Tag: news

Shikha Dalmia on how Western Aid Contributed to West Africa’s Ebola Epidemic

EbolaBoth Nigeria and Liberia were
hit by Ebola. But whereas Nigeria has managed to contain the
disease, in Liberia it has turned into a deadly epidemic. What’s
the difference between Nigeria and Liberia?

Liberia is among the most indebted nations in Africa, notes
Shikha Dalmia, and Nigeria is the least. Its capital, Monrovia, is
crawling with NGOs and the U.N. is already spending $500 million to
maintain a peacekeeping force. In other words, as one African
writer pointed out: “The virus has managed to escape from a country
that has one of the largest concentration of ‘helpers’ in the
world.”

View this article.

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Poll: Americans Not Happy With Obama, Ebola Gets Confusing, U.S. Ranks 20 on Gender Gap Index: P.M. Links

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More “War on Terror” Abuses – Spying Powers Are Used for Terrorism Only 0.5% of the Time

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 2.12.13 PMThe Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law enforcement was adamant Section 213 was needed to protect against terrorism. But the latest government report detailing the numbers of “sneak and peek” warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism. Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties.

– From the EFF’s excellent piece: Government Authority Intended for Terrorism is Used for Other Purposes

The last week or so has provided several examples of how Western governments aren’t using their increased spy powers for terrorism at all, but rather, are abusing them in almost every other manner imaginable. From tax collection and raiding manufacturers of female undergarments, to confiscating counterfeit goods.

While powerful, all of that is just anecdotal evidence. What we really need to see are some hard numbers to prove that the “war on terror” is a gigantic fraud simply used to strip citizens’ of their civil liberties. Well, thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), we now have such numbers.

Read it and weep serfs:

continue reading

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FBI Raids Federal Contractor’s Home – Has The Government Identified The “Second Leaker”?

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Anyone who has been following Edward Snowden’s heroic whistleblowing, and the reporting of Glenn Greenwald on the classified documents that prove egregious violations of the United States Constitution by the NSA, will also be aware of speculation that a “second leaker” had emerged earlier this year. It appears this person may have been identified by the FBI.

Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff reports that:

The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called “second leaker” who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case.

 

The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect’s home, and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, the sources said.

 

Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on the investigation into the watch-list leak, citing department rules involving pending cases.

 

The case in question involves an Aug. 5 story published by The Intercept, an investigative website co-founded by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who first published sensitive NSA documents obtained from Snowden.

 

The story, co-authored by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, was accompanied by a document “obtained from a source in the intelligence community” providing details about the watch-listing system that were dated as late as August 2013, months after Snowden fled to Hong Kong and revealed himself as the leaker of thousands of top secret documents from the NSA.

 

This prompted immediate speculation that there was a “second leaker” inside the U.S. intelligence community providing material to Greenwald and his associates.

 

That point is highlighted in the last scene of the new documentary about Snowden released this weekend, called “Citizenfour,” directed by filmmaker Laura Poitras, a co-founder with Greenwald and Scahill of The Intercept.

 

Greenwald tells a visibly excited Snowden about a new source inside the U.S. intelligence community who is leaking documents. Greenwald then scribbles notes to Snowden about some of the details, including one briefly seen about the U.S. drone program and another containing a reference to the number of Americans on the watch list.

 

During Obama’s first five years as president, the Justice Department and the U.S. military brought seven criminal prosecutions for national security leaks — more than twice as many as all previous presidents put together.

May as well add another to the list, right Barry?




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1tetCYF Tyler Durden

“How we ‘won’ in Vietnam, but are losing at home”: Glenn Reynolds

What is it John
Rambo said in First Blood? “Nothing is over!“

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, revisits America’s engagement
with Vietnam and comes away thinking we lost the war, though not in
the way you think:

According to the Pew
Global Poll, 95% of people in Vietnam agree that most people
are better off under capitalism, even if there is inequality.

By contrast, only 70% of Americans believe the same thing.
(America is out-performed by such other less developed countries as
Nigeria, China, Turkey, Malaysia, the Philippines and India).
Maybe, quipped an
Internet commenter, the Vietnamese should send us some
advisers….

In his book, The
Rise and Decline of Nations, economist Mancur Olson
argues that established economies develop a web of special
interests that gradually chokes off economic growth.
Vietnam’s advantage is that its own parasites haven’t had a chance
to start spinning much of a web yet. Ours, on the other hand, have
been at it for decades.

Olson wrote that — as with the German and Japanese booms after
World War II — it takes a major calamity, such as
a war or a revolution, to cut through that web and allow economic
growth to take off again. I’ve argued
in the past that massive democratic change — a “wave”
election — might accomplish the same end.


Read the whole thing.

I’m not sanguine that this midterm will be a wave election. It
may well get a bunch of Republicans elected but it’s far from clear
that they are dedicated to free markets in any meaningful way (and
we know they tend to like “free minds” not at all). But the country
certainly needs to understand that it can’t take innovation and
rising living standards for granted. And if that’s a lesson we need
to learn from Vietnam, I got no problem with that as long as we
learn it and learn it fast.

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Ebola Discoverer Warns Deadly Virus Will Hit China

Having previously warned of "an unimaginable tragedy," Peter Piot, one of the scientists who discovered Ebola, has warned that China is under threat from the deadly virus because of the huge number of Chinese workers in Africa. While offering a silver(ish) lining that the pandemic will be over in 6-12 months, Piot stresses "it will get worse before it gets better," and the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine explained that he "assumes that an outbreak of Ebola in China will happen."

 

As South China Morning Post reports,

One of the scientists who discovered Ebola has warned that China is under threat from the deadly virus because of the huge number of Chinese workers in Africa.

 

Professor Peter Piot also made the grim prediction that Ebola would claim thousands more lives in the months ahead.

 

"It will get worse for a while, and then hopefully it will get better when people are isolated," said Piot, who is in Hong Kong for a two-day symposium. "What we see now is every 30 days there is a doubling of new infections."

 

He estimated the epidemic would last another six to 12 months.

 

…

 

"In Africa, there are many Chinese working there. So that could be a risk for China in general, and I assume that one day [an outbreak of Ebola in China] will happen," said Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

 

He also said that infection control measures at mainland hospitals were not always "up to standard", which put public health at great risk.

 

…

 

Piot stressed the importance of training people to spot at-risk air passengers before they boarded. And he said voluntary surveillance measures at Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong were not effective enough. "Widespread screening [of arrivals] in airports is not that effective, to be honest … the most cost-effective method is to screen people before they take the plane."

 

A patient feared to have Ebola in Hong Kong tested negative in a preliminary test yesterday. The 39-year-old man, who had been in Nigeria from October 13 to 20, went to Prince of Wales Hospital before being transferred to the Infectious Disease Centre at Princess Margaret Hospital.

*  *  *

As Piot concluded previously,

Do you think we might be facing the beginnings of a pandemic?

There will certainly be Ebola patients from Africa who come to us in the hopes of receiving treatment. And they might even infect a few people here who may then die. But an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be brought under control. I am more worried about the many people from India who work in trade or industry in west Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected, travel to India to visit relatives during the virus's incubation period, and then, once he becomes sick, go to a public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too, often don't wear protective gloves. They would immediately become infected and spread the virus.

The virus is continually changing its genetic makeup. The more people who become infected, the greater the chance becomes that it will mutate …

… which might speed its spread. Yes, that really is the apocalyptic scenario. Humans are actually just an accidental host for the virus, and not a good one. From the perspective of a virus, it isn't desirable for its host, within which the pathogen hopes to multiply, to die so quickly. It would be much better for the virus to allow us to stay alive longer.

Could the virus suddenly change itself such that it could be spread through the air?

Like measles, you mean? Luckily that is extremely unlikely. But a mutation that would allow Ebola patients to live a couple of weeks longer is certainly possible and would be advantageous for the virus. But that would allow Ebola patients to infect many, many more people than is currently the case.




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1oWMgG4 Tyler Durden

Matt Welch Interviews Sen. Rand Paul

Sen. Rand PaulOn Oct.
23, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) gave a major address in front of
the Center for National Interest, a “realist” foreign policy think
tank founded by Richard Nixon. As he did in a similar February 2013
speech in front of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the
libertarian-leaning presumptive 2016 GOP presidential candidate
attempted to sell his foreign policy vision to fellow Republicans
as being in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Caspar Weinberger,
representing a middle path between the near-absolute
anti-intervention of his (unmentioned) father and the
hyper-interventionism of the Washington establishment.

Four days after this latest foreign policy speech,
Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch spoke with Sen. Paul
over the telephone to flesh out his notion of realism, and probe
some limiting principles on taking the nation to war.

View this article.

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Washington, D.C.’s Subsidies for New Soccer Stadium Delayed, Thank God.

Last year, Washington Nationals managing owner and billionaire
real estate tycoon Ted Lerner had an idea: build a
retractable roof over the Nats baseball stadium and stick the
taxpayers with the $300 million tab. That’s on top of the more than

$600 million the District already shelled out to build the
stadium that charges fans $9 for a Miller Lite. But in an unusual
twist to
an otherwise routine story, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray reportedly

started laughing when he heard the proposal and threw it
out.

D.C. taxpayers may have weathered that particular crony
capitalist squall, but more dark clouds have been lowering on the
horizon. For over a year and a half, developers, District
officials—including
Gray—and D.C. United, the city’s Major League Soccer team, have
been negotiating a sweetheart deal for the franchise. Unhappy with
the Washington Senators’ old
stomping grounds, D.C. United wants politicians to unite behind a plan to bankroll up to
half the cost of a new $300 million, 20,000-seat stadium.

The government largess will come in the form of land and
infrastructure payments as well as tax breaks for the franchise. To
justify this bald-faced cronyism, officials have promised the usual

litany of bogus benefits:
jobs, economic development, increased tax revenue, ad
nauseum.

There is a chance that fiscal sanity will prevail, at least for
the time being—not because of principled opposition to corporate
welfare, sadly, but because of political infighting. The deal
hinges on a pair of 
property transfers to cobble together enough land on Buzzard
Point for the stadium, including a relocation of the Reeves
Municipal Center to Ward 8. Several council members have been
skeptical about the plan.

Other recent developments also threaten to delay the project,
hopefully indefinitely. In a completely nonpolitical move, of
course, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson on Monday decided to
postpone a council hearing on the proposal until after the
election, reports
The Washington Post:

Every candidate for mayor and council has said that their
decision on whether to support the $300 million stadium would
rest in part on the findings of a study commissioned by Mendelson
(D) that was set to be released Tuesday at a council hearing.

Instead, his office announced that the hearing would take place
the day after the election and that Mendelson wasn’t sure whether
the study, which details financial risks to the city, would be made
public before voters go to the polls.

This despite Mendelson having been briefed earlier this month on
the study’s findings. Those privy to the briefing confirm that the
study found issue with the city’s financial assessments of the
property transfers.

Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) interprets the postponement as a sign that
the project is dead. Others think the move will only delay the
council’s consideration until January, when a new mayor occupies
City Hall.

In either case, chalk one up for political gridlock saving the
taxpayers some money for a few months. God only knows they’ll need
it: The Gray administration recently announced that the District’s
harebrained streetcar project faces further
delays and will wreak
commuter havoc when finished—all for a very pretty penny,
indeed.

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Ebola Virus Is More Likely to Spread through Aerosols – and Survive Longer – When It’s Cold

A British government defense lab finds that Ebola can last up to 50 days in the cold.

The Daily Mail reports:

The UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) found that the Zaire strain [of Ebola] will live on samples stored on glass at low temperatures for as long as 50 days.

The left-hand charts plot survival rates of Zaire strain of Ebola (Zebov) and Lake Victoria marburgvirus (Marv) on glass (a) and plastic (b) at 4° (39°F) over 14 days. The right-hand charts reveal the survival rate under the same conditions over 50 days. Both viruses survived for 26 days, and Ebola was extracted after 50 days

The left-hand charts plot survival rates of Zaire strain of Ebola (Zebov) and Lake Victoria marburgvirus (Marv) on glass (a) and plastic (b) at 4° (39°F) over 14 days. The right-hand charts reveal the survival rate under the same conditions over 50 days. Both viruses survived for 26 days, and Ebola was extracted after 50 days.

 

The tests were initially carried out by researchers from DSTL before the current outbreak, in 2010, but the strain investigated is one of five that is still infecting people globally.

 

The findings are also quoted in advice from the Public Agency of Health in Canada.

Temperatures of 39°F or colder are common in the U.S., Canada and much of Europe during the winter.

Top Ebola scientists also say that the virus is more likely to be spread by aerosol in cold, dry conditions than in hot, humid weather.

(Given that sneeze droplets can travel 20 feet, that’s nothing to sneeze at.)

Indeed, the British defense study cited above also found:

***

 

All three filoviruses under investigation [Ebola is a type of filovirus] could be detected after 90 min in a dynamic aerosol (Fig. 4a)

In other words – even after 90 minutes – Ebola could survive suspended in aerosols if the temperature is chilly.

The amount of Ebola which survives in aerosol obviously diminishes with time:

However, since MIT has recently shown that sneeze droplets travel much farther than previously thought – and can enter into ventilation systems – Ebola protocols need to take these realities into account.

This is the first time that Ebola has spread out of West Africa to cooler, dryer nations … so we can’t assume that what works in the hotzone will work here.




via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/kfDuNJ9kd-w/story01.htm George Washington

Obama Explains What “Quarantine-Like Isolation” Really Means – Live Feed

Having confirmed earlier that Ebola Czar Ron Klain did not take the weekend off, and ensured the American public knows the decisions on what Chuck Hagel called “quarantine-like” isolation (though obviously not quarantine because the polls suggest that word would not play well with core liberal voters) are still under discussion; we anxiously await President Obama to explain how the mixed messages from various government entities and individual states (with Christie re-flopping to strict quarantines again today) all make sense and are not, as Christie said “incredibly confusing.”

Some select headlines from the administration today so far…

  • *EARNEST SAYS U.S. EBOLA CZAR RON KLAIN DIDN’T TAKE WEEKEND OFF
  • *EARNEST: KLAIN BRIEFING OBAMA ‘REGULARLY’ ON EBOLA
  • *KIRBY SAYS JOINT CHIEFS RECOMMEND 21-DAY SUPERVISED MONITORING
  • *KIRBY SAYS HAGEL HASN’T YET DECIDED ON ‘QUARANTINE-LIKE’ PLAN
  • *KIRBY SAYS PENTAGON NOT CHALLENGING OTHER AGENCIES’ PROTOCOLS
  • *KIRBY SAYS HAGEL WON’T OVERTURN ARMY POLICY `AT THIS TIME’

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he isn’t “moving an inch” on his quarantine rules for people with direct exposure to the Ebola virus.

Christie, a second-term Republican who has said he may run for president in 2016, said new federal guidelines for quarantines are “incredibly confusing.” He spoke during an interview on the NBC “Today Show.”

President Obama is due to speak at 1455ET (plan accordingly)




via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/2qFfy-kw55M/story01.htm Tyler Durden