By-Tor.com

zepboy wrote:Though my business isn't nearly as critical, I am seeing the same thing . . . the bottom line is MONEY, no matter what the perceived reality is among those carrying out the task.

My company has a slogan "Managed services, managed better." BULL! If it requires ANY time, money or effort to do something better than the competition, forget it! The company will never expend any more than the absolute minimum required to get the job done.

Nowadays, it doesn't matter what you do for a living. Money has gotten a little too important to those who make critical decisions. MHO.

Soup4Rush wrote:

CygnusX1 wrote:

ElfDude wrote: That's why Gordon Liddy says you need to make sure that they're dead.

I know, God bless him too, but the perps' survivors are suing now...

I took some home defense firearm tactics classes. Believe me, they may
get in, but they won't get out.

like a can of raid eh Sigs..

zepboy wrote:Last I heard, Russia called for a standdown, but Georgia is still gedding pounded.

Propaganda?

Charles Bremner in Moscow

Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to stop Barak Obama being elected president of the United States.

The line came on the main news of Vesti FM, a state radio station that ? like the Government and much of Russia's media ? has reverted to the old habits of Soviet years, in which a sinister American hand was held to lie behind every conflict, especially those embarrassing to Moscow. Modern Russia may be plugged into the internet and the global marketplace but in the battle for world opinion the Kremlin is replaying the old black-and-white movie.

The Obama angle is getting wide play. It was aired on Wednesday by Sergei Markov, a senior political scientist who is close to Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister and power behind President Medvedev.

?George Bush's Administration is promoting interests of candidate John McCain,? said Dr Markov. ?Defeated by Barak Obama on all fronts, McCain has one last card to play yet - the creation of a virtual Cold War with Russia . . . Bush himself did not want a war in South Ossetia but his Republican Party did not leave him any choice.? The Americans were now engineering an armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia, Dr Markov added.

The Establishment and its media supporters are dusting off favourites from the Cold War shelf. Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, accused Washington of playing dangerous games. The West was guilty of ?adventurism?, supporting aggression against peace-loving Russian forces who are engaged on a humanitarian mission to protect human life. Yesterday's headline in Commersant, a generally admired newspaper, announced with old-style sarcasm the imminent American ?Military Humanitarian Landing? in Georgia.

A classic of Soviet-speak also came from Vasili Lickhachev, a former Russian Ambassador to the EU. ?The West has spent a lot of time, energy and money to teach Georgia the tricks of the trade . . . to make the country look like a democracy,? he said.

?We and many other nations see through this deceit. We understand that the seditious tactics of the so-called colour revolutions are a real threat to international law and the source of global legal nihilism.?

These grooves from the Cold War grave are shrugged off by many Russians but they strike a chord in a nation ready once again to see itself as the victim of outside conspiracy. Blogs everywhere attract conspiracy lovers but Russian blogs have been exceptionally rich this week in theories of Western skulduggery over Georgia.

The old thinking finds more fertile ground now because, in the view of disillusioned Russians, President Bush relaunched the ideological war through a compliant American media, especially at the time of the invasion of Iraq.

?In the old days under Soviet rule we didn't believe a word of our own propaganda but we thought that information was free in the West and we longed for it,? said Katya, a middle-aged Muscovite. ?But we have learnt since that the West has its own propaganda and in some ways it is more powerful because people believe it.?

Moscow is using novel methods to spread a very unsubtle, Cold War version of the Caucasian conflict to the world. Chief among them is Russia Today, a state 24-hour news channel that is fronted much of the time by cheery British and other English-speaking television professionals.

The smiles and studio banter could come from BBC World or CNN but the story is unrelentingly the Kremlin version. Banners flash along at the bottom of the screen saying such things as ?genocide? and ?aggression? or ?city turns into human hell, many people still trapped under rubble?. Recapping the conflict yesterday RT's presenter said that Georgia's ?brutal assault? had killed 1,600 civilians in its breakaway province in a campaign that destroyed 70 per cent of the buildings in Tskhinvali, its capital. Russian forces had moved in only to bring peace as Georgian forces killed women and children who were trying to flee, it said. Throughout its rolling cover of alleged Georgian atrocities, there was no mention of the heavy Russian military offensive.

The coverage goes down well in developing countries that want an alternative to CNN and BBC World Service, a Russian official said. ?We have learnt from Western TV how to simplify the narrative.?

Japanese scientists said Friday they had derived stem cells from wisdom teeth, opening another way to study deadly diseases without the ethical controversy of using embryos.
Researchers at the government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology said they created stem cells of the type found in human embryos using the removed wisdom teeth of a 10-year-old girl.

"This is significant in two ways," team leader Hajime Ogushi told AFP. "One is that we can avoid the ethical issues of stem cells because wisdom teeth are destined to be thrown away anyway.

"Also, we used teeth that had been extracted three years ago and had been preserved in a freezer. That means that it's easy for us to stock this source of stem cells."