Cyberknife is at Your Service in AMC
Cyberknife, which is available only in a limited number of centers worldwide, is AT YOUR SERVICE only in Anadolu Medical Center in Turkey.
Cyberknife, which is used for the radiotherapy of many types of cancer, removes the tumor precisely as a surgical method while preventing harmful effects of radiation on normal intact tissues. Patients can return to their work soon after the procedures performed with Cyberknife technology, which is the most sophisticated method of radiosurgery. Cyberknife confers additional benefits too !
From 2002 on Cyberknife has been used successfully in thousands of patients in the most respectable cancer institutes mainly in the US and Japan. Many patients from our country have been referred to Stanford University Cyberknife Center, which is accepted as one of the best healthcare centers in the world. Cyberknife is now available in 70 healthcare centers in the world including Anadolu Medical Center in Turkey. Cyberknife, which was approved by FDA for usage in any part of the body, is the latest technology used for the radiotherapy of cancer. It is the most advanced method of radiotherapy, which minimizes exposure of intact peritumoral tissue to radiation Cyberknife is defined as painless non-operative treatment approach. Tumor or affected areas are targeted precisely, and killed with higher radiation doses.
For which body parts it is used?
Cyberknife is an effective method for brain tumors. Cyberknife may offer an alternative for inoperable patients. After contouring of tumor seen in computerized tomography, CyberKnife system irradiates and destroys tumor meticulously like a surgeon with the help of a robot in a session lasting nearly an hour.
It has a potential widespread usage in many types of tumors. It can irradiate organs having higher incidence of cancer such as brain, brainstem, spinal cord, throat, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidney, adrenals and prostate without any side-effect. This superior technology allows patients return to their homes, or even drive home soon after the therapy.
The probability of treatment errors drops to negligible levels!
Cyberknife is used for cancer radiotherapy. The equipment has a robotic arm that works with an integrated 6 MV Linac, rotates in every direction, and stops at every position. It delivers precisely directed radiation beams to the tumor area within the patient. Thus, any body region can be easily irradiated using this robotic arm. This feature offers a chance of treatment for patients, considered as untreatable with other types of radiotherapy equipments.
Besides, during treatment with Cyberknife, 100% real-time images can be obtained, and these images guide the radiation procedure. Organs, with the exception of brain, can sometimes move. This feature prevents desired dose distribution. With the guidance of the markers placed inside tumor / on the skin surface and Synchrony software program, mobile organs are monitorized continuously during therapy session with Cyberknife, and the organ is irradiated when it is in the desired position. Perfect homogeneity and distribution of doses are obtained with non-isocentric and non-coplanar single or multiple fractionated radiation doses, and radiotherapy can be achieved with minimal deviation (<1 mm). As a result of these benefits, probability of a treatment error drops to minimum.
Painless and without adverse effects
It is possible to protect normal tissues from harmful effects of radiation using robotic orientation system with a accuracy rate less than 1 mm. In other words, it removes the tumor precisely as a surgical method while preventing harmful effects of radiation on normal intact tissues. Robot-assisted operations do not carry any adverse effect or risk of traditional surgery, in that it is a bloodless and painless intervention performed without anesthesia. Therefore, it is also known as a radiosurgical equipment. Owing to the monitoring system of organs moving up and down with respiration, it is at least as effective as surgery for the treatment of many types of cancer and their metastases.
Cyberknife in clinical applications.
AVM (Arteriovenous Malformations)
AVM is a vascular disease in brain and spinal cord. It carries a 3-4% risk of bleeding. Besides, it can cause epileptic seizures, pain and neurologic deficits. They can be treated with embolization or other surgical methods. However, these procedures are risky and invasive interventions. Although its effects are seen later than other methods, radiosurgery is a safe treatment modality.
In other methods, a metal frame must be placed around skull to localize and stabilize the target. This apparatus must stay around patient’s head for nearly 3-6 hours. However, during treatment with Cyberknife, a metal frame causing pain is avoided. Besides, AVMs in spinal cord of near skull base can not be treated with other radiosurgical methods. However, with Cyberknife, any lesion within the body can be treated easily and precisely.
Brain Tumors
In a majority of tumors arising from brain tissue, Cyberknife treatment is applied as a monotherapy or post-operatively.
In benign tumors of brain, Cyberknife reduces and destroys tumor or stops its growth and allows non-operative management of the patients.
In malign tumors of brain, pre-, and post-operative applications aid in recovery of patients. The greatest advantage of Cyberknife is the avoidance of metal skull frame apart from other radiosurgical methods, and completion of therapy usually within 1-5 sessions instead of 30-40 sessions.
Brain metastases
Cancer cells transport in blood circulation to other organs, settle there and continually damage the tissue. They mostly settle inside brain. In 20-40% of cancer patients, brain metastases are observed. Up to 75% of them metastasize to more than one foci. They can lead to epileptic seizures, headache and neurologic deficits.
For the treatment of brain metastases, surgical treatments, whole-brain radiotherapy, and some chemotherapeutic agents have been used. Studies performed have shown that radiosurgery is as effective as surgical treatment. With this modality, patients are freed from a heavy burden as brain surgery. However, as in many radiosurgical methods, for the treatment of AVMs a metal frame must be fixed to the skull to determine the target to be radiated, to plan and apply the treatment. This apparatus must stay on patient’s head for nearly 3-6 hours. However, during treatment with Cyberknife, a metal frame causing pain is avoided. In addition, patients will not feel pain since a metal frame is not fixed for planning and application of Cyberknife therapy. Besides, with other radiosurgical methods, only one fraction of radiotherapy is applied, while with Cyberknife, radiosurgical therapy can be instituted in 1-5 fractions.
In addition, with similar reasons, Cyberknife maintains its superiority for glial tumors, acoustic neurinomas and trigeminal neuralgias.
Liver cancers
For primary cancers of liver (hepatocellular carcinoma) and intrahepatic biliary tract, surgical treatment is preferred. Especially patients with small tumors can survive longer after surgery. However, only 30% of the patients are operable. The remaining 70% can not use their chance of surgery, and they do not survive longer despite many systemic treatments. Similarly, in metastatic diseases of liver, surgical approaches are less suitable, and chemotherapy is not sufficiently effective. Conventional radiotherapy can not be applied for these patient groups or only very limited doses can be given to a small number of patients because of mobility of liver and damage incurred on intact liver tissue. Even these doses could not demonstrate the desired effect. Although, with radiosurgery, intact tissues can be protected maximally, technically it can not be performed for tumors outside skull, and a planning can not be done for movable organs. However, with Cyberknife, radiosurgery of mobile organs can be performed with a minimal intervention. Intact tissues can be protected maximally, while higher doses can be applied to cancerous tissues when compared with conventional methods. For inoperable primary or metastatic hepatic cancers, with effective doses of radiosurgery, patients can survive longer.
Lung Cancers
Cancers arising from the lung tissue or those metastasize to the lungs are fatal because of damage incurred on the lungs. Coughing, dyspnea, bleeding, pain, rapid weight loss are usually the most commonly seen symptoms. For the treatment of primary lung cancer, surgical therapy plays an important role. In early stages, with surgical treatment, patients can survive longer. In late stages, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are used. Despite all of these treatment modalities, mostly the disease can not be controlled and the tumor can continue to grow. For these cases, reoperation and / or radiotherapy with conventional methods can not be instituted. Even applicable, the chance of increasing doses to desired levels are very low. For that reason, effective results can not be obtained. However, with Cyberknife, intact tissues are protected maximally, and tumor tissues can be exposed to higher doses that can not be delivered with other conventional methods. In primary lung cancers not amenable to surgical treatments and radiotherapy, effective doses of radiosurgery can control the disease and the patients can survive longer.
In studies performed recently, evidence suggested that the treatment of metastases ( with surgery and / or radiotherapy) provides a better and a longer life span. In these cases, where surgery is inadequate, Cyberknife is preferred as an effective treatment modalities. Sometimes Cyberknife saves patients from serious operations.
Pancreatic Cancer
Every year in the USA, 30,000 individuals are diagnosed as pancreatic cancers, and 30,000 patients are dying from pancreatic cancer. As can be understood from these statements, mortality from pancreatic cancer is relatively higher. They can lead to complaints as jaundice, pain, weakness and indigestion. Surgical treatment is the basic therapy. However, surgery can only be applied only during early stages. Since findings other than jaundice are not specific to the disease, it can not be detected during early stages. In patients who lost their chance of operability, chemotherapy or radiotherapy alone can not provide desired outcomes. Although better outcomes have been achieved with concomitant use of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the desired levels have not been achieved. Radiotherapy can not be applied with satisfactorily higher levels on small intestines, liver, kidney and spinal cord. Cyberknife will reach the doses not attainable with classical radiotherapy, and offers an opportunity to accomplish outcomes nearly similar to surgery.
Prostate Carcinomas
Studies aiming at achieving definitive treatment outcomes with single sessions of Cyberknife similar to those obtained with classical radiotherapy have reached its last phase. Cyberknife application in prostate cancers has been started in AMC simultaneously with renown international centers.
What is Cyberknife ?
Cyberknife is the latest technology used for the radiotherapy of every type of cancer. It works with 6 MV Linac mounted on a robotic arm.
It is the most advanced radiotherapeutic method minimizing exposure of normal intact peritumoral tissues to irradiation.
With a robotic arm that can be rotated, and stopped at every position, focussed radiation beams can be delivered to the patient.
Any body region can be easily irradiated with a robotic arm. This characteristics offers opportunity of treatment to many patients incurable with other radiotherapy equipments.
Cyberknife is defined as a painless, non-operative treatment modality. With Cyberknife, tumor or affected areas in the body are targeted precisely, and destroyed with higher radiation doses.
Our Mission
We are here to provide a healthier life for our people. We aim to maintain the continuity of our services within the same system structured to give all kinds of healthcare services required in any period of life.
Our Vision
We want to be the designer, executor and pioneer of innovations in healthcare in our district. We hold an all-inclusive perspective towards research, education and service in the healthcare sector. Our objective is to provide the means for healthcare services, the focal point of our efforts, to be supported with education and reserach.
Infertility and in Vitro Fertilization (IVF):
Anadolu Medical Center provides infertility treatment by medical and surgical methods, using advanced assisted reproductive technology, following diagnostic investigations in both partners. These treatment methods include all methods of infertility treatment proposed by modern medicine, like;
- IVF,
- IUI (intra-uterine insemination),
- ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection),
- In Vitro Maturation (unmedicated fertilization).
Biological Sperm Magnet :
Turkey is currently one of the most successful countries worldwide in terms of infertility treatment. Many internationally applied high-technology treatment methods are successfully performed in Anadolu Medical Center. The “Biological sperm magnet”, a method considered to be a reform in the selection of healthy sperm, is actively used in the Women’s Health Department. This method enables a marked decrease in the risk of the procreation of handicapped children following microinjection.
http://www.anadolumedicalcentre.co.uk/index.html
Margaret Thatcher -distinguish and excellency for a lifetime
September 30, 2008
Medya Library:meeting-president-carter white-house-banket white-house-front-enteance nancyreganbritishbanketmeeting-bobhopeafter
Margaret Thatcher’s political career has been one of the most remarkable of modern times. Born in October 1925 at Grantham, a small market town in eastern England, she rose to become the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive General Elections and served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century.
During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation’s foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination.
In the process, Margaret Thatcher became one of the founders, with Ronald Reagan, of a school of conservative conviction politics, which has had a powerful and enduring impact on politics in Britain and the United States and earned her a higher international profile than any British politician since Winston Churchill.
By successfully shifting British economic and foreign policy to the right, her governments helped to encourage wider international trends which broadened and deepened during the 1980s and 1990s, as the end of the Cold War, the spread of democracy, and the growth of free markets strengthened political and economic freedom in every continent.
For the last quarter century Margaret Thatcher has been one of the world’s most influential and respected political leaders, as well as one of the most controversial, dynamic, and plain-spoken.
1925-1947: Grantham & Oxford
Margaret Thatcher at a friend’s house, summer 1935.Margaret Thatcher’s home and early life in Grantham played a large part in forming her political convictions. Her parents, Alfred and Beatrice Roberts, were Methodists. The social life of the family was lived largely within the close community of the local congregation, bounded by strong traditions of self-help, charitable work, and personal truthfulness.
The Roberts family ran a grocery business, bringing up their two daughters in a flat over the shop. Margaret Roberts attended a local state school and from there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964.
But chemistry took second place to politics in Margaret Thatcher’s future plans. Conservative politics had always been a feature of her home life: her father was a local councillor in Grantham and talked through with her the issues of the day. She was elected president of the student Conservative Association at Oxford and met many prominent politicians, making herself known to the leadership of her party at the time of its devastating defeat by Labour at the General Election of 1945
1950-1951: Candidate for Dartford
Margaret Thatcher in her mid-twenties.In her mid-twenties she ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford at the General Elections of 1950 and 1951, winning national publicity as the youngest woman candidate in the country.
She lost both times, but cut the Labour majority sharply and hugely enjoyed the experience of campaigning. Aspects of her mature political style were formed in Dartford, a largely working class constituency which suffered as much as any from post-war rationing and shortages, as well as the rising level of taxation and state regulation. Unlike many Conservatives at that time, she had little difficulty getting a hearing from any audience and she spoke easily, with force and confidence, on issues that mattered to the voters
1951-1970: Family & Career
The Thatcher family – Denis, Margaret and twins, Mark and Carol.It was in Dartford too that she met her husband, Denis Thatcher, a local businessman who ran his family’s firm before becoming an executive in the oil industry. They married in 1951. Twins — Mark and Carol —were born to the couple in 1953.
In the 1950s Margaret Thatcher trained as a lawyer, specialising in taxation. She was elected to Parliament in 1959 as Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley, a north London constituency, which she continued to represent until she was made a member of the House of Lords (as Baroness Thatcher) in 1992. Within two years, she was given junior office in the administration of Harold Macmillan and during 1964-70 (when the Conservatives were again in Opposition), established her place among the senior figures of the party, serving continuously as a shadow minister. When the Conservatives returned to office in 1970, under the premiership of Edward Heath, she achieved cabinet rank as Education Secretary.
1970-1974: Education Minister
Margaret Thatcher & Edward Heath: October 1970.
Margaret Thatcher had a rough ride as Education Minister. The early 1970s saw student radicalism at its height and British politics at its least civil. Protesters disrupted her speeches, the opposition press vilified her, and education policy itself seemed set immovably in a leftwards course, which she and many Conservatives found uncomfortable. But she mastered the job and was toughened by the experience.
The Heath Government itself took a beating from events during its tenure (1970-74) and disappointed many. Elected on promises of economic revival through taming the trade unions and introducing more free market policies, it executed a series of policy reverses — nicknamed the ‘U turns’ — to become one of the most interventionist governments in British history, negotiating with the unions to introduce detailed control of wages, prices, and dividends. Defeated at a General Election in February 1974, the Heath Government left a legacy of inflation and industrial strife
1975: Elected Conservative Leader
Many Conservatives were ready for a new approach after the Heath Government and when the Party lost a second General Election in October 1974, Margaret Thatcher ran against Heath for the leadership. To general surprise (her own included), in February 1975 she defeated him on the first ballot and won the contest outright on the second, though challenged by half a dozen senior colleagues. She became the first woman ever to lead a Western political party and to serve as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.
1975-1979: Leader of the Opposition
Cradling the calf: 1979 General Election campaign.
The Labour Government of 1974-79 was one of the most crisis-prone in British history, leading the country to a state of virtual bankruptcy in 1976 when a collapse in the value of the currency on the foreign exchanges forced the government to negotiate credit from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF imposed tight expenditure controls on the government as a condition of the loan, which, ironically, improved Labour’s public standing. By summer 1978, it even looked possible that it might win re-election.
But over the winter of 1978/79, Labour’s luck ran out. Trade union pay demands led to an epidemic of strikes and showed that the government had little influence over its allies in the labour movement. Public opinion swung against Labour and the Conservatives won a Parliamentary majority of 43 at the General Election of May 1979. The following day, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1979-1983: Prime Minister – First Term
The new government pledged to check and reverse Britain’s economic decline. In the short-term, painful measures were required. Although direct taxes were cut, to restore incentives, the budget had to be balanced, and so indirect taxes were increased. The economy was already entering a recession, but inflation was rising and interest rates had to be raised to control it. By the end of Margaret Thatcher’s first term, unemployment in Britain was more than three million and it began to fall only in 1986. A large section of Britain’s inefficient manufacturing industry closed down. No one had predicted how severe the downturn would be.
But vital long-term gains were made. Inflation was checked and the government created the expectation that it would do whatever was necessary to keep it low. The budget of spring 1981, increasing taxes at the lowest point of the recession, offended conventional Keynesian economic thinking, but it made possible a cut in interest rates and demonstrated this newly found determination. Economic recovery started in the same quarter and a long expansion followed.
Political support flowed from this achievement, but the re-election of the government was only made certain by an unpredicted event: the Falklands War. The Argentine Junta’s invasion of the islands in April 1982 was met by Margaret Thatcher in the firmest way and with a sure touch. Although she worked with the US administration in pursuing the possibility of a diplomatic solution, a British military Task Force was despatched to retake the islands. When diplomacy failed, military action was quickly successful and the Falklands were back under British control by June 1982.
The electorate was impressed. Few British or European leaders would have fought for the islands. By doing so, Margaret Thatcher laid the foundation for a much more vigorous and independent British foreign policy during the rest of the 1980s.When the General Election came in June 1983, the government was re-elected with its Parliamentary majority more than trebled (144 seats).
1983-1987: Prime Minister – Second Term
Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan at Camp David, 22 December 1984.
The second term opened with almost as many difficulties as the first. The government found itself challenged by the miners’ union, which fought a year-long strike in 1984-85 under militant leadership. The labour movement as a whole put up bitter resistance to the government’s trade union reforms, which began with legislation in 1980 and 1982 and continued after the General Election.
The miners’ strike was one of the most violent and long lasting in British history. The outcome was uncertain, but after many turns in the road, the union was defeated. This proved a crucial development, because it ensured that the Thatcher reforms would endure. In the years that followed, the Labour Opposition quietly accepted the popularity and success of the trade union legislation and pledged not to reverse its key components.
In October 1984, when the strike was still underway, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher and many of her cabinet by bombing her hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference. Although she survived unhurt, some of her closest colleagues were among the injured and dead and the room next to hers was severely damaged. No twentieth-century British Prime Minister ever came closer to assassination.
British policy in Northern Ireland had been a standing source of conflict for every Prime Minister since 1969, but Margaret Thatcher aroused the IRA’s special hatred for her refusal to meet their political demands, notably during the 1980-81 prison hunger strikes.
Her policy throughout was implacably hostile to terrorism, republican or loyalist, although she matched that stance by negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 with the Republic of Ireland. The Agreement was an attempt to improve security cooperation between Britain and Ireland and to give some recognition to the political outlook of Catholics in Northern Ireland, an initiative which won warm endorsement from the Reagan administration and the US Congress.
The economy continued to improve during the 1983-87 Parliament and the policy of economic liberalisation was extended. The government began to pursue a policy of selling state assets, which in total had amounted to more than 20 per cent of the economy when the Conservatives came to power in 1979. The British privatisations of the 1980s were the first of their kind and proved influential across the world.
Where possible, sale of state assets took place through offering shares to the public, with generous terms for small investors. The Thatcher Governments presided over a great increase in the number of people saving through the stock market. They also encouraged people to buy their own homes and to make private pension provision, policies which over time have greatly increased the personal wealth of the British population.
The left wing of the Conservative Party had always been uneasy with its chief. In January 1986, enduring divisions between left and right in the Thatcher Cabinet were publicly exposed by the sudden resignation of the Defence Minister, Michael Heseltine, in a dispute over the business troubles of the British helicopter manufacturer, Westland. The fallout from the ‘Westland Affair’ challenged Margaret Thatcher’s leadership as never before. She survived the crisis, but its effects were significant. She was subjected to heavy criticism within her own party for the decision to allow US warplanes to fly from British bases to attack targets in Libya (April 1986).There was talk of the government and of its leader being ‘tired’, of having gone on too long.
Her response was characteristic: at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in October 1986, her speech foreshadowed a mass of reforms for a third Thatcher Government.With the economy now very strong, prospects were good for an election and the government was returned with a Parliamentary majority of 101in June 1987.
1987-1990: Prime Minister – Third Term
Margaret Thatcher & Gorbachev at RAF Brize Norton, 7 December 1987.
The legislative platform of the third-term Thatcher Government was among the most ambitious ever put forward by a British administration. There were measures to reform the education system (1988), introducing a national curriculum for the first time. There was a new tax system for local government (1989), the Community Charge, or ‘poll tax’ as it was dubbed by opponents. And there was legislation to separate purchasers and providers within the National Health Service (1990), opening up the service to a measure of competition for the first time and increasing the scope for effective management.
All three measures were deeply controversial. The Community Charge, in particular, became a serious political problem, as local councils took advantage of the introduction of a new system to increase tax rates, blaming the increase on the Thatcher Government.(The system was abandoned by Margaret Thatcher’s successor, John Major, in 1991.) By contrast, the education and health reforms proved enduring. Successive governments built on the achievement and in some respects extended their scope.
The economy boomed in 1987-88, but also began to overheat. Interest rates had to be doubled in 1988. A division within the government over management of the currency emerged into the open, Margaret Thatcher strongly opposing the policy urged by her Chancellor of the Exchequer and others, of pegging the pound sterling to the Deutschmark through the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). In the process, her relations with her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, were fatally damaged, and he resigned in October 1989.
Behind this dispute there was profound disagreement within the government over policy towards the European Community itself. The Prime Minister found herself increasingly at odds with her Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, on all questions touching European integration. Her speech at Bruges in September 1988 began the process by which the Conservative Party — at one time largely ‘pro-European’ — became predominantly ‘Euro-sceptic’.
Paradoxically, all this took place against a backdrop of international events profoundly helpful to the Conservative cause. Margaret Thatcher played her part in the last phase of the Cold War, both in the strengthening of the Western alliance against the Soviets in the early 1980s and in the successful unwinding of the conflict later in the decade.
The Soviets had dubbed her the ‘Iron Lady’ — a tag she relished — for the tough line she took against them in speeches shortly after becoming Conservative leader in 1975. During the 1980s she offered strong support to the defence policies of the Reagan administration.
But when Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as a potential leader of the Soviet Union, she invited him to Britain in December 1984 and pronounced him a man she could do business with.She did not soften her criticisms of the Soviet system, making use of new opportunities to broadcast to television audiences in the east to put the case against Communism.Nevertheless, she played a constructive part in the diplomacy that smoothed the break-up of the Soviet Empire and of the Soviet Union itself in the years 1989-91.
By late 1990, the Cold War was over and free markets and institutions vindicated. But that event triggered the next stage in European integration, as France revived the project of a single European currency, hoping to check the power of a reunited Germany. As a result, divisions over European policy within the British Government were deepened by the end of the Cold War and now became acute.
On November 1 1990 Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned over Europe and in a bitter resignation speech precipitated a challenge to Margaret Thatcher’s leadership of her party by Michael Heseltine. In the ballot that followed, she won a majority of the vote. Yet under party rules the margin was insufficient, and a second ballot was required. Receiving the news at a conference in Paris, she immediately announced her intention to fight on.
But a political earthquake occurred the next day on her return to London, when many colleagues in her cabinet — unsympathetic to her on Europe and doubting that she could win a fourth General Election — abruptly deserted her leadership and left her no choice but to withdraw. She resigned as Prime Minister on November 28 1990. John Major succeeded her and served in the post until the landslide election of Tony Blair’s Labour Government in May 1997.
Biography: Conclusion
After 1990 Lady Thatcher (as she became) remained a potent political figure. She wrote two best-selling volumes of memoirs – The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995) – while continuing for a full decade to tour the world as a lecturer. A book of reflections on international politics – Statecraft – was published in 2002. During the period she made some important interventions in domestic British politics, notably over Bosnia and the Maastricht Treaty.
In March 2002, following several small strokes, she announced an end to her career in public speaking.
Denis Thatcher, her husband of more than fifty years, died in June 2003, receiving warm tributes from all sides.
Margaret Thatcher remains an intensely controversial figure in Britain. Critics claim that her economic policies were divisive socially, that she was harsh or ‘uncaring’ in her politics, and hostile to the institutions of the British welfare state. Defenders point to a transformation in Britain’s economic performance over the course of the Thatcher Governments and those of her successors as Prime Minister. Trade union reforms, privatisation, deregulation, a strong anti-inflationary stance, and control of tax and spending have created better economic prospects for Britain than seemed possible when she became Prime Minister in 1979.
Critics and supporters alike recognise the Thatcher premiership as a period of fundamental importance in British history. Margaret Thatcher accumulated huge prestige over the course of the 1980s and often compelled the respect even of her bitterest critics. Indeed, her effect on the terms of political debate has been profound. Whether they were converted to ‘Thatcherism’, or merely forced by the electorate to pay it lip service, the Labour Party leadership was transformed by her period of office and the ‘New Labour’ politics of Tony Blair would not have existed without her.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential/default.asp
Gorbachev to form new Russian party…for the future
September 30, 2008
By Conor Sweeney
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will join forces with Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev to launch a new political party independent of the Kremlin, the billionaire businessman said on Tuesday.
Gorbachev, 77, won the 1990 Nobel peace prize for allowing the peaceful revolutions the previous year that brought democracy to Eastern Europe after decades of Soviet control.
Though hugely admired in the West, he is deeply unpopular at home for presiding over the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union that led to economic and political chaos. When he last ran for president, in 1996, he won just half a percent of the vote.
Gorbachev initiated plans for the new party, said Lebedev on his website here
“He gave our people freedom but we just can’t learn how to use it,” wrote Lebedev, who said the provisional name of the new party is the ‘Independent Democratic Party’.
The party will press for legal and economic reform and promote the growth of independent media, said Lebedev, who does not plan to bankroll the party himself but said it should be financed only from “non-state sources.”
He said the party favored “less state capitalism,” the development of independent media, reform of the justice system and a stronger role for parliament, adding that it would take part in elections.
However, Mikhail Kuznetsov, the deputy chairman of Gorbachev’s present political organization, the Union of Social Democrats, said winning seats was not the objective.
Thank you for commenting Mr.Keith
September 30, 2008
i read alll youre 5 comments, i belive the third is the first if i try to folow logical the exposure of youre opinions about this post who was taken from a websait!
google the title and you will find it, i ‘m sure , it’s quait easy!
You gave me here so much information about internal issues who goes out in foreign policy!
Mr.John Maszka is an expert in Iternational Relations and he like others can expose opinions with more or less information knowledge! Because this is what we can all do , just give opinions, that’s why we try to read eachothers opinion with respect so we can build a big picture! But this can be made with open dialogue,and contructive ideeas with background suport ofcourse.
I want to belive that many of us here use our intelligence and cultural screen to write , to say or to adress, we are all diffrent and this is beautiful, but open language can unite us!
Thank you again for commenting! Please fell open to do it again!What do you say about water management ? child problems?
Burca Alice Larisa
GWM-A new home for water. A new force for green.
September 30, 2008
Global Water Resources is known for its leadership in water conservation through recycling and reuse. Now, with the Global Water Center in Maricopa, Arizona, we’ve built Arizona’s new capitol of water recycling and a force for water conservation and sustainability.
The new Global Water Center is the first LEED certified utility facility in Pinal County. The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System is the national benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-efficiency green buildings. LEED promotes environmentally conscious building by recognizing six key categories:
As the premier facility of its kind in the world, the Global Water Center will be at the forefront of water management innovation, education, and practice. It will serve over 100,000 homes, care for over 300,000 customers, educate thousands on the benefits of water recycling, and host both local and international conferences on long-term water sustainability. In so doing, it will ultimately create over 100 jobs for the city of Maricopa, Arizona.
Global Water Center’s Environmental Impact
- Countertops are 100% recycled material
- Plywood backers are 100% recycled materials
- Precast insulated concrete formwalls contain 85% recycled materials
- Ceiling tiles contain 76% recycled materials
- Carpet contains 50% recycled materials
- Asphalt paving contains 75% recycled materials
- Metal parking canopies contain 75% recycled materials
Plant Now for the Future
Choosing and planting low water-use plants.
September is the optimal time to prepare your yard for landscape color with low water-use plants. Two-thirds of household water-use takes place outdoors, making the yard the best place to impact water consumption. Below are the top six landscape tips to incorporate into your landscape plan, as well as new planting standards (100K PDF) and information on planting trees and shrubs.
- Yard Grading
- Boulders and Granite
- Views, Hardscaping and Energy Conservation
- Common Themes and Grouping Plants
- Flowers and Native Plants
- Planting Trees and Shrubs
There are many other considerations for landscape design. For more information, consult Sunset Western Landscaping Book or talk to a Landscape Designer/Landscape Architect. Also, don’t forget to check out examples of themed planting lists.
Don’t know much about desert plants and flowers and would like to attend a FREE Landscape Workshop? Check with your local water conservation office for a listing of dates and times.
McCain being McCain:return to wall street for big transaction for US economy
September 30, 2008
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) – It could be the move that secures or destroys his White House hopes.
John McCain’s decision last week to suspend his campaign and return to Washington to help broker a Wall Street bailout deal drew scorn from Democrats and praise from some Republicans, who saw a chance for the Arizona senator to show his “maverick” style and ability to work with both parties.
The results did not turn out exactly as planned.
The Republican presidential candidate became an immediate target for the opposing party, which blamed him for torpedoing a bill, and a bipartisan meeting with President George W. Bush and rival Barack Obama ended in chaos.
So McCain retreated. He flew to Mississippi to debate Obama after first threatening to skip the event and then came back to Washington to work the phones and maneuver behind the scenes.
By Monday a deal was in place and McCain, after nearly a week without public campaign events, returned to the campaign trail with a trip to Ohio.
Was it worth it?
“In the short run it has not helped him,” said Andrew Busch, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California.
Pollution slowly killing world’s coral reefs
September 30, 2008
CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – Dainty blue fish dart around coral shaped like moose antlers near the Mexican resort of Cancun, but sickly brown spots are appearing where pollution threatens one of the world’s largest reefs.
Parts of the reef, nestled in turquoise waters, have died and algae — which feed on sewage residues flowing out of the fast-growing resort city — has taken over.
Coral reefs like Chitales, near the northern tip of a Caribbean reef chain stretching from Mexico to Honduras, are dying around the world as people and cities put more stress on the environment.
Climate change alone could trigger a global coral die-off by 2100 because carbon emissions warm oceans and make them more acidic, according to a study published in December.
But local environmental problems like sewage, farm runoff and overfishing could kill off much of the world’s reefs decades before global warming does, said Roberto Iglesias, a biologist from UNAM university’s marine sciences station near Cancun.
“The net effect of pollution is as bad or maybe worse than the effects of global warming,” said Iglesias, a co-author of the study in the journal Science on how climate change affects reefs.
Human waste like that from Cancun’s hotels and night spots aggravates threats to coral worldwide like overzealous fishing which hurts stocks of fish that eat reef-damaging algae.
Coral reefs, underwater structures that look like rocky gardens, are covered with tiny animals called coral polyps.
EU force cannot enter Georgia buffer zone: Russia
September 30, 2008
KARALETI, Georgia (Reuters) – European Union ceasefire monitors will for now not operate inside a security zone south of Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region but talks on access are continuing, Russia’s military said Tuesday.
“From tomorrow, representatives of the European Union will begin conducting monitoring up to the southern borders of the security zone,” Vitaly Manushko, head of the temporary press center for the Russian peacekeeping force around South Ossetia, told reporters.
Under a French-brokered ceasefire deal, Russian troops stationed in Georgia since a brief war in August are to pull back from undisputed Georgian territory by October 10, and allow EU monitors to take over duties patrolling the security zone.
Manushko said Russian and EU officials, meeting in the Georgian village of Karaleti Tuesday, had not finalized a technical and logistical agreement which would have allowed the EU monitors to enter the security zone from Wednesday.
But he said there would be further talks on access for the EU monitors. “Work will continue,” Manushko said.
A senior EU official Monday said the EU contingent of more than 300 civilian monitors and support staff was deployed in Georgia and would be ready to begin their mission in the early hours of October 1.
Georgian police are also expected to move into the security zone after the Russian withdrawal.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was to visit Georgia Tuesday to mark the start of the monitors’ deployment and meet Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Sex Slavery – The Growing Trade in Israel
September 30, 2008
Sex slavery: The growing trade in Israel, thousands of Eastern European and Russian girls lured to TelAviv and enslaved into prostitution
Commercial for attracting people to Israel: – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vblux0g4ouE
Up to – 20,000 trafficked women in Israel and more than 280 brothels in Tel Aviv …
As customers – demands for slave trade workers who do not have HIV or AIDS …
Similar pages
http://www.israelnewsagency.com/sexisrael69690531.html
“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life…..” (Leviticus 25:44-46)
There are an estimated 20,000 female sex slaves forced into prostitution in Tel-Aviv each year. According to a report released in 2005 by the Knesset Subcommittee on Trafficking in Women, between 10,000 and 15,000 women had been smuggled into Israel over the previous four years to work as prostitutes. According to the report, the women, who were mostly from the former Soviet Union, were sold at public auction for as much as $10,000 and forced to work up to 18 hours a day. On average, the women received only three percent of the money they earned from prostitution, and many were raped and beaten. Most of the women had been smuggled over the Egyptian border and lured from Russia and Eastern Europe on false promises of secretarial jobs.
Israel Sex Slavery Thrives
Israel and the Ugly Slavery Trade
Human rights groups have long demanded actions against the trade in women in Israel. These women many from the former Soviet, are working as prostitutes in a condition of virtual slavery. Many of the Russian women who have ended up in Israel’s brothels, some smuggled into the country from Egypt on the back of camels, expected to find jobs a cleaners and or working in childcare. There are certain places where auctions are taking place. The Israeli police well know the names. They are nightclubs or regular bars. The women are brought there, buyers come and look at their bodies and their teeth, then the bidding starts. They are held by the pimps, beaten and totally isolated
Dozens of brothels and peepshows have sprung up in Tel Aviv and Haifa in the last few years. There are over 20,000 women in prostitution in Tel Aviv. Their customers pay for 45,000 acts of prostitution every day. Women are held in apartments, bars and brothels where they are bought by up to 25 men a day. They sleep in shifts, four to a bed. (Police officials, Michael Specter, “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women, “New York Times, 11 January 1998, They cannot walk freely. They cannot leave the apartment as they wish. Usually the passports have been taken.
Amnesty International investigation of the trade in Russian women suggests Israel’s police and government officials have largely ignored the abuse.
The arrest of prostitutes is frequent, as illegal workers, the men who brought them to Israel many of whom are Israelis are not arrested. The Justice Ministry spokeswoman Etty Eshed (1998)said the government would think about making legal changes to address trafficking in the “near future” but had no date or plan for doing so. (Elisabeth Eaves, “Israel not the promised land for Russian sex slaves,” Reuters, 23 August 1998)
The Israeli police say they are powerless to stop the flow of trafficked women until the laws change. “They (trafficked women) are very much afraid to come to the police and complain, so the police really can’t do anything,” said a police spokeswoman Linda Menuhin. “Israel has no law against trafficking people, and no law against prostitution.” Rachel Benziman, legal adviser to the Israel Women’s Network, said there are a variety of crimes, rape, abduction, battery, deceit and theft which the authorities rarely bother to prosecute for, even though they have the power to do so. “It’s not a problem of finding the right section in the criminal code. It is more a problem of finding the women who will testify and finding the motivation. she said. (Elisabeth Eaves, “Israel not the promised land for Russian sex slaves,” Reuters, 23 August 1998)
Israel does not have a specific law against the sale of human beings. (Michael Specter, “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women,” New York Times, 11 January 1998). There is no law related to bringing women from another country into Israel for prostitution. (CEDAW Report, 8 April 1997) If trafficked and prostituted women are caught they are deported. Since 1994, not one woman has testified against a trafficker. (Betty Lahan, director of Neve Tirtsa Prison, Michael Specter, “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women,” New York Times, 11 January 1998)
There are no official numbers regarding the extent of prostitution and the traffic of women in Israel, but there is a general consensus that it is becoming more prevalent. (CEDAW Report, 8 April 1997). There has been a steady increase in the numbers of foreign women involved in prostitution who are arrested for illegal stays in Israel and who are detained before being deported to their home-countries; in over 95% of the cases, they were from the former USSR. The average time these women spend in prison is 50 days. The women themselves are supposed to pay for their expenses to leave Israel, but when their resources are inadequate, the Ministry of Interior finances their deportation from a special budget. (Authorities, Neve Tirza women’s prison, CEDAW Report, 8 April 1997)
Traffickers and pimps earned US $50,000 – $100,000 a year from each prostituted woman, resulting in a US $450 million sex industry. (“A modern form of slavery,” The Jerusalem Post, 13 January 1998). 1,500 Russian and Ukrainian trafficked women have been deported from 1995-1997. (Michael Specter, “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women,” New York Times, 11 January 1998)
Russian women are bought and sold by pimps in Israel for prices ranging from US $5,000 to $20,000. (Police sources, “‘Invisible’ Women Shown In Russia’s Demographics,” Martina Vandenberg, St. Petersburg Times, 13 October 1997). A small brothel with ten women can make up to 750,000 shekels a month (US $215,000). (Michael Specter, “Traffickers’ New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women,” New York Times, 11 January 1998). Article Confirms Israel’s White Slave Trade
By TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA
Eve was working at a fast food restaurant when one of her “regulars” walked in.
It had been months since Eve escaped from two and a half years of sexual slavery — sold to a dozen men a day, around the clock and through her period, every penny passed to her trafficker.
“I started hyperventilating. I just freaked out. Because I don’t want anything to do with them and it brings flashbacks back,” Eve, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, says of the encounter during a recent interview about her human trafficking case. “The feelings come flooding back in. Feeling scared. Feeling like I just want to get out of there. Nervous. Uncomfortable. Hurt.”
Eve was 12 when she ran away from foster care and ended up in an escort agency. From agency to pimp to pimp she went until she met the man who pleaded guilty in May to trafficking her.
She speaks a little louder than she did six months ago, just three months out of the flesh trade then. And today her hair is yet another colour, yet another style.
Lots of changes since she was held up at gunpoint in that motel room just outside Toronto, a moment that jerked her past the threats of her trafficker and into a police station. She spent her 18th birthday in hiding, shuffled through jobs, got a place of her own and went back to school — just 22 credits to go for her high school diploma. She wants to be a social worker.
Hers is the first human trafficking conviction in Canadian history. A ground-breaking case that didn’t involve cross-border movement or a container ship of illegal aliens.
Hers is the story of a homegrown girl who, for two and a half years, gave out pleasure but received little in return — against her will, desires and dreams, and amidst a sea of threats that if she left, he would get her.
—
About 7,300 men caught trying to buy sex in Toronto have moved through John Fenn’s classroom since he started a john school 13 years ago.
They are the fathers with baby seats and husbands of oblivious wives. Politicians and power-hungry Bay St. boys. Joe Blows.
And they are, Fenn has learned through this prostitution diversion program, either incredibly naive or blissfully ignorant.
“They believe that every girl’s out there because she loves sex and they believe that all that money is theirs, that they don’t give it away to anybody,” Fenn says from behind his desk at Streetlights Support Services in downtown Toronto.
Sometimes Fenn doesn’t even need to talk to the johns. Sometimes the ex-sex worker who has been trafficked through the United States and across Canada; or the cop who has interviewed the beaten and raped, crack-addicted women — sometimes their stories are enough.
“Yeah sure, tell me a girl’s got 50 holes up her arm and no teeth left and it’s 3 o’clock in the morning on the worst night in the wintertime, that she loves sex to stand out there and do that. Come on, buddy. Get real,” Fenn says. “She’s out there because she needs to be out there. Not because she wants to be.”
If it’s against her will, why wouldn’t she just run away? Some johns wonder. She insisted she was independent. Many do; some are. Even if she is only keeping a few bucks a trick, that’s more than she’d be making in Moldova or Ukraine or, wherever she’s from. It’s still exploitation.
“They can give you every excuse there is, but once they get that girl in the car and they exchange that sex for money then it’s a power trip,” Fenn says. “It makes them feel like, ‘I just bought somebody. I just got the sex act.’”
She made that choice.
“That kid did not make a choice. Not at 13,” Fenn says. “You make the choice between a Coke or a Pepsi, that’s the choice you make. The choice of whether I want a blue sweater or a green sweater.”
—
Hers is a self-deprecating story of the blame so many trafficking victims somehow turn inward.
“I’m not too happy with myself still,” Eve says. “I just feel like every guy is out there to use me. I try to trust them, but I just can’t because I just go back and I fall back and I go hide in that dark corner.”
Eve was 12 when she decided to sell her body for what she naively thought would involve walking around in a sexy outfit. It was the choice of a child.
She held onto the fruitless promises of her trafficker — that he loved her, that she would get braces one day, that he would let her go back to school.
She insisted to johns that she was independent, that her money was her own. Sometimes when she made these proclamations, her trafficker was hiding in the bathroom listening. Sometimes he wasn’t.
Could she have been saved from the turnstile of men that moved through her motel cell?
It doesn’t take long for Eve to answer that one. After all, she eventually went to police.
“I really don’t think so,” she says. “A lot of people are ignorant and a lot of people don’t care.”
“It’s not fair when someone comes out and says, ‘Hey, look what he’s doing to me,’ they just say, ‘Oh well, you know, she’s just another regular prostitute. Whatever, she likes being a slut.’ They don’t care.”
—
“The victims of human trafficking are like desert roses,” Benjamin Santamaria says as rain pours down outside his modest office, set up on the second floor of an old Toronto house. “Beautiful souls, beautiful hearts in the desert, where there is nothing for them, like many youth or teens would say, in this cruel, cruel, lonely world.”
Hence the name of the organization he set up to combat human trafficking: Project Desert Roses.
Some victims Santamaria has met arrive under these big city lights thinking, as artists like 50 Cent suggest, that it’s cool to have a pimp.
Soon enough, they have one of their own.
He’ll promise her love and riches. She’ll buy it. He’ll offer her drugs. She’ll get hooked. Then there’s no turning back, because a wasted teenaged girl is easy to manipulate.
Controlled, cheated and sold, the girls may not identify themselves as victims. They will be given little gifts here and there. Maybe go to Las Vegas to work for a while. They may think they are like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.
“They see these guys like saviours. ‘He’s my john!’ some of the girls say. Because he is their saviour in one way. He is saving them from the cruel, sad situation at home,” Santamaria says. “They don’t know they are changing one hell for another hell.”
Dealing with human trafficking, he admits, isn’t easy.
“Nobody wants to hear that the solution is we,” he says. “There is no government that will stop human trafficking. There is no international agency who will stop human trafficking. There is no new Messiah who will come to stop trafficking, but we love to dream. And we love not to have personal responsibility.”
Philosophically speaking, as Santamaria does, there would be no supply if not for demand. Sexual services are sold online and in the classified pages of local publications.
“Children and youth are learning that women are just a commodity, that I can buy them whenever I want. If I have $60, $80, I just go to the pages of NOW Magazine and I can find which I want: A black one, a blonde one, a Chinese, a Japanese woman for $60.”
—
Eve has a message for her trafficker. She apologizes for the words she has for him: “Go f— yourself,” she says, his name still inked into her skin. “I am at the point that I don’t even need to tell him how I’m doing because I don’t have any time to waste my breath.”
The tables have certainly turned.
Now he is confined. He needs permission to use the phone. He is told what to wear, what to eat. And, if his victim gets her wish, he is being raped.
She doesn’t think his sentence was tough enough: Three years for human trafficking, two for living off the avails of prostitution and possession of counterfeit mark.
“Once he gets out, he can move on with his life. I have to live with it everyday.”
The only solace she takes from the situation is that every day her boyfriend-turned-pimp-turned-trafficker spends behind bars, it’s another day he is forced to think about her.
“One day I’m going to meet that Prince Charming and he’s going to be opening doors for me and giving me massages and pedicures,” she says. “I’m going to get what I deserve.”
Eve hopes that someday she will get past the flashbacks and the hurt that comes with them. She takes that dream one day at a time.
“Some days I wake up and I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth and I look at myself and I’m like, I’m really happy. I’m blessed that I got the second chance. I’m blessed that I can go back to school. I’m blessed that I’m still alive. I’m blessed that I’m not a crackhead, you know? So yes, sometimes I’m really happy,” she says. “But sometimes I’m really lonely and I’m sad and I just want someone to be there.”
