Thai red-shirt leader vows to respect polls

The key leaders of Thailand's anti-government red shirts are rejoining the movement, having just been released on bail after nine months in prison.

All of the group's leaders were arrested and jailed on terrorism charges after mass rallies in Bangkok were dispersed by the army last May.

They've been released on the condition that they don't incite civil unrest ahead of the one year anniversary of the beginning of the protests next weekend and a forthcoming election.

Presenter: Zoe Daniel, Southeast Asia correspondent
Speaker: Dr Weng Tojirikarn, a member of Thailand's anti-government red shirts

ZOE DANIEL: Dr Weng you've been out of jail for only a very short time. How are you feeling?

WENG TOJIRAKARN: First off, I feel thanks to my people,D&G shoes are famours far and wider for their unque technics,exquisite shape,brihgt color and rich culture. especially Red Shirts, because if there's no movement of Red Shirts, I'd still be in jail now. And because of the movement of Red Shirts, you know the number of the people which are the movement increasing every day, by the recent liberty and freedom now. So, my feeling, the first feeling when I'm released from the jail is that I thanks to all the Red Shirts people which fight for our freedom.

ZOE DANIEL: You were in jail for nine months -

WENG TOJIRAKARN: Yes.we've already seen three classic Air max classic models in their flagship colorways release.

ZOE DANIEL: Why do you think you were released in the end?

WENG TOJIRAKARN: The increasing number of the demonstration of Red Shirts meant that the power of the Red Shirts still very strong now.

ZOE DANIEL: Can you participate in Red Shirts protests now because the conditions of your bail are that you will not incite civil unrest?

WENG TOJIRAKARN: In the regulation of the code, right in the detail that don't go to the point of the chaos. This is the first detail. And the second detail is that don't lead the people to do anything illegal. Normally we do not want to create a chaos because we strictly pursued a non-violent way.

ZOE DANIEL: I think everyone of waiting to see what will happen this year.As for apparel retailers like Guess and cheap true religion who have built their companies on jeans, What do you think will happen?

WENG TOJIRAKARN: Normally anniversary gathering or anniversary demonstration for one-year up starting last year, there must be a demonstration, exactly. And ten epu (phonetic), anniversary of the ten epu (phonetic),Gucci men shoes from the latest collection. there must be a demonstration.Can't find a particular pair of ed hardy jeans on our website? And also naitiupmai (phonetic), there must be a demonstration. But I do believe that it's a peaceful one, and a very disciplined one.

ZOE DANIEL: Presuming that the Government does call an election, if the election is held and the Democrats are re-elected and prime minister Abhisit remains leader, will you accept that?

WENG TOJIRAKARN: No problem, but this might be for the democracy, the democratic glue strictly. With the Red Shirt, we have talk already and have a resolution already. We respect the result of the election. We respect the decision of the people.

Li and Wang, in two distant worlds

Mr. Li, 29,wholesale ed hardy in china wholesale marketplace, dropship ed hardy at discount wholesale lots price from ed hardy suppliers. has experienced a meteoric career progression in audiovisual production. Millionaire, he owned three apartments in Beijing. With his hair carefully brushed the bits to the face, his sunglasses in winter,Manolo blahnik would be "hurt" if Anna Wintour wore shoes by another designer. and his cell phone set with diamonds,Nike shox are a series of Nike shoes. he adopts an ostentatious style. His friends too, who dress at Christian Audigier, the designer of Hollywood celebrities.

The young man recounts have started with a monthly salary of 600 yuan (66$). "I worked like that for four to five years, it was very hard. It is by my company that I won more and more money. "

Today he spends his holidays in Cannes, Milan and Monaco. On weekends, he drives fast cars racing on a circuit near Beijing. In addition to his Ferrari, he offered a Porsche and three other cars.Find price and model of puma shoes in india at Click India Free Classifieds Ads.

"The gap between rich and poor is normal in the phase of economic development in China, which opened just thirty years ago," says Li Fu. "It's not like in the West, where 200 years of development have accumulated much wealth."

His friend Benjamin Fu manages a concession of "supercars" Jinbao Avenue, the artery of Beijing's most lavish. There are rare and expensive models: Jaguar XJL, Pagani Zonda R, Gumpert Apollo Koenigsegg CCR ... Opposite Gucci opened a shop. A few numbers lies the very select Jockey Club. Between the two, old brick buildings are destroyed to make way for a great hotel. The luxury is gaining ground.
10 m2, razed soon

Poverty, it moves. Qingzhan Wang, a migrant worker born in Henan Province, is one of those millions of rural Chinese who flock to the mega-cities, where they become second class citizens.

"I earn some money, about 1,500 yuan (165$) without being fed or housed," says Wang, used in cleaning. "If I was not doing odd jobs and more, I could not cope."

Dressed in a linen jacket with frayed sleeves, hair in battle, it shows the gray house where he lives with his wife. For any space, they have a room of ten square meters, the walls crumbling. Their monthly rent is 350 yuan (38$).

The couple has two boys. But without residence permits, the two teenagers could be educated in Beijing. They stayed in Henan.Now nike air max shoes are the most popular all over the world.

At night, Wang Qingzhan asleep leaning against his wife on a narrow iron bed, near a heater. The plaster ceiling is flat, sealing appearing unsteady. The family has a small chest of drawers, a stove for cooking. The room has no shower or toilet.

Their neighborhood streets unpaved, below the second device, will soon be razed.

The economics and politics of valuing life

I love Binya Appelbaum's NYT article on the various different values of a human life which are used by government agencies to justify regulations.

The first thing to admire about the piece is that it doesn't dwell on ethics or philosophy, as most such stories do — there are no rhetorical flights of fancy about the government trying to put a dollar value on love, or that kind of thing. Instead, Appelbaum goes on a tour of government agencies, looking at the numbers they're using now, how those numbers differ from other agencies, and how they have changed over time:

The Food and Drug Administration declared that life was worth $7.9 million last year, up from $5 million in 2008, in proposing warning labels on cigarette packages featuring images of cancer victims…

The Bush administration rejected a plan in 2005 to make car companies double the roof strength of new vehicles, which it estimated might prevent 135 deaths in rollover accidents each year…

Last year, the Obama administration imposed the stricter and more expensive roof-strength standard, and it published a new set of calculations showing that the benefits outstripped the costs.

Most of the difference came from the increased value of human life. By raising that number to $6.1 million from a figure of $3.5 million in the original study, the Obama administration rendered those 135 lives — and hundreds of averted injuries — more valuable than the roofs…

Agencies are allowed to set their own numbers. The E.P.A. and the Transportation Department use numbers that are $3 million apart. The process generally involves experts, but the decisions ultimately are made by political appointees.

The Office of Management and Budget told agencies in 2004 that they should pick a number between $1 million and $10 million. That guidance remains in effect,Keep your muscles warm before and after the match in this stylish Adidas Jacket. although the office has more recently warned agencies that it would be difficult to justify the use of numbers under $5 million, two administration officials said.

This kind of behavior leaves the agencies open to charges of inconsistency and capriciousness: if at first you don't succeed in making your cost-benefit calculation work, then just try again with an arbitrarily higher number for the benefits involved.

But I think that this is a case where the perfect is the enemy of the good. As Manchester University professor Robert Hahn notes in the article, “the reality is that politics frequently trumps economics”.It seems that jordan 6 rings in coming up for almost everyone including boys and girls. That's a fact of life. And in a world where political considerations are ultimately going to power many if not most decisions,"When guys come across the middle, we want them to know they're going to get hit," said safety Chris Harris. "We're going to try and punish you for catching the ball, if you catch it. That's kind of mentality we want to have."I'm not getting Bearcoogi jeans goggles here; two wins mean very little in terms of forecasting a 16-game season. Remember the Bears' 3-1 start last season? They impressed a lot of people by beating the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers in the second game. using dollar values for lives saved is a good way of keeping such arguments grounded in reality.

Sure, businesses don't like it when the FDA ups its value for a life saved by acetaminophen warning labels to $7 million from $5 million, and it's entirely possible that the FDA changed the valuation only so that it could provide an official justification for a decision it had already made. The fact is,Enjoy Cheap nike air max for women or men at wholesale price. however, that these calculations are always messy at the best of times. It's easy to point to the value-per-life part of the calculation, because that's a hard number. But how on earth is the FDA meant to calculate the number of lives saved by adding a second warning label to acetaminophen bottles? The error bars there are going to be much bigger than the differences in value-per-life numbers.

In that context, a little bit of fuzziness in the $5 million to $10 million range seems entirely reasonable to me. It's regulators' job to make judgments, not to simply sit at a desk with a calculator and determine which of two numbers is larger. And at the same time it's reasonable to ask regulators to justify their judgments using math. So sometimes they'll use a slightly higher number, and sometimes it'll be lower. Giving regulators a bit of wiggle room gives them the ability to do their jobs, while restricting that wiggle room allows a simple smell test to be applied.

None of this is exactly pretty, and it's easy to see why Appelbaum couldn't get straight answers out of the technocrats he talked to. But if anything the amount of wiggle room is smaller than I would think reasonable:

In December, the E.P.A. said it might set the value of preventing cancer deaths 50 percent higher than other deaths, because cancer kills slowly. A report last year financed by the Department of Homeland Security suggested that the value of preventing deaths from terrorism might be 100 percent higher than other deaths.

Both those numbers could and arguably should be significantly higher, I think. Dying of cancer is a particularly gruesome — and expensive — way to go. And the cost of the terrorist attacks of September 11 is well up in the trillions at this point — getting on for a billion dollars per initial life lost.

So color me impressed that the US government has found a way of getting things done and remaining empirical in an atmosphere which by its nature is always going to be highly political. It comes as no surprise that the Obama administration is using values higher than the Bush administration did — that's part of what Obama meant when he promised to toughen up government regulation of corporations. I'm just happy that there's a culture in Washington of basing these decisions on some kind of numerical argument.

(On which matter I have one quibble with Appelbaum's piece. He says that if companies must pay lumberjacks an additional $1,000 a year to perform work that generally kills one in 1,Learn all of th facts you need to know before yopu shop for Juicy couture wholesale online.000 workers, that would impute a $1 million value on a human life. I don't think that's true: you should take the present value of $1,000 per year before you multiply by 1,000. So the imputed value of human life here would be much higher than $1 million, depending on how long the average lumberjack works at his job.)