Be Careful Who You Change Your Money With

Ever searched for a term in google and stumbled upon a site other than you one you expected and had always used?

Unsuspecting searchers run this risk with the popular XE.com online currency converter, described as "the world's most popular currency site" when they google the term "xe". That's because of the recently formed company known as "XE" which provides a rather different service from currency conversion for tourists and businesses.

The other xe company, based in North Carolina, describes its services as International Training, Mobility and Logistics, Innovative Technologies and Professional Resources.

Further light is shed on what these terms include when digging into the sight a little and discovering references to antenna systems, high-tech surveillance equipment, weapons and armor, armored vehicles and a list of current vacancies with the company which include Firearms and Tactics Instructor, Aviation Project Director and Navy Instructor (part-time).

XE is, of course, none other than the old Blackwater security firm, banned by the government of Iraq earlier this year after its involvement in the killings of 11 civilians in Baghdad's Nisur Square on September 16, 2007. Renamed XE this year, a move which had nothing at all to do with its similarity to one of the Internet's most visited sites, the company continues to provide over 900 contractors to the US State Department for various operations.

The XE company is one of the most prominent examples of the growing trend towards the outsourcing and commercialization of war.

And if that weren't bad enough, they don't do currency conversions.

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The Green Party on Citizens Income

There are lots of things I like about the Green Party.

Their current proposal to replace the current social security system with a non-means-tested universal Citizen's Income (CI) is, however, not one of them.

Time permitting, I'll try and blog in greater detail about what I see as the problems with the proposal.

Doing so does not mean, incidentally, that I am a fan of the current social security system, which I think has many significant deficiencies.

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Zimbabwe Produces Funny Money

The Zimbabwe Central Bank has introduced a new form of money in an attempt to alleviate the desperate shortage of cash in the country.

A previously unknown and officially sanctioned financial instrument called a "bearer cheque" has been launched and copies have started to be dispensed from bank machines across the country.

The cheques are printed on banknote paper, look like banknotes and are described as being as "good as cash".

An anonymous senior Harare bank executive describes the new cheque as "an invention. I have never heard of it before. For a central bank to issue something called a bearer cheque is probably unique." The stop gap measure has been caused by what the government has described as "hoarding" but the above source goes on to say that, "With inflation now at 427 percent, it means that five times as much cash is needed now than a year ago.".

Zimbabwe has been classified by the United Nations as having the fastest shrinking economy in the world - with gross domestic product forecast to tumble 12 percent this year.

source

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The American Psychological Association States that Homosexuality Cannot be Cured

I've posted a brief comment on Truthout magazine on the report by the APA that states that there is no scientific basis for the claim that a homosexual orientation can be "cured" or altered by "corrective therapy".

As always, your comments are welcome here or there.

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Democracy Afghan Style

A new law has been passed in Afghanistan allowing Shia men to withhold food from their wives if they refuse to obey their sexual desires. It also prohibits women of Shia mean from leaving their homes without their husbands' approval.

The law is seen as an attempt by President Karzai to win votes in the forthcoming national elections.

Source.

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Responding to Jerry Bowyer on Healthcare

The current debate, if it can be called that, about health care in the United States is one that I have generally avoided taking part in on this blog. The following video, however, has proven too strong a provocation for me to resist.

In it, radio broadcaster Jerry Bowyer misuses our beloved British National Health Service in order to give support to his own position on healthcare and in doing so expresses disrespect for an institution which is held in high regard here in the UK. More significantly, Bowyer makes a number of statements that are simply untrue or which appear designed to mislead and sow fear among his listeners.

Specifically:

1) He states that UK doctors are low paid. However, recent figures compiled by the British government's Department of Health and reported in the British Medical Journal here reveal that the average pre-tax salary of a British General Practicioner (equivalent to a local family doctor in the US) was £106,000 per year ($175,000) in 2007. Commenting on this figure, the British Medical Journal suggests that "there is a groundswell of opinion [in Britain] that GPs are being too generously rewarded."

The same article from the BMA compares average salaries among doctors internationally and reveals that British doctors are higher paid than their peers across Europe and trail behind only American doctors on an international comparison of medical salaries.

2) He states that physicians in the UK are "civil servants" comparable to post masters, without the same level of prestige as doctors in the US and that this fact makes the profession less attractive to British citizens as a career choice, opening the door to foreign-born doctors from Muslim majority countries.

As a British resident, I can assure Mr Bowyer that his view of British doctors is way off the mark. It is a highly respected profession and doctors are routinely among the most trusted individuals in their community. A recent poll rated them as significantly more trusted by members of the public than teachers, academics, judges or church leaders.

Furthermore, applications by British students for medical degree courses at British universities are hugely oversubscribed every year. Over 1000 applicants applied recently, for instance, for the 40 available medical training places available at Bart's Teaching Hospital in London.

It may be difficult for Mr Bowyer to appreciate - and this may reveal a cultural difference between the two countries - that "prestige" in a British context cannot be equated solely with salary in the way that he might assume to be the case in the United States. Medicine is very much seen as a vocation rather than a business in Britain - as it happens, a well paid and well respected vocation.


3) He states - ably assisted by the un-professionalism of anchorman Neil Cavuto - that the number of foreign Muslim doctors in Britain increases the probability of terrorist attacks taking place in the UK.

Fox News illustrates Mr Bowyer's thesis with images of Dr Bilal Abdullah who drove a car loaded with gas canisters into the front of Glasgow Airport in 2007, causing 5 injuries.

The message is that, since Dr Abdullah worked in the National Health Service and was a muslim, Americans can expect to be attacked by foreign Muslim terrorists with increased frequency if the current health care reform bill is passed.

That an educated man such as Jerry Bowyer could publicly make so stupid a statement almost defies belief.

Mr Bowyer is aware, I presume, that Dr Bilal Abdullah was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire - a more traditional English town would be difficult to imagine. His father was a doctor and Abdullah trained for medicine in Baghdad.

More informed sources than Jerry Bowyer have conducted factual research into the nature and extent of Islamic terrorism in recent years. An extensive investigation into the number of terrorist attacks by Islamists worldwide between 2001 and 2006 was carried out by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank of the New York University School of Law and published in 2007.

The facts reveal that, whereas there were no attacks on European soil between 2001 and 2003, the number of fatal attacks rocketed after 2003 - the year that British and American forces invaded Iraq - and that 297 civilians died in these attacks.

What do Bergen and Cruickshank conclude about the reasons for this upsurge in terrorist violence? More Muslim doctors, perhaps? Surprisingly not. The report's authors state that,

"We are not making the argument that without the Iraq War, jihadist terrorism would not exist, but our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the Al Qaeda ideological virus"

and that

"the Iraq War has generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks,
amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost"

and

"our survey shows that the Iraq conflict has motivated jihadists around the world to see their particular struggle as part of a wider global jihad fought on behalf of the Islamic ummah."

Mr Bowyer also fails to mention that in the United Kingdom, national health doctors are required to treat the entire population, not only those who can afford health insurance. 100% of British citizens have a legal right to healthcare, free at the point of delivery. It really would be an excellent thing if our American neighbours caught up with us.

In the meantime, we must put up with this nonsense. Watch if you can bear it.

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Emil Brunner on the Nature of the Church

“In the last 50 or 100 years New Testament research has unremittingly and successfully addressed itself to the task of elucidating for us what was known as the „Ecclesia‟ in primitive Christianity—so very different from what is to-day called the church both in Roman and Protestant camps. . . . This insight—which an unprejudiced study of the New Testament and the crying need of the church have helped us to reach—may be expressed as follows: the New Testament „Ecclesia,‟ the fellowship of Jesus Christ, is a pure communion of persons and has nothing to do with the character of an institution about it; it is therefore misleading to identify any single one of the historically developed churches, which are all marked by an institutional character, with the true Christian communion.”

Emil Brunner

Not so Funny People

In case we needed any proof that it is not only authoritarian governments that practice aggressive censorship of journalists, spare a thought for Brazilian journalist Fernanda Ezabella who has been blacklisted by the local representative of Universal Studios for asking director Judd Apatow an awkward question during a press conference about Universal's new film Funny People.

The story is as follows: Ezabella is attending the press conference on behalf of the magazine Folha de S. Paulo when, in the press pack handed out to journalists, she discovers a copy of a receipt for $1,375 for a limousine hired to bring the director the 9 miles from his home to the press conference.

Obviously, the receipt was not meant to be included, but in fact copies of it had made their way into each press pack due to an administrative error.

The observant Fernanda therefore asked a question of Judd Apatow along the lines of whether it could be justified in the present financial crisis, when staff are being laid off by studios, to pay nearly $1,400 for a limo to travel such a short distance.

Barely had the words left her mouth when Ezabella found the mocrophone hastily removed from her and attempts to ask a follow up question blocked by press officers. Her press pack was removed and, later, she found she had been blacklisted from future Universal press conferences.

I guess many of us have known for some time that there is an insanity at the heart of much of the corporate world and, perhaps it would be helpful for Universal if people with a concern for free speech and the integrity of the press took a break from paying any money to watch any Universal movies for a while until they have cleared up this nasty over-reaction. What do you think?

Current releases from Universal include A Perfect Getaway, Bruno and Public Enemies. Future releases include Funny People, Love Happens and The Wolfman. Were you so inclined, you could always contact Universal and let them know why you're watching something else instead.

Fernanda Ezabella's account of the incident (in Portugeuse) is here and my source for the story is here.

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Why Assisted Suicide Does Not Represent a Genuine Choice

Kim Fabricus has written a succinct and, to me, persuasive post on why the idea of personal choice in assisted suicide is a myth.

You can read the short piece here.









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Clinton's the Don

Well done to Bill Clinton for securing the release of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, arrested and held for 58 days in North Korea for apparently straying into the country while reporting from the Chinese side of the boarder.

Strange as that seems, it is apparently quite easy to cross the boarder unintentionally. I have relatives from the Chinese side who say that as the Yalu River (or Amnok, depending on which country you are on) is no more than 3 metres deep and is heavily silted with numerous islands and sandbars, people cross quite regularly on foot or flat boat despite there being only one official bridge - the Sino-Korea Friendship Bridge (pictured from the Chinese side). Boats can be easily hired on the Chinese side of the boarder and tourists regularly do so in order to move halfway into the river to catch a glimpse of North Korean civilians on the other bank.

Most of the human traffic comes from the Korean side as individuals attempt to buy what they can from the numerous Chinese traders in the boarder city of Dandong. Trains and lorries, meanwhile, carry half of North Korea's exports to China through the same city.

There has been some criticism of the American media for failing to report regularly on the fate of the two journalists in a way that would have been unthinkable had they been captured in Iraq or elsewhere. The two were originally sentenced to 12 years hard labour for entering the country illegally.

Korean-American academic and church leader Dr. Soong-Chan Rah has, at times, appeared a lone voice in highlighting the plight of the missing Americans through his blog and daily twitter updates.

President Clinton, meanwhile, will have an additional topic for his after-dinner speeches now as he becomes one of the few westerners on the planet to have seen, yet alone met the enigmatic North Korean President Kim Jong-il.

For the definitive map on where everything is in North Korea, visit North Korea Uncovered.






Photo Credit, Prince Roy.

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Doing Church Differently

In my opinion the time has come to do church differently. I am convinced that we must shift our focus from highly programmed ministry to developing Missional/Transformational Communities that are formed as a seamless organic whole. These types of communities are rare and difficult to visualize because we have moved so forcefully to programmatic ministry in the last half of the previous century.

Alan Andrews, recently retired President of the Navigators, U.S.

source

Following the Money

An influential group of international asset managers, representing around US$ 2 trillion in assets under management, are arguing that integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into investment decisions is no longer a luxury, but a legal responsibility.

The case is set forth in a new report compiled with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The report stresses the central role held by the world's largest institutional investors - pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds - in helping the global economy effectively make the transition to a low-carbon and resource-efficient Green Economy.

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