Captain Scott a year later on his ill-fated journey to the South Pole

The following, which I read and saved was reported in The Observer last year; not really sure why I chose to post it now, especially with what Augustus has been telling us lately - perhaps it's the surroundings I find myself in. Anyway, the article:

"This is when your lungs get fucked,' the cook splutters as he unscrews the top of a plastic bottle and carefully pours hydrochloric acid into the brown liquid. Gun tucked in his waistband, he reacts nervously to any sound, even the chickens rooting through the undergrowth. We have been told to run if any shooting starts but are not sure where to. At the bottom of the bowl, the acid and the brown liquid start to turn white. A minute in the microwave, and we have a kilo of cocaine."

"We are in the depths of the Peruvian jungle watching coca leaves being converted into one of the most potent commodities on the planet. Using a few leaves, lime, alcohol and acid, cocaine costs about £500 a kilo to make. By the time it reaches the streets of Soho, supplemented with anything from aspirin to powdered glass, it weighs two kilos and is worth around £35,000, a profit of more than £34,000. "

Read the rest here: The White Stuff, Sunday January 9, 2005 The Observer. "Celebrated documentary-maker Angus Macqueen spent 18 months on the cocaine trail across Latin America from the dirt-poor valleys of Peru to the shanty towns of Rio. Here he recalls the journey that revolutionised his views and explains why he believes 'the dandruff of the Andes' should be sold in Boots."

The final few paragraphs:

"Just as with Colombia's civil war, all the social problems cannot be laid at the door of cocaine. But the white stuff feeds huge amounts of criminal money into the conflict. The picture, though not on the same scale, is much the same on British and American inner-city streets. When we read about the rise of gun crime, the phrase 'drugs-related' is rarely far away as rivals battle for a piece of that £34,000-per-kilo profit.

This journey has left me thinking the politically unthinkable. With an election looming, the Blair government has made the war on drugs a populist law-and-order priority, once again conflating the taking of drugs with the crime and violence that surrounds them. But it is the war itself that is the problem. The politicians rightly warn that demand will go up if it is legalised. It is not good but not the nightmare they summon up: neither cocaine nor heroin is a cancer. In quantities it destroys your nose and is bad for your brain, but it very rarely kills - unlike that other addictive plant we can use legally: tobacco. Nor is it a direct cause of violence, like alcohol. "

"Let's be honest. People try drugs, whether in the form of alcohol or pills, because they are fun. Tens of thousands of UK citizens regularly consume cocaine; hundreds of thousands more use other illegal drugs, completely discrediting the law. In his book Cocaine, Dominic Streatfield quotes the monetarist Milton Friedman: 'I do not think you can eradicate demand. The lesson we have failed to learn is that prohibition never works. It makes things worse not better.'
Streatfield quotes the extraordinary statistics involved in fighting cocaine and drugs. Here are a couple: over the past 15 years, the US has spent £150 billion trying to stop its people getting hold of drugs. In Britain and the US almost 20 per cent of the prison population is inside for drugs offences. So what is left? We can muddle on or we can legalise cocaine - and indeed all drugs. "

"This won't solve the social ills of poverty or inequality here or in Latin America but it would remove vast sums of money from the criminal world. We should allow the farmers to grow coca and sell it for decent prices direct to government-controlled factories which can produce a high-quality product. And then it should be sold over the counter from registered chemists such as Boots to anyone over 18 at a reasonable, taxed price that does not encourage a black market. At least then we will know it is pure. Then we must attack demand by using some of the millions saved to invest in education drives that are honest. Look how effective a generation of anti-smoking education has been in bringing the public behind stringent restrictions on smoking in public, but not an outright ban."

"Yes, more people will try these drugs and there will be tragedies. But 30 years of the war on drugs have achieved almost nothing except to make a few people fantastically rich, to arm our inner cities, to criminalise a generation of users, and to leave tens of thousands of Latin Americans dead. As our cocaine maker in Peru happily told us, 'People want our cocaine because it is good and, for a while at least, makes them happy.' "

S.O. (as usual, all the pictures are links)

Ominous Orange Order...

July Twelfth Marches: The Battle of the Boyne was fought on July 1st and is recalled each July in the celebrations of the Orange Order not on the first day, but on "the Twelfth": eleven days were lost with the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752…the point of this post – ows’s opinion - is at the end in the last sentence but there’s interesting historical details before then if you care to read the whole post!

Originally Irish Protestants had commemorated the Battle of Aughrim on the 12 July - the battle was the bloodiest ever fought on Irish soil with more than 7,000 people killed; it meant the effective end of Jacobitism in Ireland. At Aughrim, the year after the Battle of the Boyne, nearly all of the old native Irish Catholic and Old English aristocracies were wiped out; what was actually celebrated on the Twelfth was not William's "victory over popery at the Battle of the Boyne" but the effective end of the elite of the native Irish at Aughrim; an elite backed by a parliament, largely Catholic and quickly summoned by James II 1689, that had proceeded to introduce repeals of legislation under which Protestant settlers had acquired land – James was supported with arms and men from Louis XIV of France who was using James and Ireland as a way to get at William (of Orange)…all very confusing.

After the Orange Order was founded in 1795 amid - and because of - sectarian violence in Armagh, the focus of parades on July 12th switched to the battle of the Boyne.

All good historical stuff and the aftermath of the Battles had repercussions far beyond The British Isles: “the papal alliance, which many Protestants prefer to gloss over, must also be seen in the context of the times, in which dynastic ambition often outweighed religious allegiance or scruple” explains Derek Brown (The Guardian 12 July 2000…a few years ago but a good, clear article)

The flag above (obviously?) is the flag of the Orange Order, but it is the alternative version: the original was an all orange flag with a purple star which was the symbol of the Williamite forces.

Today’s Orange Order continue to push what could be called the ‘Christain Fundamentalist’ attitude: read the Qualifications of an Orangeman (link through flag) and tell me if it isn't spookily similar to what the Muslim Fundalmentalist terrorists say (link dead)

S.O.

Ominous Orange Order...

July Twelfth Marches: The Battle of the Boyne was fought on July 1st and is recalled each July in the celebrations of the Orange Order not on the first day, but on "the Twelfth": eleven days were lost with the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752…the point of this post – ows’s opinion - is at the end in the last sentence but there’s interesting historical details before then if you care to read the whole post!

Originally Irish Protestants had commemorated the Battle of Aughrim on the 12 July - the battle was the bloodiest ever fought on Irish soil with more than 7,000 people killed; it meant the effective end of Jacobitism in Ireland. At Aughrim, the year after the Battle of the Boyne, nearly all of the old native Irish Catholic and Old English aristocracies were wiped out; what was actually celebrated on the Twelfth was not William's "victory over popery at the Battle of the Boyne" but the effective end of the elite of the native Irish at Aughrim; an elite backed by a parliament, largely Catholic and quickly summoned by James II 1689, that had proceeded to introduce repeals of legislation under which Protestant settlers had acquired land – James was supported with arms and men from Louis XIV of France who was using James and Ireland as a way to get at William (of Orange)…all very confusing.

After the Orange Order was founded in 1795 amid - and because of - sectarian violence in Armagh, the focus of parades on July 12th switched to the battle of the Boyne.

All good historical stuff and the aftermath of the Battles had repercussions far beyond The British Isles: “the papal alliance, which many Protestants prefer to gloss over, must also be seen in the context of the times, in which dynastic ambition often outweighed religious allegiance or scruple” explains Derek Brown (The Guardian 12 July 2000…a few years ago but a good, clear article)

The flag above (obviously?) is the flag of the Orange Order, but it is the alternative version: the original was an all orange flag with a purple star which was the symbol of the Williamite forces.

Today’s Orange Order continue to push what could be called the ‘Christain Fundamentalist’ attitude: read the Qualifications of an Orangeman (link through flag) and tell me if it isn't spookily similar to what the Muslim Fundalmentalist terrorists say.

S.O.

Other opinions on outlandishness…

Outré, odd, outrageous...But, odds on to come out smelling of roses...OK, okay!... Gavin, Baldino (about the 3rd or 4th post down) and others have posted on this and hopefully I'm just beating the cut off before boredom sets in...but it’s not going away just yet: 0ver 80% 0f votes on this BBC page are either "ZZ is a hero" or it was Materazzi’s fault...[vote here youself] i.e. less than 1 in 5 blame Zizou...I do though; this despite the fact that I absolutely do not believe Luis Medina Cantalejo (the 4th oficial) when he claims "did not rely on video evidence after France's Zidane headbutted Italy's Marco Materazzi." Cantalejo told Spanish radio: "I saw it happen live, I didn't invent anything.


...also, I still blame him despite this from the Herald Sun (Aus), which I haven't seen in the UK press (yet)...Ows edit 21:00 (Chile time) ZZ talks Materazzi responds; who do you believe?...the quote from the Sun Herald: "ITALY defender Marco Materazzi acknowledged that he "insulted" French player Zinedine Zidane because he was "super arrogant" in the World Cup final, La Gazzetta dello Sport reported tonight.

"I held his shirt .. for only a few seconds, he turned toward me and scoffed at me, looking at me with super arrogance, up and down: 'if you really want my shirt, you can have it later.' (Zidane said) It's true, I shot back with an insult," the paper quoted Materazzi as saying. (Picture link)

but...ZZ is still a hero, especially amongst the immigrants in France

And as Abdelilah tells us “he can find his consolation in being elected as the best player in 2006 World Cup Tournament. In a way, he got credit. The incident of the headbutt- causes and consequences- should remain a bygone incident. Either way, he'll still benefit very nicely thank you.

S.O.

Other opinions on outlandishness…

Outré, odd, outrageous...But, odds on to come out smelling of roses...OK, okay!... Gavin, Baldino (about the 3rd or 4th post down) and others have posted on this and hopefully I'm just beating the cut off before boredom sets in...but it’s not going away just yet: 0ver 80% 0f votes on this BBC page are either "ZZ is a hero" or it was Materazzi’s fault...[vote here youself] i.e. less than 1 in 5 blame Zizou...I do though; this despite the fact that I absolutely do not believe Luis Medina Cantalejo (the 4th oficial) when he claims "did not rely on video evidence after France's Zidane headbutted Italy's Marco Materazzi." Cantalejo told Spanish radio: "I saw it happen live, I didn't invent anything.


...also, I still blame him despite this from the Herald Sun (Aus), which I haven't seen in the UK press (yet)...Ows edit 21:00 (Chile time) ZZ talks Materazzi responds; who do you believe?...the quote from the Sun Herald: "ITALY defender Marco Materazzi acknowledged that he "insulted" French player Zinedine Zidane because he was "super arrogant" in the World Cup final, La Gazzetta dello Sport reported tonight.

"I held his shirt .. for only a few seconds, he turned toward me and scoffed at me, looking at me with super arrogance, up and down: 'if you really want my shirt, you can have it later.' (Zidane said) It's true, I shot back with an insult," the paper quoted Materazzi as saying. (Picture link)

but...ZZ is still a hero, especially amongst the immigrants in France

And as Abdelilah tells us “he can find his consolation in being elected as the best player in 2006 World Cup Tournament. In a way, he got credit. The incident of the headbutt- causes and consequences- should remain a bygone incident. Either way, he'll still benefit very nicely thank you.

S.O.

Oldie's oogonium outcome...

Its that OO thing again; this time From Russia With Love: ...from the BBC: "They travelled to the former Soviet Union to get fertility treatment from Italian doctor Severino Antinori."

Britain’s Daily Mail's WORLD EXCLUSIVE: She controversially gave birth to the baby, known as JJ, after having IVF treatment abroad using a donated egg so she could fulfil her 60-year-old husband John's dream of becoming a father. Today, the couple tells their story exclusively to the Daily Mail. With her 'perfect' baby boy sleeping peacefully in her arms, Patricia Farrant told of her joy yesterday after becoming Britain's oldest mother at the age of 62. The Daily Mail's pictures are heart-warming.

However, heartwarming or not, one comment that stood out for me was this... "Mr Farrant, a hugely proud first time father, said: "When I first held him I was simply awestruck. I thought 'Here he is after all this waiting and we'll be together forever because I'm his daddy'. "I feel a huge sense of responsibility and tremendous love for him."...Forever?...OK, but just how long is forever. Despite the fact that both parents look fit and well for their age, this baby will be a huge strain on that health.

Severino Antinori has a history with performing fertility treatment on older women but he also has a more worrying aim: he has said before that he wanted to be the first doctor to produce a cloned human baby. [Here's a good description of cloning with easy to follow diagrams from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP).]

Other comments from earlier this year when the Italian Doctor defended his fertility treatment of Patricia Farrant. "Critics said it was selfish to have a baby at their age, but they said they were confident of meeting his needs." However Severino believes that " When the couple love each other they naturally want to have a baby. Age isn't important in this decision - what's important is the physical condition of the mother." That is a fair point but that physical condition may deteriorate rapidly with the rearing of a new baby. There is no age limit for fertility treatment set down in UK law, and whether a particular person is treated is left to the clinical judgment of doctors; my opinion is that the fact that they went to Russia speaks volumes.

I refer back to an owsblog post last month (Optimising older ova) where I asked "All this seems overly concerned with women who can’t conceive, or women who want babies later in life when perhaps their body clock is starting to suggest they shouldn’t, is this right do you think?"
...Women who can't conceive is one thing; having a baby at 60+ is another...any thoughts you'd like to share?

As regards the title of the post: most double 'o' words were created from the prefix oo- (Greek oon, egg) + gonium (New Latin for cell) = the egg cell. Oogonium (la meiosis link) is a female ancestral germ cell that divides several times in the ovary to give rise to an oocyte that further splits into an ootid (and polar bodies), which in turn, differentiates into an ovum...ooooooooo

S.O.

Oldie's oogonium outcome...

Its that OO thing again; this time From Russia With Love: ...from the BBC: "They travelled to the former Soviet Union to get fertility treatment from Italian doctor Severino Antinori."

Britain’s Daily Mail's WORLD EXCLUSIVE: She controversially gave birth to the baby, known as JJ, after having IVF treatment abroad using a donated egg so she could fulfil her 60-year-old husband John's dream of becoming a father. Today, the couple tells their story exclusively to the Daily Mail. With her 'perfect' baby boy sleeping peacefully in her arms, Patricia Farrant told of her joy yesterday after becoming Britain's oldest mother at the age of 62. The Daily Mail's pictures are heart-warming.

However, heartwarming or not, one comment that stood out for me was this... "Mr Farrant, a hugely proud first time father, said: "When I first held him I was simply awestruck. I thought 'Here he is after all this waiting and we'll be together forever because I'm his daddy'. "I feel a huge sense of responsibility and tremendous love for him."...Forever?...OK, but just how long is forever. Despite the fact that both parents look fit and well for their age, this baby will be a huge strain on that health.

Severino Antinori has a history with performing fertility treatment on older women but he also has a more worrying aim: he has said before that he wanted to be the first doctor to produce a cloned human baby. [Here's a good description of cloning with easy to follow diagrams from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals (ARHP).]

Other comments from earlier this year when the Italian Doctor defended his fertility treatment of Patricia Farrant. "Critics said it was selfish to have a baby at their age, but they said they were confident of meeting his needs." However Severino believes that " When the couple love each other they naturally want to have a baby. Age isn't important in this decision - what's important is the physical condition of the mother." That is a fair point but that physical condition may deteriorate rapidly with the rearing of a new baby. There is no age limit for fertility treatment set down in UK law, and whether a particular person is treated is left to the clinical judgment of doctors; my opinion is that the fact that they went to Russia speaks volumes.

I refer back to an owsblog post last month (Optimising older ova) where I asked "All this seems overly concerned with women who can’t conceive, or women who want babies later in life when perhaps their body clock is starting to suggest they shouldn’t, is this right do you think?"
...Women who can't conceive is one thing; having a baby at 60+ is another...any thoughts you'd like to share?

As regards the title of the post: most double 'o' words were created from the prefix oo- (Greek oon, egg) + gonium (New Latin for cell) = the egg cell. Oogonium is a female ancestral germ cell that divides several times in the ovary to give rise to an oocyte that further splits into an ootid (and polar bodies), which in turn, differentiates into an ovum...ooooooooo

S.O.

Orgy of ogling...

Double O oh, licensed to thrill. Yesterday a great love of mine (mainly a love of my eyes...and loins) turned 60 years old. It was 'born' shortly after the first post-war nuclear tests by the USA on Bikini atoll in the South Pacific. Words like 'atomic' weren't yet commonly used, either by the media or anyone else, but the atoll's name was used to describe something sensational...(Bikini Atoll is located in the central Pacific and is one of the 29 atolls and 5 single islands that form the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Bikini is perhaps best known for its role in a series of nuclear tests conducted by the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, now something of a diving/ holiday paradise)

...the bikini made its first proper introduction to the world of fashion design on July 5, 1946, as it is was worn and displayed at a Paris fashion show by French model Micheline Bernardini. Reaction to the bikini was immediate and explosive...so says The history of the bikini, and the history begins far before the official introduction of the bikini swimsuit in the summer of 1946...Brigitte Bardot made the wearing of less more acceptable and it soon became more popular as other famous beautiful stars in big films wore them (the BBC link in the first line of this post has one of the most famous: Ursula Andress in Dr. No; the bikini even became furry with the help of another bombshell Rachel Welch and of course it's birthday is news in whatever language you speak (French, Spanish, Portuguese) presumably because it is a good excuse for lucious 'eye candy' pictures for those males of the species who just love the sight (site) of scantily clad ladies ...hmmmmmm. The research was enjoyable...even Wiki articles like these: Evolution of the bikini and the Microkini

S.O.

Orgy of ogling...

Double O oh, licensed to thrill. Yesterday a great love of mine (mainly a love of my eyes...and loins) turned 60 years old. It was 'born' shortly after the first post-war nuclear tests by the USA on Bikini atoll in the South Pacific. Words like 'atomic' weren't yet commonly used, either by the media or anyone else, but the atoll's name was used to describe something sensational...(Bikini Atoll is located in the central Pacific and is one of the 29 atolls and 5 single islands that form the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Bikini is perhaps best known for its role in a series of nuclear tests conducted by the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, now something of a diving/ holiday paradise)

...the bikini made its first proper introduction to the world of fashion design on July 5, 1946, as it is was worn and displayed at a Paris fashion show by French model Micheline Bernardini. Reaction to the bikini was immediate and explosive...so says The history of the bikini, and the history begins far before the official introduction of the bikini swimsuit in the summer of 1946...Brigitte Bardot made the wearing of less more acceptable and it soon became more popular as other famous beautiful stars in big films wore them (the BBC link in the first line of this post has one of the most famous: Ursula Andress in Dr. No; the bikini even became furry with the help of another bombshell Rachel Welch and of course it's birthday is news in whatever language you speak (French, Spanish, Portuguese) presumably because it is a good excuse for lucious 'eye candy' pictures for those males of the species who just love the sight (site) of scantily clad ladies ...hmmmmmm. The research was enjoyable...even Wiki articles like these: Evolution of the bikini and the Microkini

S.O.