MBT Women Shoes Reviews

MBT's are not just a shoe in the ordinary sense. This product will not only change the way you use your muscles, but will improve the use of your joints and spine. The uniquely designed sole achieves a more active and healthy posture and walk. With each step we take, pressure acts on the foot. MBT's distribute this load evenly, which prevents ailments that can be caused by the concentration of pressure on individual points. Masai Barefoot Technology in Everyday Use: Train muscles, burn calories, protect joints ... while you're doing something else. Shopping, in the office, at home. MBT's act as training equipment, every step of the way. The more you wear MBT's the more your body will feel the benefits. Masai Barefoot Technology is used in Sports: Many professional athletes rely on MBT's for regeneration, prevention and accelerated healing of injuries and in endurance and coordination training. MBT's are perfect for jogging and for training but not for competitions. Masai Barefoot Technology for Medical Applications: MBT's can contribute significantly to alleviating a variety of ailments, and many doctors and physiotherapists like to use them to treat patient. With its special sole construction the MBT places the body in a natural instability which is being compensated by a balancing movement. Stress on joints is relieved by activating the joint near and stabilizing muscle groups. The result is an erect, natural and biomechanical correct gait. MBT can help with back, hip, leg and foot problems as well with medical conditions regarding the muscles, ligaments and tendons.
Customer Review: MBT Volcano Men's Shoes
Great product, fits well and gives that unique MBT cushion and stride. I Teach High School Science, so I'm on my feet all day long. With other shoes and custom orthotics, my feet would hurt at the end of the day, not so with my MBT's. They are definitely different than other shoes, but for me its a good different.
Customer Review: Great shoes
These shoes really make walking easier. I do not recommend them for people with balance problems, as they may cause you to fall.

The Senlis Council has an idea for dealing with the vast quantity of poppies grown in Afghanistan: buy it, of course.

Opium harvests have been on the rise in the war-torn, near-lawless country since conflicts began with the United States, and despite strong eradication efforts by American and British forces, there's no end in site. In fact, the country is currently producing ninety-three percent of the world's supply. Yet, 6.2 million individuals are dying of cancer, AIDS, burns and wounds without adequate pain relief, according to the World Health Organization.

Connecting the two causes seems logical enough: on one side, poor peasant farmers are selling their wares to illegal organizations in order to make ends meet, and on the other, legitimate organizations that could use those farmers' products to provide humanitarian pain relief to those who would otherwise not be able to afford it need them. This hits home in the middle of a domestic healthcare crisis; more than fifty million Americans are currently going without health insurance and, according to the Commonwealth Fund, have less access to healthcare because of it.

Texas, a state with ready access to such illegal drugs as Mexican Black Tar (MBT) -- a form of heroin, originally processed from poppies before being "cut" with other, less pure ingredients -- and twenty-five percent of its population living without health insurance, may be more connected to the international poppy crop situation than it thinks. How many in the state are living with inadequate pain relief as a result of limited access to healthcare, yet could easily find heroin?

The Dallas/Fort Worth area is now considered "a major distribution point" for MBT shipments bound for far-flung locations around the country, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the DEA's Houston Field Division is the "primary transshipment area for bulk importation of most major categories of drugs." Smaller cities, like Austin, are not exempt from the drug trade just across the border, either.

The Senlis Council, a drug-policy research organization with offices in London, Brussels, and Kabul, argues that the U.S. and Britain alone waste $800 million a year -- not to mention valuable lives -- on a futile attempt to kill off crops the world could use to provide better access to pain relieving, legal medications. According to the Council, Afghanistan's entire supply could be purchased directly from the farmers for about $1 billion -- a bargain compared to the same quantity's heroin street value of $50 billion.

Many, including government organizations in charge of the attempted eradication, counter that Afghani farmers should be encouraged to grow alternative crops instead, such as wheat, cotton, and fruit. The price just may not be right, however. It's difficult, if not impossible in some regions, for a family to survive on such crops.

Romesh Bhattacharji, former narcotics commissioner of India, also believes that buying Afghanistan's infamous supply of what seems, at first glance, to be innocuous flowers may be the answer. "Enforcement will not work," he said after conducting an investigation for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "The Afghan farmer will not switch to alternative crops as long as there is a market for his opium." The problem is that if the medical community doesn't buy it, the smugglers will.

Not so fast, says Thomas A. Schweich, chief of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. Schweich believes the problem is much more complicated than simple supply and demand. Smugglers pay more than governments ever would, he says, and Afghanistan grows more than what the U.S. could handle, along with keeping up with suppliers already under contract. The trade would also be far more difficult to control than, for instance, India and Turkey's crops, which came under contract with the U.S. after similar efforts to eradicate the supply proved unsuccessful a few decades ago.

Additionally, the U.S would have to provide price supports in order to match what illegal drug traders are willing to pay -- amounting to more than $800 million. The Indian government offered its farmers the equivalent of twenty to fifty US dollars per kilo of legally grown poppy in 2006. Smugglers were willing to pay $100 to $190 per kilo. Afghanistan tells a similar tale -- average prices from smugglers are around $125 a kilo.

"Why would anybody switch to legal opium when they can get those prices," asked Schweich. "You do the math. If we did it, no one in Afghanistan would grow any other crop, we'd be paying billions for it, and it would become a narco-welfare state."

And then there are loyalty issues. Albeit a bit like a girls' junior-high group fight, staying true to the contracts already in existence is a valid concern. Jagjit Pavadia, India's narcotics commissioner, believes that if the U.S. government wants more opium, it should give the business to India's poor farmers. The business relationship with the country is already well established, and the falling demand has cut legal farmers' licenses in the country from 150,000 to 62,000.

While Britain is considering the Senlis Council's plan, the U.S. is still adamantly opposed to it. "It's almost theological, their opposition to our idea," said Norine MacDonald, the Council's founder. She argues that the eradication effort takes too much funding to pursue and is pointless anyway. She also believes it attracts paramilitary contracts with companies a little too friendly with the Bush administration, such as Blackwater USA and DynCorp International, which train Afghan's anti-narcotics police force.

Schweich believes MacDonald's attitude is "cynical and inaccurate," though he admits eradication efforts are host to both nepotism and corruption.

Both are valid arguments, but without decisive action, nothing is going to be done to improve the situation -- neither the world's relatively limited access to morphine, nor the illegal drug trade's profit from it.

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