By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Mar 4, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Istanbul is a unique city where East meets West, Europe is connected to Asia by a bridge and the Middle East is just a short boat ride away. Nowhere is the cultural convergence of Turkey more evident than in their diverse and vibrant markets. The Grand Bazaar in the center of the old city and the spice market on the banks of the Bosphorous offer a glimpse into the past and the opportunity to travel without leaving the country.
Grand Bazaar
Construction of the Grand Bazaar started in 1455 and continued to grow as it first housed the textile trade, then included space for the slave trade within the area. As more shop owners set up their businesses an entire quarter dedicated to commerce was born. In the seventeenth century the area became the hub of Mediterranean trade, further proof of the power of the Ottoman Empire. It seems as if the history is still present within the vaulted chambers of the historic market, the diversity of vendors is incredible and the whole area has a wonderful old world charm.
Tea cups and tea sets for sale in the Grand Bazaar
Read the rest of… Erica and Matt Chua: Istanbul Markets
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Feb 25, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Sailing the Nile for three days sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Sailboats conjure up feelings of freedom, relaxation and, let’s be honest, opulence. How often do you associate sailing with anything less than the high-life? My last multi-day sailing experience, yachting around the Galapagos, was exactly what sailing fantasies are made of. Sailing on a felucca for three days up the Nile though was not.
The idea of sailing from Aswan to Luxor as the ancient Egyptians did is romantic. Wanting to see the Nile, relax and enjoy a little more of Egypt’s scenery we signed up for the two night, three-day tour. Originally we had planned to do the five-day cruise, but people had told us that two nights was plenty, actually they told us one night was probably enough. Even with this advice we decided to spend a little extra time, hoping to see more of the Nile, little did we know that extra time didn’t equate to extra distance.
Getting on the boat around 1 PM we lazily drifted a couple hundred meters to what we presume was a police checkpoint. Waiting there for a few minutes, we were excited when the captain returned to start our voyage. After drifting downstream for another 20 minutes we stopped at a beach to “swim”. Only LOCAVORista took the opportunity to dive into the Nile while our two German shipmates and I read on the boat. After LOCAVORista finished her swim the captain continued playing in the water for another hour or so. When he finally returned we were excited to really get moving, maybe actually sail.
Read the rest of… Erica and Matt Chua: Sailing the Nile — Dream or Dull?
By Jonathan Miller, on Sat Feb 23, 2013 at 7:36 PM ET
Oh, no. First the Chinese. Now the Mexicans are attacking me. As you can see in the screenshot, UPI Espanol is calling me y “el ex director del partido, Jonathan Miller” which I am pretty sure is Spanish for a “former dictator who throws bad parties.”
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Feb 18, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. For the uninitiated it’s known as the world’s biggest party. For those who have lived it there’s no way to explain it. Dozens of major streets closed for parties with thousands of bands playing filled with millions of people partying while drinking tens of millions of beers. Carnival is crazy.
As an Argentinian we met at 4AM said to us, “I came last year and it was so crazy I had to come again with my friends.” Next time we go we’ll do the same and bring friends because there will be a next time…here’s why.
HE SAID…
A five-day adventure like Carnival is hard to sum up. With days and nights filled with the unexpected it’s hard to remember exactly what happened, so let’s review the tape. Here’s the official replay of my Carnival 2013:
With temperatures around 90 degrees through the night, $1.50 ice-cold beers are an easy way too cool off…
Number one thing I love about Carnival? It’s everything “freedom-loving” Americans have outlawed. Imagine if nine drunken, tu-tu clad, men jumped on a city truck and used it as a dance platform in your city…in Rio, the driver just shook his head and kept on driving with them aboard…
Read the rest of… Erica and Matt Chua: Carnival Instant Replay
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Feb 11, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Jerusalem is a loaded word. I could preface that with “these days”, but the reality is that it’s been a place of dispute more than peace. ”It has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times and changed hands 52 times,” according to Wikipedia. If Jerusalem was a sporting event it’d be the must watch game of all-time. We’d be glued to the television wondering how it was going to end, cheering when our side gained the lead and screaming in dismay when control changed hands. The only thing everyone would agree upon is that the officials, those “independent” outside arbiters, were terrible. Sadly the sporting analogy is all too apt, religions are the teams, officials are foreign powers, and Jerusalem is the trophy. Why fight for this trophy? The agnostic doesn’t see a reason.
The golden Dome of the Rock on the right is one of Sunni Muslim’s most sacred sites along with the location of the Holiest of Holies for Jewish people. Just behind this is the Church of the Sepulchre one of Christianity’s holiest sites.
Jerusalem and Israel as a whole is a place where assigned value trumps real value. The value of these places isn’t real, there aren’t $2 billion plus gold monuments like Shwedagon Paya in Myanmar. The land isn’t productive like Iowa. The riches don’t lie beneath the ground like in Venezuela. The country isn’t a paradise like Palawan. There is nothing tangible worth fighting for in Jerusalem or Israel. The reality is that if all of Israel were to fall into the ocean the world wouldn’t be affected. The problem is that people believe that it would affect us. Jewish people believe that theFoundation Stone in the Dome of the Rock is the meeting point of Heaven and Earth. Both Sunni Muslims and Christians believe that their prophet ascended to Heaven from Jerusalem. While these places have limited actual value, for the three of the world’s major religions, Jerusalem is priceless.
Read the rest of… Matt and Erica Chua: An Agnostic Walk Through Jerusalem
By Jonathan Miller, on Sun Feb 10, 2013 at 11:19 AM ET
Last week, I joined Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Jamie Comer in support of legalizing industrial hemp on the public broadcasting program, Kentucky Tonight. Click the picture at left to watch our debate with law enforcement officials.
Viewers of the program noticed that the two sides disagreed on some very critical underlying facts about the differences between hemp and marijuana and how the two plants are grown.
Janet Patton of the Lexington Herald-Leader spent a few weeks investigating this matter, and interviewing objective experts. Here is an excerpt from her story published today:
The nightmare hemp scenario for Kentucky State Police apparently is a field legally licensed to grow hemp forgrain with illegally planted marijuana mingled in.
Unlike hemp grown for fiber (when the plants are inches apart to promote tall stalk growth), the hemp grown for grain and marijuana plants would look substantially the same, said Jeremy Triplett, supervisor of the state police forensic lab.
Both could be shorter and bushy. The only way to really know, he said, would be to test for delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that gives marijuana smokers a high.
Such testing could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, at $755 per quantitative analysis, not to mention $1.8 million in start-up expenses, state police have estimated.
But would that really happen? Would an unscrupulous pot grower plant marijuana with hemp?
Take Canada, where marijuana also is illegal but hemp has been legallygrown since 1998. “Health Canada’s Industrial Hemp Program has never found marijuana growing in hemp fields instead of hemp,” the agency said in a statement.
They’ve looked. A lot.
Canadian inspectors take samples annually from each field and have found THClevels slightly above 0.3 percent from stress during growing, but not above 0.5 percent, Health Canada said.
Keith Watson, Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives agronomist, has seen and tested most of the hemp grown in his province in the past 15 years. Does marijuana creep in?
“I’ve never run into it,” Watson said. About 95 percent of the crop is sampled annually, and he said that marijuana and grain hemp might look just alike and could be planted side by side and only an expert eye might distinguish the difference. But in his experience, it just doesn’t happen.
“Over the years, that’s taken me out to an awful lot of fields,” Watson said. “I’ve never found marijuana in the field or any trace of it.”
He said a “handful” of times he has seen paths cut into the fields, places where people have topped the plants. But it doesn’t happen much anymore.
“After a couple of years, nobody bothers it,” he said.
What about marijuana?
As for marijuana growers using hemp to pad their illegal pot, “the general impression is that’s a self-regulating industry,” Watson said. “They’ll get away with it once … but if the quality (of the marijuana) isn’t up to par, there will be a lot of broken kneecaps.”
Kentucky Agricultural Commissioner James Comer announced on KET’s Kentucky Tonight “On February 11, when I testify with Senator Hornback for this bill, we’re going to have Senator Rand Paul, Congressman [John] Yarmuth and Congressman Massey all there testifying in favor of this bill [Senate Bill 50]. I’ve been there 13 years, and I’ve never seen three congressmen testify on the same bill, and of different parties. Today we learned former CIA director James Woolsey will be flying in to testify on behalf of this bill…”
Comer, a Republican, has made a full media press in support of industrial hemp in Kentucky, which cannot currently be legally grown in the U.S. Tonight, he was interviewed by KET’s Bill Goodman, on a panel that included former Kentucky State Treasurer Jonathan Miller, Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer, and Dan Smoot, vice president of Operation UNITE.
Senate Bill 50, proposed by senator Paul Hornback (Republican, Shelbyville), doesn’t legalize hemp. It establishes the framework for a regulatory agency (the Kentucky Department of Agriculture) to regulate this crop, if and when the federal government allows the growing of industrial hemp in the U.S. Key provisions: any grower would have to pass a criminal background check. Growers would have to submit GPS coordinates of their hemp fields. Growers would have to agree to inspections and grow a minimum of ten acres.
Comer says industrial hemp grows well in Kentucky (it was prevalent in Kentucky in the 1900s), and it “has a growing demand…. It’s a green crop,” adding “we’re at a crossroads in Kentucky agriculture.”
Jonathan Miller, citing his background as a Henry Clay high school graduate, and a childhood growing up on land that was once part of Henry Clay’s estate, reminded viewers that industrial hemp was Henry Clay’s key crop, but he was most excited about the environmental possibilities. “We’re facing some real issues here in terms of developing energy and developing clean energy.”
“Instead of trying to find examples of other places to follow, I’d love to see Kentucky take the lead. We need to be first in something we can be really proud of.”
Not everyone on the panel agreed with Comer and Miller.
Commissioner Brewer says he agrees with Comer that hemp and marijuana grow well in Kentucky. He says the problem is “you cannot distinguish between hemp and marijuana with the naked eye. You’ll hear a lot of proponents say that you can…but you cannot tell the difference.” He asks what would keep an enterprising or unscrupulous farmer from adding a few marijuana plants to the interior of a hemp tract, “when the going rate for marijuana is about $2300/lb,” adding that “the research has not been done to show [hemp’s] a viable product in Kentucky yet.”
Smoot, of Operation Unite, refers to UK’s 1998 study “concluding there was no market for hemp.” He says the market’s only declined since. He says, “The United States Department of Agriculture says ‘thin market at best, novelty item.’”
SB50 requires that the seeds that the certified growers use will have only trace amounts of THC. It’s an agricultural crop, with no narcotic value.
Comer says he appreciates the concerns of the law enforcement panelists, but that “there is a concern in Kentucky to create jobs. This is an opportunity.”
Brewer says “marijuana and hemp are not first cousins, they are twin brothers.” He adds, “you can get high off of hemp.” [If they are brothers, however, they are Cain and Abel — destroying each other every chance they get. “Hemp and marijuana, both members of the cannabis family, aggressively cross-pollinate with undesirable results for both. Interbreeding marijuana valued for high THC content with low-THC hemp dramatically lowers THC content and thus economic value of smoked marijuana. Likewise, lanky hemp plants grown for the fiber in their stems would lose those desired characteristics if interbred with bushy pot plants.” Ace 2000 archive.]
Miller says, this debate makes it “so compelling why we need Senate Bill 50. It’s not legalizing hemp. It says IF hemp is legalized at the federal level,” this establishes a strong regulatory framework around it.
He spoke of “empowering” the farmers with “new opportunities,” particularly as tobacco has faded from the economic landscape…
Host Bill Goodman then read an email from James Higdon, author of Cornbread Mafia:
“In reporting my book, I found that many illegal pot farmers were against the idea of reviving Kentucky’s hemp industry out of fear of what the increase in hemp pollen would do to the value of their crops. Why is it that Operation Unite and the Kentucky State Police agree with criminal marijuana growers that hemp is a bad idea?”
Smoot responded, first to the caller:
“I will guarantee you that those people that died of the pill overdoses, their first experience with illegal drugs was marijuana. “
He then suggested that anyone growing industrialized hemp should be prepared to hire armed guards.
Smoot countered, “If you take our whole federal delegation from Kentucky to DC, combined, I don’t think they have put a fraction of the time and effort into the drug crisis in Kentucky and this nation as Congressman Hal Rogers…He has made battling drugs a priority.”
Goodman adds, “he is one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress because he is chair of the appropriations and revenue committee.”
Comer says he respects Rogers’ point of view, but stresses “when Senate Bill 50 passes, that still doesn’t legalize industrial hemp in Kentucky. It just sets up the framework for how it will be regulated in Kentucky,” referring to the arguments against the bill as “shallow,” saying “it’s ok to be bold.”
Miller says, “we don’t claim this is a magic crop or panacea. It’s not gonna solve all of Kentucky’s problems.” But he referenced UK’s 1998 survey (before new applications for hemp were developed) identifying one processing plant as capable of generating 300 new jobs and $6.7 million of revenue.
Commissioner Brewer says law enforcement will have to prepare for “The Hemp Defense.”
“Everybody we stop from now on that has a bag of marijuana is going to say ‘that’s not marijuana, that’s hemp.’”
He estimates the testing that necessitates will cost the state about $1.75 million the first year.
Goodman asks, “can it be tested in the field? It can’t be tested when someone is pulled over for a nickel bag? Can it be tested in a growing field? It has to be taken to a laboratory?”
Miller says, “if someone is pulled over for a nickel bag and says it’s hemp, the immediate response should be to arrest them for marijuana possession.”
Commissioner Brewer says, “oh we will,” citing the arrest of Dr. Bronner last summer for growing hemp.
By Michael Steele, on Wed Feb 6, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
From MSNBC:
“We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” President Obama said in his inaugural address Monday. The address devoted more sentences to the environment more than any other specific subject. “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”
In that, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele said the president indicated that climate change would be a crucial part of his second term legacy.
“When I heard that line, what struck me is this is the Obamacare of the second administration” Steele said. “Climate change is going to be the sleeping dog issue that he is going to fashion and put into play, maybe a total package or piecemeal, but I think that’s going to be part of the second term legacy.”
Many assume that social issues would take a central stage in the second term, as Obama came out in favor of gay equality, against guns, and in favor of sweeping immigration reform. While those may also play a role in second-term agenda, Steele believes it’ll be climate change that has the greatest effect.
“It’s not going to be so much the social stuff that a lot of people, certainly in the conservative movement concern themselves with, it’s going to be the bigger idea that falls into that broader vision,” Steele said. “He reformed 1/6 of the nation’s economy with healthcare. Now he’s going to go to the next level with global change in the environment.”
