ScienceisPolitical

Dr Paul deserves the best: A tribute from Itsya

2012-01-22T01:35:00.000-05:00

Alexandria closing Coal Plant: History in the Making

2011-09-26T10:39:00.000-04:00

I will go down there and take some photos of the site this week. This is a very serious and important impact on the City of Alexandria.

Long known by the name of its former owner, Mirant — which through a merger became GenOn — the plant sits on 25 prime acres. The parcel cuts Old Town Alexandria off from the water and is adjacent to a popular walking and bicycling trail on National Park Service land.

Dr Dee at Washington Psychiatrist

2011-02-14T19:23:00.000-05:00

Create your own free photo slideshow

Pill for Aids

2010-12-04T00:12:00.000-05:00

Healthy gay men who took an anti-AIDS pill every day were well protected against contracting H.I.V. in a study suggesting that a new weapon against the epidemic has emerged.

Enlarge This Image

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Truvada, a combination of antiretroviral drugs made by Gilead Sciences, costs around $13,000 a year in the United States.

An AIDS Advance, Hiding in the Open (November 28, 2010)
U.N. Reports Decrease in New H.I.V. Infections (November 24, 2010)

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In the study, published Tuesday by theNew England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the men taking Truvada, a common combination of two antiretroviral drugs, were 44 percent less likely to get infected with the virus that causes AIDS than an equal number taking a placebo.

But when only the men whose blood tests showed that they had taken their pill faithfully every day were considered, the pill was more than 90 percent effective, said Dr.Anthony S. Fauci, head of the infectious diseases division of the National Institutes of Health, which paid for the study along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“That’s huge,” Dr. Fauci said. “That says it all for me.”

The large study, nicknamed iPrEx, included nearly 2,500 men and was coordinated by the Gladstone Institutes of the University of California, San Francisco.

The results are the best news in the AIDS field in years, even better than this summer’s revelation that a vaginal microbicide protected 39 percent of all the women testing it and 54 percent of those who used it faithfully.

Also, Truvada, a combination of tenofovir and emtricitabine that prevents the virus from replicating, is available by prescription in many countries right now, while the microbicide gel is made in only small amounts for clinical trials.

The protection, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, is also the first new form available to men, especially men who cannot use condoms because they sell sex, are in danger of prison rape, are under pressure from partners or lose their inhibitions when drunk or high.

It “does not involve getting permission from the other partner, and that’s important,” said Phill Wilson, president of the Black AIDS Institute, which focuses on the epidemic among blacks.

Michel Sidibé, the head of the United Nations agency that fights AIDS, called it “a breakthrough that will accelerate the prevention revolution.”

AIDS experts and the researchers issued several caveats about the study’s limitations, emphasizing that it looked only at gay men and Truvada. More studies, now under way, are needed to see whether the results can be duplicated, whether other antiretroviral drugs will work and whether they will protect heterosexual men and women, prostitutes and drug users who share needles.

There is no medical reason to think the pill would not work in other groups, since it attacks the virus in the blood, not in the vaginal wall as a microbicide does. Pre-exposure prophylaxis became possible only in recent years as newer, less-toxic antiretroviral drugs were developed.

Some scientists fear that putting more people on the drugs will speed the evolution of drug-resistant strains, though that did not occur in the study.

Because Truvada is available now, some clinicians already prescribe it for prophylaxis, Dr. Fauci said, but whether doing so becomes official policy will depend on discussions by theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, medical societies and others, which could take months.

Although the C.D.C. would prefer that doctors wait for further studies, more will probably prescribe the drugs now that this study is out, said Dr. Kevin Fenton, chief of the agency’s AIDS division, so the C.D.C. will soon release suggested guidelines.

The agency will suggest that the drug be prescribed only with close medical supervision and used only with other safe-sex practices.

“The results are encouraging, but it’s not time for gay men to throw away their condoms,” Dr. Fenton said.

AIDS advocacy groups were very excited by the results.

“If you comply with it, this works really well,” said Chris Collins, policy director of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. “This is too big to walk away from.”

Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an organization that lobbies for AIDS prevention, called the study “a great day for the fight against AIDS” and said gay men and others at risk needed to be consulted on the next steps.

In the study, 2,499 men in six countries — Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and the United States — were randomly assigned to take either Truvada or a placebo and were followed for up to three years. For ethical reasons, they were also given condoms, treatment for venereal diseases and advice on safe sex. There were 64 infections in the placebo group and 36 in the group that took Truvada, a 44 percent risk reduction.

Two in the Truvada group turned out to have been infected before the study began. When the remaining 34 were tested, only 3 had any drug in their blood — suggesting that the other 31 had not taken their pills.

Different regimens, like taking the pills not daily but only when sex is anticipated, also need testing.

Also, many men in the study failed to take all of their pills, and some clearly lied about it. For example, some who claimed to take them 50 percent or 90 percent of the time had little or no drug in their bloodstreams.

The pills caused no major side effects, though men who began to show signs of liver problems were taken off them quickly. Some men stopped taking the pills because they disliked relatively minor side effects like nausea and headaches. Also, some stopped bothering once they suspected that they might be taking a placebo.

“People have their own reasons,” Mr. Collins said. “People don’t take their Lipitor every day either.”

A major question now is who will pay for the drug.

In the United States, Truvada, made by Gilead Sciences, costs $12,000 to $14,000 a year. In very poor countries, generic versions cost as little as 40 cents a pill.

Globally, only about 5 million of the 33 million people infected with the AIDS virus are on antiretroviral drugs, and in an era of tight foreign-aid budgets, that number is not expected to rise quickly.

Hundreds of millions of Africans, Eastern Europeans and Asians are at risk and could benefit from prophylaxis, but that would cost tens of billions of dollars.

In this country, insurers and Medicare normally pay for the drugs, and the Ryan White Act covers the cost for the poor, but none of these payers yet have policies on supplying the drugs to healthy people.

No participant in the study developed resistance to tenofovir. Three were found to have strains resistant to emtricitabine, but investigators believe that all three were infected before the study began at levels low enough to have been missed by their first H.I.V. tests.

Another concern was that the participants would become so fearless that they would stop using condoms, but the opposite effect was seen — they used condoms more often and had fewer sex partners. But that can also be a result of simply being enrolled in a study and getting a steady diet of advice on safe sex and free condoms, the investigators said.

Other trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis have about 20,000 volunteers enrolled around the world. Their results are expected over the next two years.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 24, 2010, on

keeping track,, IH

Pell Grant restored to Prisoners seeking education

2010-09-20T20:58:00.000-04:00

Other exciting news that you may have heard is that
Julie Weiss told me that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island will
introduce legislation to repeal the Pell Grant ban on prisoners.
Finally, Jon Marc Taylor who wrote his doctoral thesis on Pell Grants
and prisoners told me in a phone conversation that two staffers from
Julie's group will visit him in prison to receive as much info as
possible about the issue. Charlie and Pauline

Back to School: A Guide to Continuing Your Education after Prison

Some inmates are able to pursue educational goals during a period of
incarceration, but few leave prison feeling that they have fully met
their educational needs. In the recent national Serious and Violent
Offender Program evaluation, 94% of adult male inmates interviewed as
they approached release identified education as a personal reentry
need. Inmates facing release from prison want to know how they can
either continue or begin to access adult education, post secondary
education, and/or occupationally specific education and training
programs. But there are some challenges in moving from knowing you
need it to knowing how to get it!

In 2008 the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Prisoner Reentry
Institute, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education,
developed a planning and information guide for inmates nearing
release. In 2010, the Department of Education updated the guide to
reflect the most recent information on federal student financial aid.
Back to School includes topics ranging from setting personal
educational goals and committing to a long term plan of educational
development, to knowing exactly where to go and what to ask for to
find, access, and pay for an educational program.

This 64 page document is in the public domain and can be downloaded
and reproduced from the web site of John Jay College at
(http://www.jjay.cuny.edu/BacktoSchoolSummer2010Revision.pdf ). Free
copies are available in limited quantities from the Department of
Education’s materials distribution center, EDPubs. (Visit EDPubs at
www.EDPubs.gov, call 1-877-4EDPUBS, or write to ED Pubs; P.O. Box
22207; Alexandria, VA 22304 and request item number ED005088P.)

Constitution Day September 2010

2010-09-17T16:11:00.000-04:00

So you think you know the Constitution..lol

http://www.constitutionfacts.com/?page=quiz.cfm

“The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

— Thomas Jefferson
hmm TJ had his visionary glasses on that day

http://www.constitutionfacts.com/?section=constitution&page=readTheConstitution.cfm

and I QUOTE..
POWER FORBIDDEN TO CONGRESS

Section 9. [1] The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

[2] The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

[3] No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

[4] No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. (Note: See the Sixteenth Amendment.)

[5] No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

[6] No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

[7] No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

[8] No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Section 10. [1] No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

[2] No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

[3] No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Monroe Doctrine Review by James Monroe

2010-09-01T18:09:00.000-04:00

James Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States' sphere of interest.

President James Monroe’s 1823 annual message to Congress contained the Monroe Doctrine, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

Understandably, the United States has always taken a particular interest in its closest neighbors – the nations of the Western Hemisphere. Equally understandably, expressions of this concern have not always been favorably regarded by other American nations.

The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Buried in a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823, the doctrine warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs. The doctrine was conceived to meet major concerns of the moment, but it soon became a watchword of U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere.

The Monroe Doctrine was invoked in 1865 when the U.S. government exerted diplomatic and military pressure in support of the Mexican President Benito Juárez. This support enabled Juárez to lead a successful revolt against the Emperor Maximilian, who had been placed on the throne by the French government.

Almost 40 years later, in 1904, European creditors of a number of Latin American countries threatened armed intervention to collect debts. President Theodore Roosevelt promptly proclaimed the right of the United States to exercise an “international police power” to curb such “chronic wrongdoing.” As a result, U. S. Marines were sent into Santo Domingo in 1904, Nicaragua in 1911, and Haiti in 1915, ostensibly to keep the Europeans out. Other Latin American nations viewed these interventions with misgiving, and relations between the “great Colossus of the North” and its southern neighbors remained strained for many years.

In 1962, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked symbolically when the Soviet Union began to build missile-launching sites in Cuba. With the support of the Organization of American States, President John F. Kennedy threw a naval and air quarantine around the island. After several tense days, the Soviet Union agreed to withdraw the missiles and dismantle the sites. Subsequently, the United States dismantled several of its obsolete air and missile bases in Turkey.

(Information excerpted from Milestone Documents [Washington, DC: The National Archives and Records Administration, 1995] pp. 26–29.)

recently brought to my attention.. history fans..

George Allen address the National Jewish Retreat this week

2010-08-21T16:56:00.000-04:00

George Allen.. excerpts..
http://www.georgeallen.com/speeches?ContentRecord_id=9f9dc4c7-7cac-41dd-85ea-a0f3277fd530
My Political Philosophy was mostly guided by Gov. Ronald Reagan, who came to LA Rams practices. Then, at UVA studying Thomas Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom and the Declaration of Independence. For me, Mr. Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address, best defined the Sum of Good Government as:

“…A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

In my book “What Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports”, I write “No One Pays to See Officials Officiate”.

Prior to that day, the Jewish aspect made no sense because there was never any discernable reason to think my mother’s parents, my grandparents – the Lumbrosos or Garcin, my grandmother – were of the Jewish faith. I knew my father was raised Catholic and we all were raised as Presbyterians-Protestants.

I then followed up and asked if any of her family way back were of the Jewish religious faith? I asked my mother about the possible Portuguese and Jewish roots, I simply said “is there anything to this, many centuries ago?”

After this last of my innocent, cross-examination questions in between spoons of cereal, my mother very seriously told me that she would tell me “something” but only if I swore not to tell anyone. No one. I replied “okay”. She insisted that I “swear” on Popop’s head that I tell no one. Popop was the nickname for my grandfather and “swearing on Popop’s head” was code for deadly serious Top Secret. I said “yes, okay. I Swear on Popop’s head that I won’t tell anyone. What is it?”
My mother then haltingly told me that “Popop was Jewish.”
I was surprised. Mostly thinking why all these years this was kept a secret and this was a fascinating discovery. I thought there must be a good way to share this newly discovered aspect with others. I thought it to be interestingly positive. My first audible response to my mother was “why didn’t you ever tell us?” and “amazing, people need to know this.”

Georgetown University Pathology Lab closed; Breast Cancer Testing HER 2

2010-08-13T10:15:00.000-04:00

http://www.darkdaily.com/?s=HER2
Last Friday, The Washington Post broke the news that Georgetown University Hospital (GUH) had closed the pathology laboratory that performed certain breast cancer tests. The action—described as an “unprecedented” suspension by GUH Chief Medical Officer Stephen Evans, M.D.—was taken in response to an investigation of the pathology laboratory by federal officials.

The closure of the laboratory followed an inspection on July 19, 2010 by officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and inspectors from the College of American Pathologists (CAP). Hospital officials say the molecular testing laboratory in question will be closed as long as four to eight weeks. During this time, specimens are being referred to outside laboratory testing sources.
The events described by the Post indicate that allegedly improper testing of breast cancer patients for HER2 took place during an 11-month period, beginning in May 2009. Georgetown University Hospital has confirmed issues with breast cancer testing and it is known that the tissues of 249 women have been retested by independent labs.
Post reporters Lena H. Sun and Carol D. Leonnig wrote that “the [GUH] lab received failing results from a quality-control assessment of its HER2 testing in January 2010, and in the following weeks an employee asked supervisors to notify patients and recommend retesting. In an April complaint to hospital administrators, she alleged that nothing had happened, according to a federal official and Georgetown staff. The tests were outsourced later that month, and the two women’s physicians were notified of the new, positive findings in the past two weeks as federal regulators began their inspection of the lab.”
According the timeline of events presented by The Washington Post, an employee of the pathology laboratory, upon learning about the failing results of the quality control testing done in January 2010, had asked supervisors to notify patients possibly affected by the findings and recommend retesting.
The matter didn’t end there. Reporters Sun and Leonnig described the situation, writing that “The employee, whose name has not been released, hired a lawyer, who brought her complaint to top hospital officials in April, a federal official and Georgetown staff said. The employee alleged that the lab director, Dan Hartmann, and other supervisors had rejected her suggestion in March that patients be alerted to the problem or their samples retested.”

Dan Hartmann, Ph.D., is identified on the Georgetown University web site as Professor in the Department of Pathology and Scientific Director of the Molecular Diagnostic Laboratory.

Apparently, unsatisfied with the response by hospital administration to the April complaint, Debra Katz, the attorney for the laboratory staff member, filed a formal complaint to CMS early in July. A copy of the complaint was also sent to the College of American Pathologists. Both organizations then began investigations into the matter. The Washington Post reported that a federal official had said that the complaint “expressed concern that Georgetown was taking a long time to do the retesting and was not sharing the problem with patients.”

The Post wrote that, “In interviews this week, Evans said the hospital learned early this year that lab staff members were not using proper temperature, timing, and tissue-embedding methods in processing samples. That caused the lab to fail the quality-control test for HER2, he said. The lab corrected its procedures, he said.”

For its part, Georgetown University Hospital has vigorously asserted that it wants its “policies and procedures to impeccable,” and that the laboratory “passed two subsequent quality control tests, voluntarily performed retesting that showed a high accuracy rate and is sending other work to outside labs.” For corrective action, “the hospital is increasing the number of quality control workers at the lab,” among other steps.
As to the patients possibly affected by these issues, Georgetown provided some information. The Post said that, around the time of the July 19 visit by CMS officials and CAP inspectors, Georgetown University Hospital “began alerting the physicians of patients whose tests came back positive for HER2 breast cancer. After two rounds of outside retesting, six patients were found positive, and their physicians were notified. Four of those had separately received other independent negative results. In the end, Georgetown said, only two patients were misdiagnosed.”

For pathologists and clinical laboratory managers, the events unfolding at the pathology laboratory department at Georgetown University Hospital are both a reminder and a warning. Setting aside the issues relating to laboratory testing quality and integrity, this situation has many hallmarks of the classic whistleblower case.

Was this laboratory staff member correctly requesting a necessary response to valid concerns about lab test accuracy and quality that might affect the diagnoses and treatment decisions of those patients affected by the breast cancer tests in question? It seems the action to suspend testing at the Georgetown molecular diagnostics laboratory in July would indicate that the basic issues triggered by this employee’s request to her supervisor earlier this year had some merit.
Thus, it would be timely for pathologists and clinical laboratory managers to review the policies and procedures in place at their respective laboratories to ensure that employees who call attention to situations of lab testing accuracy or quality are handled responsibly, ethically, and to the best interests of the patients whose specimens were tested.

Improper Genetic Testing and Delayed Corrections Lead to Shut Down at Georgetown
Dark Daily recent news coverage on HER2

WOW ,, good for the lab employee, hope they have a job .. and retain his/her attorney
I am not surprised at all...

as a Med Tech and oncology tech,, Good for them,, I am sure Georgetown will fix this.. should have never happened however.

John Kerry snaps about Isabel... his yacht

2010-07-27T16:23:00.000-04:00

I couldn't help it,, when I saw that
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/john-kerry-yacht-sales-tax-rhode-island/2010/07/27/id/365777?s=al&promo_code=A5D4-1
Top News

Sen. John Kerry on Monday snapped at reporters and tried to dodge questions about his new $7 million, 76-foot yacht.

On Friday, the Boston Herald reported that the Massachusetts Democrat had berthed his yacht Isabel in Rhode Island and suggested he was seeking to avoid paying about taxes..
What? Avoid paying taxes.. now who would want to do that?. LOL
Article says Rhode Island does not charge sales taxes on yachts.. unlike Massachusetts..
I have mixed feelings about this because,, I actually agree with John Kerry, why in the world
would anyone want to give away 70K ,, yes 70k in taxes? ....
so there ya go....not a limosine liberal afterall.. proof positive

Obama use your brain McChrystal is having PTSD temporary aberation

2010-06-22T23:12:00.000-04:00

Watching the McChrystal scandola .. generated by the Rolling Stone reporter..
maybe McChristal is suffering from extended post war or PTSD
You should not accept his resignation or buy into this media feeding frenzy
just make amends.. people have anger and aberrations and react strangely and lash out
under stress .. it is not about you Barack Obama,,
he is just responding to stress. He needs to remain there or troops and efforts will be demoralized.
For a change David Gergen and I agree.. a reprimand is Ok; other than that
remember he is a warrior under stress

Gulf Oil Spill DEBACLE continues Pelicans and Dolphins

2010-05-24T22:19:00.000-04:00

This is totally outrageous. Two weeks ago after hearing about the oil spill--I suggested
that ANYBODY and ANYTHING be used, tires, submarines, mud, tires,,
to stop the leak,, now it turns out for some reason the exterior containment Islands to prevent the oil
from reaching the nesting areas also are not working. I just typed in the Oil absorbing
and what came back.. BOOMS designed for oil spills .. all of this is already available
Dolphins are washed up, the Pelicans are covered with oil,,
and guess what a COMMISSION to study this is appointed!!
The Corp of Engineers who were part of the Hoover Dam know how to work with huge water issues
the Navy does; the Coast Guard does; BP should just PAY for everything, obviously
their expertise is limited.. they DRILL wells. they don't contain WELLS for living
evidently someone slept through quality control
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That was just my first time hit... sigh..

Great Supreme Court Decision‏

2010-05-18T14:35:00.000-04:00

*Justices Bar Life Terms for Youths Who Haven’t Killed**By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS*WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may notbe locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven't killedanyone. By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court says the Constitution requires thatyoung people serving life sentences must at least be considered forrelease. The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated inarmed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham, now 22, is in prison inFlorida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendantslocked up for life for crimes other than homicide. "The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he isfit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that hecommitted while he was a child in the eyes of the law," JusticeAnthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. "This the EighthAmendment does not permit." Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with Kennedy and the court's fourliberal justices about Graham. But Roberts said he does not believethe ruling should extend to all young offenders who are locked up forcrimes other than murder; he was a "no" vote on the ruling. Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh forjuveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious thankilling, although roughly three dozen states allow for the possibilityof such prison terms. Just over 100 prison inmates in the UnitedStates are serving those terms, according to data compiled byopponents of the sentences. Those inmates are in Florida and seven other states -- California,Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska and South Carolina --according to a Florida State University study. More than 2,000 otherjuveniles are serving life without parole for killing someone. Theirsentences are not affected by Monday's decision. Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissentedfrom Monday's ruling. Thomas criticized the majority for imposing "its own sense of moralityand retributive justice" on state lawmakers and voters who chose togive state judges the option of life-without-parole sentences. --

Gulf Coast Oil Spill.. where are all the engineers?

2010-05-06T14:56:00.001-04:00

Correcting my own blog.. yes I know it was deep underwater spill
Where are all those Navy underwater engineers? This impacts the entire USA for a LONG time
why can't they deliver some junk subs and plug the hole? nuclear subs can go that far and explore the area and figure it out.. surely! Maybe the alien underwater technology can be of some use.. sigh,,this is friggin planetary emergency and ALL contingencies MUST be used and explored!
or check out the Pyramid for the
scheme about side angle venting off the main leak? I saw that on Ancient History or Nat Geo
that is amazing about the big pyramid having those V vents in there to produce Hydrogen
it could happen that way.. why can't the underwater weapons etc/ engineers adapt and employ ..and check out technology used .. where is Red Adair when we need him?

I am not an engineer and I can even project better scenarios than the one I saw on CNN where they are putting a big rigged cap on it and stand back and PRAY..
yes I do pray this will take more than sticking a finger in the dyke and hoping it holds

http://www.redadair.com/

DA MAN

On the CURE front international and prison reform front

2010-04-05T18:04:00.000-04:00

UNITED STATES HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN CORRECTIONAL PRACTICES
A contribution to the 2010 UN Universal Periodic Review
By NGO International CURE

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR), established by the UN General Assembly resolution 60/251 of 15 March 2006, is a new human rights mechanism. Through the UPR, the Human Rights Council (HRC) reviews, on a periodic basis, the fulfillment by each of the United Nations’ 192 Member States of their human rights obligations and commitments. The 2010 UPR includes an assessment of the United States adherence to its commitments. CURE’s assessments in the following concern only issues in correctional practices as guided by ratified human rights documents

I. ACCESS TO THE COURTS

II. CONTROL UNITS

III. EDUCATION IN PRISON

IV. MEDICAL CARE IN PRISONS

V. SEXUAL SECURITY

VI. COMMUNITY TIES; VOTING and FAMILY

VII. DEATH PENALTY and LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE

VIII. LIFE WITH PAROLE

IX. MENTALLY ILL IN PRISON

X. PRIVATE PRISONS

XI. TELEPHONE SERVICE IN PRISONS

XII. SLAVERY, FORCED LABOR, AND WORK IN PRISONS

XIII. SEX OFFENDERS

I. ACCESS TO THE COURTS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 14, Paragraph 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by the US: “Minimum guarantees: to be informed promptly and in detail in an understandable language the nature and cause of charges; to have adequate time and facilities for preparation of a defense and communication with counsel of one’s own choosing; or legal assistance assigned without payment if one is indigent; to have free assistance of an interpreter.”

Article 2, Paragraph 3 states: “Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes: To ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
Article 5 (a) of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD): “the right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice.”

B. ANALYSIS.

A report, titled “Lessons Not Learned,” by the Innocence Project, detailed 23 wrongful convictions in New York that have been overturned through DNA evidence.
1. Eyewitness misidentification played a role in 13 of the 23 wrongful convictions in New York that were overturned.
2. In 10 of the 23 cases in New York, innocent people falsely confessed or admitted to crimes that DNA later proved they did not commit.
3. Limited or unreliable forensic science played a role in 10 of the 23 wrongful convictions in New York that were overturned.

C. VIOLATIONS.

ICCPR: Inadequate legal defense for persons living in poverty results in many false convictions of innocent persons. Over one-hundred individuals in capital cases have been exonerated, through subsequent DNA technology, after spending years in prison for crimes they did not commit. This extent of injustice in high visibility capital cases is a certain indicator of more injustice in non-capital cases.

Capital juries are death qualified which means jurors have to be willing to give the death penalty in order to serve. The prosecution customarily has an unlimited budget and resources whereas public defender offices are traditionally staffed by lawyers carrying large caseloads with limited budgets. This often means limited, if any, investigation. Interrogation techniques are often manipulated by law enforcement, witnesses are threatened, confessions are coerced, eyewitness testimony is extracted with prejudicial techniques, jailhouse informants are used to gain convictions. Prosecutors cannot be prosecuted even for hiding exculpatory evidence.

Police are permitted to lie to defendants to get confessions. In many cases, defendants do not have any communication with their attorneys, even in capital cases, and little preparation takes place prior to trial. Despite a Supreme Court ruling requiring 2 lawyers and 2 investigators, one of which must be a mitigation specialist for capital trials, this is still not the norm.

Foreign nationals who are arrested are frequently not permitted to contact their consulate for help. Non English speaking defendants are often not provided with interpreters.

Denial of effective redress of constitutional violations. Persons who seek their rights must not be punished because of those efforts. The constraints on access to legal review imposed by the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) have been significant impediments to the redress of violations of prisoners’ rights. By keeping constitutional claims out of court, the PLRA places severe limitations on the possibility of challenging and redressing abusive prison conditions through litigation.

ICERD: Racial discrimination has dominated our criminal justice system. People of color are convicted disproportionately to their makeup in the overall population, particularly if the victim is white. Juries continue not to reflect the actual population. Drug laws are less severe for the so-called white drugs vs. drugs commonly found in the poorer, non white population.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Change jury qualification to eliminate “death qualification” in capital juries. Make certain juries actually reflect the racial make-up of the community.
2. In capital trials enforce ABA recommendations: defense team must have 2 lawyers, 2 investigators,
one of which is a mitigation specialist.
3. Implement videotaping in interrogations, double-blind eyewitness identification techniques.
4. Eliminate police freedom to lie to defendants to obtain confessions.
5. Jailhouse informants are unreliable and should only be used after extreme scrutiny of deals made for their testimony.
6. Prosecutors should be subject to prosecution and lawsuits for not disclosing exculpatory evidence.
7. Foreign nationals should be put in contact with their consulate immediately after arrest. Non-English speaking defendants should be provided with interpreters at every step in legal processes.
8. DNA and other forensic testing should be provided.
9. Amend the PLRA to eliminate the barriers to effective redress of constitutional violations.

II. CONTROL UNITS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

B. ANALYSIS.

Brain damage. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury. …One of the paradoxes of solitary confinement is that, as starved as people become for companionship, the experience typically leaves them unfit for social interaction.” (Atul Guwande, New Yorker, March 30, 2009)

C. VIOLATIONS.

A study of a hundred randomly selected inmates at California’s Pelican Bay supermax prison, noted that after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose.”… “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic. (Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz)

Such debasement of human beings clearly violates the intent of Article 7 of the ICCPR.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS.

1. Current practice of prolonged isolation in control/segregation units should be stopped completely.
2. There should be narrowly defined criteria for placement into control/segregation units so that they are used only for prisoners who are the most serious threats to safe and humane operations of correctional facilities. Placement in such units may never be done for prisoners with known psychiatric problems.
3. There should be a clearly articulated system in place for prisoners to work their way back to open population settings over a reasonable period.
4. The conditions inside the cells must not lead to adverse sensory deprivation, overstimulation, or disorientation, due to lack of natural light or excessive sound/noise/music. Deprivation of food, water or sleep, or spatial disorientation must be avoided at all costs. Restraints should not be used for punishment.
5. The mental health of all prisoners who are in control/segregation units should be regularly reviewed by properly trained and certified mental health professionals. If, in the opinion of these professionals, the inmates need treatment, it should be provided immediately, including transfer to a psychiatric setting if necessary.

III EDUCATION IN PRISON

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states, in Article 26.1: “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available, and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”

Article 10.3 of the ICCPR: “The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.”

Article 5 of the ICERD: “to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race…the right to education and training.”

B. ANALYSIS.

Especially for ex-offenders, adequate vocational training is key to economic survival and re-integration into society, In the workplace of the United States, this usually requires vocational training beyond secondary schooling. Specialized occupational training in careers like electrical installation, plumbing, welding, building construction, air conditioning, heating, auto mechanics, and semi professional skills that are available in community colleges, are essential.

C. VIOLATIONS.

1. UDHR: Post secondary vocational training, that is needed for economic survival in the U.S., is seriously inadequate in most U.S. places of detention.

In 1995, the U.S. Congress terminated all federal funding (financial aid via PELL Grants) for post-secondary education in prisons. Within five years the U.S. Congress established post secondary grants for financial aid of youthful offenders and now such funds are available for offenders up to the age of 35. However, funding is not adequate and the level of commitment must be changed to cover all ages of the incarcerated. These social exclusions and inadequacies violate the intent of Article 26 of the UDHR.

Compounding the reentry problem, laws needlessly deny licenses to persons with criminal records that are unrelated to the work involved.

2. ICERD:The grossly disproportionate inclusion of African-Americans and Hispanics in the prison systems of the U.S., and the relative inadequacy of Correctional Education, effectively deprives such persons of equal educational opportunity, thus violating Article 5 of the ICERD.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS.

1. Federal and state laws and regulations should generally include correctional education as beneficiaries on a par with public education.
2. Steps should be taken to enhance education in places of detention so that educational content and quality there will approach a par with public education.
3. Federal funding of financial aid for post-secondary education in prisons (PELL Grants for prisoners) should be restored, on a par with federal aid in public education.
4. Unwarranted restrictions on work licenses should be removed.
5. To facilitate investment in correctional education, the use of lower cost technologies such as distance learning and online video should be encouraged and funded, as supplements to standard education delivery.

IV. MEDICAL CARE IN PRISONS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

1. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CAT): Deliberate indifference to the pain and suffering of those in custody evidenced by the denial of medical care, unreasonable delay in the provision of care, or the provision of substandard and ineffective care is prohibited by Article 16, which obligates each State Party to “undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel or degrading treatment or punishment”

2. The U.S. Constitution: The 8th amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. In Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976), the Court concluded that deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners constitutes "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," whether the indifference is displayed by prison doctors in their response to the prisoner's need or by prison guards who deny or delay access to treatment or interfere with the treatment.

B. ANALYSIS.

All inmates with substance use disorders should be provided evidence-based treatment and aftercare. We would then break even on this investment in one year if just over 10 percent of those receiving such services remained substance and crime free and employed. For each succeeding year that these inmates remained substance and crime free and employed, the nation would reap a huge economic benefit in reduced crime, lower arrest, prosecution, incarceration and health care costs, and economic benefits from employment. (Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University)

Documentation Of Various Instances Of Deficient Medical Care

· ACLU Lawsuit Charges Grossly Inadequate Medical Care At State Prison In Nevada
http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/aclu-lawsuit-charges-grossly-inadequate-medical-care-state-prison-nevada

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/challenging-grossly-inadequate-medical-care-ely-state-prison

· Healthcare Behind Bars, Part 1: Prisoners of the system
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20070219/REG/70216010#

· Access To Health Care Among U.S. Prisoners Is Inadequate
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/135684.php

The Prison Litigation Reform Act

· A review of the Act Prepared for Second Circuit Court of Appeals (2004) http://www.wnylc.net/pb/docs/plra2cir04.pdf

· Reform the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA)

In enacting the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) in 1996, Congress sought to curb what was perceived to be an overwhelming number of frivolous prisoner lawsuits. There certainly are frivolous prisoner lawsuits that have been kept out of court by the PLRA. However, after a decade of experience under the legislation, it is clear that the PLRA is also keeping countless serious claims from reaching the courts—including claims of physical and sexual abuse, indifference to inmate on inmate rape, gross mistreatment of confined juveniles, and markedly deficient medical and mental health treatment. This effectively prevents courts from exercising their role of protecting constitutional rights. http://www.savecoalition.org/pdfs/save_final_report.pdf

C. VIOLATIONS.

1. CAT: The systematic failure to provide adequate resources to provide care to inmates, as illustrated by the placing in judicial receivership the medical services of the California Department of Corrections, also constitutes an 8th amendment violation and, by implication, a violation of Article 16 of The Convention.

2. Only 11 percent of inmates with substance use disorders receive any type of treatment during incarceration; few of those receive evidence-based care. (“Behind Bars II: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population” CASA; February 2010).

3. Many other instances of failure to provide prisoners and detainees with constitutionally adequate medical and psychiatric care. The articles referenced in the Annex provide a glimpse of the failure of penal institutions to provide constitutionally adequate care.

4. Medical co-pays from inmates are sometimes large when compared to their income, and can deter timely and preventive medical treatment.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS

1. All inmates with substance use disorders should be provided evidence-based treatment and aftercare.

2. Provide adequate resources and staff training to ensure constitutionally sufficient medical care.

3. Institute a structure of review of prison performance independent of prison administrative structure. For example, establish an independent ombudsman to review prisoner complaints and to monitor the indices of prison administrative performance.

4. Eliminate or reduce medical co-payments by inmates in accord with their income.

V. SEXUAL SECURITY

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

The Preamble to the Article 3 of the ICCPR states: “The States Parties to the present Covenant shall undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth in the present Covenant.”

Article 7 of that Covenant states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

B. ANALYSIS.

Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure." (U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun).

The sexual assault of prisoners, whether perpetrated by corrections officials or by other inmates, amounts to torture under international law. Torture is prohibited by international conventions and treaties, including the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), both of which have been ratified by the United States.

C. VIOLATIONS

1. Sexual assault. In 2009, the State of Michigan paid $100 million to settle a class-action by more than 500 female prisoners who said they were sexually assaulted by prison guards.

2. Sexual abuse. In a 2007 survey of prisoners across the country, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)
found that 4.5 percent (or 60,500) of the more than 1.3 million inmates held in federal and state prisons
had been sexually abused in the previous year alone. A BJS survey in county jails was just as
troubling; nearly 25,000 jail detainees reported having been sexually abused in the past six months.

Incarcerated women have undergone intrusive pat-downs and body searches in public by male guards.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Adopt and enforce the national standards that were developed under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

2. Ratify the OPCAT, which establishes a system of regular visits undertaken by international and national bodies to places of detention in order to prevent torture and other forms of ill treatment.

3. Prohibit pat-downs and body-searches of women by male officers.

4. Adopt severe penalties for staff violence against women inmates.

5. Swiftly prosecute, and widely publicize punishment, for all violence by staff on women inmates.

VI. COMMUNITY TIES; VOTING and FAMILY

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

1. Article 21 (1) of the UDHR states that “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country directly or through freely chosen representatives,” and (3) of the UDHR states that “the will of the people shall be expressed ...by universal and equal suffrage.”

2. Article 17 of the ICCPR states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, home, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation.”

B. ANALYSIS.

1. Restoring a person’s right to vote is a critical element to successful reentry into society after incarceration, and consistent with our democracy’s modern ideal of universal suffrage.

2. If offenders are to achieve a relatively stable lifestyle post-release, continued contact with family and friends is needed.

3. Research shows that children are the unintended victims of a prison sentence, with many children of prisoners less likely to complete secondary school and more likely to become homeless or unemployed and more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice or criminal justice systems. The likelihood of the children of an imprisoned parent ending up in prison increases by 6 times; they are also six times as likely to have mental health problems. (report by Justice Action)

C. VIOLATIONS.

1. Article 21 (1) of the UDHR: Nationally, an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. Of these, 4 million are out of prison and living and working in the community. Two states permanently ban voting by anyone with a felony record of any sort.

Also, 13% of all adult black men or nearly 1.4 million are disenfranchised. This represents one-third of the total disenfranchised population.

2. Article 17 of the ICCPR: Only a few states have visits where the family is together for 48 hours.

Some correctional facilities are now limiting mail to only postcards. This is certainly a violation of privacy in regard to the family which the state must have a special obligation to uphold.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS.

1. Voting should be permitted and facilitated for all persons incarcerated and for those already released from prison.

2. There should be periodic private family visits that can continue supportive relationships among all family members of persons incarcerated.

3. Close relations with family should be facilitated, including ordinary privacy of correspondence.

VII. DEATH PENALTY and LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

1. Article 6-1 of the ICCPR: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.”

2. Article 6-2 of the ICCPR: “In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes… and not contrary to the provisions of the present covenant.“

3. The “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” adopted by the United Nations in July 1998, declares that in all life sentences, a review is mandated after twenty-five years and /if warranted/ a lesser sentence may be imposed (Article 110 No. 3). By October 2009, 110 states had become party to the treaty, with 38 states signed but not yet ratified.

4. Article 10.3 of the ICCPR: “The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.”

5. Article 1 of the ICCPR: “All peoples have the right of self determination. By virtue of that right they …freely pursue their cultural development.”

B. ANALYSIS

1. Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. (Staff Report, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil & Constitutional Rights, Oct. 1993, with updates from DPIC). From 1973-1999, there was an average of 3.1 exonerations per year. From 2000-2007, there has been an average of 5 exonerations per year.

2. In the United States 35 states with death penalty statutes also can impose life without parole. 14 states which do not have death penalty statutes may impose life without parole, including the District of Columbia. Alaska is the only state that does not impose life without parole.

3. A report released by The Sentencing Project, “The Meaning of 'Life': Long Prison Sentences in Context” (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/life-without-parole), indicates a dramatic increase in life without parole sentences and notes that prisoners are generally serving longer terms of incarceration: “Of the lifers in prison, one in four (26.3%) is serving a sentence of life without parole, having increased from one in six (17.8%) in 1992. In six states - Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota - all life sentences are imposed without the possibility of parole. Seven states - Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - have more than 1,000 prisoners each serving sentences of life without parole. The increase in prison time for lifers is a result of changes in state policy and not due to increases in violent crime.”

C. VIOLATIONS

1. The high rate of exonerations of persons on death row awaiting execution is proof of the “arbitrary deprivation of life,” with inadequate proof of a “most serious crime.”

2. The rapid increase and the high rate of life-without-parole testifies to the arbitrary “slow death” deprivation of life as a result of politically motivated changes in state policy and not due to increases in violent crime or greater need for public safety.

3. Several other human rights are brought into question. For example, the right to the opportunity to reform one's life, to change, to grow positively in maturity and responsibility; and the right for an opportunity for “conversion or transformation” (which is held dear by many religious and social groups in our country) and to become a contributing and productive member of society.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS.

1. The death penalty should be abolished.

2. The opportunity for parole or sentence reduction, based on demonstrated rehabilitation, should be a recognized right for all prisoners, including those with a life sentence (in accord with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court).

VIII. LIFE WITH PAROLE

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

1. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD):
Article 2: 1(c) Each State Party shall take effective measures to review governmental, national and local policies, and to amend, rescind or nullify any laws and regulations which have the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination wherever it exists.

2. International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):

Article 10.3. The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.

B. ANALYSIS

1. In five states-Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York-at least 1 in 6 people in prison are serving a life sentence.

2. The highest proportion of life sentences relative to the prison population is in California, where 20% of the prison population is serving a life sentence, up from 18.1% in 2003. Among these 34,164 life sentences,

3. There are 6,807 juveniles serving life sentences;

4. There are 4,694 women and girls serving life sentences.

5. Life in prison is the most severe punishment available for juveniles. Every state allows for life sentences for juveniles, and 46 states hold juveniles serving such terms. Juveniles serve life sentences in nearly every state, but more than 50% of the national population is located in five states: California (2,623), Texas (422), Pennsylvania (345), Florida (338), and Nevada (322).

6. In 1967, the President’s Crime Commission recommended that parole boards be staffed by correctional professionals rather than political appointees. However, parole boards remain the domain of political appointees and two-thirds of states lack any standardized qualifications for service. This has resulted in a highly politicized process that too often discounts evidence and expert testimony. In the case of life sentences with the possibility of parole, the range of time that must be served prior to eligibility for release varies greatly, from under 10 years in Utah and California to 40 and 50 years in Colorado and Kansas. The median length of time served prior to parole eligibility nationally is in the range of 25 years. However, eligibility does not equate to release and, owing to the reticence of review boards and governors, it has become increasingly difficult for persons serving a life sentence to be released on parole.

C. VIOLATIONS.

1. Racial and ethnic minorities serve a disproportionate share of life sentences. Two-thirds of people with life sentences (66.4%) are nonwhite, reaching as high as 83.7% of the life sentenced population in the state of New York. Seventy-seven percent of juveniles sentenced to life are youth of color. This violates the ICERD Article 1-1, Article 2–1, and Article 5(a).

2. There is a broad range in the severity and implementation of the statutes and arbitrary mechanisms for release on parole. This violates the ICCPR Article 10-3.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Restore the Role of Parole

The opportunity for parole, based on demonstrated rehabilitation, is a right for all, including those with a life sentence. Parole boards should be staffed with members who have a background in corrections or relevant social services in order to best assess suitability for release. They should also use risk-based release polices that consider a range of static and dynamic factors including criminal history, offense severity, prison disciplinary record, and program participation while incarcerated. An example may come from Canada, where all persons serving life are considered for parole after serving 10 to 25 years. In the interest of public safety, some individuals sentenced to life will serve the remainder of their natural lives in prison. However, this reform would provide that a decision on release be made by a professional parole board at the time of eligibility, taking into account a person’s prospects for a successful transition to the community.

2. Prepare Persons for Release From Prison

The emergence of reentry as a criminal justice policy issue in the last decade has largely ignored persons serving a life sentence. Typically, reentry programs are provided to persons within 6 months of their release date and offer transition services in the community upon release. However, for persons serving a life sentence, their release date is not fixed and they are often overlooked as policymakers and correctional administrators consider reentry strategies. Additionally, persons serving a life sentence have unique reentry needs based upon the long duration of their prison term. The failure to design reentry strategies for persons serving a life sentence neglects 1 in 11 persons in prison by denying them the opportunity to participate in valuable programming. Reentry and reintegration principles must be extended to persons serving a life sentence. Correctional programs can contribute to a successful release and persons serving life should be encouraged to access the types of services that will help them transform their lives and improve their presentation before the parole board.

IX. MENTALLY ILL IN PRISON

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

1. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states: No one shall be subject to torture, or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

2. Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT): “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,…intentionally inflicted...for an act he or a third person has committed.”

B. ANALYSIS

1. There is now a huge population of mentally ill persons in our prisons and jails. The American Correctional Association has recognized that holding mentally challenged individuals in isolation can exacerbate their problems and bring about additional mental problems. Several federal courts have found that the conditions of confinement in isolation units can constitute cruel and unusual punishment which is prohibited by Article 7 of the ICCPR.

2. It would also qualify as torture defined in the CAT, Article 1, if correctional officials knowingly place mentally ill persons in disciplinary units.

3. Prisoners, who are seriously mentally ill, fall under the protection of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990. This act was amended to include serious mental illness as a disability in 2008 and enacted January 2009 to state: (1) Mentally ill people have the rights to accommodation plans to meet the needs of their disability, (2) They have the right to have access to an (ADA) representative to oversee Correctional Institutions compliance.

C. RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Ensure that mentally Ill prisoners are treated in accord with their lack of culpability, lack of awareness and impaired judgment due to their disabilities. Ensure that consideration is given for any adverse affects that certain psychotropic medications could cause to the mentally ill prisoner both physically and mentally. Ensure that the Americans with Disabilities (ADA) Title II, Federal Regulation is recognized and complied with by all Correction facilities.

2. Approve OPCAT (the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture) to monitor for abuse in places of detention. Appoint nationally recognized experts on mental health issues such as: The Bazelon Law Center, Treatment Advocacy Center, National Disability Rights Network and National Association of Mentally Ill (NAMI) to a National Oversight Committee to establish National Standards and Guidelines for the treatment of mentally ill prisoners.

3. Ensure that mentally ill prisoners are not placed in extensive isolation and receive professional
treatment. Ensure that emotionally disturbed persons are not placed in isolation without a qualified
examination for mental illness.

4. Expand community based mental health services and develop therapeutic units within the prisons to
handle the mentally ill in an appropriate setting.

X. PRIVATE PRISONS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS and VIOLATIONS

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

1. Article 7 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (See also: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5).

Violation. – Little is more degrading than for prisoners to be treated as commodities, to be warehoused in for-profit private prisons like chattel. Private prison companies view prisoners as investments, not people; the privatization of prisons for profit is equivalent to the privatization of prisoners for profit, which is demeaning to their humanity and dignity as human beings. The United States holds over 128,000 prisoners in privately-operated for-profit prisons.

2. Article 8, Sec. 1. No one shall be held in slavery; slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited. (see also: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 4).

Violation – Private prisons operate on a per-diem payment system, where they are paid per prisoner per day they are incarcerated. This mirrors the system of slavery, which also is a for-profit enterprise that involves imprisoning people against their will. Private prison companies are modern-day extensions of the slave trade, in which prisoners are used to generate profit. The largest private prison companies in the United States are listed on the stock exchange, and the trade in prisoners for profit has become an acceptable form of legitimized slavery.

3. Article 10, Sec. 3. The Penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.

Violation – The objective of private prison companies is to generate profit, not to reform or rehabilitate prisoners. Such companies have a duty to their shareholders to make money; they do not have a duty to help prisoners better their lives. Studies have shown that prisoners held in private prisons in the United States have higher recidivism rates than those in public prisons.

B. RECOMMENDATIONS:

The for-profit private prison industry, by its nature, is antithetical to the principles expressed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, it is recommended that for-profit privately-operated prisons be proscribed by the United States in compliance with its obligations under those documents.

XI. TELEPHONE SERVICE IN PRISONS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

Article 22 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights states, “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others…. “

B. ANALYSIS:

Incarcerated persons and their loved ones should have access to technology that will facilitate cost-effective communication. They should be able to communicate with each other, as long as there is no risk to security. One very effective tool for preventing torture and abuse is to ensure that vulnerable, confined persons have ready access to persons who are not confined.

C. VIOLATIONS:

In far too many jails and prisons in the United States, the rates charged to inmates for making telephone calls are much higher than comparable rates for calls placed by persons not incarcerated and much higher than the actual cost of providing the inmate calling service. There are several reasons for those high charges:

Commissions paid by the phone company to the jail, prison system, or other governmental entity.
Refusal to provide the less expensive debit or prepaid call option.
Surcharges required by some phone companies for processing an advance payment.
Denial of access to less expensive technologies by blocking inmate calls to cell phones or VoIP services.

Such practices limit the communication between incarcerated persons and their loved ones. It is not unusual for persons who are incarcerated for lengthy periods to lose contact with family members entirely. In some cases, these practices also limit one’s access to an attorney.

While security concerns and their associated costs are sometimes cited as a rationale for these policies, the fact is that there are jails and prisons that provide calls at reasonable rates, allow less expensive debit calls, and allow calls to cell phones and VoIP phones – all without compromising security.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS:

Prevent commissions paid by phone companies to governmental units.
Provide the less expensive debit calling option for all persons incarcerated.
Eliminate all surcharges.
Allow calls by inmates to outside cell phones and VoIP phones.
If necessary, set benchmark per-minute rate limits on all phone calls.
Phone contracts in private correctional facilities should not cost more than the cost in the state’s public facilities.

XII. SLAVERY, FORCED LABOR, AND WORK IN PRISONS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS
1. Article 10.3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): “The penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.”

2. Article 5, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

3. Articles 22, 23, and 24, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, provide that “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security…the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work…to equal pay for equal work…to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity…the right to form and to join trade unions.”

B. ANALYSIS.

Productive work, that develops good work habits and skills for economic survival, and enables economic support for and relations with family, is a cornerstone of the rehabilitation process.

C. VIOLATIONS.

1. Article 5, UDHR: Wherever in the United States punishment for incarcerated persons’ refusing to work results in segregation or solitary confinement, in withholding of food or access to basic support or human interaction, violations occur.

2. Although the ICCPR excludes from “forced labor” “any work…required of a person who is under detention in consequence of a lawful order of a court,” (Article 8(3c)), slave labor or denial to incarcerated persons access to remunerative work sufficient to support oneself and ones’ family are rarely a consequence of any criminal sentence or court order, making all cases in which either slave or forced labor, absent sentence or court order, a violation of human rights with respect to incarcerated persons.

3. Articles 22, 23, and 24, UDHR: By law and custom, US incarcerants earn extremely little or no wages and are excluded from civilian labor force participation, impoverishing themselves and their families. United States’ Prison labor frequently denies incarcerated persons any choice in prison work assignments, affords neither employer nor worker investment in Social Security, pays in gratuities only a fraction of that required for “equal pay,” far below even minimum amounts, ensuring poverty for the incarcerated and his family, and denying incarcerated workers any union or participatory rights whatsoever.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS.

1. Respecting the right of incarcerated persons to access to remunerative employment sufficient to human dignity and at least partial support of oneself and family.

2. Preserving and propelling, wherever possible, offenders’ access to the legal labor force, normal investment in social security and health insurance programs, and participation in workplace trade unions.

3. Segregation or solitary confinement as well as denial of food or basic support solely for refusal to accept a work assignment should cease. Wherever possible, incarcerated persons should be afforded both influence and choice in work assignments. Appropriate impartial hearings should be available before any sanctions are applied.

4. Limiting slavery and forced labor to those instances in which either forced labor or slavery are required by terms of a criminal sentence.

XIII SEX OFFENDERS

A. RELEVANT HUMAN RIGHTS

1. Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.”

3. Article 17 states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, home, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his honor and reputation.”

B. ANALYSIS.
1. Bureau of Justice Statistics show that within 3 years following their 1994 state prison release, only 5.3 percent of sex offenders (men who had committed rape or sexual assault) were rearrested for another sex crime.
2. Other BJS surveys have shown that 70 percent of all men in prison for a sex crime were men whose victim was a child. In almost half of the child-victim cases, the child was the prisoner’s own son or daughter or other relative.

C. VIOLATIONS.
1. Many states are broadly implementing arbitrary residency restrictions where a person with a sex offense may live. This often banishes such persons to outlying or rural locations which makes it difficult to reach job centers and public transportation. This can disrupt community involvement of the banished persons and prevent families from living together and developing solid relationships. Similarly, sex offenders are arbitrarily restricted from placement in halfway houses, thus obstructing their recovery and re entry as more productive citizens. In general, there are inadequate safeguards against unnecessary abuse.
2. Civil commitment is used by numerous states to detain a person convicted of a sex offense at the completion of the prison sentence, based on the premise the person may re-offend. The extended time was not meted out by the court at the time of sentencing. Committees arbitrarily determine if a person will be held. Though the Supreme Court has judged this is not additional punishment, it leads to an arbitrary violation of the person’s rights, with inadequate safeguards against abuse.

D. RECOMMENDATIONS.

1. Criminal justices' current efforts to respond to sex abuse issues is primarily punishment and tracking. Neither include evidence-based treatment and change that has been shown to be effective in most cases. Further research and analysis is needed to better identify and quantify those therapies that are most effective.

2. An approach with more prevention and control as the focus should be implemented:

a) Utilize funding for successful, evidence-based, therapy practices for those who have abused, using money previously spent on ineffective tracking methods and realigned confinement sentences.

b) Funding should go to intervention assistance with family services and child services where known dysfunctional family history is known to have led to abuse.

c) Education to families on the actual dangers of sex abuse - within the circle of their own friends, acquaintances and family- can give young people tools to be safe.

Allen J. Beck & Paige M. Harrison, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sexual Victimization in State and Federal PrisonsReported by Inmates, 2007 (2007).

Allen J. Beck & Paige M. Harrison, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sexual Victimization in Local Jails Reported by Inmates, 2007 (2008).

Sentencing Project Report 2009-“ No Exit|The Expanding Use Of Life Sentences In America”

ibid.

More than half of all prisoners, including jail inmates, are mentally ill. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept of Justice, Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates, at 1 (2006). REPORT,American Bar Association- Criminal Justice Section, Robert M.A. Johnson, Chair, Criminal Justice Section, February 2007.

ACA Standard 4-4256.

Jones EI v. Barge, 2001; Ruiz v. Johnson, 1999; Madrid v. Gomez, 1995.

Confronting Confinement, A Report of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, Katzenbach and Gibbons,Vera Institute 2006.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=497

SUPER SWEETER PLANETS FOUND

2009-12-17T19:27:00.002-05:00

Dec. 2) -- Astronomers have discovered hundreds of Jupiter-like planets in our galaxy. However, a handful of the planets found orbiting distant stars are more Earth-sized. This gives hope to astrobiologists, who think we are more likely to find life on rocky planets with liquid water.
The rocky planets found so far are actually more massive than our own. Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, coined the term "Super-Earths" to reflect their mass rather than any superior qualities.
But Sasselov says that these planets -- which range from about two to 10 Earth masses -- could be superior to the Earth when it comes to sustaining life.
"Earth is a marginal planet when it comes to conditions we would like to see for complex life to sustain itself," Sasselov notes. "In the family of Earth-like planets, the sweet spot for complex chemistry and biochemistry to emerge and sustain itself lies in planets larger than the Earth."

And Mr Sasselov knows because he visited some of these Super Planets on his last "trip",, conducted a chemical and biochemical tests,, and without a doubt
Earth is marginal. Next thing you know,, he will be applying for a BILLION BILLION dollar grant to take class from Harvard there to taste the sweet spot

Are we having fun yet? Duh!

NSEERS changes in immigration reform pro-Muslum

2009-11-04T11:58:00.003-05:00

While Republicans are celebrating a GOP Victory
The Obama Administration is shoring up relationship with Muslim communities
by appointing a devout Muslim to a Homeland Security post,, I didn't realize that was part of a job description!

Press Release: After Ten Years of Service, ADC Congratulates Kareem Shora for Appointment as DHS Senior Policy Adviser Washington, DC October 15, 2009 www.adc.org The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination (ADC) offers its most heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to Kareem Shora, ADC National Executive Director, for his ten years of exceptional service to ADC and to the Arab-American community. Shora, who earlier this year was sworn-in by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), has been appointed as Senior Policy Adviser for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and will be leaving ADC as of October 23. ADC congratulates Kareem on his new position, wishes him the very best, and knows he will continue to be successful in the future. ADC President Mary Rose Oakar said, "Without question, in the past decade Kareem helped our dedicated national board, staff, and grassroots chapters build ADC into one of the most effective and respected civil rights organizations in the country. Especially following 9/11, Kareem's strategic leadership approach and ability at building partnerships and coalitions both with other organizations and communities as well as with federal agencies, gave ADC an edge in standing up as a strong and consistent voice for civil and human rights. Personally, I will miss his wise counsel, calm demeanor, and sense of dedication and responsibility. Thank you Kareem for your outstanding leadership and commitment to ADC and the community. Kareem's appointment as Senior Policy Adviser with DHS is yet another feather in ADC's cap of ever-growing achievements and success."Kareem Shora said, "I am honored to have served the noble cause of such a great organization as ADC. Everyday, for the past ten years, I saw the increased effectiveness of ADC thanks to its dedicated team of staff, board members, and volunteer grassroots leaders. It is an organization that each American should be proud of as it stands up for the very-definitions which have made this country so great. While we have achieved many victories during my tenure with ADC, we continue to face many more challenges that require our collective support for ADC and its great work. Although I am leaving ADC, I will maintain my involvement with the organization in my personal capacity and hope to use the knowledge and experience I gained over the past decade in my new role with the Department of Homeland Security." To reach Kareem via email: kareemshora@yahoo.com
To reach ADC President Mary Rose Oakar: president@adc.orgTo reach the ADC Legal Department: legal@adc.orgTo reach the ADC Media Department: media@adc.orgTo reach the ADC Organizing Department: organizing@adc.org
###
NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.
The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.
ADC Files FOIA With FBI, DOJ, and DOE For Radiation Surveillance of Muslim SitesDecember 27, 2005, Washington, DC-Today, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request asking that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Department of Justice (DOJ), and the US Department of Energy (DOE) release information relating to the FBI and Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) nuclear surveillance program. Specifically, ADC requested that it be provided with the addresses of the mosques, homes, businesses, warehouses, and all other facilities, in the greater Washington, DC, area where the nuclear surveillance program has been conducted. ADC's intent with the request is to assure the Arab-American and Muslim communities, along with the rest of our nation, that national security enforcement measures are not resulting in a disproportionate impact on these communities and that these federal agencies act in a manner consistent with the repeated statements made by their spokespersons - namely, not to engage in racial, national origin, or religious profiling.

Obamacare :) ten new additions

2009-09-04T13:31:00.003-04:00

Decided to have some fun on Science is Political this sent to by my friend Dorothy

TOP TEN INDICATORS THAT YOUR EMPLOYER HAS CHANGED TO OBAMACARE:
(10) Your annual breast exam is done at Hooters.
(9) Directions to your doctor's office include "Take a left when you enter the trailer park."
(8) The tongue depressors taste faintly of Fudgesicles.
(7) The only proctologist in the plan is "Gus" from Roto-Rooter.
(6) The only item listed under Preventive Care Coverage is "an apple a day.."
(5) Your primary care physician is wearing the pants you gave to Goodwill last month.
(4) "The patient is responsible for 200% of out-of-network charges," is not a typographical error.
(3) The only expense covered 100% is "embalming."

(2) Your Prozac comes in different colors with little M's on them.

AND THE NUMBER ONE SIGN YOU'VE JOINED OBAMACARE

(1) You ask for Viagra and they give you a Popsicle stick and Duct Tape.

New HIV strain found in Africa

2009-08-03T12:30:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
The finding ''highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa,'' said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.
The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees.
The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier's team said. But they added they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.
The 62-year-old patient tested positive for HIV in 2004, shortly after moving to Paris from Cameroon, according to the researchers. She had lived near Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but said she had no contact with apes or bush meat, a name often given to meat from wild animals in tropical countries.
The woman currently shows no signs of AIDS and remains untreated, though she still carries the virus, the researchers said.
How widespread this strain is remains to be determined. Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus' rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported.
Their research was supported by the French Health Watch Institute, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis and Rouen University Hospital.
A separate paper, also in Nature Medicine, reports that people with genital herpes remain at increased risk of HIV infection even after the herpes sores have healed and the skin appears normal.
Researchers led by Drs. Lawrence Corey and Jia Zhu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that long after the areas where the herpes sores existed seem to be clear, they still have immune-cell activity that can encourage HIV infection.
Herpes is marked by recurring outbreaks and has been associated with higher rates of infection with HIV. It had been thought that the breaks in the skin were the reason for higher HIV rates, but a study last year found that treatment of herpes with drugs did not reduce the HIV risk.
The researchers tested the skin of herpes patients for several weeks after their sores had healed and found that, compared with other genital skin, from twice to 37 times more immune cells remained at the locations where the sores had been.
HIV targets immune cells and in laboratory tests the virus reproduced three to five times faster in tissue from the healed sites as in tissue from other areas.
''Understanding that even treated (herpes) infections provide a cellular environment conducive to HIV infection suggests new directions for HIV prevention research,'' commented Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
That study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Tietze Foundation.
^------
On the Net:
Nature Medicine: http://www.nature.com/nm

Veterans in Virginia exposed to HIV from dirty colonoscopy equipment

2009-06-17T10:37:00.005-04:00

Veteran's Hospitals,, the snake pits of 2009 one would think after all that talk about improving the Veteran's txtment clean equipment for a colonoscopy--and don't think about the graphics on that one.. could be managed

Lawmakers "shocked" by report on possible cases of HIV exposure at VA hospitals.
The CBS Evening News (6/16, story 5, 2:35, Glor) reported, "Capitol Hill is famous for holding hearings, but rarely have members of Congress been as shocked as they were" Tuesday, when "they got the results of a new report with this startling headline: More than 10,000 veterans who went in for checkups at several Southeast VA hospitals may have been exposed to HIV or other blood diseases." According to CBS, over "10,000 veterans have now received letters warning them that the equipment the VA used for their colonoscopies may not have been properly sterilized. So far, six of those" vets "have tested positive for HIV, 13 for hepatitis B, and 34 for hepatitis C."
According to the AP (6/16, Evans), "lawmakers sharply criticized" the VA "on Tuesday about why a national scare over botched colonoscopies earlier this year didn't prompt stronger safeguards at the agency's medical centers." VA officials "apologized for the continued weaknesses and told a House subcommittee they would do better," while VA Secretary Eric Shinseki "said he would be disciplining staffers. The strong reaction came as the agency's inspector general reported that fewer than half of VA facilities selected for surprise inspections last month had proper training and guidelines in place. That was months after the VA launched a nationwide safety campaign over the discovery of errors" at three facilities.
USA Today (6/17, Theobald) adds, "House lawmakers blasted" VA "officials on Tuesday after hearing testimony that the agency still wasn't following procedures for handling endoscopes, months after discovering that the improperly cleaned instruments may have exposed veterans to hepatitis and HIV. 'I'm outraged that any of our nation's heroes were potentially infected or that they even have to worry about the possibility,' said" US Rep. Harry Mitchell (D-AZ), "who is chairman" of the House's Veterans Affairs subcommittee on oversight and investigations.
McClatchy (6/17, Clark) reports, "Several employees" at the VA hospital in Miami "are likely to be disciplined for failing to detect problems with improperly sterilized medical equipment in a case that's enraged members of Congress. The disclosure of the potential punishments came" as federal "lawmakers chided" the VA "for not moving faster to address mistakes that may have exposed thousands of veterans to HIV and hepatitis."
From the ASCP
Maintenance of Certification 101
ASCP launched a Maintenance of Certification (MOC) on-demand Webcast featuring Betsy Bennett, MD, FASCP, presenting an ABP MOC overview and Larry Fowler, MD, FASCP, presenting information on ASCP tools and resources to support ABP diplomates. This Webcast is available on the ASCP website.
Launch the Webcast now

This is what we as a nation could be facing----like I used have on my bumper sticker,,
if you think Health care is expensive now "WAIT UNTIL IT IS FREE"..

Indonesian AIDS patients face microchip monitoring

2008-11-25T10:44:00.000-05:00

Indonesian AIDS patients face microchip monitoring
By NINIEK KARMINI – 22 hours ago

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Lawmakers in Indonesia's remote province of Papua have thrown their support behind a controversial bill requiring some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchips — part of extreme efforts to monitor the disease.

Local health workers and AIDS activists called the plan "abhorrent."

"People with AIDS aren't animals; we have to respect their rights," said Tahi Ganyang Butarbutar, a prominent Papuan activist.

But legislator John Manangsang said by implanting small computer chips beneath the skin of "sexually aggressive" patients, authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine.

The technical and practical details still need to be hammered out, but if the proposed legislation gets a majority vote as expected, it will be enacted next month, he and others said.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country and has one of Asia's fastest growing HIV rates, with up to 290,000 infections out of 235 million people, fueled mainly by intravenous drug users and prostitution.

But Papua, the country's easternmost and poorest province with a population of about 2 million, has been hardest hit. Its case rate of almost 61 per 100,000 is 15 times the national average, according to internationally funded research, which blames lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases.

"The health situation is extraordinary, so we have to take extraordinary action," said another lawmaker, Weynand Watari, who envisions radio frequency identification tags like those used to track everything from cattle to luggage.

A committee would be created to decide who should be fitted with chips and to monitor patients' behavior, but it remains unclear who would be on it and how they would carry out their work, lawmakers said Monday.

Since the plan was initially proposed, the government has narrowed its scope, saying the chips would only be implanted in those who are "sexually aggressive," but it has not said how it would determine who fits that group. It also was not clear how many people it might include.

Nancy Fee, the UNAIDS country coordinator, said the global body was not aware of any laws or initiatives elsewhere involving HIV/AIDS patients and microchips.

Though she has yet to see a copy of the bill, she said she had "grave concerns" about the effect it would have on human rights and public health.

"No one should be subject to unlawful or unnecessary interference of privacy," Fee said, adding that while other countries have been known to be oppressive in trying to tackle AIDS, such policies don't work.

They make people afraid and push the problem further underground, she said.

Tahi Ganyang, the Papuan activist, said the best way to tackle the epidemic was through increased spending on sexual education and condom use.

Associated Press Writer Irwan Firdaus contributed to this report.
Hosted by Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Drug War Chronicle - world’s leading drug policy newsletter

2008-10-24T12:09:00.002-04:00

I consider the use of medical marijuana a highly scientific and political debate

I support legalization of marijuana by USA in all states.

StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet) is seeking enthusiastic volunteers for two important purposes:
Membership Drive: Do you live in Washington, DC or nearby? We need help from friendly drug reform enthusiasts who are willing to spend a couple of hours on one or more evenings working the phones for DRCNet's membership fundraising drive. This effort will take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings, starting this coming week. (No session on election day.) Volunteers will be calling previous DRCNet contributors. Come on out, enjoy free pizza and other snacks, make new friends, and help raise needed funds for the cause while gaining valuable phone-banking experience. E-mail borden@drcnet.org or call us at (202) 293-8340 ext. 301 for further information or to sign up.
Writers: In the second half of November or early December, StoptheDrugWar.org will be carrying out an ambitious week-long writing-based campaign dealing with the mainstream media's coverage of drug issues, and we are seeking a team of good volunteer writers to be part of it. Along with writing skills, volunteers for this project should have a fairly good understanding of the effects of drug prohibition -- visit our Site Map page and scroll down to the "Consequences of Prohibition" section to get an idea of what we mean by that. Contact David Borden at borden@drcnet.org or (202) 293-8340 ext. 301 for further information about this very exciting effort.

Joe Biden's Health

2008-10-21T22:06:00.002-04:00

I watched Joe Biden tonight and I am sad to say my own father died and uncle died of aneurysms. He does not look healthy at all. If anyone should he carefully monitored in this campaign it should be Joe Biden. Interestingly enough, my father also was from the Scranton, PA area. Maybe it is the alcohol, gambling or mountains or hard life
or something in the water.
I am sad for Joe Biden, if anything he should not have accepted the nomination
Sarah Palin is young and smart and healthy. She is not a scholar but actually.. looking at W. it doesn't appear that one needs to have a high IQ and I am speaking as a Republican
OH well, I hope Joe Biden a stress test and have everything relooked at.. his eyes were puffy and he didn't look well.
see for yourself.
PS Pennsylvania people are NOT rednecks nor racists... they are coal minors and Italian and Irish and the back bone of society who immigrated here in the 1900s and the ones who made here to Ellis Island, like my dad's side of the family, who came here speaking Italian,, and then learned English, and worked coal mines and built bridges, and supported themselves by cooking, pizza restaurants, growing their own food, making Dandilion wine and living on tomatoes and invented Pizza crust,, now known as Foccocia, are tough SOBs and my father is a four star Bronze and Purple Heart,, after serving the WW2 and Korea, so I think I have a right to talk about it,, even though he didn't ,, I didn't know until after his death and I found his military papers. A real VETERAN. and I resent the implication as the daughter of an Army Hero, 100 per cent disabled upon retirement that PA people are racist.. never had I had a racist word in my life from him. I am glad he is not here to hear this nonsense.

German, 2 French researchers share Nobel Prize in medicine

2008-10-06T12:02:00.000-04:00

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Germany's Harald zur Hausen and French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discovering the AIDS virus and viruses causing cervical cancer.
French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV; while Germany's Harald zur Hausen was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
The German medical doctor and scientist received half of the $1.4 million prize, while the two French researchers shared the other half.
"I'm not prepared for this," zur Hausen, 72, of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, told The Associated Press by telephone. "We're drinking a little glass of bubbly right now."
In its citation, the Nobel Assembly said Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier's discovery was one prerequisite for understanding the biology of AIDS and its treatment with antiviral drugs. The pair's work in the early 1980s made it possible to study the virus closely.
FIND MORE STORIES IN:
That in turn let scientists identify important details in how HIV replicates and how it interacts with the cells it infects, the citation said. It also led to ways to diagnose infected people and to screen blood for HIV, which has limited spread of the epidemic, and helped scientists develop anti-HIV drugs, the citation said.
"The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients," the citation said.
The Nobel assembly said zur Hausen "went against current dogma" when he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus, or HPV, caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumors, and uncovered a family of HPV types, only some of which cause cancer.
The discovery led to an understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection, the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi is director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Union at the Intsitut Pasteur in France, while Montagnier is the director for the World Foundation for Aids Research in Prevention, also in the French capital.
Barre-Sinoussi's father, Roger Sinoussi, told the AP that his daughter is visiting Cambodia this week.
"I am happy for her," he said, reached at her home in the Paris suburbs.
Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, established the prizes in his will in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace. The economics prize is technically not a Nobel but a 1968 creation of Sweden's central bank.
The awards include the money, a diploma and an invitation to the prize ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.
Nobel left few instructions on how to select winners, but medicine winners are typically awarded for a specific breakthrough rather than a body of research.
Last year's medicine award went to U.S. researchers Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies and Briton Martin Evans for work that led to a powerful and widely used technique to manipulate genes in mice, which has helped scientists study heart disease, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis and other diseases.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

'Fossil' HIV reveals virus history

2008-10-02T12:51:00.002-04:00

'Fossil' HIV reveals virus history
Thursday, 2 October 2008 Bianca NogradyABC

The researchers found that the HIV viral sequences from two samples, which are almost 50 years old, differ significantly in their genetic makeup (Source: iStockphoto)
Related Stories
Audio: African discovery prompts major rethink on origin of AIDS (AM)
Malaria resistance gene ups HIV risk, Science Online, 17 Jul 2008
Microbicides could lead to tougher HIV, Science Online, 08 Jul 2008
Semen protein ushers HIV into cells, Science Online, 14 Dec 2007
A preserved specimen of lymph node nearly half a century old has revealed how rapidly the HIV virus has diversified, according to international research.
A team of researchers from around the world has been trawling through decades-old tissue samples from African hospital archives in the hope of finding samples containing the HIV virus.
They struck it lucky with a sample that was collected back in 1960, from a woman living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is the second-oldest sample of the HIV virus ever found - the oldest is from 1959.
The researchers found that the HIV viral sequences these two samples differ significantly in their genetic makeup.
Their finding appears in the latest issue of Nature.
Using a technique called molecular clock analysis, they were able to plot the two viral sequences' evolutionary path back in time to determine when they diverged.
They concluded the strains evolved from a common ancestor that emerged in Africa near the beginning of the twentieth century around 80 years before the disease appeared in western populations.
Fossil virus
Co-researcher and molecular palaeontologist Dr Michael Bunce, head of the Ancient DNA Laboratory at Murdoch University, Perth, says these early viral sequences tell scientists a lot about how the virus evolves.
"The more information we can find out about the evolutionary history of pathogens, [the] more we can understand how they've changed over time to adapt to humans," says Bunce.
"We can get a really good picture of those parts of the virus that are rapidly mutating and those that stay more constant."
While a 50-year-old sample seems relatively young compared to the fossil materials Bunce is used to working with, for a virus like HIV, it's ancient.
"HIV mutates so quickly that 40 to 50 years old is really akin to looking at fossil bone that's millions of years old," he says.
Extracting the viral genetic material from the samples was no easy task. The samples had been preserved in formalin, which can cause considerable damage to DNA sequences.
"What we have got is actually quite good considering the preservation status," Bunce says, but it required a lot of technological 'tweaking' to isolate the tiny snippets of DNA from the sample.
The international research team is continuing to analyse hundreds of samples in the hope of finding further HIV-positive tissue that could add more pieces to the puzzle.
Tags:

Who's MONEY is it anyway? Federal Bail Out

2008-09-25T11:26:00.003-04:00

Since I do keep track and watch CNBC obsessively and have a small stock portfolio.. vested in ETF's, made that move this summer after watching the Yahoo versus Microsoft debacle and then the Bear Stearns failure, figure it was safer to buy the Lipper ETF's that move inversely,, lol with the market. Ok so much for the economic jargon

My humble opinion is that we need to keep the facts and figures straight here and not react with a knee jerk reaction and instead remain calm, cool and collected and do some serious technical analysis.

I watched George W. Bush last night and he really didn't say much except acknowledge that the FEDs need to so something or the entire economy was going to collapse.. OOPS, btw, Paulson should be fired now.. he doesn't need the job, so replace him with someone who does give a damn! oops now that is being emotional.
Bill Clinton actually presented an excellent analysis of what should and could be done.
and before he was on with Larry King, I said what he said,, and BTW, Bill and Hillary as he suggested,, had to have seen this coming because they are financially vested people.. to use an economic term.

More to the point, this so called Bail Out of Wall street is not a bail out and it is certainly not bailing out Wall Street, which will go on with or without the "Federal bail out or is that buy out?"
Unfortunately, AIG and Fannie and Freddie regardless of HOW they got there need to be supported by Federal dollars for the stability of the US economy. AIG insures US Property and lives all over the world (whether or not they pay any claims is another matter) and the level of intertwined infrastructure between the USA and the world would be is at this point in time, not to be unwound, therefore, AIG must be included in the buy/bail out. The ramifications of this not happening are more than I could write in this Blog.

Fannie and Freddie hold both GOOD and BAD mortgages directly or via proxy, therefore, in order to make sure the good mortgages, and I mean the regular people who got mortgages based on their credit and income must be protected. There is no way to separate out the good and bad debts in retrospect now, it is too late. A year ago when Jim Cramer and Hillary Clinton suggested to the Government a current review of the sub prime mortgage and over extended credit and lending, a blatant money grab by those institutions, they were ignored totally, which is why Jim Cramer is played over and over again screaming THEY KNOW NOTHING,,, how right he was in that case.

Yes this 700 Billion dollar bail out is needed, but it should be carefully scrutinized by Congress, and all the quid pro quos suggested by Paulson should be totally ignored.
The companies that will get the money should have apply for a specific amount of money and any CEO previously involved should NOT be allowed to be involved in the application nor counsel and they should definitely NOT be given a severance package,,, it is my humble understanding they got that last year as a Christmas bonus. :)

And yes. Senators John McCain and Obama should return to Congress and study this and vote on the biggest economic crises for our country since the New Deal,, no make that the Great Depression. About the suggestion that a debate should be held during this, if John McCain decides he wants to dedicate his mind, (the implication about his multi tasking abilities aside..give me break) and his staff and his time to this, it is his decision.
Frankly, I think Obama should also do the same thing, sometimes things of this import take full effort and time.

A 700 Billion government purchase of private companies should be carefully looked at,, no giant carte blanche handed over to unknown entities, corporations or prior CEOs.

I think that about covers it..
Have a great day :)
Grasshopper izzy

Vitamin D-receptor polymorphism may increase melanoma risk, research suggests.

2008-09-23T09:15:00.001-04:00

Daily Diagnosis
Vitamin D-receptor polymorphism may increase melanoma risk, research suggests.
HealthDay (9/22, Preidt) reported that a paper appearing in the Nov. 1 issue of Cancer suggests that there is a "possible link between melanoma and a gene involved in vitamin D metabolism," which "has been identified by Italian researchers." Previous studies have shown "that vitamin D has significant protective effects against the development of cancer, because it regulates cells growth, cell differentiation, and cell death." There is "also evidence that sun exposure, which triggers the body to produce vitamin D, can have anti-cancer effects." HealthDay explained that "Vitamin D works by binding to a receptor in cells," and researchers at the University of Padova chose to focus on that process.
They conducted "meta-analyses of existing studies" that examined a "higher risk of developing melanoma (as well as all other cancer types), depending upon gene polymorphisms," Medscape (9/22, Mulcahy) added. Initially, they looked at seven studies that "addressed the issue of" vitamin D-receptor (VDR) gene "polymorphisms and cancer risk," but "dropped one because the data overlapped with data from another study." In the end, the six "studies provided a total of 2,152 cases and 2,410 controls." The investigators discovered that "only Bsml was significantly associated with the risk of developing melanoma," while the "other polymorphisms of the VDR gene that were studied -- FokI, TaqI, EcoRV, and Cdx2 -- were not."
In fact, "individuals with the BsmI polymorphism had a 30 percent increase in the odds ratio for melanoma," MedPage Today (9/22, Bankhead) reported. The researchers also said that "their findings are consistent indirectly with the hypothesis that the BsmI polymorphism alters interaction between 1,25[OH]2D3 and the vitamin D receptor, thereby reducing 1,25[OH]2D3 levels or activity and increasing vulnerability to melanoma." They did concede, however, "that there is no current evidence of a functional effect of the polymorphism on vitamin D metabolism or the vitamin D receptor." Still, the "current evidence is in favor of the association between one [vitamin D receptor] gene polymorphism and the risk of melanoma development, although further work will be necessary to validate the risk identified in the current meta-analysis," the investigators concluded.

Will Results of Presidential Elections Chart a New Course for the Nation’s Health Care System

2008-09-04T15:11:00.000-04:00

Will Results of Presidential Elections Chart a New Course for the Nation’s Health Care System
With the presidential election just months away, voters are homing in on what Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are saying about the issues that impact voters’ lives. Key among their concerns is health care. In fact, the Kaiser Foundation recently reported that, “when it comes to the relative importance of different issues in deciding their vote, health care was one of the top five issues chosen by voters in three of the last four presidential elections” and is likely to be an important factor in this election as well. During the primary season, likely voters ranked health care third in order of importance behind the economy and the war in Iraq.
In the midst of clear evidence that health care matters to the electorate, how do the candidates of the two major parties propose to repair what many consider to be a “broken” health care system. Both Senators McCain and Obama propose expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which is designed to provide low-cost health insurance for children and families. In addition to assuring the children are covered, what else are the candidates putting on the table?
The Obama PlanSenator Obama proposes a national health program that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health care similar to that available to federal employees. Subsidies would be available to help with the cost of premiums for those that need assistance. Moreover, there are plans to make available a National Health Insurance Exchange to reform the private insurance market. The premise is that any American could enroll in private plans that would be required to provide comprehensive benefits, to issue every applicant a policy, and to charge fair and stable premiums. In addition to SCHIP, Senator Obama proposes to expand Medicaid and require employers to make “meaningful” contributions to the health coverage of their employees. His plan also places great emphasis on reducing costs and moving toward a public health model. For details on Senator Obama’s proposed health plan, visit his website.
The McCain PlanSenator McCain’s plan has a basic premise to provide affordable health care without a mandate, thereby reducing regulations and government intervention and increasing individual responsibility. The Senator thinks that there should be an expansion of community health centers; tax incentives for low-income Americans to be able to afford health care coverage; expansion of health care online; reform of medical malpractice; and more availability of health savings accounts. Senator McCain advocates for employers to continue to provide health care coverage to employees or increase salaries so that they might purchase individual coverage. In addition, his proposal calls for federal subsidies for high-risk health insurance pools to help those who cannot obtain private coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions or lack of any previous health coverage. For details on Senator McCain’s proposed health plan, visit his website.
Health care is indeed a high priority issue for voters and candidates alike. The issue clearly becomes how to balance costs yet at the same time provide quality, affordable health care to all. If you are interested in comparing the candidates’ proposals, take a look at the following side-by-side summary by the Kaiser Family Foundation: www.health08.org
E-Policy will report in upcoming issues on changes being made to the U.S. health care system and, most importantly, on changes that impact the field of laboratory medicine.
As a Section 501(c)(3) organization, ASCP does not endorse any candidate in any race on the national, state or local front. Although this article focuses on the health care policies of the nominees by the two major parties, it is important to note that many third-party candidates also have positions on health care issues, and their websites can be consulted for further details.

Diabetes research news

2008-08-28T13:01:00.001-04:00

Scientists Reprogram Adult Cells' Function
Advance Stirs Up Debate on Embryos

» Links to this article
By Rob SteinWashington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 28, 2008; Page A01
Scientists have transformed one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that could lead to cures for a variety of illnesses and sidestep the political and ethical quagmires
associated with embryonic stem cell research.
Through a series of painstaking experiments involving mice, the Harvard biologists pinpointed three crucial molecular switches that, when flipped, completely convert a common cell in the pancreas into the more precious insulin-producing ones that diabetics need to survive.
The experiments, detailed online yesterday in the journal Nature, raise the prospect that patients suffering from not only diabetes but also heart disease, strokes and many other ailments could eventually have some of their cells reprogrammed to cure their afflictions without the need for drugs, transplants or other therapies.
"It's kind of an extreme makeover of a cell," said Douglas A. Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who led the research. "The goal is to create cells that are missing or defective in people. It's very exciting."
The work was hailed as a welcome development even by critics of research involving embryonic stem cells, which can be coaxed to become any tissue in the body but are highly controversial because they are obtained by destroying embryos.
"I see no moral problem in this basic technique," said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a leading opponent of embryonic stems cell research. "This is a 'win-win' situation for medicine and ethics."
Researchers in the field, who have become accustomed to rapid advances, said they, too, were surprised by the advance.
"I'm stunned," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., a developer of stem cell therapies. "It introduces a whole new paradigm for treating disease."
Melton and other researchers cautioned that many years of research lay ahead to prove whether the development would translate into cures.
"It's an important proof of concept," said Lawrence Goldstein, a stem cell researcher at the University of California at San Diego. "But these things always look easier on the blackboard than when you have to do them in actual patients."
Although the experiment involved mice, Melton and other researchers were optimistic that the approach would work in people.

STOP RUSSIAN INVASION OF GEORGIA NOW

2008-08-13T16:21:00.002-04:00

KICK Russia out of the Olympics, kick out of G-8
NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FBI accused of hardball tactics in anthrax case

2008-08-06T22:12:00.005-04:00

Looking at the envelope I have my doubts about a lone Anthrax killer, we may never know the answer now that he "committed suicide" which may have been caused by the fact that he was mentally ill rather than an admission of guilt.
Even paranoid people know when they are being harassed and watched. I am sure they were not subtle at all with white vans all over the neighborhood and TV antennae hanging off of them.

Bruce Ivins was he the LONE anthrax deranged scientist that lived a peaceful life in Frederick Maryland and no one noticed that he was delusional paranoid killer?
if this is political science what is?
I have saved some of his work that is freely available for Science and US Army site and he worked with many colleagues and published many papers, and I also have worked in labs like this and the chances of a colleague and co author not noticing "strange behavior" the likes the FBI is describing is not possible. Also other interesting work that Ivins was linked to is Vibreo Cholera and Legionairre's, the bulk of the work in the Anthrax field supposedly working on the Anthrax vaccine, which I was and still would be opposed to under all circumstances, based on my experience in immunology and biochemistry, however, other scientists have been quoted as saying that the Anthrax powder used in the "bioterrorist act" could not have been made in secret by one person at the Frederick MD.
I also have my doubts as the perfect "closure" to this case. As far as I am concerned it is still unsolved, and with the sad suicide of one of the participants in a bioterrorist act already deranged and saw the Feds closing in decided to "spare" his family and co-workers --and
for all we know his co-conspirators as well in this bizarre case in the annals of terrorism in the USA.

Cold War redux Che, Hugo and Obama,,hmm

2008-08-01T11:51:00.005-04:00

Presumptuous Democrat presidential nominee Barack Obama wasn’t the only disciple of Che Guevara touring Europe last week. While Obama spoke to the adulating proletariat of Berlin, Venezuelan President Huge Chavez was in Moscow asking to buy $1 billion worth of diesel submarines, mobile missile launchers and tanks. He also told Russian leaders that he plans to spend $30 billion on weaponry in the coming years.

Not to be outdone, Chavez’s closest ally, the Republik of Cuba, offered refueling stations for Russian bombers. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro even went so far as to write a missive declaring that he owed the U.S. no explanation for breaking the 1962 treaty to keep Russian arms out of Cuba. The island penitentiary has also invited Russia to reopen the Lourdes signals intelligence facility near Havana, which being just 90 miles off the coast of Florida is “a unique place to gather intelligence on the U.S” according to one Russian official.

In short, a second Cold War is brewing in America’s back yard, and the United States will need the support of South American allies like Colombia. Unfortunately, Leftist politicians like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have more in common with socialist thug Hugo Chavez than with capitalist Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. As a result, the Democrat-controlled Congress has spurned Colombia’s attempts to reach a free trade agreement with the United States, despite the positive impact of such a deal on the security of both nations. Perhaps sensing that the U.S. does not realize the gravity of the situation in South America, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has vowed to enhance trade ties between Colombia and his country “so we aren’t left dependent on a single partner.”

Let us know what you think: from the archives of the Patriot Post

QUOTE from Che Guevara
The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!" raved Ernesto "Che" in 1961
"Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination. We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies' very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we'll destroy him! We must keep our hatred against them [the U.S.] alive and fan it to paroxysms

OBAMA speaking in Berlin

2008-07-26T14:50:00.004-04:00

And his 757 Jet Plane has been overhauled to the tune of 500K and check out the custom tricked out Obama slogan. So much for the USA..

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article4392846.ece.

WOW this coupled with the Yellow cake,, unreal

http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/07/20/obamas-757-is-back-in-service/

http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/07/obama_remakes_plane_in_his_own.php

YELLOW CAKE= URANIUM Transfer from IRAQ

2008-07-11T11:11:00.003-04:00

AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq
By BRIAN MURPHY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

In a Monday June 9, 2003 file photo, UN inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) work at the nuclear facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, 50 kms east of Baghdad. The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday, July 5, 2008, to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das, file)
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad - using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called "dirty bomb" - a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material - it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment.

The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth "tens of millions of dollars." A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.

"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.

The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives - kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger - and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims - led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site - surrounded by huge sand berms - following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.

Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.

"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.

Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.

Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant

Aids funding

2008-07-02T11:06:00.002-04:00

This is my first post on my science is political blog, and a lot more will come.
As a former researcher who actually worked with the original scientists who developed the technology for the retrovirus research available in the year 2008
my only comment right now is that the United States of America should not
increase funding the 30 Billion dollars for Africa infested Aids.

I will elaborate more fully on this first blog.