today

David Milliband, who was environment secretary when the school packs were announced in February, said at the time: "The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over."

Distribution of the film to schools is being contested in the courts. A Mr Downes, allegedly acting for a lorry driver, said there was an "unlevel playing field" "I'm afraid this film is irredeemable. It's awful. It should never, ever have gone out to schools."

The complaint to the courts seems to be at least partly funded by the 'New Party' - which seems to be a far right wing political lobby group.

IMO: I have read many of Al Gore's own film reviews and he seems a reasonable, balanced man. The film is pretty good too, and won two Oscars. Climate change must be made clearly known to everyone. That is not a matter of politics.

Like so many widely publicised drug company ideas, the new anti-ageing ideas mentioned in a post recently have already come under doubt.

It is now claimed that the rats concerned in the original work, dieted becuase they were now too stressed out, according to Vaishali Bakshi and Ned Kalin, who found CRF2 receptors in a single brain region, the lateral septum, mediate both feeding and behaviors associated with stress, thereby suggesting the protein may not be an ideal therapeutic target. So the rats get stressed out and so do not eat so much, too busy with checking syndrome, excessive grooming etc. Brief details here and here.

Backshi says in Neuroscience Sept 26, ""We're refuting a global statement that CRF2 stimulation reduces ingestive behavior without eliciting stress-like effects."

IMO: There seem to be some serious doubts raised about the eventual potential use to humans about this treatment.

Prime Minister Abe is resigning due to ill health, and is to be replaced by moderate Former chief cabinet secretary 71 year old Yasuo Fukuda. He has said he will not during the tenure of his office pay tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war dead, including 14 convicted Class A war criminals in WWII, are honored.

"The End of America, A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot". The UK Guardian points out how the 10 steps to create a fascist state are happening in the USA.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy - 9/11
2. Create a gulag - Guantánamo Bay
3. Develop a thug caste -Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. And, of course, Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system - secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions
5. Harass citizens' groups -American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents etc. etc. etc.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - continuous. America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of targeted passengers ... and they do not take names off.
7. Target key individuals -Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. (Shades of David Bohm)
8. Control the press -Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers .. Valerie Palme etc. etc. .. the list never ends.
9. Dissent equals treason -Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". And he does so.
10. Suspend the rule of law - For example George Bush with the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 can now send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

IMO: I hardly would imagine Iran to be much of a democracy right now, but it actually fails on less points than a republican USA. Can't see the Democrats are likely to improve things much, either, though it might make a little bit of difference. UK is unfortunately still a Thatcher type economy and Thatcher actually approves of Gordon Brown's Thatcherism. Thatcher's methods have led to mob violence, muggings, street crime and local and national Government corruption subsequent to Thatcher being voted out.. Nowhere in the West to hide from dictators now.

Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) on Saturday said it had discovered oil in the deepwater block KG-D4 in the Krishna Basin, in Andrha Pradesh. The company spokesperson said this is the first time an oil discovery has been made in the Krishna deep-water basin.

The well was located in a water depth of 565 meters and was drilled to a target depth of 3,595 meters. It has a gross oil column of more than 20 meters in the mesozoic section, and yielded a flow of 596 barrels of oil per day during the drill stem testing.

Reliance is already spending about $5.2 billion to develop and $3.5 billion to maintain production from its deep-sea gas fields.

Over seven decades, researchers have shown that calorie restriction, or at least a 30-40 percent cut in the normal calorie intake, extends healthy lifespan in multiple species, including mice and rats.

Replicating similar reasons to humans, researchers of a new study offer ways to mimic like effects of low calorie diet in humans, using a pill – perhaps a pill that fights multiple diseases and also activates the body's own anti-aging defense mechanism.

Sirtuins, a recently-discovered class of enzymes that promote the body's natural defense against disease, there are seven human sirtuins (SIRT1-7), classed according to their sequence of amino acids.

A biopharmaceutical company, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is already working on the drug that imitates certain beneficial health effects of calorie restriction, without requiring a change in eating habits, by activation of sirtuins. The experimental pill - SRT501 is already in the Phase 2a trials in patients suffering from Type-2 diabetes.

Parliamentary presidium member Musa Qorbani told ISNA on September 15 that there is no logic to the "hostility" of Western states to Iran's program.

President George W Bush has publicly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb. Mr Sarkozy's remarks were strikingly similar to those of Mr Bush, and Mr Chirac said that if Iran 'tried to drop a bomb' (on Israel) , Teheran would immediately be "razed".

Chinese sources seem sanguinely confident in the United States's and France's statement on Friday they favor diplomacy to end Iran's suspected nuclear arms drive and urging the UN Security Council to pass a new resolution on Iran.

Iranians might harbor thoughts (that Iran is "twisted" right now) about the application of Iran's domestic laws and the way some officials there bend and interpret laws when dealing with protesting women, trade unionists, liberals, or students. Indeed, the Islamic Republic's attitude to "the law" and lawfulness -- both inside and outside of Iran -- might be said to be at the root of its troubled relations with the West.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he does not know whether the invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. This stunningly candid answer came in an interview with New York Times columnist David Brooks.

He's been mentioned before on this blog, and he should know all about Iraq if anyone does. Unlike George Bush he does not have a known bad habit of stupid lies, AFAIK, which Bush seems to have had all along.

Lee Hamilton, co-author of the Iraq Study Report says "It's refreshing to see a secretary of defense who has an appreciation of military power but also has an appreciation of the limitations of military power." "Gate's views on the Iraq conflict are in "stark contrast" to the president's".

IMO: Sounds about fair comment.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, for years an inscrutable seer on the economy, is causing a stir by alleging in his new memoir that "the Iraq war is largely about oil." He says : "I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows".

Mr Greenspan has become the "highest official in American government at the time" of the Iraq conflict to publicly accuse the president, George Bush, of going to war over oil.

IMO: Bush is a war criminal and it could help matters if he and most of his administration were judicially convicted and hung. Bush is supposed to be a good Christian - can't he volunteer for execution for war crimes ? Better than eternal damnation, surely ?

Interestingly, Greenspan praised the UK government for continuing the economic approach of Margaret Thatcher.

Greenspan, a lifelong Republican, writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb "out-of-control" spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. According to The Wall Street Journal, he says that Bush's failure to do so "was a major mistake." Republicans in Congress, he writes, "swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither." "They deserved to lose" in the 2006 elections when the Democrats retook control of Congress, he adds.

The former Fed chief said the fall in US housing prices triggered by the subprime credit crisis would be very large. The drop in property prices "is going to be larger than most people expect," Greenspan told the Financial Times, adding that he would not be surprised if the percentage decline in the United States ended up being "in double digits."

IMO: Yes, and the world will end in most of our lifetimes due to global warming if human beings everywhere continue to show so much personal greed, ignorance and stupidity. It is particularly the developed countries and China who are presently to blame - possibly through circumstances.

A Texas oil company whose CEO is a longtime confidant of President Bush with access to the most closely held US intelligence has entered into an agreement to explore for oil in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

The agreement shows that Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. and its chief executive Ray L. Hunt are "effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation," argues New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Paul Krugman reported that Ray Hunt “is a close political ally of Mr. Bush.” He continued, “More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.”

Krugman went on to note, “By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad’s disapproval, he’s essentially betting that the Iraqi government—which hasn’t met a single one of the major benchmarks Mr. Bush laid out in January—won’t get its act together.”

IMO: Sounds par for the course for current US foreign policy. Bush's pals make loadsamoney, Iraqis will die. [someone said : In fairness to George Bush, the scenario is more like "There's a funeral, and George Bush and two cronies are asked to throw $100 each into a casket in accordance with the dead man’s last wishes, Bush throws in a $300 check and takes $200 as change"]

Margaret Thatcher returned to Downing Street for tea with Gordon Brown on Thursday in the Labour prime minister’s most brazen attempt yet to attract Conservative voters. (And why not ?).

Insiders said the meeting was set up four weeks ago and was not designed to overshadow the launch of Tory proposals on the environment.

Labour also revealed that it had hired Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency which helped Lady Thatcher win power in 1979. Thatcher is still articulate, despite a series of strokes. But one intimate later told friends that, after Mr Brown praised her conviction politics, "we had to restrain her from sending a thank-you note".

Liberals say that rather than rallying floating voters under Brown's "all the talents" flag of convenience, it will remind them of other cheap tricks he's played in the past and might therefore restrain him from playing too many more.

Brown does leave that impression in some ways. By "cheap tricks" the April 2007 budget seems to be a key reference. Certainly that budget had a bad effect on the poorer people, and not the positive one Brown wanted to suggest. PFIs and other creeping denationalisation methods certainly do not seem very good policy either. But Europe overall does not seem to be as wise as it should be, and the privatisation of Deutsche Bahn could be one of the saddest moves of the decade. Write about Northern Rock ? Oh, a straw that shows the cold way the wind is blowing.

IMO: I have been uneasy about PFIs and other matters for a long time now, and in that I share a view with "Private Eye", certainly not something I always do.

Researchers now say that the lifespan of an individual taking Vitamin D supplements increases by one to two years. "Archives of Internal Medicine", Autier and Gandini. Vol. 167 No. 16, pp. 1702-1808, September 10, 2007.

400 and 600 IUs daily. There is no need to take more. You have to be careful not to take a dose that's too high.

Apparently Vitamin D could inhibit some mechanisms by which cancer cells proliferate, promotes calcium absorption and bone maintenance, spur cell differentiation or it may boost the function of blood vessels or the immune system. In turn, these processes reduce the aggressiveness of cancer tumours or keep artery-clogging plaques from growing.

In tests, those who took vitamin D supplements had a 7 percent lower risk of death compared with those who didn't take the supplement.

IMO: Only small numbers of patients (about 57,000 overall) have been tested. You can also get vitamin D by sunbathing but this obviously could bring skin cancer dangers. Similarly taking any medicament, particularly over a long term, poses potential problems. But taking Vit D in small quantities does now seem a good idea, not a fad. The best hope may be in new drug development, though.

Hizbollah "Party of God" has installed its own private communications network in the south of Lebanon, stretching from the village of Zawter Sharqiya all the way to Beirut. Hizbollah is also building new roads north of the Litani river, new bunkers, new logistics far outside the area of operations of the Nato-led UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

Since the Israeli army is incapable of fighting the Hizbollah on its own ground – its collapse when faced by Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon last year proved this – what happens if their awesome air power is also neutered? With the new anti-aircraft missiles Hizbollah is believed to have.

Tiny Lebanon has accepted 50,000 Iraqis since the great refugee exodus began. Syria has allegedly accepted almost one and a half million Iraqi refugees – caring for them, providing them with welfare and free hospital services – while Washington, when it isn't cursing Iraq's prime minister, has accepted a measly 800 Iraqis.

The Pakistanis reported that the Americans were using pilotless drones to attack targets just inside Pakistan. But it seems much more ambitious military plans may now be in the works. An all-out strike inside the North West Frontier province before President Pervez Musharref steps down – or is overthrown? A last throw of the dice at Bin Laden before "democracy" returns to Pakistan?

IMO: In a war, decent people often feel sorry for innocent victims on each and every side. This even includes 9-11. After all, the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001? But all in all, USA and Israel do not seem to be making any real friends in the Middle East. It looks as if they may have to leave for good, for better or for worse, just as the UK had to leave India, with far less ill will and bloodshed.

Police announced the arrest of eight self-avowed Neo-Nazis in Israel on Sunday and released videos showing them kicking helpless victims on the ground to a 'bloody pulp', hitting a man over the head with an empty beer bottle and proclaiming their allegiance to Adolf Hitler in a Nazi salute.

Group members wore tattoos of Celtic crosses — a symbol adopted by white supremacists — and barbed wire fences, and the number "88," code for "Heil Hitler" because "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Another tattoo proclaimed "White Power."

Apparently all of these people seem to have been Jews, by many people's standards, including those of Israeli immigration. Known incidents of anti-Semitism in Israel have occurred in the past, and of course the attacks (often merely verbal) by the large internal Jewish Orthodox community towards homosexuals and even recent physical attacks by Israel on the Lebanon have often appeared to have savoured of Nazism. Views of nonresident Jewish intellectuals towards Israel have been remarkably and occasionally violently different towards neo-Nazism, presumably often due to personal problems and also to pro-Israel realpolitik.

IMO: It is rather a pity that an often civilised nation, which should be setting good examples to the rest, including particularly the Gulf states, should exhibit so much loutish behaviour.

A UK London Times reader noted

"Its not really that surprising given that many Zionist leaders collaborated with Hitler to try and drive out Jews from Europe and into Palestine (the Zionist goal). Many assimilated European Jews did not want to go to the hot and backward middle east, they had to be forced there by the Zionist leaders with the help of Hitler.

Early in 1935, a passenger ship bound for Haifa in Palestine left the German port of Bremerhaven. Its stern bore the Hebrew letters for its name, 'Tel Aviv,' while a swastika banner fluttered from the mast. And although the ship was Zionist-owned, its captain was a NAZI -- a National Socialist Party member. Many years later a traveler aboard the ship recalled this symbolic combination as a 'metaphysical absurdity.'

Absurd or not, this is but one vignette from a little-known chapter of history: The wide-ranging collaboration between Zionism and Hitler's Third Reich. (from Mark Weber, 'Zionism and the Third Reich')

Ben Hecht (a Hollywood Jew) In 1961 he wrote the suppressed book Perfidy, which exposed Nazi - Zionist collaboration during World War II. The book begins with the 1953 trial of Michael Greenwald at the hands of David Ben-Gurion's Israeli Government, a trial not publicized outside of the newly formed state of Israel.

Greenwald, an elderly Hungarian Jew, alleged in a few thousand mimeographed leaflets distributed in public cafes and market places that a prominent member of Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's cabinet, Rudolph Kastner, had collaborated with high ranking Nazi, Kurt Becker, to block attempts to release Jews from concentration camps in Hungary as World War II was coming to an end. "

IMO: There must be a lot of genuinely fascinating historical material available on these matters.

This discovery follows the unfortunate fact that various UK TV channels have been charging people millions of pounds for TV prize and lottery tickets and then rigging the prize in advance. Probably this still goes on, so people neither trust nor respect TV as much as they may have done.

The end product of the interviews used in the BBC1 arts series "Imagine" gave the impression that Mr Yentob had conducted interviews when he had not in fact been present. No details were available as to which interviews Mr Yentob attended and which he did not. It seems that the BBC have filmed shots showing Alan Yentob nodding and included them when he was not present at various interviews, trying to deceive viewers that Yentob was actually present at some rather boring TV work.

So fraud is, as BBC seem to claim, a "standard industry technique".

Apparently Five News subsequently announced it would not be using techniques such as 'nodding' or 'walking' shots in any of its reports. But in view of the fact that Five now admit to "walking" shot fraud as well, can we believe that they will stop now as they now have officially admitted to viewer fraud ?

IMO: So now we can't believe that if Paxman interviews say, Gordon Brown, that either he or Gordon Brown are actually shown. If so, we might as well view impersonators like Rory Bremner if we want news ? And I have always thought that Cameron had simply been botoxed too much. Perhaps Cameron is actually Osama Bin Laden wearing a mask. AFTER THESE DISCLOSURES DO YOU REALLY DOUBT I AM SERIOUS ?

These articles were written by the people who were paid by the US government, mostly in the 1950s, to research brainwashing and interrogation techniques by giving people drugs, placing them under sensory deprivation, hypnotizing them, etc. etc. Many of these experiments essentially involve torture and are likely to be widely regarded as highly unethical. This is fundamental research, and if there was any followup research done, it has not yet been published for public consumption.

This book is of enormous historical importance, and yet is largely unavailable. If you live in the United States, this is some of what your government was up to in the fifties. I doubt that their funding of these ideas stopped with the publication of this volume.

Torture bible here (if not removed by the authorities yet). I won't comment in detail but 'Esty' mentioned in ref 22 of this book, I can certainly remember as a nice guy who did some interesting work, of value for fundamental scholarship, if at times to be read as intended.

"The Bush White House broke the law and erased our history by deleting those e-mail messages," said National Security Archive director Tom Blanton. "The period of the missing email starts with the invasion of Iraq and runs through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

"The law is clear that e-mails count as government records," said attorney Sheila Shadmand of the law firm Jones Day, which is representing the Archive. "The White House admits e-mails are missing but we have no assurance they are fixing the problem."

The National Security Archive, an independent NGO (non-governmental organization) based at George Washington University, brought the original White House e-mail lawsuit (which included a wide range of scholarly, library and public interest co-plaintiffs) against Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

IMO: USA is lucky - in many countries this sort of action would have been immediately prevented by the authorities.

Ever wondered why there’s never a cop around when you need one? Well, in Powai, some residents found out why — the cops were spending their patrolling hours fast asleep in the parking lots of buildings in the plush Hiranandani Gardens. A resident of a neighbouring building said, “I always wondered what went on inside these parking lots. So one day out I decided to check the basement in Delphi and found the cops fast asleep.”

Mumbai Mirror apparently caught the cops in the act. They settled for taking photos of a representative seven cops who were blissfully asleep on the floor even as their radios buzzed constantly. Most off the cops had taken off their shirts and shoes and were using corrugated boxes as mattresses to sleep on. While the cops slept, a lone private security guard posted in the basement of the building sat in a corner.

IMO: Just like in the UK. Also, GPS allows tracking of the Mumbai cops so one can only suppose that all those at the the regional control room were also asleep.

Idols are normally made of clay, but Hindus and Muslims work together to adorn it.

"The stitching and designing of a crown is done by Muslims, whereas the finishing and the selling of crowns is done by Hindus. 50-50 work is shared by both Hindus and Muslims,"

These crowns are then sent to Vrindavan, Mathura, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Surat and Ahmedabad.

"There is no difference between our religion and their (Hindus) religion. All the religions are one and there is greatness in oneness," said Sayeed Ansari, a crown maker. About 20,000 Muslim families depend on crown making for their livelihood

IMO: These people seem to have the correct spirit. And why should it not be so, even though it is perhaps not the best theology.

"All your DNA are belong to US".

Lord Justice Sedley says "Everybody, guilty or innocent, should expect their DNA to be on file for the absolutely rigorously restricted purpose of crime detection and prevention."

IMO: Expensive and impractical. Even most "middle ways" would need much more thought by the informed.

Others make many comments, like the following:
He seems to want to treat *everyone* as a suspect which means that if your DNA is somehow found at a crime scene (eg a criminal plants a hanky they've stolen from you) then you will have to *prove* that you weren't there and, if you can't, that's as good as a conviction. We already have a Government that wants to monitor our every move and make us have ID Cards and put us all on a National Identity Database, now we have the Judges and the Police saying that having everyone's DNA would make their job easier. I'm sure the Stasi and the KGB would have said exactly the same thing...We'll see how you feel about having 'nothing to hide' when you're implicated in a serious crime because some data entry monkey misspelt your name when they fed you into the grinder. It's *my* dna - not yours, not the police's, not the govenment's etc. I fancy putting a 24-hour webcam in Sedley's living room. if he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear. If he has, like most of the other judges who are frequently pedophiles and other perverts, nick him and give him PD. Can someone please explain when we substituted a democracy for a totalitarian state? It's like a death by a thousand cuts, and crap like this makes me seriously consider emigrating.

Targeting the growing community of buyers that are opting for a completely electric two-wheeler, TVS is planning to launch the Scooty Teenz EV. The new Scooty is a pure EV and will only feature an electric motor — there will be no petrol engine — that has a peak power of 800 watts. The Scooty Teenz EV will be capable of touching a maximum speed of 40 kmph and will have a driving range of 50 km per charge.

It will house a normal VRLA battery that can be fully charged by plugging it into a household power socket for four hours.

IMO: Maximum speed and range so far seem modest, but may well be adequate for Mumbai driving conditions. Could well be very popular. Hybrids also may become available, and dual-fuel LPG and CNG powered bikes are already planned but the electric sounds a good option

The US National debt is now 9 Trillion dollars. 70% of this debt was incurred under the two Bush presidencies and the one Regan presidency.To waste over 6 Trillion dollars is a very expensive way of killing innocent foreigners during peacetime, and at the same time lowering the quality of US social services and reducing the level of security of the US population. And that is all aside from global warming.

In my view, by retrospect Tony Blair should never have believed a word the Nazi war criminal and hypocrite G.W.Bush had said. I, myself, and other outsiders recognised, and mentioned, the problems that Iraq after the US led invasion would have, just as everyone does today. We certainly hoped that the USA would have made some sensible preparations - but no.

Bush has dragged the name of the USA into the sewer. And President Bush has created a (still minor) depression which may however become a major worldwide depression.

General Sir Mike Jackson, brands the American approach "intellectually bankrupt".

Major General Tim Cross, the most senior UK officer involved in the post-war planning, says Washington's policy had been "fatally flawed".

IMO: So bad it is almost unbelievable.

The three largest credit rating agencies, S&P, Moody's and Fitch, have come under increasing scrutiny from politicians in the US for their role in the sub-prime mortgage debacle.

Chairman of the US Senate Banking Committee, has called for an inquiry and yesterday asked them to explain why they assigned "AAA ratings to securities that never deserved them".

German chancellor Angela Merkel joined the chorus of critics this week, saying: "It is not acceptable that wrong risk assessment in one place has to be paid for by the entire global community."

IMO: Yes, we do not want another world depression. Poor people in the USA are already suffering from "President Bush's depression" and I dare say another Huey Long would be some people's desire already.

Bush has done little so far, except seek spin, and his actions remind one of the empty talk in Wall Street before Black Tuesday and the 1929 crash.

Tweaking FHA rules slightly will do precious little because loan amounts are capped at around $360,000. In northern California, that amount of money will buy you a nice mobile home on leased land.

People caught in the sub-prime disaster are there because of poor credit history and or inadequate income which means that refinancing through FHA is unlikely.

What help to those who do not have the money needed to make that mortgage payment due tomorrow and on each subsequent first day of the month ?

Just as not all people are meant to be college graduates, so it is that not all people are sufficiently capable and responsible to qualify for home ownership. Those facts are not within the prerogative of government to change, regardless of how well intentioned and compassionate.

Affirmative action as practiced in USA has been shown to be unworkable in education and employment for years, in the USA. President Bush and congress need to understand that it will not work for US housing either.

IMO: Affirmative action can be a great idea if used effectively. For example, in India it can be used, in one form or another, to put right problems caused by caste. But even in the UK, more pressing problems may be that, for example, people continue to try to push house and other loans on the gullible. And insufficient social housing seems to be provided. Instead, the Loadsamoney brigade try to grab the available funds by carrying out criminal strikes, if they are lowly (but well paid) prison officers or something of the kind, or shifty undercover financial operations if they are better placed. And the poor, the old, and the weak ? No chance.