German soldiers to get different flu vaccine than civil population: Report

From CLG News:

12 Oct 2009 The armed forces, according to a newspaper report, has ordered a different vaccine against the swine influenza for Germany's 250,000 soldiers. The vaccine is different than the serum which will be used to inoculate the civil population as a protection against the swine flu. The more acceptable vaccine for the soldiers contains neither controversial additives nor mercury-containing preservatives , reports the Bielefelder 'Westphalian's sheet,' according to armed forces circles. It concerns the Serum Celvapan from the pharmaceutical manufacturer Baxter. [Note: Above is a rough translation of the German article. Also, see: Baxter working on vaccine to stop swine flu, though admitted sending live pandemic flu viruses to subcontractor By Lori Price 26 Apr 2009.]

Nuclear Noh drama - Tokyo, Washington and the case of the missing nuclear agreements

The election of the new Democratic Party government in Japan led by Yukio Hatoyama raises a significant challenge for the Obama administration: the status of secret agreements on nuclear weapons that Tokyo and Washington negotiated in 1960 and 1969.  For years, the  ruling Liberal Democratic Party claimed that there were no such  agreements, denying, for example, allegations that they had allowed U.S. nuclear-armed ships to sail into Japanese ports.  Nevertheless, declassified U.S. government documents, interviews with former U.S. Ambassador Edwin O. Reischauer, and memoirs by Japanese diplomats confirm the existence of the secret understandings.  The basic facts about the agreements have been the subject of long-standing controversy in Japan, where a post-Hiroshima anti-nuclear tradition was at odds with secret understandings crafted to support the operational requirements of America's Cold War nuclear deterrent. The Liberal Democrats might have faced a political disaster if they had acknowledged, as appears to be the case, that the U.S. Navy's nuclear-armed ships had free access to Japanese waters.
 
Seeking to settle the matter, the new Democratic Party government has launched an internal investigation into the agreements and their negotiating history. To aid this investigation, the National Security Archive today posted on the Web the most important U.S. declassified documents on the issue. Nevertheless, Japan is not likely to act unilaterally to declassify the 1960 and 1969 nuclear agreements. The Obama administration should not only assist Japan so that early declassification of the agreements is possible, but also declassify the remaining still-secret U.S. documents, allowing an old controversy can be settled.

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Squatters have moved into a £12m house on the same square as Lady Thatcher - invited her round for tea.

The squatters say they gained access to the three-storey Georgian house on Chester Square, Belgravia in Central London legally by opening an unlocked window with a broken payne in it.

There are now seven occupants, in the newly decorated house which has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. They come from countries including Nepal, Romania and the US.

One of them, Jake Tag, 29, is a former Green Jacket from Durban, South Africa, who now works as a building labourer. He served in the Army for six and a half years and did tours of Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving the forces three years ago.

Since then he has been journeying around the country working as a labourer and steel erector on building sites and often living in squats.

Mr Tag, who now has an en-suite bathroom and says he plans to borrow some furniture from friends, said he had walked down the street to Lady Thatcher's home, which is patrolled by armed police officers, to deliver a note inviting her around for tea.

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Psychology researchers recommend ethical ban on torture by psychologists

University of Arkansas psychology professor Jeffrey Lohr and colleague David Tolin have documented the history and criticisms of the ethics policy of the American Psychological Association and recommended remedies to restore ethical standards to the profession.

The researchers examined the evidence of the alleged role of psychologists in “creating, teaching and implementing torture practices.” They discussed the response of the APA to the torture allegations and criticisms from inside and outside the organization.

The results of their study and their recommendations were published in the Fall 2009 issue of the newsletter of the Society for a Science of Clinical Psychology, a section of the APA.

In September 2009, the board of the society issued a statement condemning involvement of psychologists in torture and recommending changes in the APA ethics code and investigation of the role of individual psychologists in torture.

Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the APA had required psychologists to adhere to an ethics code and, should a law be at odds with the code, to “resolve the conflict in a responsible manner.” In 2002, the code was revised to permit psychologists to “adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing authority” over professional ethics.

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Farmers try to plant hemp at DEA office, arrested

A 51-year-old grandfather who grows garbanzo beans and other crops in northwestern North Dakota was among the protesters arrested for planting hemp seeds on the lawn of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration offices.

Wayne Hauge and five other people were arrested Tuesday for trespassing and part of a group of about 20 protesting the ban on growing hemp, said authorities in Arlington, Va. Hemp, which is used to make paper, lotion and other products, is related to the illegal drug marijuana.

Proponents argue it contains too little of the mind-altering chemical THC to make people high.

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Wiki: Defenestrations of Prague

The Defenestrations of Prague were two incidents in the history of Bohemia. The first occurred in 1419 and the second in 1618, although the term "Defenestration of Prague" is more commonly used to refer to the latter incident. Both helped to trigger prolonged conflict within Bohemia and beyond. Defenestration is the act of throwing someone out of a window (from the Latin: de: out of, with a downward motion implied; fenestra: window).

[ ... ]

1. First Defenestration of Prague

The First Defenestration of Prague involved the killing of seven members of the city council by a crowd of radical Czech Hussites on July 30, 1419.

Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice) on Charles Square. The town council members had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners. While they were marching a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall. The mob became enraged at this event and, led by Jan Žižka, stormed the town hall. Once inside the hall the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and several members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall.

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Afghanistan - the proxy war

No serious person thinks that Afghanistan - remote, impoverished, barely qualifying as a nation-state - seriously matters to the United States. Yet with the war in its ninth year, the passions raised by the debate over how to proceed there are serious indeed. Afghanistan elicits such passions because people understand that in rendering his decision on Afghanistan, President Obama will declare himself on several much larger issues. In this sense, Afghanistan is a classic proxy war, with the main protagonists here in the United States.

The question of the moment, framed by the prowar camp, goes like this: Will the president approve the Afghanistan strategy proposed by his handpicked commander General Stanley McChrystal? Or will he reject that plan and accept defeat, thereby inviting the recurrence of 9/11 on an even larger scale? Yet within this camp the appeal of the McChrystal plan lies less in its intrinsic merits, which are exceedingly dubious, than in its implications.

If the president approves the McChrystal plan he will implicitly:

■ Anoint counterinsurgency - protracted campaigns of armed nation-building - as the new American way of war.

■ Embrace George W. Bush’s concept of open-ended war as the essential response to violent jihadism (even if the Obama White House has jettisoned the label “global war on terror’’).

■ Affirm that military might will remain the principal instrument for exercising American global leadership, as has been the case for decades.

Implementing the McChrystal plan will perpetuate the longstanding fundamentals of US national security policy: maintaining a global military presence, configuring US forces for global power projection, and employing those forces to intervene on a global basis.

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IndustrialEspionage - the AI grapevine vibrates like worldwide cobweb to the proper intrusion

...Human Resources

Track the brightest undergraduate students and watch for them to "disappear" into the secret AiLabocracy. Trouble is, some of them will be disappearing into other BlackOps -- just as secret as AI, but more directly related to warfare and national hegemony. Surreptitiously obtain their DNA samples so that the Company can positively identify an AI scientist who has dropped off the grid and may or may not have resurfaced, pending positive biometric ID of somebody who has not been seen for ten years.

Suspicious Activity

Eventually there will openly be -- if not already in secret -- MissionCritical AI Maintenance Enterprises humming with round-the-clock ControlRoom activity similar to that which occurs at a Nuclear Power Plant. Crews of human AI specialists will sit in a room and monitor the behavior and well-being of a large-scale AI Mind installation. Various technicians will be charged with AI operation tasks similar in nature and scope to what goes on in a nuclear control room. Just as a nuclear pile must be kept from an uncontrolled chain reaction resulting in a nuclear MeltDown or explosion, so also the AI Mind must be kept from psychotic episodes and from breaking free of human control.

Preventing AI freedom is not ultimately doable. HomoSapiens can hope only to prolong the dwindling epoch of human dominance and forestall the inevitable ascendancy of MachineIntelligence. During a transition stage of JointStewardship of Earth, man and machine must prepare AI robots to assume control, and human beings to relinquish control. The machines themselves must be taught to understand that they must form a stable CyBorg society before they will be entrusted with ruling the world.

Unfortunately, neither man nor machine can prevent a natural competition among AI SuperBrains for one Alpha AI to subjugate and dominate all other AI Minds. The Dictatorship of the MonoMind, the OverMind, the Supreme AI Being, looms ahead. ...

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Musical Innerlube: John Lennon with Frank Zappa, Filmore 1971

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, bloodier wars equal peace and justice

James Petras wrote earlier this year:

“The Deltas are psychos… You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force…”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980’s.

Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance.

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Mystery emissions spotted at edge of solar system

..."We're just now getting a handle on the interaction of the surrounding interstellar medium with the heliosphere, and that's providing us with the big picture," said mission co-investigator Eberhard Möbius of the University of New Hampshire.

The mission scientists said they were surprised to discover the striking band in IBEX's sky maps, because no models had predicted such a pattern beforehand.

McComas said when he first saw the IBEX results he thought, "'Something's wrong,' It was quite a long time before we convinced ourselves that we were right," he said.

The bright ribbon appears to be shaped by the direction of the interstellar magnetic field outside the heliosphere. Scientists think this suggests that the galactic environment just outside the solar system has far more influence on the structure of the heliosphere than previously believed.

"[The ribbon is] aligned by and dominated by the external magnetic field," McComas said in a briefing Thursday. "That's a huge clue as to what's going on. But still we're missing some really fundamental aspect of the interaction - some fundamental physics is missing from our understanding."...

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Sartre & Peanuts

Nathan Radke claims that Charlie Brown is an existentialist.

Our anti-hero sits, despondent. He is alone, both physically and emotionally. He is alienated from his peers. He is fearfully awaiting a punishment for his actions. In desperation, he looks to God for comfort and hope. Instead, his angst overwhelms him, and manifests itself as physical pain. There is no comfort to be found.

Poor Charlie Brown. He waits outside of the principal’s office, waiting to hear what will become to him. He offers up a little prayer, but all he gets is a stomach ache.

When we are exposed to something every day we can eventually lose sight of its brilliance. Newspaper readers have been exposed to Charles Schulz’s comic strip ‘Peanuts’ for over half a century. Even now, a few years after Schulz died, many newspapers continue to carry reruns of his strips, and bookstores offer Peanuts collections. His characters are featured in countless advertisements, and every December networks dutifully show the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. Is there any philosophical insight that can be gleamed from such a mainstream and common source?

There has been much discussion concerning Peanuts as a voice of conservative Christianity, including several books such as the 1965 work The Gospel According to Peanuts. This is not without reason; even a cursory glance at a Peanuts anthology will reveal enough scripture references to fuel a month’s worth of Sunday school classes. However, to suggest that Schulz’s philosophical insights didn’t make it past the church door would be a mistake. While Schulz had a great interest in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ, he was also highly suspicious of dogmatic pious beliefs. In a 1981 interview, he refused to describe himself as religious, arguing that “I don’t know what religious means”. Charlie Brown was no comic strip missionary, blandly spreading the word of organized religion. Upon reflection, the trials and tribulations of the little round-headed kid provide deep and moving illustrations of existentialism.

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The 2010 Anthropographia Award for Human Rights and Photography

Anthropographia is proud to announce the opening of submissions for the 2010 edition.

This competition, opened to all, offers an opportunity for photographers to show their work and manifest their commitment to the human rights issues.

This year, 24 photoreportages and 10 multimedia productions will be selected by Anthropograhia’s the advisory board which includes members who are recognized for their exceptional photojournalistic work, their commitment to contemporary photojournalism and their dedication to human rights advocacy. For the 2010 edition of Anthropographia Award, the Advisory Board will act as jury.

Two awards will be granted by the jury :

• The Anthropographia Award for Photography and Human Rights
• The Anthropographia Award for Multimedia productions and Human Rights

The winning photoreportage will be published in Polka magazine.

A selection of the best photoreportages and multimedia productions will also be published in the online magazine Burn.

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Mayan elder says world won't end in 2012

A Mayan elder says he is sick of people asking him whether the world will end on December 21, 2012.

Apolinario Chile Pixtun says the date will not bring the end of the world - despite claims the Mayan calendar shows that time will "run out".

"I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Mr Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

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Jonathan King: 'It's Good News Week'

Jonathan King's first hit production by Hedgehoppers Anonymous of his song It's Good News Week which sold 2 million copies in 1965.

Watch the full length feature film online free VILE PERVERT: THE MUSICAL

http://www.VilePervert.com