Heroin is a highly addictive drug and is the most widely abused and most rapidly acting of the opiates. Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seed pod of certain varieties of poppy plants.
Pure heroin, which is a white powder with a bitter taste, is rarely sold on the streets. Most illicit heroin is a powder varying in color from white to dark brown. The differences in color are due to impurities left from the manufacturing process or the presence of additives. Another form of heroin, "black tar" heroin, is primarily available in the western and southwestern U.S. This heroin, which is produced in Mexico, may be sticky like roofing tar or hard like coal, with its color varying from dark brown to black.
Heroin can be injected, smoked, or sniffed/snorted. Injection is the most efficient way to administer low-purity heroin. The availability of high-purity heroin, however, and the fear of infection by sharing needles has made snorting and smoking the drug more common. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) researchers have confirmed that all forms of heroin administration are addictive.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Great power vs great responsibility
Great power brings great responsibility. How much responsibility should I take? How much is great? Why is me to have great power? Or great responsibility brings great power? Which one comes first? But I think, it should be responsibility come first, then following by capability. When we realized our responsibility or commitment is ‘great’, we were trained under the fear, under the real pain, under the force, without mercy, in reality. We will become the product of the situation, the product of the environment. The quality of the product came from the quality of the situation and quality of the environment. It’s depending on the quality of our fear, pain and force. This will improve our power to be greater and greater, to overcome our fear and pain. The more we fear or pain then the greater we are.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Keris turns up at Gerakan Youth meeting too
Keris turns up at Gerakan Youth meeting too
Saturday, 06 October 2007
Beh Lih Yi & Wong Teck Chi (Malaysiakini)
A Gerakan Youth delegate had his colleagues in stitches at the party's annual meeting when he wielded two keris in
parody of Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin Hussein.
Kedah’s Heah Tick Lai stunned the crowd halfway through his speech during the debate on the resolutions when
he took out two keris (traditional Malay dagger) made of styrofoam.
Waving them over his head, he however said his purpose of wielding the keris was different from Hishammuddin.
“I wave this pair of keris here not to fight or challenge anyone... I hope next time Hishammuddin will hold and shout
‘unity for all Malaysians’,” he said.
He also ‘warned’ the media not to misinterpret his move or remarks, prompting the laughter and applause
from the delegates.
Heah’s antic was clearly in parody of the Umno Youth chief, who had repeatedly brandished the keris at the
Umno Youth meets, which was criticised by various quarters as an attempt to play up racial sentiment.
It was also attributed as one of the reason in voters’ opinion poll as to why the Chinese community is likely to vote
for the opposition in the next general election - a claim that has been rejected by the Malay-based party.
There were 593 Youth delegates at the Gerakan national delegates’ conference today but only about 90 people
were around during the debate session.
Minister came under fire
Meanwhile, an emotional Negri Sembilan’s delegate Cheow Woon San accused Foreign Minister Syed Hamid
Albar as being the “liar” in a recent interview with BBC’s Hardtalk.
Cheow took exception to the minister’s remarks in the interview that include stating that non-bumiputeras
benefitted more than bumiputeras in terms of receiving government contracts and getting places in university.
“Please assess for yourselves on how true these statements are... our own leaders are liars,” he alleged.
Kelantan’s Lau Suraksakh meanwhile said corruption that occurred under the New Economic Policy was the
biggest reason behind the unresolved poverty problem.
Blaming this on government leaders, he said: “Our elected representatives are only interested in their personal
interest, they have no time to fulfill the people’s hope in them.”
At the end of the two-hour-long debate, seven resolutions ranging from calling for tough action against corruption and the
alarming crime rate were adopted.
Saturday, 06 October 2007
Beh Lih Yi & Wong Teck Chi (Malaysiakini)
A Gerakan Youth delegate had his colleagues in stitches at the party's annual meeting when he wielded two keris in
parody of Umno Youth chief Hishammuddin Hussein.
Kedah’s Heah Tick Lai stunned the crowd halfway through his speech during the debate on the resolutions when
he took out two keris (traditional Malay dagger) made of styrofoam.
Waving them over his head, he however said his purpose of wielding the keris was different from Hishammuddin.
“I wave this pair of keris here not to fight or challenge anyone... I hope next time Hishammuddin will hold and shout
‘unity for all Malaysians’,” he said.
He also ‘warned’ the media not to misinterpret his move or remarks, prompting the laughter and applause
from the delegates.
Heah’s antic was clearly in parody of the Umno Youth chief, who had repeatedly brandished the keris at the
Umno Youth meets, which was criticised by various quarters as an attempt to play up racial sentiment.
It was also attributed as one of the reason in voters’ opinion poll as to why the Chinese community is likely to vote
for the opposition in the next general election - a claim that has been rejected by the Malay-based party.
There were 593 Youth delegates at the Gerakan national delegates’ conference today but only about 90 people
were around during the debate session.
Minister came under fire
Meanwhile, an emotional Negri Sembilan’s delegate Cheow Woon San accused Foreign Minister Syed Hamid
Albar as being the “liar” in a recent interview with BBC’s Hardtalk.
Cheow took exception to the minister’s remarks in the interview that include stating that non-bumiputeras
benefitted more than bumiputeras in terms of receiving government contracts and getting places in university.
“Please assess for yourselves on how true these statements are... our own leaders are liars,” he alleged.
Kelantan’s Lau Suraksakh meanwhile said corruption that occurred under the New Economic Policy was the
biggest reason behind the unresolved poverty problem.
Blaming this on government leaders, he said: “Our elected representatives are only interested in their personal
interest, they have no time to fulfill the people’s hope in them.”
At the end of the two-hour-long debate, seven resolutions ranging from calling for tough action against corruption and the
alarming crime rate were adopted.
High price of drugs in Malaysia excludes the poor
Many essential medicines are too expensive for the poor in Malaysia
Morguefile
Drugs essential to basic health care have been priced out of the reach of Malaysia's poor, highlighting the importance of mechanisms to prevent manufacturers from raising prices too high, say researchers.
Research published in PLoS Medicine this week (27 March) has implications for health policy in other parts of the developing world.
An international team of researchers looked at the cost of 48 key drugs in private and government-run pharmacies and dispensing doctor's surgeries in four regions of western Malaysia.
Twenty-eight of these drugs are on a core list of 'essential' drugs published by the World Health Organization, based on disease burden. The remaining 20 are important for health care needs specific to Malaysia.
Prices of patented and generic drugs were compared and average local wages assessed to calculate the affordability of drugs.
They found that the prices of both patented and generic drugs were on average 16 times higher than international reference prices, and that some dispensing doctors are selling generic drugs at 310 times their real cost.
Buying a month's supply of a commonly prescribed stomach ulcer pill in Malaysia would cost a low-paid government worker the equivalent of three days' wages, for example.
Malaysia allows market forces to determine drugs prices, and the study questions the government's failure to cushion the poorest of its people against the effects of its commitment to the free market under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) as part of the World Trade Organization.
This agreement allows countries to secure cheap drugs for themselves by allowing people to sell generic versions of the original patented drugs.
But the study points out that drug prices in Malaysia are much higher than in India and Sri Lanka, for example, where government measures make medicines more affordable.
Malaysia, wooed by United States, has entered into bilateral free trade agreements on drugs, which have been criticised for disabling the country's rights to procure cheaper drugs.
The authors call for more effective price-control policies to be put in place, and increased or better-targeted public spending on essential medicines.
In India ― also a signatory of TRIPS ― the multinational drug company Novartis has been claiming rights of exclusivity over newer versions of the leukaemia drug Gleevec, which costs 12 times more than its Indian generic version.
Meera Shiva, a health rights activist in India, said, "Drug prices in developing countries in the post TRIPS scenario reflect the reality of big firms seeking to monopolise drugs and keep out cheaper versions."
"[The issues in the study] are also about people having to pay for most of the drugs from their own pockets with little government aid. So keeping the drugs cheap is life-giving in a number of ways," she added.
Shiva gave the example of France, where more than 80 per cent of drugs are paid for by the health system, making prices less of a concern.
Suzanne Hill, clinical pharmacologist based in Ferney-Voltaire, France, advised caution about the results of the study. She said it is important not to over-interpret the results, as they are based on surveys of small samples of facilities, and may not be applicable to the entire country.
Morguefile
Drugs essential to basic health care have been priced out of the reach of Malaysia's poor, highlighting the importance of mechanisms to prevent manufacturers from raising prices too high, say researchers.
Research published in PLoS Medicine this week (27 March) has implications for health policy in other parts of the developing world.
An international team of researchers looked at the cost of 48 key drugs in private and government-run pharmacies and dispensing doctor's surgeries in four regions of western Malaysia.
Twenty-eight of these drugs are on a core list of 'essential' drugs published by the World Health Organization, based on disease burden. The remaining 20 are important for health care needs specific to Malaysia.
Prices of patented and generic drugs were compared and average local wages assessed to calculate the affordability of drugs.
They found that the prices of both patented and generic drugs were on average 16 times higher than international reference prices, and that some dispensing doctors are selling generic drugs at 310 times their real cost.
Buying a month's supply of a commonly prescribed stomach ulcer pill in Malaysia would cost a low-paid government worker the equivalent of three days' wages, for example.
Malaysia allows market forces to determine drugs prices, and the study questions the government's failure to cushion the poorest of its people against the effects of its commitment to the free market under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) as part of the World Trade Organization.
This agreement allows countries to secure cheap drugs for themselves by allowing people to sell generic versions of the original patented drugs.
But the study points out that drug prices in Malaysia are much higher than in India and Sri Lanka, for example, where government measures make medicines more affordable.
Malaysia, wooed by United States, has entered into bilateral free trade agreements on drugs, which have been criticised for disabling the country's rights to procure cheaper drugs.
The authors call for more effective price-control policies to be put in place, and increased or better-targeted public spending on essential medicines.
In India ― also a signatory of TRIPS ― the multinational drug company Novartis has been claiming rights of exclusivity over newer versions of the leukaemia drug Gleevec, which costs 12 times more than its Indian generic version.
Meera Shiva, a health rights activist in India, said, "Drug prices in developing countries in the post TRIPS scenario reflect the reality of big firms seeking to monopolise drugs and keep out cheaper versions."
"[The issues in the study] are also about people having to pay for most of the drugs from their own pockets with little government aid. So keeping the drugs cheap is life-giving in a number of ways," she added.
Shiva gave the example of France, where more than 80 per cent of drugs are paid for by the health system, making prices less of a concern.
Suzanne Hill, clinical pharmacologist based in Ferney-Voltaire, France, advised caution about the results of the study. She said it is important not to over-interpret the results, as they are based on surveys of small samples of facilities, and may not be applicable to the entire country.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Banks, piggy banks and the joy of capital markets
'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.'- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the US Secreatary of the treasury, 1802
There is, in tradition to oligopolistic licensses and concessions, a second recource which the south-east Asian godfather cannot do without: access to capital. In the post-colonial era, capital become readily available for the first time to local entrepreneurs because of three developments. The first was changes in the lending practices of existing banks. The second was the obtaining by well-connected tycoons of licenses to open their own banks, which typically became akin to personal piggy banks, albeit ones filled with other people's money. The third development was the growth of the region's capital markets.
Few things constrained local businessmen so much under colonial rule as the dificulty of obtaining loans at reasonable interest. Eoropean and american banks were little concerned with lending to Asian businesses- their preferred activity was financing international trade with letters of credit and other support- and when they did lend to locals their compradors were rapacios in demanding kickbacks. There was a number of small ethnic Chinese and Thai- controlled bank in the region, but they were extreamely conservative in their lending practices. Most local businessmen turned to the traditional Indian moneylenders with their punishing rates of interest. Starting in the 1950s, however, more aggressive, entrepreneurial management at two Asian-based banks began to change this situation. The banks in question were Bangkok Bank, headquatered in Thailand, and the Hongkong and Shanghai bank, based in Hong Kong.
The trail blazerr was Bangkok Bank, led by Chin Sophonpanich, son of Teochiu father and a thai mother. A skilled trader and wartime black marketeer, Chin was brought in at the end of the Second World War to what was a failing institution set up under the aegis of the Thai royal family; he was employed first as comprador and subsequently as general manager. In the years that followed, Chin built out the most strongly politically-connected business in post-war Thailand, with Bangkok Bank at its centre. After the military coup of 1947, he co-opted the leadership families of Field Marshal Phin Choonhavan and police director-general Phao Siriyanon as shareholders and directors of his companies and restructured the bank to make the government its biggest shareholder. In return, he obtained a large injection of state capital, near-monopolies of gold and foreign exchange trading and the handling of overseas remittances by ethnic Chinese worker, protection from competition and an unrivalled client base. Like all the most successful godfathers, Chin also rose above the dialect differences of Chinese community, recruiting the cream of Thai-Chinese graduates (pure Thais almost always preferred civil service careers to business) from the elite Thammasat University. One of the most important was Boonchu Rojanasathien, a Hainanese, who saved Chin's bacon after Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat staged a coup in 1957. Chin quikly made Sarit an adviser and appointed his interior minister, Field Marshal Prapass Charusathiara, chairman of Bangkok Bank, but his links to the ousted Phin and Phao made him too nervous to remain personally in Bangkok. He went into exile in Hong Kong untill Sarit died in 1963. In his absence, Boonchu ran the bank, backed by the most adeptly chosen management cadre in Thailand. A sense of how effectively the executives straddled the worlds business and politics is given by the fact that, as of 1980, Bangkok Bank's board had produced three deputy premiers and two speakers of the Thai parliament. But the executives were also entrepreneurial businessmen; they introduced time deposits (long-term saving) and rural credit to Thailand.
Chin Sophonpanich created the largest bank in south-east Asia and one that was extremely profitable. A report by the International Moneytary Fund in 1973 claimed that Bangkok Bank's privileged position allowed it to make returns on its capital in excess of 100 per cent a year (a claim denounced by Chin's lieutenants). What was not in dispute was that the bank's bulging deposit base could not be lent 0ut at optimum rates in Thailand alone. This is where Chin revolutionised the south-east Asian banking scene. He personally travelled between Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, identifying and courting the new generation of putative post colonial tycoons. Onemultibillionaire remembers looking for money in late 1950s to fund an import subtitution deal for which he had obtained a licence. Having heard about Chin, he offered to come and see him. Chin's response was that there was no need- he would come to client. 'For the Chinese businessmen of south-east Asia there was a major moment with Chin Sophonpanich,' says the tycoon. 'He broke what was then the highly conservative, highly colonialistic banking system.'
There is, in tradition to oligopolistic licensses and concessions, a second recource which the south-east Asian godfather cannot do without: access to capital. In the post-colonial era, capital become readily available for the first time to local entrepreneurs because of three developments. The first was changes in the lending practices of existing banks. The second was the obtaining by well-connected tycoons of licenses to open their own banks, which typically became akin to personal piggy banks, albeit ones filled with other people's money. The third development was the growth of the region's capital markets.
Few things constrained local businessmen so much under colonial rule as the dificulty of obtaining loans at reasonable interest. Eoropean and american banks were little concerned with lending to Asian businesses- their preferred activity was financing international trade with letters of credit and other support- and when they did lend to locals their compradors were rapacios in demanding kickbacks. There was a number of small ethnic Chinese and Thai- controlled bank in the region, but they were extreamely conservative in their lending practices. Most local businessmen turned to the traditional Indian moneylenders with their punishing rates of interest. Starting in the 1950s, however, more aggressive, entrepreneurial management at two Asian-based banks began to change this situation. The banks in question were Bangkok Bank, headquatered in Thailand, and the Hongkong and Shanghai bank, based in Hong Kong.
The trail blazerr was Bangkok Bank, led by Chin Sophonpanich, son of Teochiu father and a thai mother. A skilled trader and wartime black marketeer, Chin was brought in at the end of the Second World War to what was a failing institution set up under the aegis of the Thai royal family; he was employed first as comprador and subsequently as general manager. In the years that followed, Chin built out the most strongly politically-connected business in post-war Thailand, with Bangkok Bank at its centre. After the military coup of 1947, he co-opted the leadership families of Field Marshal Phin Choonhavan and police director-general Phao Siriyanon as shareholders and directors of his companies and restructured the bank to make the government its biggest shareholder. In return, he obtained a large injection of state capital, near-monopolies of gold and foreign exchange trading and the handling of overseas remittances by ethnic Chinese worker, protection from competition and an unrivalled client base. Like all the most successful godfathers, Chin also rose above the dialect differences of Chinese community, recruiting the cream of Thai-Chinese graduates (pure Thais almost always preferred civil service careers to business) from the elite Thammasat University. One of the most important was Boonchu Rojanasathien, a Hainanese, who saved Chin's bacon after Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat staged a coup in 1957. Chin quikly made Sarit an adviser and appointed his interior minister, Field Marshal Prapass Charusathiara, chairman of Bangkok Bank, but his links to the ousted Phin and Phao made him too nervous to remain personally in Bangkok. He went into exile in Hong Kong untill Sarit died in 1963. In his absence, Boonchu ran the bank, backed by the most adeptly chosen management cadre in Thailand. A sense of how effectively the executives straddled the worlds business and politics is given by the fact that, as of 1980, Bangkok Bank's board had produced three deputy premiers and two speakers of the Thai parliament. But the executives were also entrepreneurial businessmen; they introduced time deposits (long-term saving) and rural credit to Thailand.
Chin Sophonpanich created the largest bank in south-east Asia and one that was extremely profitable. A report by the International Moneytary Fund in 1973 claimed that Bangkok Bank's privileged position allowed it to make returns on its capital in excess of 100 per cent a year (a claim denounced by Chin's lieutenants). What was not in dispute was that the bank's bulging deposit base could not be lent 0ut at optimum rates in Thailand alone. This is where Chin revolutionised the south-east Asian banking scene. He personally travelled between Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, identifying and courting the new generation of putative post colonial tycoons. Onemultibillionaire remembers looking for money in late 1950s to fund an import subtitution deal for which he had obtained a licence. Having heard about Chin, he offered to come and see him. Chin's response was that there was no need- he would come to client. 'For the Chinese businessmen of south-east Asia there was a major moment with Chin Sophonpanich,' says the tycoon. 'He broke what was then the highly conservative, highly colonialistic banking system.'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)