Mao's Barefoot Doctors: The Secret History of Chinese Medicine

From Skeptoid:

Today we're going to take a look at how Chinese alternative medicine spread into the Western world. Promoters of alternative medicine claim that this ancient wisdom was (and is) in common use throughout China, and the Western world is becoming aware of its value. Skeptics of this position point out that alternative medicine was only used in Chinese rural areas where conventional treatments were not available, and it became popular because it was inexpensive, not because it was effective. The actual history brings some interesting perspective onto both of these points of view.

[ ... ]

Mao's government had tried since 1949 to recruit and encourage doctors to move from the cities to the country, but this had been largely a failure. What healthcare there was had been mainly provided by traveling teams of doctors who would spend a few weeks in the outlying provinces, but would then return to their hospitals in the cities where they could receive a decent income. The problem grew more pronounced with the increasing spread of schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that caused infection and organ damage, and is most notably characterized by swelling in the abdomen. Schistosomiasis came to be something of an iconic symbol for the lack of healthcare in China.

Mao planned a fix. In 1968, Red Flag published what was to be China's solution. Mao's experience had taught him that efforts to push healthcare out to the countryside were doomed, and so he did the opposite. Farmers were recruited from all over China, given free training, and sent back to their own villages to serve as medical professionals.

Within just a few years, some 150,000 doctors and 350,000 paramedics — half a million workers to serve over half a billion patients — were at work throughout the country. They became known as the barefoot doctors. Candidates were required to be high school graduates.

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See also:

Health for the Masses: China's 'Barefoot Doctors'

China’s village doctors take great strides

1975 ARC Identifier 46549 / Local Identifier 286.260. DOCUMENTARY FILM: Highlights work of Chinese paramedics in rural China. Paramedics work to provide sanitation, reduce pest problems, and care for sick animals. They also have duties related to human birth control, dentistry, tonsil removal, and minor ailments requiring herbal remedies or acupuncture. U.S. Agency for International Development. (ca. 1998 - )

Lured by a painting he saw of a barefoot doctor in a Chinese magazine, Dr Saroj Dhital moved to Shanghai to study medicine. Returning to Nepal he took the lessons he learned from China's barefoot doctors and applied them to the villages of Nepal. Over time the concept expanded to use video conferencing via the internet as a means to allow barefoot doctors to bring complicated cases to specialists in Kathmandu.

Sudan: Unshackling the Sudanese Revolution

Unlike other countries in the region, Sudan is grossly underreported, and this was ever so evident during Friday and Saturday’s street demonstrations. The Sudanese government keeps a tight grip on local media and bans journalists from reporting on issues of human rights and corruption.

This however does not justify the blatant lack of interest from international media outlets. Al Jazeera, for instance, played a prominent role in reporting the uprisings in several Arab countries, but netizens say it seems to ignore the events currently unfolding in Sudan.

The media coverage of recent protests in Sudan was confined to articles in Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera, including some snippets on Al Jazeera’s English Channel. Other news outlets to cover the protests include CNN, the Malaysian news outlet The Star, the New York Times, Yahoo News, ABC News, and the Chicago Tribune. Nonetheless, this has not brought enough attention to the issues on the ground, as most of these news outlets don’t have much impact in the region, say netizens.

The protests kicked off after Friday prayers in a mosque in Wad Nubawi neighborhood in Omdurman. A call for protests tagged as #SandstormFriday was made a day earlier. The demonstrations were organized to protest against rising prices and the government’s new austerity plans that were announced by Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir and implemented last week.

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See also:

Sudan sees rise in anti-government protests

2011–2012 Sudanese protests

The Collective Tarot: Queer-centric, Radically-Politicked Mysticism

In The Collective Tarot, wands, coins, cups and swords are replaced with magical found objects: keys, bones, bottles and feathers. The court cards (page, knight, king and queen) are replaced with the Seeker, Apprentice, Artist and Mentor. While most card names in the Major Arcana remain unchanged, all have inspired new interpretations. Certain cards that contain outdated tropes (for example, “The Hierophant” – when is the last time that metaphor was relevant to your life?) have been replaced with more relevant symbols, such as “The Code” (referencing the hanky code) and “Intermission.”

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'A Perfect and Beautiful Machine': What Darwin's Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence

The Pre-Turing world was one in which computers were people, who had to understand mathematics in order to do their jobs. Turing realized that this was just not necessary: you could take the tasks they performed and squeeze out the last tiny smidgens of understanding, leaving nothing but brute, mechanical actions. In order to be a perfect and beautiful computing machine, it is not requisite to know what arithmetic is.

9/11 Vancouver Tribunal expected to issue Indictments in 9/11 events around Labor Day 2012

...The 9/11 Information and Indictment is expected to issue around Labor Day, 2012. The Information and Indictment will be accompanied by an Evidentiary Report, setting out the evidence of probable cause for the indictments of the Accused.

Legal implications of the 9/11 Vancouver Tribunal

Following the issuance of an Information and Indictment against specific named individuals who allegedly participated in a common plan and conspiracy in the events of 9/11, there are multiple legal venues in which the criminal charges in the Information and Indictment can be prosecuted and tried, and verdicts and judgments reached and enforced against the Accused.

A. International law - The alleged crimes of the Accused in the Information and Indictment may be found to violate the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and constitute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. At the 9/11 Vancouver Hearings Judge Alfred Webre stated, "The 9/11 false flag operations may qualify as a war crime, genocide, and crime against humanity, inter alia, if it can be demonstrated that the true intent of the 9/11 perpetrators was to carry out 9/11 as a pretext for invading Afghanistan, which invasion and war has been found to be genocidal because of the use of depleted uranium weapons and other reasons. So the legal chain of culpability is there, under the Nuremberg precedents of a crime against peace and stating an unjust war. The Tokyo Tribunal for War Crimes in Afghanistan, in an opinion by Judge Niloufer Bhagwat, found that U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration had committed war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity through the horrific birth defects and other widespread genetic and health damage cause to Afghan civilians through the U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons."

The 9/11 Indictment can be taken by the 9/11 Vancouver Commission to the national courts of any of the more than 100 nations, such as Germany and Spain, that are signatories to the Rome statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for prosecution and enforcement, as well as to the ICC itself. The chief prosecutor of the ICC, to the criticism of many throughout the world, has failed to act on over 400 complaints on war crimes in Iraq and in Afghanistan by US and UK forces, and has privately stated he will not take jurisdiction of 9/11.

B. U.S. Congress - The Indictment of the 9/11 Vancouver Tribunal can be taken by the 9/11 Vancouver Commission to the U.S. Senate and to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to prosecute the Accused Treason under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, which provides, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

There is legal precedent for such an action. In November 2007, a Memorandum was presented to senior Congressional staff and personally to Rep John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee setting out sufficient prima facie evidence of Article III(3) treason in connection with the events of 9/11 by George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and other Jane and John Does. Senior Congressional staff acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations in the Memorandum. Rep. Conyers took the Memorandum home to Detroit, MI over the Thanksgiving 2007 holidays promising an answer as to whether he would move on the file after the Holidays. To this date, no answer has been forthcoming from Rep. Conyers.

C. Canadian Parliament - There are various concurrent efforts to have the Parliament of Canada investigate the 9/11 events, as NORAD is a joint Canada/USA function and 26 Canadians were killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. The 9/11 Vancouver Indictment can be taken by the 9/11 Vancouver Commission to members of Parliament and the Senate, including the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leaders in the Parliament of Canada to appoint a Public Inquiry to investigate and report on possible criminal violations by Canadian persons or U.S. persons, including U.S. government employees or contractors/agents, and other individuals flowing out of the 9/11 events.

D. Prosecution for murder - The 9/11 Vancouver Indictment can be taken by the 9/11 Vancouver Commission to any District attorney and/or U.S. Attorneys in the United States of America, and to any Public Prosecutors in other nations whose citizens were killed in the World Trade Center or the events of 9/11. The alleged Accused, Co-conspirators and persons acting in a common plan to cause, facilitate or support the events of September 11, 2001 can each be prosecuted for murder by a U.S. attorney, by a district attorney or by public prosecutors of a nation whose citizens were killed at the World Trade Center or in any aspect of the false flag operation on September 11, 2001.

E. 9/11 Vancouver Tribunal - The 9/11 Vancouver Commission can establish a formal Tribunal for a trial of the Accused under the 9/11 Vancouver Indictment. This trial would be heard by the 9/11 Tribunal Judges, with appointed prosecutors, counsel for the Accused and due process for the Accused. A sister tribunal of conscience, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, has successfully tried George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, et al. for war crimes in Iraq...

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Anonymous Revolution 2012

Call for Ray Bradbury to be honoured with internet error message

Tim Bray, a fan of Bradbury's writing, is recommending to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which governs such choices, that when access to a website is denied for legal reasons the user is given the status code 451.

There are already a host of HTTP status codes, from the common 404 Not Found to 504 Gateway Timeout. The 451 idea follows a blogpost from Terence Eden, who found that his ISP had been ordered to censor the Pirate Bay when he was given an HTTP 403 Forbidden message, meaning that "the server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfil it". In fact, Eden writes on his blog, it was not Pirate Bay that was preventing access but the government, after Britain's high court issued an order to ISPs to block access to the filesharing site in April, so the response was "factually incorrect", and a new code is needed to indicate "censorship".

451, Bray believes, would work nicely, as it would provide a tribute to Bradbury as well as reminding users of the dystopian future predicted by the science fiction author. Bradbury died earlier this month, leaving behind an oeuvre numbering hundreds of short stories as well as the novels Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, which tells of a world where books are banned and burned and fireman don't put fires out but start them.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks from Ecuadorian embassy

Responding to US and Australian government claims that Washington was not interested in extraditing him to America, Assange said US legal action against him was already underway and on the “public record”.

The US Department of Justice, he said, was “playing a little game, and that little game is they refuse to confirm or deny the existence of a grand jury. And as a result, the press goes, ‘Oh well, they don’t confirm it, and therefore we can’t really write about it.’

“But that’s not true,” Assange said. “There’s public record everywhere, there’s multiple witnesses everywhere, there’s testimony in military courts about the existence of what is happening in these 48,000 pages, and that the founders and managers of WikiLeaks are amongst the subjects.”

Assange said two individuals with whom he previously worked—Jérémie Zimmermann and Smári McCarthy—had recently been detained at American airports and interrogated by FBI officials about WikiLeaks activities.

Assange added that the US was spending “vast resources” on its operations against him. He revealed that WikiLeaks had just discovered that the Department of Justice had awarded a $2 million contract to MANTEC, an IT systems company, to maintain the government’s computer system operations against WikiLeaks.

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You Are Here To Wake Up

Herman Van Rompuy publishes haiku poems

According to the Guardian:

A relative unknown when he served as Belgium's prime minister for just 10 months before becoming EU president, Mr Van Rompuy has become internationally renowned not for his political achievements but for his haiku, a 17-syllable form of poetry originating in Japan.

Those looking for any insights into Mr Van Rompuy's political plans will be disappointed by his poetry and its mystical strain.

[ ... ]

Nobutake Odano, Japan's ambassador to the EU, would not comment on the literary merits of Mr Van Rompuy's haiku.

"He feels that he does not have to worry about the reaction of readers. He wants to express ideas in his own way," he said.

[ ... ]

HERMAN'S HAIKUS

On the seasons:

In a nearby ditch

toads mating passionately

inaugurate spring.

Brussels:

Different colours,

tongues, towers and gods.

I search my way.

A moment of reflection:

Birds in concert,

one sings above all others.

I don't know its name.

Mother:

Are you mute forever?

Are flesh and blood extinct?

I will be your grave.

~ ~ ~

See also:

Speech by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy
I discovered haiku poetry in the Summer of 2004. It would take too long to explain the circumstances and the reasons but it happened.

Fidel Castro leaves people guessing as he writes cryptic, Haiku-like notes

In cryptic paragraphs of never more than 65 words, the former Cuban president has written about yoga poses, edible plants, a criticism of Cuba by a Chinese leader who died 15 years ago and a former leader of communist East Germany who died even further back.

Castro’s pronouncements have sparked quizzical looks, jokes about his mental state as he approaches his 86th birthday on Aug. 13 and convoluted efforts by supporters to explain his odd words.

“I respect all religions, though I don’t believe in them. Human beings, from the dumbest to the wisest, search for an explanation for their existence. Science constantly searches for the laws that guide the universe. At this time, it is in an expansion started about 13,700 million years ago,” he wrote in a short missive published Tuesday by government websites.

Interesting ... Military Police Training to Drive Armored Vehicles on Civilian Streets

Interesting place to train,and more intersting as to why they need training of that sort. This exercise will run from June 21-28 in St. Louis. Presence of tanks will be most noticeable in the area of the sixth district.

SOURCE:

http://www.dailypaul.com/241599/dont-be-alrmed-army-trains-mps-to-drive-tanks-on-us-streets

Worldwide Militarization: NATO Expands Military Network To All Continents

By Rick Rozoff, Global Research

NATO's Allied Command Transformation, established at the 1999 fiftieth anniversary summit in Washington, D.C. and the first alliance command based in the U.S. (in Norfolk, Virginia), reported that participation came from "numerous partnership nations that came from all over the world including South America, North Africa, the South Pacific and East Asia" and that attending nations were members of the bloc's Partnership for Peace, Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and other military partnerships.

The first of the above three includes 21 nations in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Finland, Georgia, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.) The Partnership for Peace program was employed to prepare the twelve nations incorporated as full members between 1999 and 2009: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Mediterranean Dialogue members are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. As will be seen below, Libya is scheduled to be the next partner.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are members of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, with Saudi Arabia and Oman being groomed as new members and perhaps Iraq and Yemen behind them.

The nations in attendance at the NATO meeting in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, subtitled Current and Future Challenges, would have included what were formerly referred to as Contact Countries - Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea - and which are now included in a new category called Partners Across the Globe along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Mongolia and Pakistan.

The South American nation(s) were not identified, but NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, recently identified El Salvador in Central America and Colombia in South America, respectively, as current and future NATO partners and troop contributors in Afghanistan. This March Stavridis told Congress that Brazil and India also were potential NATO partners.

Before assuming the joint roles of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe and commander of U.S. European Command in 2009, Stavridis was commander of U.S. Southern Command and as such in charge of American military operations and military-to- military relations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. In 2007 the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 conducted "presence operations" in the Caribbean Sea, the first time that alliance warships deployed there.

The inclusion of South America marks the crossing of a new threshold for NATO: It now has members and partners on all six inhabited continents, accounting for over a third of the nations in the world.

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Action group "The revenge of the Ghosts from Floria" puts secret documents about bribe money payments of German arms manufacturer online

Düsseldorf, Germany 24.06.2012

Press release: Action group "The revenge of the Ghosts from Floria" puts secret documents about bribe money payments of German arms manufacturer online.

We, "The revenge of the ghosts of Floria", have uploaded secret documents about bribe money payments of the German company "Ferrostaal" amongst others to Greek politicians. Its irrelevant wether we obtained this documents by hacking, or because somebody leaked the information or in any other way. Fact is that these documents are original and reveal how German arms manufacturers like "Ferrostaal" bribed politicians to satisfy their greed of gain.

The international debt crisis, which is actually a banking crisis and also a crisis of capitalism, steamed up over years amogst others by German corporations because they bribed politicians to become fresh orders which where financed with new credits. After the bribery scandal of German corporation "Siemens" in Greece, the documents show that this was not an isolated case. Arms manufacturers like "Ferrostaal" bribed Greek politicians in a grand scale.

The "Ferrostaa"l bribery scandal is known for a long time, now we published a few secret documents. Our position is that the people of Germany, Greece, Portugal and of many other involved countries where "Ferrostaal" bribed politicians have a right to have access to the information in these documents. The documents were produced by US lawfirm Debevoise & Plimpton (D&P) on behalf of Ferrostaal. German newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" published a story about these documents in July 2011. Still we think its important to publish the complete original documents. The documents reveal that Ferrostaal made questionable payments of 246 million euros, even after a new German law of 1999 defined this kind of payments to a criminal act. Mostly on Swiss bankaccounts. Warnings ("red flags") about these payments were ignored by the Ferrostaal board of directors.

The documents show how the former MAN subsidiary operated in countries like Portugal, Greece and many other countries and how they bribed politicians. In December 2011 the court of Munich (Germany) convicted 2 former Ferrostaal manager to suspended sentences and a fine. The Ferrostaal corporation itself was sentenced to a fine of 140 million euros. One of the politicians who was bribed is former Greek defense minister Apostolos-Athanasios Tsochatzopoulos. He was arrested on April 11, 2012, under suspicion of corruption. At page 36 you can read more about his role in the "Ferrostaal" bribery scandal. At page 37 you can read about a "Ferrostaal" contact man (Mr. Beltsios) with best contacts with the Greek "PASOK" party, who where governing Greece at that time.

Both documents describe that it was common practice, and maybe still is, to become fresh orders by paying bribe money. The board of directors didn't care from whom these orders came. They also sold arms to dictators and their governments.

We declare our solidarity with the Occupy camps in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf (both Germany), who are both threatened by eviction. The activists again and again protest against the power and doings of banks and large corporations and in favor of humanity and real democracy. They demand from the EU Troika to immediately stop their inhuman austerity policy in countries like Greece and Spain and instead establish a policy for the people and their needs. The documents we now uploaded show that corrupton is not a South-European problem. Bribe money payments are made by German corporations. Its because of the greed for even more profits of corporations like "Ferrostaal", why people in Greece and many other countries are suffering from austerity mandates. Enough is enough! Viva La (r)Evolution! Occupy Düsseldorf and Occupy Frankfurt will stay!

Rapport lawfirm Debevoise & Plimpton (D&P):
http://www.uploadarea.de/files/ruj9zdtk7pkrihyowwp4hs3do.pdf

Top Secret Greek Submarines Payment Files:
http://www.uploadarea.de/files/tgadncz4vw61it2fxib6wkcy2.pdf

Solidary & militant greetz
The revenge of the ghosts of Floria*

*On May 23, 1941 all residents of the small mountain village of Floria (Crete, Greece) where murdered by the German "Wehrmacht" (army) after the residents of Floria had put up resistance against the German occupation.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/84qphwe

US Banks Love Real Dollars, and Illegal Drug Money Comes in Cash

From Prison-Industrial Complex, Corrupt Officials, Businesses, Law Enforcement, Racists and the CIA Profit From Illegal Drugs by Mark Karlin, Truthout

A recent article in The Guardian UK offers evidence that "while cocaine production ravages countries in Central America, consumers in the US and Europe are helping developed economies grow rich from the profits."

According to The Guardian UK story, the study by two Colombian professors found that "2.6% of the total street value of cocaine produced remains within the country [Columbia], while a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates and laundered by banks, in first-world consuming countries."

One of the researchers, Alejandro Gaviria said: "We know that authorities in the US and UK know far more than they act upon. The authorities realize things about certain people they think are moving money for the drug trade - but the DEA [US Drug Enforcement Administration] only acts on a fraction of what it knows."

"It's taboo to go after the big banks," added Gaviria's co-researcher Daniel Mejía. "It's political suicide in this economic climate, because the amounts of money recycled are so high."

Since Wachovia Bank (now owned by Wells Fargo) was levied a fine in 2010 (but no criminal charges) for money laundering hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of illegal drug cartel dollars, there does not appear to be any large crackdown on the practice in the United States, although lip service is often given to coming down hard on money laundering.

Indeed, more than one analyst has speculated that the billions of dollars in drug cash are vitally important to US banks because so many of their financial assets are tied up in non-fluid assets.

According to a 2011 article in AlterNet:

Antonio Maria Costa, former executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in 2008, "there's evidence to suggest that proceeds from drugs and crimes were the only liquid investment capital for banks in trouble of collapsing [during the financial crisis]."

If billions of dollars in drug money rescued banks and other financial institutions from closing down then it's reasonable to argue that the economy itself is addicted to drugs.

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