Redrawn counter-terrorism programme will call on doctors’ help, but BMA fears threat to patient confidentiality Doctors and other health professionals will be asked to identify people who are “vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism” as part of the government’s redrawn counter-terrorism programme to be detailed on Tuesday. The home secretary, Theresa May, will also try to deflect criticism that the £60m-a-year Prevent programme has been used to spy on the Muslim community by extending its coverage to the far right and animal rights extremists, as well as Islamist groups. May has indicated that 20 of the organisations funded by the government over the past three years are to have their cash withdrawn after the decision to stop working with non-violent extremists. David Cameron has pushed through the change despite opposition from Nick Clegg and Charles Farr, the head of the office of security and counter-terrorism, arguing that such engagement is like “turning to a rightwing fascist party to fight a violent white supremacist movement”. The argument within Whitehall has delayed the publication of the revised Prevent strategy for five months and it is believed that Cameron only finalised the document on Monday afternoon. The Prevent programme was developed to combat home-grown terrorism after the 7 July bombings in 2005. The final draft is believed to propose to “expand Prevent programmes to health bodies to draw on the expertise of medical professionals”. One “key message” of the document is that it is not a programme to spy on Muslim communities, but doctors will be asked to identify people who may be “vulnerable” to recruitment by terrorist groups. The British Medical Association said doctors were allowed to breach patient confidentiality in the public interest – for example, if they thought someone was going to blow up a bus. But a spokeswoman said the plan “goes a lot further and we would have an issue with that”. She said: “Doctors cannot look into the future and say how someone might behave. This would threaten the trust of the doctor and patient relationship. A doctor’s role is to treat the patient in front of them, not predict how the patient will behave in future.” The doctors’ concerns followed warnings from university vice-chancellors that May’s push to clamp down on non-violent extremist speakers on campuses could lead to renewed freedom of speech rows and drive groups underground. Counter-terrorism officials are reported to have identified 40 universities that have been judged to be at particular risk of radicalising activity. May accused universities of complacency over campus extremism and said of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis): “They need to be prepared to stand up and say that organisations that are extreme or support extremism or have extremist speakers should not be part of their grouping.” Nabil Ahmed, president of Fosis, said the accusation was unjustified. “We have consistently taken measured steps to engage with key stakeholders, including members of the government, on the issue of radicalisation on campus,” he said. “We find it disrespectful for commentators to throw around accusations of extremism so easily – especially when not only university vice-chancellors but David Willetts, the universities minister, himself have clearly elucidated how extremism is not widespread on campus, and have questioned whether universities are the ‘trigger’ for radicalisation.” Terrorism policy Doctors UK security and terrorism Theresa May Health Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media It appears that the Fox News graphic department doesn’t know what their own employees look like. During a segment reporting that Sarah Palin was undecided on whether or not to jump into the 2012 presidential race, the news channel showed a photo of Tina Fey imitating the former Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008. In 2009, Fox News management sent out a memo to employees saying that on-screen errors would no longer be tolerated. “Effective immediately, there is zero tolerance for on-screen errors,” the memo said. “Mistakes by any member of the show team that end up on air may result in immediate disciplinary action against those who played significant roles in the ‘mistake chain,’ and those who supervise them. That may include warning letters to personnel files, suspensions, and other possible actions up to and including termination, and this will all obviously play a role in performance reviews.”
Continue reading …Welcome Back To The Casino. Instead of Mortgages, Now They’re Gambling With The World’s Food Supply
June 6, 2011 No CommentA just-released U.N. report says that governments may have to intervene to burst the bubbles that have developed in the price of commodities like food staples and oil. The report blames a dysfunctional commodities market, and disputes the conventional economic wisdom that commodity prices went up because of demand: “The changing role of commodity markets, which are turning into financial markets, has enormous repercussions for the economy,” said one of the report’s authors – Heiner Flassbeck, a director at the UN conference on trade and development (Unctad). “The possibility of allowing governments’ direct intervention in the physical and financial markets needs to be considered,” the study concluded. Investors are encouraged to behave like a herd, says the report, with few incentives to arbitrage or bet against the tide of rising prices. Without checks and balances in the system, investors create price bubbles that put many basic foodstuffs out of the reach of millions in the developing world. In April, the World Development Movement blamed Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of the high street bank, for driving up prices. BarCap is the UK’s biggest player in food commodity trading, and one of the top three banking players along with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. BarCap has pioneered the creation of derivatives that allow pension funds and other investors traditionally barred from commodities exchanges to bet on food prices. Nearly $270bn is invested in derivatives that follow commodity prices, up from $90bn in 2005, according to Unctad. A separate report by the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, argued that the appetite for investments in commodities was even higher. He found that commodity index funds rose from $13bn (£7.9bn) in 2003 to $317bn by 2008. While there are no definitive figures on how those index funds break down, one estimate suggested their holdings in agricultural commodity markets rose from about $3bn to more than $55bn over that period. Using these new derivative products, pension funds, especially in the US, have invested large slices of their overall portfolio in commodities as it has become more difficult to generate above average returns from more traditional sources of income, such as stock and bond markets.
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Copper theft from railway lines is so rife the rail operator has had to take on new staff, as well as pay compensation for delays The theft of copper cables from Britain’s railways is reaching epidemic proportions, costing the operator Network Rail millions of pounds as it takes on extra staff to catch the criminals and pays out compensation to train companies for delays on the system. Copper theft from railway lines jumped by 67% to 3,116 incidents in the year to April as metal prices have soared and Britain’s stumbling recovery from recession has continued to push impoverished groups into crime, according to the British Transport Police. But Network Rail maintenance staff working in the worst-hit areas – which are centred around the former steel city of Sheffield – say the number of incidents has spiked even higher in the past three weeks, prompting the company to introduce a new night shift for beleaguered staff. “In the past few weeks it has definitely got worse. Around here, it went from being a minor occurrence to around two or three incidents a week in 2009 and now it’s got to 10 or 12 incidents a week,” said Steve White, the Network Rail engineer in charge of signalling and telecommunications in the Sheffield area. His Blast Lane Depot, situated in the city’s former industrial heartland, introduced a new 10pm to 6am shift three weeks ago because cable theft had become so rife that staff were being contacted as many as seven or eight times a night, White said. Most Network Rail depots around the country have introduced some form of “24/7″ cover. “It’s pretty soul destroying because fixing theft damage is becoming my new day job, so we have much less time to deal with routine faults. And it can only get worse. If someone is desperate and determined they will find a way – copper is likely to keep rising and the austerity measures aren’t helping,” said White. Most of the thefts are carried out by casual criminals, stealing small amounts of copper and selling it on to scrap metal dealers to fund drug or alcohol habits, according to the British Transport Police. “The knock-on effect of these thefts across the network is huge. Everybody is effected, right down to the human resources department which has to deal with increased levels of stress,” White said. The damage is also taking its financial toll, costing Network Rail about £43m in compensation and repair charges in the past three years, as thousands of incidents forced nearly 1 million minutes of delays. One incident on 15 April, near the Nottinghamshire town of Newark, cost Network Rail £620,758 in compensation payments to train and freight operators, after a cut to a line-side cable forced 34 cancellations and 8,074 minutes of delays. Economic hardship has been blamed for the rise in thefts but the soaring price of copper has made it more lucrative to steal. Copper has tripled to about $9,000 (£5,486) a tonne in under three years as fast-growing emerging markets such as China demand increasing quantities of the metal, which is used in wiring, to service its construction boom. The price is also being driven up by financial speculators who have poured tens of billions of dollars into metals as an investment, in the hope of making a profit. The number of copper thefts is closely aligned to its price, meaning that an increase in speculation by pension funds and other investors at one end is likely to filter through to an increase in train service disruptions at the other. Network Rail Commodities Transport Crime Travel & leisure Tom Bawden guardian.co.uk
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New College of the Humanities, whose students will pay £18,000 a year, offering courses available at University of London at half the price A new private university college founded by the philosopher AC Grayling and staffed by celebrity professors will teach exactly the same syllabuses as the University of London, which charges half the price, it has emerged. Students of the New College of the Humanities will pay £18,000 a year to take courses in history, English literature and philosophy that are already on offer at Birkbeck, Goldsmiths and Royal Holloway for £9,000 or less. Academics complained that syllabuses listed on the New College website appeared to have been copied from the University of London’s own web pages in a move some said amounted to plagiarism. Grayling launched his venture with the claim that it would help save humanities education from government cuts by bringing together teachers including Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson and Stephen Pinker. “Every university is worried about students plagiarising essays,” said Justin Champion, a senior historian at Royal Holloway college, who spotted that the titles of modules he wrote were reproduced on the New College website. “Here we have a whole degree programme being plagiarised. I personally feel quite insulted because I wrote quite a lot of the syllabus. If the University of London didn’t exist and public money hadn’t been used to draw up these syllabuses, they wouldn’t have been able to do this, or they would have had to invest a lot of money.” The New College philosophy syllabus includes: “Logic, epistemology, Greek philosophy: Plato and the pre-Socratics, ethics: Historical perspectives, modern philosophy: Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume”. The University of London course details use exactly the same wording. The syllabus for the literature and history degrees is also identical. Grayling has said that New College students would receive University of London degrees, but the university has since made clear there is “no formal agreement between the University of London and the NCH concerning academic matters”. However, it said it was “legitimate for NCH, as an entirely independent institution, to provide tuition to students of University of London international programmes, as other institutions in London and around the world do”. On Monday, David Latchman, master of Birkbeck, announced that Grayling had resigned from its teaching staff, adding in an email to staff: “Birkbeck has no links with New College and no agreement to provide New College with access to any of its facilities.” Amanda Vickery, a TV historian and history professor at Royal Holloway, was one of the first to spot similarities between the syllabuses. She posted on Twitter : “New College of Humanities seems to have ripped off London Univ’s international programme in history,” adding: “Perplexed to see my own course ‘Experience, Culture & Identity: Women’s lives in England 1688-1850′ at NCH.” Colin Jones, president of the Royal Historic Society and a professor at Queen Mary college, said: “Despite a light scattering of international stardust, this seems to be a somewhat cynical repackaging operation.” Grayling strongly denied the charge, and said teaching at the college would be more extensive, with “value added” by courses in logic, scientific literacy and applied ethics, as well as professional skills. “It is a complete misunderstanding,” he said. “We offer University of London international programme degrees, so that is the syllabus we are preparing the students for. It is reductive to describe it as repackaging … There is a quarter more content, contact with some rather distinguished people, and preparation for professional life.” Amid a growing backlash from students and lecturers, Dawkins sought to clarify his role, saying on his website: “This is the brainchild of AC Grayling, not me … Professor Grayling invited me to join the professoriate and give some lectures.” He said “the financial inducement was attractive” and indicated he would use the fees to fund his charitable foundation. London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, backed Grayling’s idea, saying “it fully deserves to succeed and to be imitated”. It prompted him, Johnson added, to recall his own idea of founding “Reject’s College, Oxbridge”, which would be “aimed squarely at the wrathful parents – many of them Oxbridge graduates – who simply could not understand how their own offspring could rack up three A-stars and grade 8 bassoon, and yet find themselves turned down”. Higher education Birkbeck, University of London Humanities Royal Holloway, University of London University of London Robert Booth guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Fox News Warns Parents Of The Evils Of That Liberal Sesame Street Indoctrination
June 6, 2011 No Comment(h/t RawStory ) Okay, stay with me …remember that wonderful show, Sesame Street, that taught little preschool boys and girls their numbers, letters, that it’s good to take turns and share and that it’s just not easy being green? Well, don’t look now, but that sweet little show–responsible for guiding millions of children worldwide into pre-reading and preparing for kindergarten over the last 40 years–is actually an evil propaganda tool. That’s right, Elmo, Big Bird and their pals are leading our impressionable children into a dangerous world where gay boys are prom queens and conservatives can’t get work in Hollywood (don’t tell that to Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck, Sylvester Stallone, Kelsey Grammer, et al…they’re all struggling so hard) and from there, it’s just a small step into authoritarian, totalitarian government of evil liberals. No, seriously. At least, that’s what the corrupt former Ohio Secretary of State and the beauty queen tells us. And really, who would know better than them?
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Chairman of Baha Mousa inquiry into death while in British forces’ custody in Iraq says findings will be published in September The report of a groundbreaking inquiry into the death of an Iraqi civilian in the custody of British soldiers will be published in the autumn, significantly later than had been hoped. Baha Mousa received 93 injuries while being held with other Iraqi detainees by 1st Battalion the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment in Basra in September 2003. The inquiry’s chairman, Sir William Gage, has said he expected to publish his findings about the case on 8 September, after parliament’s summer recess. Gage, a former appeal court judge, said he had hoped to be able to publish his report sooner. “However, the volume of evidence and the work necessary to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the report has made this difficult to accomplish,” the inquiry said in a statement. Gage is expected to criticise senior army officers and officers in the Ministry of Defence, as well as soldiers. He will notify the individuals concerned of the criticisms he intends to make. They will have the opportunity to respond before Gage draws up his final report. The inquiry into Mousa’s death, and the abuse of nine other Iraqi men detained with him, heard oral evidence from 247 witnesses over 115 days of hearings between July 2009 and October 2010. Though Gage has no power to accuse soldiers of criminal action, prosecutors could use his report to bring charges. Mousa was working as a receptionist at the Ibn al-Haitham hotel in Basra when it was raided by British forces in early on 14 September 2003. They found weapons and fake ID cards in the hotel. Mousa and his colleagues were arrested and taken to the headquarters of the 1st Battalion the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. The soldiers subjected the Iraqis to humiliating abuse, including “conditioning” methods banned by the British government in 1972 following the abuse of detainees in Northern Ireland. Treatment banned included hooding, sleep deprivation, subjection to noise, and stress positions. Mousa was hooded for nearly 24 of the 36 hours he spent in British detention. He died at about 10pm on 15 September. His wife had died of cancer shortly before he was arrested, meaning his two young sons, Hussein and Hassan, were orphaned. The public inquiry was told that although British military commanders had issued orders confirming the ban on hooding twice in 2003, the practice continued until May 2004. Seven of the battalion’s soldiers, including former commanding officer Colonel Jorge Mendonca, faced a court martial in 2006-07. They were all cleared, apart from Corporal Donald Payne, who became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians. The surviving detainees and Mousa’s father have said they are optimistic that action could still be taken against those responsible for the abuse. Baha Mousa Iraq Middle East Military Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Journalists taken to see ‘bomb victim’ in Libyan hospital find out child was hurt in road accident The Libyan government’s attempts to show how Nato bombing is harming civilians backfired when a hospital worker revealed that a seven-month-old “air strike victim” had been injured in a car crash. Foreign journalists in Tripoli were taken by bus to a hospital on Sunday night to see the seven-month-old girl, Nasib, who lay unconscious. Media handlers claimed she had been hurt when a bomb exploded in a field near her house on the eastern edge of the capital a few hours earlier. But a member of the medical staff slipped a note written in English on hospital stationery to a reporter, which was seen by Reuters, that said: “This is a case of road traffic accident. This is the truth.” Journalists’ suspicions had already been raised during an earlier visit to the bombsite in the suburb of Tajura where the girl was said to have been injured. Talking to journalists, Mohamed Elounsi, the son of the owner of the field, described how a black and white dog and a dozen or so chickens and pigeons had been killed in the evening strike, but said nobody had been injured. Elounsi said: “I lost my birds, one dog and my cows nearly died.” Shockwaves from the blast destroyed a room in one house and shattered numerous windows, he said. “My message to Obama is, ‘Why do you send this [bomb] to my father’s farm.’” Residents gathered around the crater, measuring two metres by one metre, chanting pro-Muammar Gaddafi slogans. Initially, none of them mentioned any civilian casualties and there seemed little real anger. It was only shortly before the bus departed that one neighbour said his four-year-daughter suffered cuts when a glass door shattered. At the hospital, Gaddafi’s aides directed the media to Nasib, whose bandaged foot was hooked up to medical equipment. A man introduced as her uncle said she had been injured in the Tajura missile strike. A second man, presented as a neighbour and a member of the health ministry, ranted against Nato and shouted “God, Muammar, Libya, and that’s all”. This man, who gave his name as Emad, was mysteriously present once more when journalists were taken to another suburb at 1am on Monday. This time, a “bomb” had landed in a back garden at about midnight “while the family were having lunch”, according to a man presented as a spokesman for the family. The two metre-long bomb had fallen from the sky, he said, implying it came from a Nato jet. It had not exploded, however, and appeared less like an example of cutting-edge warfare than a remnant of the cold war. Closer inspection showed there was Russian writing on the bomb. That fact was put to Emad, who had since admitted he was a member of Gaddafi’s media team, while still insisting he was also a neighbour of the seven-month-old girl. Emad’s story of the midnight bomb suddenly changed: Nato must have struck a nearby military compound, triggering an explosion that caused this missile – a piece of Gaddafi’s own arsenal – to shoot off into a nearby garden. On Monday, during a visit to complex of state buildings that were bombed overnight, deputy foreign minister Khaled Kaim denied that the regime was deliberately trying to mislead the media. “We want to be as credible as much as possible. If there was a mistake it was not from the government.” He suggested that civilians angered by Nato’s campaign might have been to blame. The government says that 700 civilians have died in bombing raids, but have offered little evidence to support the claim. The majority of the airstrikes in Tripoli appear to have been so precise that life in the city has carried on largely as normal, with people out on the streets well into the night, when most of the bombing takes place. Kaim’s comments were the first by a senior government official on any topic since last Wednesday. He strongly criticised the bombing of the government buildings, which included the offices of the foreign affairs parliamentary committee and the attorney general, saying they had no link to the military. He also said that Gaddafi, who has not appeared in public or on television for a week, was in “very good” health, and in direct contact with the government. Libya Middle East Africa Arab and Middle East unrest Muammar Gaddafi Nato Xan Rice guardian.co.uk
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Organic farm in Germany tests negative so far for bacterium, throwing source of contamination into doubt again An investigation into a deadly outbreak of E coli has been thrown into chaos after laboratory tests showed that bean sprouts grown near Hamburg, which had been identified as the likely source, are possibly not to blame. German officials had said they were confident that sprouts from the organic Gärtenhof farm in Lower Saxony were behind the spread of a particularly virulent strain of the bacterium. There were “strong and clear indications” that the farm was involved, the federal health minister, Daniel Bahr, said. However, Lower Saxony’s agriculture ministry said 23 of 40 samples from the farm had now tested negative for the E coli , with 17 more tests still being done. “The search for the outbreak’s cause is very difficult as several weeks have passed since its suspected start,” the ministry said in a statement, while warning that the negative tests did not conclusively prove the sprouts had not been contaminated. The ministry said it may be some time before Europe’s shoppers know for sure what foodstuffs are safe: “A conclusion of the investigations and a clarification of the contamination’s origin is not expected in the short term.” Mounting suspicions that the outbreak originated in Germany caused outrage in Spain, which has seen a slump in demand for its vegetables after Spanish-grown cucumbers were initially blamed. The EU is to hold an emergency meeting to consider ways to compensate Spanish farmers for their losses. “There has been a drop in consumption around Europe,” said European commission spokesman Roger Waite. “It has taken on a European-wide crisis impact so we really need to have a European-wide solution.” The aggressive strain has so far killed 22 people, made more than 2,200 ill and prompted Russia to bar EU fruit and vegetable imports. The owner of the sprout farm, in the village of Steddorf, near the small town of Bienenbüttel, 40 miles south of Hamburg, had said he was baffled at being implicated, saying there were no animals or animal products on the site. “The salad sprouts are grown only from seeds and water, and they aren’t fertilised at all,” Klaus Verbeck told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung . “There aren’t any animal fertilisers used in other areas on the farm either.” The farm has withdrawn its goods from sale. While bean sprouts are seen as a healthy food, they have been linked to a series of previous E coli and salmonella outbreaks. US experts have warned for over a decade that young children, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems should not consume them raw, advice now mirrored by the UK’s Food Standards Agency . The sprouts are grown in water heated to about 38C, ideal conditions for bacteria to flourish, meaning that even a tiny initial source of contamination can multiply many times over. The situation has strained ties between Germany and Spain and led the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to say he would not “poison” Russians by lifting an embargo on EU fruit and vegetable imports. Lower Saxony’s agriculture minister, Gert Lindemann, said earlier it was possible the contaminated produce had found its way into a variety of foods but there was a “clear trail” to the farm. “It is the most convincing … source for the E coli illnesses. This is for us the most plausible cause of the illness.” However, he added that consumers should continue to avoid raw cucumbers, tomatoes and salad leaves, as advised by Germany’s main health body, the Robert Koch Institute. The bacterium has so far infected people in 12 countries. All of them had been travelling in northern Germany. It has killed 21 Germans and one Swede. Many of those infected have developed haemolytic uraemic syndrome, a potentially deadly complication attacking the kidneys. Spanish farmers say they have lost €200m (£178m) in sales a week. The crisis threatens to put 70,000 people out of work in Spain, which already has the highest unemployment in the EU. Bahr said health facilities in Hamburg were struggling to cope with the flood of victims . Germany’s second city is the centre of the outbreak. Hospital authorities said blood supplies were running low and staff were exhausted and working round the clock, with the northern cities of Hamburg and Bremen the worst affected. “They [the doctors] voluntarily come in on weekends and even sleep here,” Oliver Grieve, a spokesman for the Kiel university hospital, told Spiegel Online. Hamburg’s health minister, Cornelia Prüfer-Storcks, told a news conference the city was considering bringing doctors out of retirement. “We want to discuss with doctors about whether those who recently retired can be reactivated,” she said. Patients with less serious illnesses are being moved to nearby hospitals and operations for non-threatening diseases are being postponed. E coli Infectious diseases Germany Europe Biology Microbiology Health Peter Walker Adam Gabbatt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sarah Palin’s gaffe about Paul Revere caused her worshipers to try to edit mistake into Wikipedia
June 6, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media David wrote yesterday about Palin’s refusal to admit she flubbed her history lessons with Chris Wallace: Failed former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin insists that she didn’t flub the history of Paul Revere. The former Alaska governor was widely mocked last week when she offered a skewed version of the Revere story. “He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed,” she explained to reporters in Boston, Massachusetts Thursday . “You realized you messed up about Paul Revere?” Fox News host Chris Wallace noted in an interview with Palin Sunday. “You know what, I didn’t mess up about Paul Revere,” Palin replied. “Here is what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming, the British were coming and they were going to try to take our arms and we have to make sure we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of our ammunitions and our firearms so they couldn’t take it.”… read on OMG, this is hilarious. And then what happened next is not surprising at all Little Green Footballs: Palin Fans Trying to Edit Wikipedia Paul Revere Page Man, you’ve gotta almost admire the sheer blind dedication of Sarah Palin’s wingnut acolytes. Now they’re trying like crazy to edit the Wikipedia page for “Paul Revere” to make it match Palin’s botched version of history. Here’s the Revision history of Paul Revere ; check out the edits that are being reversed. Also see the discussion page for an entertaining exchange between Wikipedia editors and a would-be revisionist. Palin should have said she made a mistake instead of trying to rewrite something that is ingrained into the hearts of all Americans except in the land of wingnutopia. Hey, the Texas school board is attacking history and rewriting their text books to fit their propaganda so why not Paul Revere? Glenn Beck has tried to rewrite MLK . Watch out George Washington and Abe Lincoln, you may be next.
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