Migrants to Italy face "a kind of slavery": OIM

ROME (Reuters) - Thousands of migrants are being lured to Italy with false promises of work and forced to live in conditions akin to slavery, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Tuesday.

In a study of a migrant camp near the town of San Nicola Varco, 100 km (63 miles) south of Naples, IOM officials found some 1,200 migrants squatting in abandoned buildings without water and electricity, eking a living among piles of rubbish.

The young men, most of them from Morocco, were being paid between 15 and 25 euros ($21 and $35) for a 12-hour day laboring in nearby greenhouses and fields, without work contracts. Their employers often charged them for basics like transport and water, in the sweltering summer temperatures of southern Italy.

"The humanitarian emergency has become serious because they are living in conditions that are unsustainable," said Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the IOM in Italy. "The salaries are well below the minimum. It is a kind of slavery."

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Stockpiling deals link baxter to CIA & Carlyle Group: Covert ops discredit official flu response

"...The CIA-influenced media is obviously being used to hype threats of death this year along with this obviously laboratory-created mutant flu, Dr Horowitz said. Follow the money and you realize all roads lead through the CIA to top officials in the companies profiting most from stockpiles of poorly test, virtually experimental, ‘fast-tracked’ vaccines and toxic Tamiflu.

Many people were aware Donald Rumsfeld, the past Secretary of the Defense Department credited by journalist Bob Woodward for pushing George H.W. Bush out of politics and into the role of CIA director, co-founded Gilead Sciences, the maker of Tamiflu. Rumsfeld, 1989-2005, was chief Defense Contractor for the Carlyle Group–possibly the world’s wealthiest military-medical investment firm. Operating as Carlyle Group’s Vice President today is Brian Canann, a chief strategist for global product management within Baxter International Inc’s spin off company, Edwards Lifesciences. Reminiscent of the CIA’s “Project Jefferson“ (also called Clearvision , wherein hyper-weaponized anthrax was first developed at the Battelle Memorial Institute, then assayed by CIA contractors for mass-dispersal via the mail, then mailed two years later following the September, 2001, attacks, Baxter officials are credited for “accidentally“ shipping H5N1 (bioweapons-grade bird flu) contaminated vaccines to several labs in four European countries according to international news reports. Baxter is among a handful of companies producing flu vaccines worth billions of dollars in government stockpiling contracts. ..."

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CIA swine flu assassinations, vaccinations & depopulation

Salvador Dali', paranoia and dissolution of time

Martin Ries dissects The Persistence of Memory

Dalí the young trouble-maker

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) showed precocious gifts in the local Catholic schools in Figueras Spain where he was born, as well as at the National School of Fine Arts in Madrid where he studied art.  He exhibited decided megalomania, and impressed everyone as a troublemaker. He was expelled from school more than once and served jail terms for anti-government activities.  While a student he met poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was later murdered during the Civil War. He wrote the script for the film, Un Chien andalou with Spanish-born film maker Luis Buňuel before joining or even meeting the Surrealists.  

Despite bizarre activities and outlandish statements, the sum total of Dalí's work, including his writings, represents much more than eccentricity, narcissism and slick posturing.  Thus the tendency to dismiss Dalí is not completely fair, considering his early articles in Catalonian and Spanish vanguard magazines during the 1920s, that are serious and without his familiar later pretension.

In 1927, Dalí discovered Surrealism in the art magazines. It was a revelation, and he painted Blood Is Sweeter than Honey, which featured images that continued to obsess him.

The “paranoiac-critical” artist

In the 1920s-30s, the Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud's theories on the unconscious mind became so pervasive as to be taken for granted by the Surrealists.  Freud used the psychoanalytic device of free association to trace the symbolic meaning of dream imagery to its source in the unconscious; Dalí applied the same method to his pictorial imagery.

Based on psychoanalytic studies of paranoiac dementia, Dalí consciously charged his paintings with psychological meaning which he called his “paranoiac-critical method”, using countless symbols of persecution mania, sharp instruments (castration), sexual fetishes, and phallic images, many taken directly from case histories of paranoia in Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, as well as from Freud's works.

Paranoia is a mental disease characterized by delusions and projections of personal conflicts ascribed to the supposed hostility of others. Dalí's work imitates paranoiac conditions, because while the paranoiac is able to find proof of persecution, Dali only simulated the illness.  He used paranoia less in the psychiatric sense than the etymological sense: para, meaning alternate, noia meaning mind. Thus, his "paranoiac-critical method" became a forced inspiration as Dalí submitted his paintings at once to the caprice of dream and wide-awake calculation.  His images, based on readings in psychiatry, eventually began displacing experiences drawn from his own psyche.

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Fast-tracked swine flu vaccine under fire

The vaccines far more deadly than the swine flu; mass vaccinations a recipe for disaster Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins

This report has been submitted to Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer of the UK, and to the US Food and Drugs Administration

Please circulate widely, with all the hyperlinks included, to your elected representatives, wherever you are

A swine flu outbreak occurred in Mexico and the United States in April 2009 and spread rapidly around the world by human-to human transmission. The new type A H1N1 influenza virus is unlike any that had been previously isolated [1, 2], judging from the first data released in May. It is a messy combination of sequences from bird, human and swine flu virus lineages from North America and Eurasia. A senior virologist based in Canberra, Australia, told the press he thought that the virus could have been created in the laboratory and released by accident [3]. Some even suggest it was made intentionally as a bioweapon [4], while others blame the intensive livestock industry and extensive trafficking of love animals over long distances, which provide plenty of opportunity for generating exotic recombinants [5]. But what worries the public most is the mass vaccination programmes governments are putting in place to combat the emerging pandemic, which could well be worse than the pandemic itself.

Watchdog opposes fast-track vaccine for school children

The US government is intending to vaccinate all children in September when school re-opens, and the country's vaccine watchdog National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) has called on the Obama Administration and all state Governors to provide evidence that the move is [6] “necessary and safe”, demanding “strong mechanisms for vaccine safety screening, recording, monitoring, reporting and vaccine injury compensation.”

The US Departments of Health and Homeland Security had declared a national public health emergency in April soon after the swine flu outbreak. As a result, some schools were closed, people quarantined, and drug companies were given contracts worth $7billon to make vaccines that are being fast tracked by the Food and Drugs Administration [7]. That means they will only be tested for a few weeks on several hundred children and adult volunteers before being given to all school children this fall.

Furthermore, under federal legislation passed by Congress since 2001, an Emergency Use Authorization allows drug companies, health officials and anyone administering experimental vaccines to Americans during a declared public health emergency to be protected from liability if people get injured. US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has granted vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that may result from any new swine flu vaccine. And some states may make the vaccination mandatory by law.

The NVIC is asking whether the states are prepared to obey vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which include: 1. Giving parents written information about vaccine benefits and risks before children are vaccinated; 2. Keeping a record of which vaccines the children get, including the manufacturer's name and lot number; 3. Recording which vaccines were given in the child's medical record; and 4. Recording serious health problems that develop after vaccination in the child's medical record and immediately making a report to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

NVIC also wants to know if the states are prepared to provide financial compensation to children injured by the swine flu vaccines, whether parents will be given “complete, truthful information about swine flu vaccine risks”, and have the right to say “no” to vaccination.

Co-founder and president of NVIC Barbara Loe Fisher said [6]: “Parents and legislators should be asking themselves right now: Why are children the first to get experimental swine flu vaccines? Are schools equipped to get signed informed consent from parents before vaccination, keep accurate vaccination records and screen out children biologically at high risk for suffering vaccine reactions? Will people giving these vaccines know how to monitor children afterwards and immediately record, report and treat serious health problems that develop? And will states have the financial resources to compensate children who are injured?”

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Toxic adjuvants in flu vaccines

Vaccines themselves can be dangerous, especially live, attenuated viral vaccines or the new recombinant nucleic acid vaccines [10], they have the potential to generate virulent viruses by recombination and the recombinant nucleic acids could cause autoimmune diseases.

A further major source of toxicity in the case of the flu vaccines are the adjuvants, substances added in order to boost the immunogenicity of the vaccines. There is a large literature on the toxicities of adjuvants. Most flu vaccines contain dangerous levels of mercury in the form of thimerosal, a deadly preservative 50 times more toxic than mercury itself [9]. At high enough doses, it can cause long-term immune, sensory, neurological, motor, and behavioural dysfunctions. Also associated with mercury poisoning are autism, attention deficit disorder, multiple sclerosis, and speech and language deficiencies. The Institute of Medicine has warned that infants, children, and pregnant women should not be injected with thimerosal, yet the majority of flu shots contain 25 micrograms of it.

Another common adjuvant is alum or aluminium hydroxide, which can cause vaccine allergy, anaphylaxis, and macrophage myofascitis, a chronic inflammation syndrome, In cats, alum also gives rise to fibrosarcomas at the site of injection [15]. Numerous new adjuvants are no better, and could be worse. According to a recent review in a science and business pharmaceutical publication [15], most newer adjuvants including MF59, ISCOMS, QS21, AS02, and AS04 have “substantially higher local reactogenicity and systemic toxicity than alum.”

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Ministry of Culture decides to cut disputable scenes at Acropolis Museum

The Greek Ministry of Culture has decided to cut the “outrageous” scenes of the 13-minute documentary, created by the world-famous Greek director Kostas Gavras, picturing the damages that the Acropolis has suffered during its 25- centurial history. As GRReporter already informed you, the Greek Orthodox Church has protested fiercely against a scene of just couple of seconds, which uses computer animation to depict angry priests in robes, destroying the Parthenon's ornaments in the VIII century A.D. The Holy Synod has urged the Minister of Culture - Antonis Samaras – to cut the above mentioned scenes from the film. The conservative Minister from the New Democracy party has yielded to the church's arguments and has ordered for the film to be cut.  

Following the decision of the Ministry, the famous director commented: “It is sad and shameful for Greek politicians and EU members of the XXI century, to give way to the will of the Church and censure a film, which is purely based on historically proven facts.” Kostas Gavras explained that the film tried to show how during the ages, the Parthenon has suffered most from the hand of man, and if it wasn't for men, maybe it would have remained the same as it was in the times of Pericles. “It is indeed a fact of history that the early Christian priests were shocked by the nudity of the Phidias sculptures adorning the Parthenon, and destroyed them intentionally.” The artist concludes that “With its latest reaction, the Church proves the argument that it has barely changed since the dark Medieval times.”

The 13 minute documentary is part of the educational program of the Acropolis Museum, and has already been showed in front of a big audience in the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2004, as a part of the cultural Olympics, organized together with the Athens 2004 summer Olympic Games. People interested in the uncensored version of the film could see it at the zougla.gr website or at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-RXc_wukeo

~ Source: GR Reporter ~

Massacre of Bedouin in 1918 revealed

As reported by JTA - Jewish & Israel News (27 Jul, 2009):

Revelations of a massacre in a Bedouin village in Palestine in 1918 has tarnished one of Australia's greatest military victories.

A new book revealed that Australians joined New Zealand soldiers in the massacre of dozens of Bedouin shortly after the end of World War I.

The claim was corroborated in a audio recording of an Australian soldier, Ted O'Brien, found by Australian journalist Paul Daley at the Australian War Memorial.

In his book "Beersheba," Daley recounted O'Brien's recollection of the massacre of between 40 and 200 Bedouin residents of Surafend in 1918 in what was then Palestine. He said about 200 Australian and New Zealand troops, including some from the famed Australian Light Horse Brigades, murdered the locals.

The incident, which barely rates a mention in the official record, tarnishes one of Australia's greatest military victories -- the charge of the Light Horse Brigades at Beersheba in 1917, a near death-defying assault on the Turks that allowed the Allies to advance north to Jerusalem and Damascus.

Last year Israeli President Shimon Peres and his Australian counterpart, Michael Jeffery, opened the Park of the Australian Soldier in Beersheba commemorating Australians who fought and died in the Middle East.

The Surafend massacre was a revenge attack for the murder of a Kiwi soldier by a Bedouin on Dec. 9, 1918. No one was charged but in 1921, Australia paid compensation to the British for the destruction of the Bedouin village.

A spokesman for the Australian War Memorial told Fairfax media on Saturday: "The Anzac legend is an uplifting one but, like all legends, there are some unfortunate aspects. But this doesn't detract from acts of heroism and bravery."

A war of algorithms

The New Atlantis magazine has a fantastic article on the increasing use of robots and artificial intelligence systems in warfare and how they bring the fog of war to the murky area of military ethics and international law.

This comes as the The New York Times has just run a report on a recent closed meeting where some of the world's top artificial intelligence researchers gathered to discuss what limits should be placed on the development of autonomous AI systems.

The NYT article frames the issue as a worry over whether machines will 'outsmart' humans, but the issue is really whether machines will outdumb us, as it is a combination of the responsibilities assigned to them and their limitations which pose the greatest threat.

One particularly difficulty is the unpredictability of AI systems. For example, you may be interested to know that while we can define the mathematical algorithms for simple artificial neural networks, exactly how the network is representing the knowledge it has learnt through training can be a mystery.

If you examine the 'weights' of connections across different instances of the same network after being trained, you can find differences in how they're distributed even though they seem to be completing the task in the same way.

In other words, simply because we have built and trained something, it does not follow that we can fully control its actions or understand its responses in all situations.

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