As Churchill confessed: the ‘loss’ of India was one of “my greatest personal losses” And no doubt his lugubrious whine must be grasped in this context when he saidthat it was not only an irreparable‘loss’ for the British Empire but for humanity as a whole and “ a personal loss that will never cease to gnaw at my soul.”Abstracted from the bogus rhetorical outburst it simply meant that the lush pickings of empire flowed in his blood stream.And as you know he was a subaltern in the Indian imperial army. He was also a major shareholder in British tea plantations in Assam and the the South African gold mines of his friend Cecil Rhodes.
On his father’s side (his Mother was American industrial heiress) his family’s extensive pickings harked back to the East India Company to be vastly compounded in his own lifetime. These investments embraced large land holdings in the Punjab, commodity trading, mines, shipping and insuranceand a wide variety of other assets. Here was the assemblage of the personification of capital wedded to Big Politics. The two moved in easy consonance. Plunder is seldom faceless and in the case of India and the Empire Churchill, like members ofhis social caste, personified the scale of its parasitism.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Thatcher Among First to See Global Warming
2. Thatcher Among First to See Global Warming
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was credited with being the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming — but she also became one of the earliest “climate skeptics.”
Thatcher expressed concern over climate change in 1988, calling for urgent international action and citing evidence presented to the U.S. Senate by James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Christopher Booker noted in Britain’s Telegraph.
She supported the establishment of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in 1990 opened the Hadley Centre to study man-made global warming.
But in her 2003 book “Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World,” Thatcher issued “what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views,” Booker reported, and “voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us.”
She questioned whether carbon dioxide is the chief force influencing world climate, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, and said claims about rising sea levels were exaggerated.
“She mocked Al Gore and the futility of ‘costly and economically damaging’ schemes to reduce CO2 emissions,” Booker wrote. “She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer.”
In fact, a prominent American geologist recently declared that global warming has ended and “even more harmful” global cooling has already begun.
As the Insider Report disclosed in May, Dr. Don Easterbrook, a university professor and associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, warned in a scientific paper that global cooling over the next two to three decades “will be far more damaging than global warming would have been.”
Thatcher, Booker also observed, “recognized how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind . . .
“What she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of ‘climate skeptics’ has been almost entirely buried from view.”
Thatcher was back in the news recently when Britain’s Daily Mail reported that she had agreed to meet with Sarah Palin if the former Alaska governor visits Britain. Palin’s representatives had approached the “Iron Lady” to request the meeting.
“A meeting with Margaret Thatcher would be an enormous publicity coup for Sarah Palin,” a source in Britain told the newspaper.
“Palin’s big hero is Ronald Reagan. In U.S. Republican folklore, Thatcher and Reagan brought down the Soviet Union between them. That’s why Maggie is so important.”
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was credited with being the first world leader to voice alarm over global warming — but she also became one of the earliest “climate skeptics.”
Thatcher expressed concern over climate change in 1988, calling for urgent international action and citing evidence presented to the U.S. Senate by James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Christopher Booker noted in Britain’s Telegraph.
She supported the establishment of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in 1990 opened the Hadley Centre to study man-made global warming.
But in her 2003 book “Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World,” Thatcher issued “what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views,” Booker reported, and “voiced precisely the fundamental doubts about the warming scare that have since become familiar to us.”
She questioned whether carbon dioxide is the chief force influencing world climate, rather than natural factors such as solar activity, and said claims about rising sea levels were exaggerated.
“She mocked Al Gore and the futility of ‘costly and economically damaging’ schemes to reduce CO2 emissions,” Booker wrote. “She pointed out that the dangers of a world getting colder are far worse than those of a CO2-enriched world growing warmer.”
In fact, a prominent American geologist recently declared that global warming has ended and “even more harmful” global cooling has already begun.
As the Insider Report disclosed in May, Dr. Don Easterbrook, a university professor and associate editor of the Geological Society of America Bulletin, warned in a scientific paper that global cooling over the next two to three decades “will be far more damaging than global warming would have been.”
Thatcher, Booker also observed, “recognized how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind . . .
“What she set in train earlier continues to exercise its baleful influence to this day. But the fact that she became one of the first and most prominent of ‘climate skeptics’ has been almost entirely buried from view.”
Thatcher was back in the news recently when Britain’s Daily Mail reported that she had agreed to meet with Sarah Palin if the former Alaska governor visits Britain. Palin’s representatives had approached the “Iron Lady” to request the meeting.
“A meeting with Margaret Thatcher would be an enormous publicity coup for Sarah Palin,” a source in Britain told the newspaper.
“Palin’s big hero is Ronald Reagan. In U.S. Republican folklore, Thatcher and Reagan brought down the Soviet Union between them. That’s why Maggie is so important.”
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers
https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-books-and-your-rights#privacy
Saved in Gmail
III. EFF Digital Book Checklist: The Extended Version1.
Does it protect your privacy? ^
Why it matters:
The ability to read privately and anonymously is essential to freedom of expression, thought and inquiry. In the world of physical books, bookstores, libraries, and individuals have long fought against the chilling effect of someone, especially someone from the government, looking over your shoulder as you read. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon stated when he joined EFF's efforts to insist that Google Books provide adequate protections for reader privacy:
If there is no privacy of thought — which includes implicitly the right to read what one wants, without the approval, consent or knowledge of others — then there is no privacy, period.1
Unfortunately, reader privacy has often been attacked. At the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, people were questioned on whether they had read Marx and Lenin. They were asked whether their spouses or associates had books by or about Stalin and Lenin on their bookshelves.2 And these efforts did not end with the McCarthy era. Between 2001 and 2005, libraries were contacted by law enforcement seeking information on patrons at least 200 times.3
Physical books have many natural protections for reader anonymity. For example, you can:
•browse through the stacks of your local library or bookstore without anyone tracking what you are looking at, what you pull off of the shelves as you browse or what pages you review;
•walk into a store and buy a book with cash, thereby avoiding any record of your purchase;
•hide a book under your bed so no one knows you're reading it;
•throw a book away after reading it and no one will ever know you had it;
•give a book to someone else without anyone knowing it;
•read a key part of a book that you own or borrow from the library multiple times, or not at all, with no one knowing.
Digital book practices may threaten these traditional protections. Digital book providers have the potential to track, aggregate, analyze, and disclose reader activity to an extent far beyond anything possible with physical books. Both book download services (like the Kindle) and those like Google Book Search (where the user accesses a book stored on a server) can continue tracking during and after the initial transaction, as well as maintain records of every book purchased over the lifetime of the reader. That means digital book providers can collect data on what books you search for, what books you browse, what pages you view, and for how long — and they can keep that data for a very long time. Most of this tracking is something bookstores and libraries could never do short of hiring an agent to follow patrons around the stacks and then into their homes.
What to look for:
Readers considering whether book products, tools or services adequately protect privacy should ask:
a.Does it limit the tracking of you and your reading?
Just as readers may anonymously browse books in a library or bookstore, readers should be able to search, browse, and preview digital books without being forced to identify themselves. To see whether a digital book provider is limiting tracking, ask whether it:
•Ensures that searching and browsing of books do not require user registration or the affirmative disclosure of any personal information;
•Connects any information collected from an individual reader with any other information the digital provider may know about the same individual from other sources without specific, informed, opt-in consent. This is especially important for book providers like Google that have multiple services collecting other information about users;
•Purges all logging or other information related to individual uses as soon as practicable, which in most instances should be no less than every 30 days. This purge should ensure that this information cannot be used to connect particular books viewed to particular computers or users;4 and
•Where possible, allows you to use anonymity providers, such as Tor, proxy servers, and anonymous VPN providers, when interacting with the service.
b.Does it protect you against disclosure of your reading habits?
Readers should be able to read and purchase books without worrying that the government or a third party may be effectively reading over their shoulder. To ensure that any stored information linking readers to the books they view or purchase is not disclosed to the government or third parties without proper protections, ask whether the provider will:
•Commit that it will not disclose information about you to government entities or others absent a warrant or court order unless required to do so by law;
•Notify you prior to complying with any government or third party request for your information (unless forbidden to do so by law or court order), and provide you with sufficient time to seek court review of the request; and
•Guarantee that it will not tell any business partners, or affiliates which books you purchased.
c.Does it give you control over the information it collects about you?
Readers of paper books can control information collected about them by, for example, buying books with cash. That freedom should not disappear as books go digital. Readers who want to assert some control over their own information should consider whether the provider will:
•Allow you to delete your books and ensure that this deletion removes any record of the purchase;
•Allow you to control what other local or remote computer users can see about your reading, possibly through the use of separate password-protected "bookshelves" or other technical means; and
•Establish a method to allow private reading of purchased books and private giving of books, such as allowing you to anonymously transfer or "gift" purchases to someone else (including transfer to other accounts you control), with no record of the fact of the original purchase.
d.Does it tell you what it's doing with the information it collects and can you enforce its commitments to you?
A provider committed to ensuring both transparency and enforceability in the protection of reader privacy will do some or all of the following:
•Provide a robust, easy-to-read notice of privacy provisions and policies;
•Ensure that any commitments it makes to protect reader privacy are legally enforceable by readers;
•Store all reader information exclusively in countries that have strong privacy protecting laws, especially as against demands for disclosure by law enforcement and private third parties;
•Ensure that any watermarks or other marking technologies used do not contain identifying information about users in a format that third parties can read or decipher. Any watermarks with personally identifying information about users should be disclosed to users sufficiently to alert them to the existence of such marks and the type of information they include; and
•Annually publish online, in a conspicuous and easily accessible area of its website, the type and number of information requests it receives from government entities or third parties.
2. Transparency: Does it tell you what it's doing? ^
Why it matters:
In the physical world, it's relatively simple to know everything you need to about the consequences of searching, buying, selling, and reading. You buy a book — in cash if you like — take it home, read it at your leisure, put it on the shelf, pass it on, or throw it away. Although, if you buy the book with a credit card you don't always know what information booksellers are keeping, or for how long, for the most part it's a simple, transparent process.
Not so for digital books. Some electronic books come laden with DRM, as well as any number of other "features" that may or may not be disclosed. For example, in 2009 Kindle users were shocked to learn that their readers included a feature that let Amazon delete their books remotely.5
We've seen where loading unexpected features onto consumer products can lead. In 2005, music fans learned (as a result of the independent effort of computer researchers) that Sony BMG had included copy-protection software in millions of music CDs that could create serious security and privacy problems on personal computers. The software actually did much more than just preventing copying, including reporting customer listening habits. This all happened to customers without appropriate notice and consent.6
Readers of digital books have little reason to trust the private companies that sell them their books and devices, and they shouldn't have to. Readers need to know what they are getting, so that they can make good choices about what to buy and how to use their books.
What to look for:
a.How clear are the disclosures? Will they be updated, and if so, how?
Your vendor should tell you, in advance and in plain, prominent language, what the device or service will be doing and how it will be doing it, especially if it is interacting with your computer or other device or service. What's more, that disclosure should be an ongoing obligation; if practices change, your vendor must make sure you can find out about it (and opt for a different provider, if need be).
b.Does it let you or others investigate to confirm that the product, device or service is actually functioning as promised?
Many companies limit users' ability to tinker with the technology they buy, via contractual terms, technological measures, or legal threats against reverse engineering and security audits. Others have cracked down on customers who publish reports about bugs and security flaws. As with any other digital device, a provider should allow customers to test and tinker with their devices and services to ensure that the device is actually working in the way it was promised.
3. What happens to your additions to the book like annotations, highlights, and commentary? ^
Why it matters:
Readers are accustomed to annotating physical books in any number of ways. They make notes in the margin, "dog-ear" the pages, lard them up with sticky notes, cut out favorite images, and frame them, etc. When they are done, the original book may be significantly altered and possibly more valuable.7 At the same time, those notes — which can provide an important window into a reader's thoughts — need not be shared with others if the reader prefers to keep them private.
Unfortunately, annotations to books kept "in the cloud" may disappear. An e-book provider might decide it no longer wants to retain the information. Upgrades to the service may interfere with your ability to access old notes. And e-book providers may limit your ability to share your notes with others.
On the flip side, as long as a provider keeps information about you, that information could be subject to disclosure. That means you may not be able to control whether your notes are made available to law enforcement, your boss, or the general public.
What to look for:
a.Can you keep your additions?
•Are annotations and additions kept "in the cloud" or locally where you can always have access to them?
•Can you make a local backup of annotations in usable form (note that for some e-books readers like the Kindle that have unique pagination and similar differences from physical or other e-books, this would likely require a local backup of the book plus annotations)?
•What happens if the provider's servers go down?8
•What happens if the provider decides that it is simply too expensive to support the additional material?9
•What happens if the vendor decides not to provide the book any longer?
b.Can you control who has access to your additions?
•Can you share your notes with others?
•Can your provider use your notes for other purposes (such as behavioral advertising)?
•Are annotations and additions shared with third parties by the provider either through marketing agreements or other partner arrangements?
•If your notes are stored remotely with the service provider, will the provider require a warrant or court order before turning those notes over to third parties?
4. Do you own the book? ^
Why it matters:
Purchasers of physical books always have the book and can lend or sell the book whenever and however they would like. They don't risk losing their book if they fail to pay an ongoing fee, violate the terms of a license agreement, or if the vendor simply decides not to continue the service. Their reading and use of the book is not — and without undue difficulty cannot be — monitored in the name of ensuring they stay within the terms of a license or for any other reason.
Ownership of books provides many protections like these. It protects readers from censorship, fosters secondary markets (i.e., used bookstores) that help protect us from price gouging, and helps less popular authors find new fans. It also ensures that your books stay yours: once you've purchased a book no one from the bookstore can come to your house later and demand the book back or hit a remote kill switch and do the same.
Perhaps most importantly, thanks to copyright's first sale doctrine, once you have lawfully obtained your copy, you are entitled to resell the book or give it away. This is what makes libraries, used bookstores, and giving books as gifts legal, all of which help authors as well as readers. Readers are more willing to shell out more for new book if they know they fully control its use and can re-sell that book later. Further, the used book market helps support a continuing vibrant book culture by making books available to readers who cannot otherwise afford them. Finally, borrowing books from friends or receiving books as gifts are a crucial means by which readers discover unfamiliar authors — which leads them to buy those authors' next books.
Many readers expect that the same rules will apply to their e-book purchases. However, electronic books have often been treated as "licensed" content, subject to legal and technical restrictions (primarily, DRM) that block readers' ability to resell, lend, or gift an e-book. More ominously, last year Kindle readers realized that their provider (Amazon) could actually reach down into their devices and pull books from their virtual shelves.10
We expect to see many different models for accessing books develop. But given the crucial benefits that ownership provides to readers and to the larger interests in privacy and freedom of expression, readers should not accept a world where all we can ever do is "rent" a book, subject to the whims of a digital "landlord."
What to look for:
a.Can you lend or resell?
One of the basic rights of ownership is the ability to lend, give away, or re-sell your property. Does your provider allow you to do that with books you buy? If so, how easy is it? DRM or other technological incompatibilities may inhibit your ability to transfer your book, so investigate these issues before you buy.
b.Is it locked down or do you have the freedom to move it to other readers, services or uses?
Another basic right of ownership is control — over both the products you buy and the devices you use. Find out if you can read your book on your laptop if that's more convenient. And, ask whether upgrades or other normal hardware adjustments might mean loss of your books.
c.Can the vendor take it away or edit it after you've purchased it?
Does the device allow a provider or anyone else to delete, delete access to, or alter the books on your device? If so, you bought it, but you don't really own it. A remote "delete" or "edit" switch for purchased books should not be built into e-book readers or other devices.
5. Is it censorship-resistant? ^
Why it matters:
Censorship resistance is one of the key benefits of buying books (as opposed to merely renting them, for example). When you own a book, that means you have the power to access it, preserve it, share it, and, if need be, hide it. Those same abilities must be preserved for digital books, lest digital book services become automated censors beyond George Orwell and Ray Bradbury's wildest dreams. Indeed, as Farhad Manjoo has noted, if a provider can delete an entire book, it can doubtless delete portions of a book as well. What is worse, such deletions may not always be the provider's own choice:
If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you've bought, then surely a court — or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime — could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I've predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.11
What to look for:
a.How easy is it to remove or edit books once access or possession has been given to readers?
Every new technology for sharing information has been met with efforts by public and private entities to control and limit the information made available. Censorship-resistant devices and services can make that effort harder by eliminating features that allow information to be deleted.
b.Is there a single entity that stores all the books, as in Google Books or the Kindle, such that political or legal pressure on that place might result in a loss of the work for all readers?
By the same token, censorship-resistant devices and services will make sure information is dispersed, so there is no easy, central point of vulnerability.
c.Are the books stored in a location where censorship is historically a problem, such as China or Saudi Arabia, or in a place that is relatively free of censorship?
A provider that cares about protecting access to knowledge will make sure its servers are located in a country with speech-friendly laws.
d.Are the copyright or other laws applicable to the books balanced, giving readers the protection of doctrines like fair use or copyright exceptions and limitations?
Censorship can come in many forms — sometimes governments intervene to shut down speech, and sometimes copyright and trademark owners misuse their rights to do so (e.g., business tycoon Howard Hughes bought up newspaper and magazine copyrights in order to suppress access to interviews he gave).12 To limit such "private" censorship, try to get books from providers located in countries that recognize speech-protecting doctrines like fair use.
6. Is It Burdened With Digital Rights Management? ^
Why it matters:
Early entrants in the digital books marketplace are already locking down their books with DRM, i.e., technologies that limit what you can do with the content you buys, usually in the name of reducing copyright infringement. Readers, authors, and publishers should take a hard look at the experience of DRM on digital music and reconsider the wisdom of this approach for digital books.
For readers, the lessons of DRM in digital music tell us that content restricted with DRM is less useful than content without DRM, and can even be dangerous. As discussed above, DRM schemes applied to music have opened up security vulnerabilities on computers and spied on listening habits. And, until its recent demise, DRM reduced consumer choice in music and music players. Apple's DRM scheme, for example, meant that purchases from Apple's iTunes Store would only play on Apple's own iPods.13
For authors and publishers, the lessons are equally plain. First, DRM will be no more effective at preventing unauthorized copying of books than it was for music.14 In an era of inexpensive cameras and optical character recognition (OCR) technologies, scanning books will just get cheaper and easier over time. Anything that can be read by humans can be photographed, OCR'ed, and uploaded — DRM will not change that. Second, DRM inevitably alienates at least some potential customers. Third, DRM will put the power in the hands of the technology companies that control the DRM standards, rather than authors and publishers, by locking customers and businesses into a proprietary platform.15 Author Cory Doctorow sums up the problem:
Imagine if, in addition to having control over what inventory they carry, [the big box stores] also carried your books in such a way that they could only be shelved on Walmart shelves, they could only be read in Walmart lamps, running Walmart light bulbs. Imagine the lock-in to your customers and the lack of control over your destiny that you have signed up with if this is the path you pursue. Well this is in fact what you get when you sell DRM'd ebooks or DRM'd music — in order to play back that DRM format, in order carry, manipulate or convert that DRM format, you have to license the DRM. The company that controls licensing for the DRM controls your business to the extent that your business is reliant on this.16
Some have argued that DRM is necessary for lending or leasing schemes. In fact, there is already "digital loan" software in wide use by public libraries that does not bother to impose any DRM on e-books, opting instead to automatically delete the books after the load period has expired.17 While users could defeat this by digging up and copying the underlying file, most users don't bother, just like most Netflix subscribers don't bother to copy the DVDs they rent, despite the ready availability of free software that can accomplish that goal.
Booksellers and publishers are still experimenting with digital book business models, and we support that experimentation. But authors and publishers should heed the lessons that the music industry learned the hard way — DRM is bad for business.
What to look for:
a.Is there DRM? If so, how does it limit your use of the book? Can you still lend, gift or resell the book? What features are enabled and which have been disabled?
DRM can come in many forms, some more pernicious than others. It's likely that vendors will experiment with different forms, which at least gives you an opportunity to vote with your wallets — just as music fans have.
b.Are you locked into a single reader technology or group of reader technologies, or can you choose any device you wish to read and otherwise use your book?
As noted, readers (not to mention authors and publishers) should be especially wary of DRM that locks them into a particular proprietary technology. Why would you want to give one company the ability to determine whether you'll be able to access a book you love?
c.Has the DRM been studied by independent researchers to confirm that it causes no security or other problems?
Remember the rootkit.18
d.Does it report on your activities or otherwise violate your privacy?
As discussed above, some forms of DRM give the vendor (or sometimes even a third party) a window into the customer's device. Your reading habits are nobody's business but your own, and selling you a book shouldn't become an excuse to monitor your activities.
7. Does it promote access to knowledge? ^
Why it matters:
Digital books have the potential to transform access to knowledge, in the U.S. and abroad. With physical books, access to books can be impeded by three barriers: archiving (physical books are expensive to preserve); indexing/search (even where catalogues are available online, searching for relevant books on a given topic can be difficult, and many books are not yet indexed); and obtaining books (once you find a book you think you want, you may need to buy it, borrow it or, if you have access to a library with the right relationships, attempt to order it via interlibrary loan). These barriers have traditionally hampered access to paper books; in areas without resources or first-class libraries, access to books can be well-nigh impossible.
Digital books offer hope of reducing these traditional barriers to access. But digital books will only live up to that promise if readers demand it.
What to look for:
a.Can authors and publishers easily dedicate their books to the public domain or Creative Commons or other flexible licensing schemes?
Rights-holders should be able to dedicate their books to the public domain and/or have the option to license the books via a Creative Commons ("CC") license or similar flexible licensing model. For example, after pressure from academic authors and others, Google and the Authors Guild announced that authors and publishers of books included in Google Books would be able to dedicate their books to the public domain or have the option to use a CC-license. For many rights-holders, promoting access and re-use of a work via a free CC license may be more valuable than charging readers. But in order for authors and rights-holders to make this choice, technology companies have to design their systems to accommodate and support public domain and CC license options.
b.Can you trust your "digital librarian" to enable access to as many works as possible?
Traditional libraries frown on limiting access to books unnecessarily. The proposed Google Book Search service reserves to Google the right to exclude any book "for editorial reasons." If, as is possible, Google becomes the only viable source for digital orphan works, this means that Google will have extraordinary influence over public access to those works.
c.Is it available to people without money, as public libraries are?
Digital book providers should ensure that readers in resource-poor areas have options for engaging with new digital resources. For example, Google has, as part of its proposed Google Book Search settlement with authors and publishers, proposed offering a free public access terminal for the Google Books collection to every public library in America.
d.Is it cost-effective for people of limited means?
The vast majority of global readers will never be able to afford the $300 Kindle 2. The best way to bring down costs is to foster vibrant, free-market competition in these technologies. This is one reason we should fear DRM for books; to the extent it impedes reverse engineering and interoperability (either by code or by contract), it is also likely to impede innovation and competition. (See below for a more detailed discussion of this.)
e.Is it available to people with disabilities?
Booksellers, publishers, and authors must work together to enable accessibility features so that people with print disabilities can enjoy the vastly expanded world of books on the same terms as the rest of us.19 Already, several leading e-book purveyors have taken steps to foster accessibility for digital books.20 Other vendors, such as Amazon, have limited their accessibility features, bowing to pressure from misguided copyright owners.
8. Does it foster or inhibit competition and innovation? ^
Why it matters:
Physical book publishing has traditionally been a reasonably competitive industry, to the benefit of readers.21 The publishing industry has consolidated in recent years, but there are still numerous academic, small, and specialty presses that help make sure readers will have access to multiple genres of books, at multiple price points. New technologies have made publishing cheaper and easier and, of course, we have recently seen disruptive innovation in the form of online book sales. We have also seen the continuing vitality of the used book market (including online markets). In short, competition and innovation has helped make physical books more accessible to more people, and help ensure that readers will have access to a wide range of voices and subjects.
If digital book publishing, selling, and sharing is to reach its full potential, we need the same robust competition and support for innovation. Competition will help ensure that readers continue to have options, such as the option to own DRM-free books, and should also help lower the price of digital books over time. Innovation is also likely to lead to both lower prices and, perhaps more importantly, new technologies that will continue to transform how we read and access books.
One key issue will be DRM. DRM can be used to lock readers into a vendor's format. Creating a barrier to entry and competition in the e-book reader market. In essence, device makers can hold their customers' book collections hostage to prevent those customers from switching to better (cheaper, easier to use, with more features) alternatives. DRM can also be used to limit innovation. In the DVD space, for example, DRM systems like the Content Scramble System (CSS) have become the legal "hook" that forces technology companies to enter into license agreements before they build products that can play movies.22 Those license agreements, in turn, define what the devices can and can't do, thereby protecting Hollywood business models from disruptive innovation. It would be a shame to see the same occur for digital books.
But DRM isn't the only issue. One of the reasons so many are concerned about the proposed Google Book Search Settlement is that it gives two entities — Google and a not-for-profit licensing entity called the Book Rights Registry ("BRR") — enormous power to shape innovation with respect to orphan works (i.e., books whose copyright owners cannot be easily found). For example, as James Grimmelman explains, under the terms of the settlement, the BRR is authorized to negotiate on behalf of all authors and publishers with respect to the millions of books covered by the settlement. Thus "[i]t could agree with Google on a privacy-intrusive DRM system that fed back usage information into a database used to do industry-wide price-fixing in the guise of price discrimination."23
What to look for:
a.Can books from this source be read on a variety of readers or formats? Conversely, can you read or access books from a variety of sources?
A digital Library of Alexandria won't do most people much good if they cannot read the books they find on devices they already have and/or devices that can be inexpensively purchased. It will be still less valuable if they can't share their discoveries with friends who may have different kinds of devices, or transfer their books to the laptop they already have. And it will be downright harmful if the Library builders could use it as a tool to force readers to buy (and upgrade, ad infinitum) a particular proprietary technology. If we want the reader experience with digital books to be as good (or better) than with paper books, we'll need flexible, interoperable formats and devices.
For example, one fundamental problem in the fledgling digital books market is that a major e-book reader vendor, Amazon, uses DRM and other techniques to lock readers into their libraries. That means Kindle owners can only read Kindle files and PDFs, and they can't transfer those libraries to a non-Kindle reader.24 What if you could lose your entire music collection as a result of upgrading your sound system?
There are alternatives. EPUB, a free open standard supported by a range of reading devices, allows readers to move their digital books across platforms rather than being locked into one particular device.25 Many providers that use EPUB deploy DRM in other ways, but at least their customers have a broader array of options.26
b.Can features be easily added or modified by users or third parties or must features be pre-approved by the provider?
As noted above, the DRM and contracts that accompany leading e-book readers and licensed content inhibit follow-on innovation. For example, the Kindle Terms and Conditions require that customers not "encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Device or the Software, whether in whole or in part, create any derivative works from or of the Software, or bypass, modify, defeat or tamper with or circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Device or Software or any mechanisms operatively linked to the Software . . . ." In other words, no tinkering with or improving your device! Innovators will be reluctant to experiment with these products if they could face lawsuits for their trouble.
c.Does the provider depend on and/or promote agreements that limit competition?
With respect to devices, consider whether your provider has made long-term exclusive deals with major publishers that hinder competition and innovation. After all, you can't vote with your wallet if you don't have a range of options to vote for.
IV. ConclusionThe future of digital books must not be shaped solely by authors, publishers, booksellers or even librarians. Readers can and should play an active role in realizing the extraordinary potential of digital books — but only if we stay informed, ask questions, and demand that providers respect the rights and expectations that have been developed and defended for physical books. We hope readers will use this checklist to do just that
Saved in Gmail
III. EFF Digital Book Checklist: The Extended Version1.
Does it protect your privacy? ^
Why it matters:
The ability to read privately and anonymously is essential to freedom of expression, thought and inquiry. In the world of physical books, bookstores, libraries, and individuals have long fought against the chilling effect of someone, especially someone from the government, looking over your shoulder as you read. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon stated when he joined EFF's efforts to insist that Google Books provide adequate protections for reader privacy:
If there is no privacy of thought — which includes implicitly the right to read what one wants, without the approval, consent or knowledge of others — then there is no privacy, period.1
Unfortunately, reader privacy has often been attacked. At the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, people were questioned on whether they had read Marx and Lenin. They were asked whether their spouses or associates had books by or about Stalin and Lenin on their bookshelves.2 And these efforts did not end with the McCarthy era. Between 2001 and 2005, libraries were contacted by law enforcement seeking information on patrons at least 200 times.3
Physical books have many natural protections for reader anonymity. For example, you can:
•browse through the stacks of your local library or bookstore without anyone tracking what you are looking at, what you pull off of the shelves as you browse or what pages you review;
•walk into a store and buy a book with cash, thereby avoiding any record of your purchase;
•hide a book under your bed so no one knows you're reading it;
•throw a book away after reading it and no one will ever know you had it;
•give a book to someone else without anyone knowing it;
•read a key part of a book that you own or borrow from the library multiple times, or not at all, with no one knowing.
Digital book practices may threaten these traditional protections. Digital book providers have the potential to track, aggregate, analyze, and disclose reader activity to an extent far beyond anything possible with physical books. Both book download services (like the Kindle) and those like Google Book Search (where the user accesses a book stored on a server) can continue tracking during and after the initial transaction, as well as maintain records of every book purchased over the lifetime of the reader. That means digital book providers can collect data on what books you search for, what books you browse, what pages you view, and for how long — and they can keep that data for a very long time. Most of this tracking is something bookstores and libraries could never do short of hiring an agent to follow patrons around the stacks and then into their homes.
What to look for:
Readers considering whether book products, tools or services adequately protect privacy should ask:
a.Does it limit the tracking of you and your reading?
Just as readers may anonymously browse books in a library or bookstore, readers should be able to search, browse, and preview digital books without being forced to identify themselves. To see whether a digital book provider is limiting tracking, ask whether it:
•Ensures that searching and browsing of books do not require user registration or the affirmative disclosure of any personal information;
•Connects any information collected from an individual reader with any other information the digital provider may know about the same individual from other sources without specific, informed, opt-in consent. This is especially important for book providers like Google that have multiple services collecting other information about users;
•Purges all logging or other information related to individual uses as soon as practicable, which in most instances should be no less than every 30 days. This purge should ensure that this information cannot be used to connect particular books viewed to particular computers or users;4 and
•Where possible, allows you to use anonymity providers, such as Tor, proxy servers, and anonymous VPN providers, when interacting with the service.
b.Does it protect you against disclosure of your reading habits?
Readers should be able to read and purchase books without worrying that the government or a third party may be effectively reading over their shoulder. To ensure that any stored information linking readers to the books they view or purchase is not disclosed to the government or third parties without proper protections, ask whether the provider will:
•Commit that it will not disclose information about you to government entities or others absent a warrant or court order unless required to do so by law;
•Notify you prior to complying with any government or third party request for your information (unless forbidden to do so by law or court order), and provide you with sufficient time to seek court review of the request; and
•Guarantee that it will not tell any business partners, or affiliates which books you purchased.
c.Does it give you control over the information it collects about you?
Readers of paper books can control information collected about them by, for example, buying books with cash. That freedom should not disappear as books go digital. Readers who want to assert some control over their own information should consider whether the provider will:
•Allow you to delete your books and ensure that this deletion removes any record of the purchase;
•Allow you to control what other local or remote computer users can see about your reading, possibly through the use of separate password-protected "bookshelves" or other technical means; and
•Establish a method to allow private reading of purchased books and private giving of books, such as allowing you to anonymously transfer or "gift" purchases to someone else (including transfer to other accounts you control), with no record of the fact of the original purchase.
d.Does it tell you what it's doing with the information it collects and can you enforce its commitments to you?
A provider committed to ensuring both transparency and enforceability in the protection of reader privacy will do some or all of the following:
•Provide a robust, easy-to-read notice of privacy provisions and policies;
•Ensure that any commitments it makes to protect reader privacy are legally enforceable by readers;
•Store all reader information exclusively in countries that have strong privacy protecting laws, especially as against demands for disclosure by law enforcement and private third parties;
•Ensure that any watermarks or other marking technologies used do not contain identifying information about users in a format that third parties can read or decipher. Any watermarks with personally identifying information about users should be disclosed to users sufficiently to alert them to the existence of such marks and the type of information they include; and
•Annually publish online, in a conspicuous and easily accessible area of its website, the type and number of information requests it receives from government entities or third parties.
2. Transparency: Does it tell you what it's doing? ^
Why it matters:
In the physical world, it's relatively simple to know everything you need to about the consequences of searching, buying, selling, and reading. You buy a book — in cash if you like — take it home, read it at your leisure, put it on the shelf, pass it on, or throw it away. Although, if you buy the book with a credit card you don't always know what information booksellers are keeping, or for how long, for the most part it's a simple, transparent process.
Not so for digital books. Some electronic books come laden with DRM, as well as any number of other "features" that may or may not be disclosed. For example, in 2009 Kindle users were shocked to learn that their readers included a feature that let Amazon delete their books remotely.5
We've seen where loading unexpected features onto consumer products can lead. In 2005, music fans learned (as a result of the independent effort of computer researchers) that Sony BMG had included copy-protection software in millions of music CDs that could create serious security and privacy problems on personal computers. The software actually did much more than just preventing copying, including reporting customer listening habits. This all happened to customers without appropriate notice and consent.6
Readers of digital books have little reason to trust the private companies that sell them their books and devices, and they shouldn't have to. Readers need to know what they are getting, so that they can make good choices about what to buy and how to use their books.
What to look for:
a.How clear are the disclosures? Will they be updated, and if so, how?
Your vendor should tell you, in advance and in plain, prominent language, what the device or service will be doing and how it will be doing it, especially if it is interacting with your computer or other device or service. What's more, that disclosure should be an ongoing obligation; if practices change, your vendor must make sure you can find out about it (and opt for a different provider, if need be).
b.Does it let you or others investigate to confirm that the product, device or service is actually functioning as promised?
Many companies limit users' ability to tinker with the technology they buy, via contractual terms, technological measures, or legal threats against reverse engineering and security audits. Others have cracked down on customers who publish reports about bugs and security flaws. As with any other digital device, a provider should allow customers to test and tinker with their devices and services to ensure that the device is actually working in the way it was promised.
3. What happens to your additions to the book like annotations, highlights, and commentary? ^
Why it matters:
Readers are accustomed to annotating physical books in any number of ways. They make notes in the margin, "dog-ear" the pages, lard them up with sticky notes, cut out favorite images, and frame them, etc. When they are done, the original book may be significantly altered and possibly more valuable.7 At the same time, those notes — which can provide an important window into a reader's thoughts — need not be shared with others if the reader prefers to keep them private.
Unfortunately, annotations to books kept "in the cloud" may disappear. An e-book provider might decide it no longer wants to retain the information. Upgrades to the service may interfere with your ability to access old notes. And e-book providers may limit your ability to share your notes with others.
On the flip side, as long as a provider keeps information about you, that information could be subject to disclosure. That means you may not be able to control whether your notes are made available to law enforcement, your boss, or the general public.
What to look for:
a.Can you keep your additions?
•Are annotations and additions kept "in the cloud" or locally where you can always have access to them?
•Can you make a local backup of annotations in usable form (note that for some e-books readers like the Kindle that have unique pagination and similar differences from physical or other e-books, this would likely require a local backup of the book plus annotations)?
•What happens if the provider's servers go down?8
•What happens if the provider decides that it is simply too expensive to support the additional material?9
•What happens if the vendor decides not to provide the book any longer?
b.Can you control who has access to your additions?
•Can you share your notes with others?
•Can your provider use your notes for other purposes (such as behavioral advertising)?
•Are annotations and additions shared with third parties by the provider either through marketing agreements or other partner arrangements?
•If your notes are stored remotely with the service provider, will the provider require a warrant or court order before turning those notes over to third parties?
4. Do you own the book? ^
Why it matters:
Purchasers of physical books always have the book and can lend or sell the book whenever and however they would like. They don't risk losing their book if they fail to pay an ongoing fee, violate the terms of a license agreement, or if the vendor simply decides not to continue the service. Their reading and use of the book is not — and without undue difficulty cannot be — monitored in the name of ensuring they stay within the terms of a license or for any other reason.
Ownership of books provides many protections like these. It protects readers from censorship, fosters secondary markets (i.e., used bookstores) that help protect us from price gouging, and helps less popular authors find new fans. It also ensures that your books stay yours: once you've purchased a book no one from the bookstore can come to your house later and demand the book back or hit a remote kill switch and do the same.
Perhaps most importantly, thanks to copyright's first sale doctrine, once you have lawfully obtained your copy, you are entitled to resell the book or give it away. This is what makes libraries, used bookstores, and giving books as gifts legal, all of which help authors as well as readers. Readers are more willing to shell out more for new book if they know they fully control its use and can re-sell that book later. Further, the used book market helps support a continuing vibrant book culture by making books available to readers who cannot otherwise afford them. Finally, borrowing books from friends or receiving books as gifts are a crucial means by which readers discover unfamiliar authors — which leads them to buy those authors' next books.
Many readers expect that the same rules will apply to their e-book purchases. However, electronic books have often been treated as "licensed" content, subject to legal and technical restrictions (primarily, DRM) that block readers' ability to resell, lend, or gift an e-book. More ominously, last year Kindle readers realized that their provider (Amazon) could actually reach down into their devices and pull books from their virtual shelves.10
We expect to see many different models for accessing books develop. But given the crucial benefits that ownership provides to readers and to the larger interests in privacy and freedom of expression, readers should not accept a world where all we can ever do is "rent" a book, subject to the whims of a digital "landlord."
What to look for:
a.Can you lend or resell?
One of the basic rights of ownership is the ability to lend, give away, or re-sell your property. Does your provider allow you to do that with books you buy? If so, how easy is it? DRM or other technological incompatibilities may inhibit your ability to transfer your book, so investigate these issues before you buy.
b.Is it locked down or do you have the freedom to move it to other readers, services or uses?
Another basic right of ownership is control — over both the products you buy and the devices you use. Find out if you can read your book on your laptop if that's more convenient. And, ask whether upgrades or other normal hardware adjustments might mean loss of your books.
c.Can the vendor take it away or edit it after you've purchased it?
Does the device allow a provider or anyone else to delete, delete access to, or alter the books on your device? If so, you bought it, but you don't really own it. A remote "delete" or "edit" switch for purchased books should not be built into e-book readers or other devices.
5. Is it censorship-resistant? ^
Why it matters:
Censorship resistance is one of the key benefits of buying books (as opposed to merely renting them, for example). When you own a book, that means you have the power to access it, preserve it, share it, and, if need be, hide it. Those same abilities must be preserved for digital books, lest digital book services become automated censors beyond George Orwell and Ray Bradbury's wildest dreams. Indeed, as Farhad Manjoo has noted, if a provider can delete an entire book, it can doubtless delete portions of a book as well. What is worse, such deletions may not always be the provider's own choice:
If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you've bought, then surely a court — or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime — could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I've predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.11
What to look for:
a.How easy is it to remove or edit books once access or possession has been given to readers?
Every new technology for sharing information has been met with efforts by public and private entities to control and limit the information made available. Censorship-resistant devices and services can make that effort harder by eliminating features that allow information to be deleted.
b.Is there a single entity that stores all the books, as in Google Books or the Kindle, such that political or legal pressure on that place might result in a loss of the work for all readers?
By the same token, censorship-resistant devices and services will make sure information is dispersed, so there is no easy, central point of vulnerability.
c.Are the books stored in a location where censorship is historically a problem, such as China or Saudi Arabia, or in a place that is relatively free of censorship?
A provider that cares about protecting access to knowledge will make sure its servers are located in a country with speech-friendly laws.
d.Are the copyright or other laws applicable to the books balanced, giving readers the protection of doctrines like fair use or copyright exceptions and limitations?
Censorship can come in many forms — sometimes governments intervene to shut down speech, and sometimes copyright and trademark owners misuse their rights to do so (e.g., business tycoon Howard Hughes bought up newspaper and magazine copyrights in order to suppress access to interviews he gave).12 To limit such "private" censorship, try to get books from providers located in countries that recognize speech-protecting doctrines like fair use.
6. Is It Burdened With Digital Rights Management? ^
Why it matters:
Early entrants in the digital books marketplace are already locking down their books with DRM, i.e., technologies that limit what you can do with the content you buys, usually in the name of reducing copyright infringement. Readers, authors, and publishers should take a hard look at the experience of DRM on digital music and reconsider the wisdom of this approach for digital books.
For readers, the lessons of DRM in digital music tell us that content restricted with DRM is less useful than content without DRM, and can even be dangerous. As discussed above, DRM schemes applied to music have opened up security vulnerabilities on computers and spied on listening habits. And, until its recent demise, DRM reduced consumer choice in music and music players. Apple's DRM scheme, for example, meant that purchases from Apple's iTunes Store would only play on Apple's own iPods.13
For authors and publishers, the lessons are equally plain. First, DRM will be no more effective at preventing unauthorized copying of books than it was for music.14 In an era of inexpensive cameras and optical character recognition (OCR) technologies, scanning books will just get cheaper and easier over time. Anything that can be read by humans can be photographed, OCR'ed, and uploaded — DRM will not change that. Second, DRM inevitably alienates at least some potential customers. Third, DRM will put the power in the hands of the technology companies that control the DRM standards, rather than authors and publishers, by locking customers and businesses into a proprietary platform.15 Author Cory Doctorow sums up the problem:
Imagine if, in addition to having control over what inventory they carry, [the big box stores] also carried your books in such a way that they could only be shelved on Walmart shelves, they could only be read in Walmart lamps, running Walmart light bulbs. Imagine the lock-in to your customers and the lack of control over your destiny that you have signed up with if this is the path you pursue. Well this is in fact what you get when you sell DRM'd ebooks or DRM'd music — in order to play back that DRM format, in order carry, manipulate or convert that DRM format, you have to license the DRM. The company that controls licensing for the DRM controls your business to the extent that your business is reliant on this.16
Some have argued that DRM is necessary for lending or leasing schemes. In fact, there is already "digital loan" software in wide use by public libraries that does not bother to impose any DRM on e-books, opting instead to automatically delete the books after the load period has expired.17 While users could defeat this by digging up and copying the underlying file, most users don't bother, just like most Netflix subscribers don't bother to copy the DVDs they rent, despite the ready availability of free software that can accomplish that goal.
Booksellers and publishers are still experimenting with digital book business models, and we support that experimentation. But authors and publishers should heed the lessons that the music industry learned the hard way — DRM is bad for business.
What to look for:
a.Is there DRM? If so, how does it limit your use of the book? Can you still lend, gift or resell the book? What features are enabled and which have been disabled?
DRM can come in many forms, some more pernicious than others. It's likely that vendors will experiment with different forms, which at least gives you an opportunity to vote with your wallets — just as music fans have.
b.Are you locked into a single reader technology or group of reader technologies, or can you choose any device you wish to read and otherwise use your book?
As noted, readers (not to mention authors and publishers) should be especially wary of DRM that locks them into a particular proprietary technology. Why would you want to give one company the ability to determine whether you'll be able to access a book you love?
c.Has the DRM been studied by independent researchers to confirm that it causes no security or other problems?
Remember the rootkit.18
d.Does it report on your activities or otherwise violate your privacy?
As discussed above, some forms of DRM give the vendor (or sometimes even a third party) a window into the customer's device. Your reading habits are nobody's business but your own, and selling you a book shouldn't become an excuse to monitor your activities.
7. Does it promote access to knowledge? ^
Why it matters:
Digital books have the potential to transform access to knowledge, in the U.S. and abroad. With physical books, access to books can be impeded by three barriers: archiving (physical books are expensive to preserve); indexing/search (even where catalogues are available online, searching for relevant books on a given topic can be difficult, and many books are not yet indexed); and obtaining books (once you find a book you think you want, you may need to buy it, borrow it or, if you have access to a library with the right relationships, attempt to order it via interlibrary loan). These barriers have traditionally hampered access to paper books; in areas without resources or first-class libraries, access to books can be well-nigh impossible.
Digital books offer hope of reducing these traditional barriers to access. But digital books will only live up to that promise if readers demand it.
What to look for:
a.Can authors and publishers easily dedicate their books to the public domain or Creative Commons or other flexible licensing schemes?
Rights-holders should be able to dedicate their books to the public domain and/or have the option to license the books via a Creative Commons ("CC") license or similar flexible licensing model. For example, after pressure from academic authors and others, Google and the Authors Guild announced that authors and publishers of books included in Google Books would be able to dedicate their books to the public domain or have the option to use a CC-license. For many rights-holders, promoting access and re-use of a work via a free CC license may be more valuable than charging readers. But in order for authors and rights-holders to make this choice, technology companies have to design their systems to accommodate and support public domain and CC license options.
b.Can you trust your "digital librarian" to enable access to as many works as possible?
Traditional libraries frown on limiting access to books unnecessarily. The proposed Google Book Search service reserves to Google the right to exclude any book "for editorial reasons." If, as is possible, Google becomes the only viable source for digital orphan works, this means that Google will have extraordinary influence over public access to those works.
c.Is it available to people without money, as public libraries are?
Digital book providers should ensure that readers in resource-poor areas have options for engaging with new digital resources. For example, Google has, as part of its proposed Google Book Search settlement with authors and publishers, proposed offering a free public access terminal for the Google Books collection to every public library in America.
d.Is it cost-effective for people of limited means?
The vast majority of global readers will never be able to afford the $300 Kindle 2. The best way to bring down costs is to foster vibrant, free-market competition in these technologies. This is one reason we should fear DRM for books; to the extent it impedes reverse engineering and interoperability (either by code or by contract), it is also likely to impede innovation and competition. (See below for a more detailed discussion of this.)
e.Is it available to people with disabilities?
Booksellers, publishers, and authors must work together to enable accessibility features so that people with print disabilities can enjoy the vastly expanded world of books on the same terms as the rest of us.19 Already, several leading e-book purveyors have taken steps to foster accessibility for digital books.20 Other vendors, such as Amazon, have limited their accessibility features, bowing to pressure from misguided copyright owners.
8. Does it foster or inhibit competition and innovation? ^
Why it matters:
Physical book publishing has traditionally been a reasonably competitive industry, to the benefit of readers.21 The publishing industry has consolidated in recent years, but there are still numerous academic, small, and specialty presses that help make sure readers will have access to multiple genres of books, at multiple price points. New technologies have made publishing cheaper and easier and, of course, we have recently seen disruptive innovation in the form of online book sales. We have also seen the continuing vitality of the used book market (including online markets). In short, competition and innovation has helped make physical books more accessible to more people, and help ensure that readers will have access to a wide range of voices and subjects.
If digital book publishing, selling, and sharing is to reach its full potential, we need the same robust competition and support for innovation. Competition will help ensure that readers continue to have options, such as the option to own DRM-free books, and should also help lower the price of digital books over time. Innovation is also likely to lead to both lower prices and, perhaps more importantly, new technologies that will continue to transform how we read and access books.
One key issue will be DRM. DRM can be used to lock readers into a vendor's format. Creating a barrier to entry and competition in the e-book reader market. In essence, device makers can hold their customers' book collections hostage to prevent those customers from switching to better (cheaper, easier to use, with more features) alternatives. DRM can also be used to limit innovation. In the DVD space, for example, DRM systems like the Content Scramble System (CSS) have become the legal "hook" that forces technology companies to enter into license agreements before they build products that can play movies.22 Those license agreements, in turn, define what the devices can and can't do, thereby protecting Hollywood business models from disruptive innovation. It would be a shame to see the same occur for digital books.
But DRM isn't the only issue. One of the reasons so many are concerned about the proposed Google Book Search Settlement is that it gives two entities — Google and a not-for-profit licensing entity called the Book Rights Registry ("BRR") — enormous power to shape innovation with respect to orphan works (i.e., books whose copyright owners cannot be easily found). For example, as James Grimmelman explains, under the terms of the settlement, the BRR is authorized to negotiate on behalf of all authors and publishers with respect to the millions of books covered by the settlement. Thus "[i]t could agree with Google on a privacy-intrusive DRM system that fed back usage information into a database used to do industry-wide price-fixing in the guise of price discrimination."23
What to look for:
a.Can books from this source be read on a variety of readers or formats? Conversely, can you read or access books from a variety of sources?
A digital Library of Alexandria won't do most people much good if they cannot read the books they find on devices they already have and/or devices that can be inexpensively purchased. It will be still less valuable if they can't share their discoveries with friends who may have different kinds of devices, or transfer their books to the laptop they already have. And it will be downright harmful if the Library builders could use it as a tool to force readers to buy (and upgrade, ad infinitum) a particular proprietary technology. If we want the reader experience with digital books to be as good (or better) than with paper books, we'll need flexible, interoperable formats and devices.
For example, one fundamental problem in the fledgling digital books market is that a major e-book reader vendor, Amazon, uses DRM and other techniques to lock readers into their libraries. That means Kindle owners can only read Kindle files and PDFs, and they can't transfer those libraries to a non-Kindle reader.24 What if you could lose your entire music collection as a result of upgrading your sound system?
There are alternatives. EPUB, a free open standard supported by a range of reading devices, allows readers to move their digital books across platforms rather than being locked into one particular device.25 Many providers that use EPUB deploy DRM in other ways, but at least their customers have a broader array of options.26
b.Can features be easily added or modified by users or third parties or must features be pre-approved by the provider?
As noted above, the DRM and contracts that accompany leading e-book readers and licensed content inhibit follow-on innovation. For example, the Kindle Terms and Conditions require that customers not "encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Device or the Software, whether in whole or in part, create any derivative works from or of the Software, or bypass, modify, defeat or tamper with or circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Device or Software or any mechanisms operatively linked to the Software . . . ." In other words, no tinkering with or improving your device! Innovators will be reluctant to experiment with these products if they could face lawsuits for their trouble.
c.Does the provider depend on and/or promote agreements that limit competition?
With respect to devices, consider whether your provider has made long-term exclusive deals with major publishers that hinder competition and innovation. After all, you can't vote with your wallet if you don't have a range of options to vote for.
IV. ConclusionThe future of digital books must not be shaped solely by authors, publishers, booksellers or even librarians. Readers can and should play an active role in realizing the extraordinary potential of digital books — but only if we stay informed, ask questions, and demand that providers respect the rights and expectations that have been developed and defended for physical books. We hope readers will use this checklist to do just that
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
How Religion Evelved
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100208_religion
Religion evolved as a byproduct of pre-existing mental capacities, and not because it fulfilled a specific function of its own—though it can facilitate cooperation in society, a study concludes.
Why religion emerged among early humans remains a source of contention among scholars. Many scientists believe religion is ultimately based in the brain, but that still leaves unclear how and why these behaviors originated and how they may have been shaped during evolution. Some archaeologists think religion came about partly as a strategy by some people to grab power, simply by claiming some sort of secret knowledge.
Religion evolved as a byproduct of pre-existing mental capacities, and not because it fulfilled a specific function of its own—though it can facilitate cooperation in society, a study concludes.
Why religion emerged among early humans remains a source of contention among scholars. Many scientists believe religion is ultimately based in the brain, but that still leaves unclear how and why these behaviors originated and how they may have been shaped during evolution. Some archaeologists think religion came about partly as a strategy by some people to grab power, simply by claiming some sort of secret knowledge.
The Drug Cocktail To Feel Youthful
The 30 readily available vitamin and supplement ingredients used in the "cocktail" tested on mice. Ingredients are listed along with the nearly exact percentages in which they were included, highest first. Mice received about 70 mg per day of the cocktail. This particular cocktail is not available on the market, although researchers are investigating developing new supplements based on the research. Note that many of these substances are not government regulated and that quality and purity are not always guaranteed with commercially available preparations.
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100215_life
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States
http://mail.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0
Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Turkey: "Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States"
While Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities are unconfirmed, the nuclear weapons capabilities of these five countries including delivery procedures are formally acknowledged.
The US has supplied some 480 B61 thermonuclear bombs to five non-nuclear NATO countries including Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Casually disregarded by the Vienna based UN Nuclear Watchdog (IAEA), the US has actively contributed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Western Europe.
As part of this European stockpiling, Turkey, which is a partner of the US-led coalition against Iran along with Israel, possesses some 90 thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs at the Incirlik nuclear air base. (National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005)
By the recognised definition, these five countries are "undeclared nuclear weapons states".
The stockpiling and deployment of tactical B61 in these five "non-nuclear states" are intended for targets in the Middle East. Moreover, in accordance with "NATO strike plans", these thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs (stockpiled by the "non-nuclear States") could be launched "against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran" ( quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005)
Does this mean that Iran or Russia, which are potential targets of a nuclear attack originating from one or other of these five so-called non-nuclear states should contemplate defensive preemptive nuclear attacks against Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey? The answer is no, by any stretch of the imagination.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Binyam Mohamed
http://www.irr.org.uk/2010/february/ha000025.html
Meanwhile, in November 2009, the US court obtained the relevant material, and having looked at it, accepted Mohamed's allegations as true. The US court said this: '[Mr Mohamed's] trauma lasted for 2 long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in various plots to imperil Americans. The Government does not dispute this evidence ... even though the identity of the individual interrogator changed (from nameless Pakistanis, to Moroccans, to Americans) ... there is no question that throughout his ordeal Binyam Mohamed was being held at the behest of the United States ...The court finds that [Mr Mohamed's] will was overborne by his lengthy prior torture, and therefore his confessions ... do not represent reliable evidence to detain petitioner'.
Mystery of the Missing Sunspots, Solved?
June 17, 2009: The sun is in the pits of a century-class solar minimum, and sunspots have been puzzlingly scarce for more than two years. Now, for the first time, solar physicists might understand why.
At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.
Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear................... read the rest here....
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm
its in gmail if u cant get it
At an American Astronomical Society press conference today in Boulder, Colorado, researchers announced that a jet stream deep inside the sun is migrating slower than usual through the star's interior, giving rise to the current lack of sunspots.
Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona, used a technique called helioseismology to detect and track the jet stream down to depths of 7,000 km below the surface of the sun. The sun generates new jet streams near its poles every 11 years, they explained to a room full of reporters and fellow scientists. The streams migrate slowly from the poles to the equator and when a jet stream reaches the critical latitude of 22 degrees, new-cycle sunspots begin to appear................... read the rest here....
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm
its in gmail if u cant get it
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Moscow's Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence
http://www.popsci.com/node/42894/?cmpid=enews012810
Moscow's Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including a Mastery of the Subway By Stuart Fox
Posted 01.21.2010 at 12:15 pm 35 Comments
Waiting for the 8:10 To Tverskaya Maxim Marmur, via The Financial Times
For every 300 Muscovites, there's a stray dog wandering the streets of Russia's capital. And according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway.
Poyarkov has studied the dogs, which number about 35,000, for the last 30 years. Over that time, he observed the stray dog population lose the spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves, while at the same time evolving social structures and behaviors optimized to four ecological niches occupied by what Poyarkov calls guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.
The guard dogs follow around, and receive food from, the security personnel at Moscow's many fenced in sites. They think the guards are their masters, and serve as semi-feral assistants. The scavengers roam the city eating garbage. The wild dogs are the most wolf-like, hunting mice, rats, and cats under the cover of night.
But beggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor's names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.
Additionally, Poyarkov says the pack structure of the beggars reflects a reliance on brain over brawn for survival. In the beggar packs, the smartest dog, not the most physically dominant, occupies the alpha male position.
The evolution of Moscow's stray dogs has been going on since at least the mid-1800s, when Russian writers first mentioned the stray dog problem in the city. And that evolution has been propelled by deadly selective pressure. Most of the strays arrive on the streets as rejected house pets. Of those dogs kicked out of their homes, Poyarkov estimates fewer than 3 percent live long enough to breed. To survive those odds, a dog really does have to be the fittest.
Moscow's Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including a Mastery of the Subway By Stuart Fox
Posted 01.21.2010 at 12:15 pm 35 Comments
Waiting for the 8:10 To Tverskaya Maxim Marmur, via The Financial Times
For every 300 Muscovites, there's a stray dog wandering the streets of Russia's capital. And according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway.
Poyarkov has studied the dogs, which number about 35,000, for the last 30 years. Over that time, he observed the stray dog population lose the spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves, while at the same time evolving social structures and behaviors optimized to four ecological niches occupied by what Poyarkov calls guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.
The guard dogs follow around, and receive food from, the security personnel at Moscow's many fenced in sites. They think the guards are their masters, and serve as semi-feral assistants. The scavengers roam the city eating garbage. The wild dogs are the most wolf-like, hunting mice, rats, and cats under the cover of night.
But beggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor's names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.
Additionally, Poyarkov says the pack structure of the beggars reflects a reliance on brain over brawn for survival. In the beggar packs, the smartest dog, not the most physically dominant, occupies the alpha male position.
The evolution of Moscow's stray dogs has been going on since at least the mid-1800s, when Russian writers first mentioned the stray dog problem in the city. And that evolution has been propelled by deadly selective pressure. Most of the strays arrive on the streets as rejected house pets. Of those dogs kicked out of their homes, Poyarkov estimates fewer than 3 percent live long enough to breed. To survive those odds, a dog really does have to be the fittest.
Friday, 22 January 2010
For The Book
Neptune and Uranus May Have Oceans of Liquid Diamond
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/diamond-oceans-may-cover-neptune-and-uranus?cmpid=enews100121
Future humans won't have to wait to travel to Pandora for the chance to mine unobtanium, because Neptune and Uranus may have diamond icebergs floating atop liquid diamond seas closer to home. The surprise finding comes from the first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, Discovery News reports.
Scientists zapped diamond with a laser at pressures 40 million times greater than the Earth's atmosphere at sea level, and then slowly reduced both temperature and pressure. They eventually found that diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, and that chunks of diamond will float in the liquid diamond.
Diamond oceans could explain why the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune appear tilted so far off their north-south axes, given that they could deflect or tilt the magnetic fields. Both planets may consist of up to 10 percent carbon, the elemental building block of diamond.
Scientists won't know for sure until they can launch missions to the planets, or try to simulate planetary conditions on Earth. But we'd wager it's worth a shot for NASA, if there's any chance that U.S. space missions could begin to pay for themselves in the distant future.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/diamond-oceans-may-cover-neptune-and-uranus?cmpid=enews100121
Future humans won't have to wait to travel to Pandora for the chance to mine unobtanium, because Neptune and Uranus may have diamond icebergs floating atop liquid diamond seas closer to home. The surprise finding comes from the first detailed measurements of the melting point of diamond, Discovery News reports.
Scientists zapped diamond with a laser at pressures 40 million times greater than the Earth's atmosphere at sea level, and then slowly reduced both temperature and pressure. They eventually found that diamond behaves like water during freezing and melting, and that chunks of diamond will float in the liquid diamond.
Diamond oceans could explain why the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune appear tilted so far off their north-south axes, given that they could deflect or tilt the magnetic fields. Both planets may consist of up to 10 percent carbon, the elemental building block of diamond.
Scientists won't know for sure until they can launch missions to the planets, or try to simulate planetary conditions on Earth. But we'd wager it's worth a shot for NASA, if there's any chance that U.S. space missions could begin to pay for themselves in the distant future.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Heat Wave In 2007
All these pics are from the website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6914490.stm#maps
Up to 500 people have died in the past week from a heatwave in Hungary, a top health official has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6914490.stm#maps
In a 'normal' summer, the Atlantic jetstream directs areas of low pressure, which bring cloud and rain, to the north of the UK. High pressure systems over Europe and the Atlantic bring warm, settled conditions.
Pressure chart: 29/6/06. Source: Met Office
This summer, the jetstream is flowing further south allowing low pressure systems to sweep straight over the centre of Britain. It is also pulling in warmer air from the sub-tropics and Africa which is sweeping over south-eastern Europe.
Pressure chart: 24/07/07. Source: Met Office
Up to 500 people have died in the past week from a heatwave in Hungary, a top health official has said.
Jet Streams
When they reach a latitude of 22°, the jet streams coincide with the generation of new sunspots, and a new solar cycle begins.
'Sluggish' jet streams linked to quiet Sun
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39525
'Sluggish' jet streams linked to quiet Sun
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39525
For The Book
Earth's Upper Atmosphere Cooling Dramatically
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
http://www.livescience.com/space/091217-agu-earth-atmosphere-cooling.html
posted: 17 December 2009 09:44 am ET
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New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag.
New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag.
When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.
The results could help scientists better understand the swelling and shrinking of our planet's atmosphere, a phenomenon that affects the orbits of satellites and space junk.
The data, from NASA's TIMED mission, show that Earth's thermosphere (the layer above 62 miles or 100 km above the Earth's surface) "responds quite dramatically to the effects of the 11-year solar cycle," Stan Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said here this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Knowing just how the energy flowing out from the sun naturally impacts the state of the thermosphere also will help scientists test predictions that man's emissions of carbon dioxide should cool this layer. (While that may seem to contradict the idea of global warming, it has long been known that carbon dioxide causes warming in the lowest part of the atmosphere and cooling in the upper layers of the atmosphere.)
Understanding the thermosphere
Earth's thermosphere is one of the least explored parts of the atmosphere, but it is important because "the thermosphere is where the sun first interacts with our atmosphere," said James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Va.
NASA launched the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesophere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission in 2001 to get a better picture of this outer layer. The energy that comes into it from the sun is absorbed by air molecules and reradiated to space during the normal ups and downs in solar energy that occur over a roughly 11-year time span.
The sun has been in a particularly prolonged and deep solar minimum for the last couple of years, with fewer sunspots and solar storms erupting on its surface. When the sun is in this state, it also sends less energy out in the soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet parts of its spectrum. These wavelengths of light have a significant impact on the thermosphere, where air molecules absorb their energy and the reradiate it in the form of infrared energy.
The TIMED mission measured both the amount of incoming solar energy in the thermosphere and the amount of energy being sent back out into space from the layer and found a significant decrease in both.
"The sun is in a very unusual period," said Marty Mlynczak, a TIMED team member at NASA Langley in Virginia. "The Earth's thermosphere is responding remarkably – up to an order of magnitude decrease in infrared emission/radiative cooling by some molecules."
Less radiation in both directions means that this layer of the atmosphere also cools substantially. In fact, the thermosphere has cooled by a factor of 10 since the last solar maximum in early 2002.
"I certainly didn't expect to see this eight years ago," Mlynczak said.
The exact temperature of the thermosphere can vary substantially, but the average temperature above 180 miles (300 km) is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius) at solar minimum and 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius) at solar maximum. (Though these temperatures sound hot, you would not actually feel warm in the thermosphere, because the molecules in that layer are too far apart.)
The temperature at this extreme solar minimum is likely a few degrees colder than in an average minimum, but that small change can cause a large change in the density of the layer.
What a drag
This same cooling effect is expected to happen (somewhat counterintuitively) as carbon dioxide concentrations increase from emissions at Earth's surface. So understanding the natural variability of this layer is important to detecting any changes from carbon dioxide increases.
The cooling effect also has an effect on the orbits of satellites, because it changes the density of the atmosphere layer. For example, if the layer heats up, it expands like a marshmallow in a microwave, as several scientists described it, and lower, denser parts of the atmosphere rise to higher altitudes. Essentially, as the upper atmosphere expands, the lower atmosphere also expands to fill the space. When the thermosphere cools, the opposite happens and the layers deflate and sink to lower altitudes.
The changing density means that satellites end up with either more or less drag on them, which can change the shape of their orbits. In the case of something like the Hubble Space Telescope, this can have implications on the orbiter's lifetime, Solomon told LiveScience. Less drag during a cooler period means the satellite might live longer, he said.
The cooling also could have implications for the buildup of so-called "space junk" – old satellites and pieces of satellites that have begun to litter the upper atmosphere and can pose a threat to other orbiting spacecraft, such as the International Space Station. Less drag means this junk gets speedier and could pose more of a threat.
More work is needed to fully understand the links between the sun's energy, rising greenhouse gas emissions and the Earth's outer atmosphere, the scientists said.
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
http://www.livescience.com/space/091217-agu-earth-atmosphere-cooling.html
posted: 17 December 2009 09:44 am ET
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redditComments (176) | Recommend (11)
New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag.
New research shows that the outermost layer of the atmosphere will lose 3 percent of its density over the coming decade, a sign of the far-reaching impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. As the density declines, orbiting satellites experience less drag.
When the sun is relatively inactive — as it has been in recent years — the outermost layer of Earth's atmosphere cools dramatically, new observations find.
The results could help scientists better understand the swelling and shrinking of our planet's atmosphere, a phenomenon that affects the orbits of satellites and space junk.
The data, from NASA's TIMED mission, show that Earth's thermosphere (the layer above 62 miles or 100 km above the Earth's surface) "responds quite dramatically to the effects of the 11-year solar cycle," Stan Solomon of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said here this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Knowing just how the energy flowing out from the sun naturally impacts the state of the thermosphere also will help scientists test predictions that man's emissions of carbon dioxide should cool this layer. (While that may seem to contradict the idea of global warming, it has long been known that carbon dioxide causes warming in the lowest part of the atmosphere and cooling in the upper layers of the atmosphere.)
Understanding the thermosphere
Earth's thermosphere is one of the least explored parts of the atmosphere, but it is important because "the thermosphere is where the sun first interacts with our atmosphere," said James Russell III of Hampton University in Hampton, Va.
NASA launched the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesophere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission in 2001 to get a better picture of this outer layer. The energy that comes into it from the sun is absorbed by air molecules and reradiated to space during the normal ups and downs in solar energy that occur over a roughly 11-year time span.
The sun has been in a particularly prolonged and deep solar minimum for the last couple of years, with fewer sunspots and solar storms erupting on its surface. When the sun is in this state, it also sends less energy out in the soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet parts of its spectrum. These wavelengths of light have a significant impact on the thermosphere, where air molecules absorb their energy and the reradiate it in the form of infrared energy.
The TIMED mission measured both the amount of incoming solar energy in the thermosphere and the amount of energy being sent back out into space from the layer and found a significant decrease in both.
"The sun is in a very unusual period," said Marty Mlynczak, a TIMED team member at NASA Langley in Virginia. "The Earth's thermosphere is responding remarkably – up to an order of magnitude decrease in infrared emission/radiative cooling by some molecules."
Less radiation in both directions means that this layer of the atmosphere also cools substantially. In fact, the thermosphere has cooled by a factor of 10 since the last solar maximum in early 2002.
"I certainly didn't expect to see this eight years ago," Mlynczak said.
The exact temperature of the thermosphere can vary substantially, but the average temperature above 180 miles (300 km) is about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius) at solar minimum and 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (927 degrees Celsius) at solar maximum. (Though these temperatures sound hot, you would not actually feel warm in the thermosphere, because the molecules in that layer are too far apart.)
The temperature at this extreme solar minimum is likely a few degrees colder than in an average minimum, but that small change can cause a large change in the density of the layer.
What a drag
This same cooling effect is expected to happen (somewhat counterintuitively) as carbon dioxide concentrations increase from emissions at Earth's surface. So understanding the natural variability of this layer is important to detecting any changes from carbon dioxide increases.
The cooling effect also has an effect on the orbits of satellites, because it changes the density of the atmosphere layer. For example, if the layer heats up, it expands like a marshmallow in a microwave, as several scientists described it, and lower, denser parts of the atmosphere rise to higher altitudes. Essentially, as the upper atmosphere expands, the lower atmosphere also expands to fill the space. When the thermosphere cools, the opposite happens and the layers deflate and sink to lower altitudes.
The changing density means that satellites end up with either more or less drag on them, which can change the shape of their orbits. In the case of something like the Hubble Space Telescope, this can have implications on the orbiter's lifetime, Solomon told LiveScience. Less drag during a cooler period means the satellite might live longer, he said.
The cooling also could have implications for the buildup of so-called "space junk" – old satellites and pieces of satellites that have begun to litter the upper atmosphere and can pose a threat to other orbiting spacecraft, such as the International Space Station. Less drag means this junk gets speedier and could pose more of a threat.
More work is needed to fully understand the links between the sun's energy, rising greenhouse gas emissions and the Earth's outer atmosphere, the scientists said.
For The Book
Sun May Soon Send Magnetic Storms Toward Earth
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/11/sun-may-soon-send-magnetic-storms-toward-earth.html
DAN ELLIOTT,
Associated Press Writer
BOULDER, Colo.—The sun may finally be awakening from its longest quiet period in about a century and powering up to solar maximum, when it could fling disruptive electromagnetic storms toward Earth.
But once the sun does ramp up, it could be a relatively quiet solar maximum, with a below-average number of eruptions, scientists say.
Some researchers argue the sun has begun to enter solar maximum; others say it's not there yet. They do agree the current quiet period, or solar minimum, is the longest since the early 1900s, but they don't know why.
"For the average person or for a technological society like ours, a hundred years is a pretty long time," said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado.
A solar cycle usually lasts about 11 years, measured from one low point to the next. The most recent started about 13 years ago, in 1996.
Scientists won't declare the quiet period over until after a sustained stretch of activity, generally about three months, said Frank Eparvier, a scientist at the space physics lab.
"We've increased a little bit and had some strong active regions," Eparvier said, but it hasn't been long enough to say solar maximum has begun.
The sun goes through fairly regular cycles of more and fewer eruptions, averaging as many as 180 per day during solar maximum and dipping as low as zero per day during solar minimum.
The magnetic fields that cause the eruptions are themselves influenced by a mix of internal solar motions, including rotation, shears, turbulence and global circulation similar to Earth's ocean currents.
Sarah Gibson, a scientist with the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, calls it "a delicate mix of ordered and chaotic processes."
The consensus prediction for the next solar maximum is a small one, averaging about 90 or fewer sunspots a day in 2013, Eparvier said.
A panel of scientists convened by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Space Environment Service reviewed more than 100 published forecasts and eventually coalesced around the small-maximum prediction.
Solar eruptions can send billions of tons of magnetically charged particles into space at high speed. If those particle clouds, called plasma, collide with the Earth's magnetic field, they can create dramatic effects ranging from a beautiful aurora borealis to a devastating electrical blackout.
The sun's volatile magnetic fields can become so severely twisted that they snap and then reconnect, producing a flash called a solar flare and a plasma eruption, Gibson said. If the plasma's magnetic field collides with the Earth's own magnetic field, they connect with another powerful snap.
That can add electrical current on power lines, overtax transformers and set off a rapid collapse of parts of the power grid. It can disrupt radio signals, cause Global Positioning System devices to be off by the distance of a football field and cut off communication between ground controllers and jetliners flying over polar regions. That forces airlines to send planes on longer routes that take more time and burn more fuel.
United Airlines diverted 26 flights from their normal polar routes in January 2005 to avoid communications blackouts during solar storms.
In March 1989, a geomagnetic storm triggered the collapse of a power grid in Quebec, leaving an estimated 6 million people without electricity for nine hours. And in 2006, a burst of solar radiation disoriented virtually all GPS receivers on the lighted half of the Earth, the National Weather Service said.
Baker said radiation from solar flares could be harmful to space travelers and even airline crews who are repeatedly exposed to it on flights over the Earth's poles.
Solar plasma can also physically compress the Earth's magnetic field so much that it's smaller than the orbit of some satellites. Without that magnetic field to orient themselves, those satellites can have trouble communicating with ground stations. Baker estimated that $200 billion worth of satellites are in orbits that leave them vulnerable to such disruptions.
Some satellites are more vulnerable to radiation damage than previous models. During the Cold War, many satellites were "hardened" against enemy radiation attacks, but when that threat passed, designers took fewer protective measures.
___
On the Net:
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics: http://lasp.colorado.edu/
High Altitude Observatory: http://www.hao.ucar.edu/
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/11/sun-may-soon-send-magnetic-storms-toward-earth.html
DAN ELLIOTT,
Associated Press Writer
BOULDER, Colo.—The sun may finally be awakening from its longest quiet period in about a century and powering up to solar maximum, when it could fling disruptive electromagnetic storms toward Earth.
But once the sun does ramp up, it could be a relatively quiet solar maximum, with a below-average number of eruptions, scientists say.
Some researchers argue the sun has begun to enter solar maximum; others say it's not there yet. They do agree the current quiet period, or solar minimum, is the longest since the early 1900s, but they don't know why.
"For the average person or for a technological society like ours, a hundred years is a pretty long time," said Dan Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado.
A solar cycle usually lasts about 11 years, measured from one low point to the next. The most recent started about 13 years ago, in 1996.
Scientists won't declare the quiet period over until after a sustained stretch of activity, generally about three months, said Frank Eparvier, a scientist at the space physics lab.
"We've increased a little bit and had some strong active regions," Eparvier said, but it hasn't been long enough to say solar maximum has begun.
The sun goes through fairly regular cycles of more and fewer eruptions, averaging as many as 180 per day during solar maximum and dipping as low as zero per day during solar minimum.
The magnetic fields that cause the eruptions are themselves influenced by a mix of internal solar motions, including rotation, shears, turbulence and global circulation similar to Earth's ocean currents.
Sarah Gibson, a scientist with the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, calls it "a delicate mix of ordered and chaotic processes."
The consensus prediction for the next solar maximum is a small one, averaging about 90 or fewer sunspots a day in 2013, Eparvier said.
A panel of scientists convened by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Space Environment Service reviewed more than 100 published forecasts and eventually coalesced around the small-maximum prediction.
Solar eruptions can send billions of tons of magnetically charged particles into space at high speed. If those particle clouds, called plasma, collide with the Earth's magnetic field, they can create dramatic effects ranging from a beautiful aurora borealis to a devastating electrical blackout.
The sun's volatile magnetic fields can become so severely twisted that they snap and then reconnect, producing a flash called a solar flare and a plasma eruption, Gibson said. If the plasma's magnetic field collides with the Earth's own magnetic field, they connect with another powerful snap.
That can add electrical current on power lines, overtax transformers and set off a rapid collapse of parts of the power grid. It can disrupt radio signals, cause Global Positioning System devices to be off by the distance of a football field and cut off communication between ground controllers and jetliners flying over polar regions. That forces airlines to send planes on longer routes that take more time and burn more fuel.
United Airlines diverted 26 flights from their normal polar routes in January 2005 to avoid communications blackouts during solar storms.
In March 1989, a geomagnetic storm triggered the collapse of a power grid in Quebec, leaving an estimated 6 million people without electricity for nine hours. And in 2006, a burst of solar radiation disoriented virtually all GPS receivers on the lighted half of the Earth, the National Weather Service said.
Baker said radiation from solar flares could be harmful to space travelers and even airline crews who are repeatedly exposed to it on flights over the Earth's poles.
Solar plasma can also physically compress the Earth's magnetic field so much that it's smaller than the orbit of some satellites. Without that magnetic field to orient themselves, those satellites can have trouble communicating with ground stations. Baker estimated that $200 billion worth of satellites are in orbits that leave them vulnerable to such disruptions.
Some satellites are more vulnerable to radiation damage than previous models. During the Cold War, many satellites were "hardened" against enemy radiation attacks, but when that threat passed, designers took fewer protective measures.
___
On the Net:
Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics: http://lasp.colorado.edu/
High Altitude Observatory: http://www.hao.ucar.edu/
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Golden Ratio
The “pitch” of these notes, or their frequencies of vibration, are in a ratio of about 1.618, the same “the golden ratio famous from art and architecture,” he continued. If two numbers are related by the golden ratio, their sum is also related to the larger of them by the golden ratio. In other words, if A divided by B is that special number, then A+B divided by A is the same number.
Saturday, 2 January 2010
US War Machine
2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World
By Rick Rozoff
By Rick Rozoff
The Pentagon has also deployed special forces and other troops to the Philippines and launched naval, helicopter and missile attacks inside Somalia as well as assisting the Ethiopian invasion of that nation in 2006. Washington also arms, trains and supports the armed forces of Djibouti in their border war with Eritrea. In fact Djibouti hosts the U.S.'s only permanent military installation in Africa to date [2], Camp Lemonier, a United States Naval Expeditionary Base and home to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), placed under the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) when it was launched on October 1, 2008. The area of responsibility of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa takes in the nations of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Yemen and as "areas of interest" the Comoros, Mauritius and Madagascar.
On October 30 of 2009 the U.S. signed an agreement with the government of Colombia to acquire the essentially unlimited and unrestricted use of seven new military bases in the South American nation, including sites within immediate striking distance of both Venezuela and Ecuador. [9] American intelligence, special forces and other personnel will be complicit in ongoing counterinsurgency operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the nation's south as well as in rendering assistance to Washington's Colombian proxy for attacks inside Ecuador and Venezuela that will be portrayed as aimed at FARC forces in the two states.
Targeting two linchpins of and ultimately the entire Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), Washington is laying the groundwork for a potential military conflagration in South and Central America and the Caribbean. After the U.S.-supported coup in Honduras on June 28, that nation has announced it will be the first ALBA member state to ever withdraw from the Alliance and the Pentagon will retain, perhaps expand, its military presence at the Soto Cano Air Base there.
In October a U.S. armed forces publication revealed that the Pentagon will spend $110 million to modernize and expand seven new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania, across the Black Sea from Russia, where it will station initial contingents of over 4,000 troops. [12]
In early December the U.S. signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Poland, which borders the Russian Kaliningrad territory, that "allows for the United States military to station American troops and military equipment on Polish territory." [13] The U.S. military forces will operate Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) batteries as part of the Pentagon's global interceptor missile system.
U.S. military websites recently announced that there have been 3.3 million deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 with 2 million U.S. service members sent to the two war zones. [17]
In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-conflict zones in Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Djibouti, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Mali, the Philippines, Romania, Uganda and Uzbekistan.
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
US Food Waste
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/091125_waste
For example, food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater
consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year representing about 4 percent of the total U.S. oil consumption.The researchers found that per-capita food waste has progressively increased by about 50 percent since 1974, reaching more than 150 trillion Calories yearly. Previous calculations are likely to have underestimated the waste by as much as 25 percent, the group said.
Friday, 20 November 2009
Would Our Government Really Start a War to Try to Stimulate the Economy?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=16082
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/confirmed-defense-spending-creates-less.html
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/military-spending-is-increasing.html
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9914
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/02/20060809nb_cheap_wars.pdf
http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1297
http://mondediplo.com/2008/02/05military
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/confirmed-defense-spending-creates-less.html
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/11/military-spending-is-increasing.html
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9914
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/205/02/20060809nb_cheap_wars.pdf
http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1297
http://mondediplo.com/2008/02/05military
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Thermography for Breast Cancer
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/10/29/thermography.aspx
&
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/03/Doctors-Shocked-by-Hospital-Radiation-Overexposure.aspx
Hey if this info is correct there is a conspiracy by our Gov to make some money for cetain people?
&
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/03/Doctors-Shocked-by-Hospital-Radiation-Overexposure.aspx
Hey if this info is correct there is a conspiracy by our Gov to make some money for cetain people?
October 23, 2000 from AlternativeMedicine.com
In September, a large-sample, long-term Canadian study proved that an annual mammogram was no more effective in preventing deaths from breast cancer than periodic physical examinations for women in their 50s.
The study was co-authored by Cornelia Baines, a professor of public health sciences at the University of Toronto and appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In the study of almost 40,000 women ages 50 to 59, half received periodic breast examinations alone and half received breast examinations plus mammograms. All learned to examine their own breasts as well.
By 1993, 13 years after the study began, there were 610 cases of invasive breast cancer and 105 deaths in the women who received only breast examinations, compared with 622 invasive breast cancers and 107 deaths in those who received breast examinations and mammograms. "They found smaller cancers, but ultimately the mortality rate was the same,¹¹ said Suzanne Fletcher, a professor of preventive medicine at Harvard Medical School. She added that cancer screening programs are built on the assumption that "finding it earlier is finding it better. . . . This study questions that assumption."
In fact, truly early detection would be better, but by the time a tumor has grown to a sufficient size to be detectable by either a mammogram or a physical examination, it has been growing for several years, and achieved more than 25 doublings of the malignant cell colony.
As Alternative Medicine has maintained for years, mammograms do far more harm than good. Their ionizing radiation mutates cells, and the mechanical pressure can spread cells that are already malignant (as can biopsies). In 1995 the British medical journal The Lancet reported that, since mammographic screening was introduced in 1983, the incidence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which represents 12% of all breast cancer cases, has increased by 328%, and 200% of this increase is due to the use of mammography. This increase is for all women: Since the inception of widespread mammographic screening, the increase for women under the age of 40 has gone up over 3000%.
Mammogram interpretation is often wrong. In 1996, the journal Archives of Internal Medicine published results of a test of 108 radiologists throughout the United States. The test used a set of 79 mammograms where the diagnosis had been verified by subsequent biopsies, surgeries or other follow-up. The radiologists missed cancer in 21% of the films, thought 10% of the women with no breast disease had cancer and thought 42% of benign lesions were cancerous.
Further, mammograms are not diagnostic and too frequently lead to unnecessary breast biopsies, which are an expensive, invasive surgical procedure that causes extreme anxiety, some pain and often physical harm to many women who do not have cancer.
According to the 1998 edition of the Merck Manual, for every case of breast cancer diagnosed each year, from 5 to 10 women will needlessly undergo a painful breast biopsy. Statistically, this means that any woman who has annual mammograms for 10 years has at least a 50% chance of having at least one biopsy -- even if she never develops breast cancer.
Why, then, does mainstream medicine keep recommending mammograms? Do the math: a $100 mammogram for all 62 million U.S. women over 40, and a $1,000+ biopsy for 1-to 2-million women, is an $8 billion per year industry. There is a superior alternative: advanced thermography, which does not use mechanical pressure or ionizing radiation, and which can detect signs of breast cancer years earlier than either mammography or a physical exam.
Mammography cannot detect a tumor until after it has been growing for years and reaches a certain size. Thermography is able to detect the possibility of breast cancer much earlier, because it can image the early stages of angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the formation of a direct supply of blood to cancer cells, which is a necessary step before they can grow into tumors of size.
Thermographic breast screening is brilliantly simple. Thermography measures the radiation of infrared heat from our body and translates this information into anatomical images. Our normal blood circulation is under the control of our autonomic nervous system, which governs our body functions without our conscious will.
To screen for breast cancer, a thermographer blows cool air over a woman¹s breasts. In response, our autonomic nervous system reduces the amount of blood going to the breast, as a temperature-regulating measure. However, the pool of blood and primitive blood vessels that cancer cells create is not under autonomic control and is unaffected by the cool air. It will therefore stand out clearly on the thermographic image as a "hot spot."
Flu HINI
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/03/What-We-Have-Learned-About-the-Great-Swine-Flu-Pandemic.aspx
ICU Hospitalizations
Out of a population of 25 million people, 722 were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with a confirmed diagnosis of H1N1 influenza. Overall, 856 people were admitted with a flu virus, but 11.3% were a type A flu that was not subtyped and 4.3% were seasonal flu.
They also analyzed the number of people admitted with viral pneumonia and found the following:
Number of People Admitted to the Hospital each Year with Viral Pneumonia5
57 people in 2005
33 people in 2006
69 people in 2007
69 people in 2008
37 people in 2009
So we see that in 2009 they had 32 fewer people admitted with actual viral pneumonia. The CDC and other public health agents of fear like to imply that mass numbers of people are dying from “flu”, that is, actual influenza viral pneumonia, when in fact, most are dying from other complications secondary to underlying health problems -- either diagnosed or undiagnosed.
They also found that the average person’s risk of ending up in the ICU was one in 35,714 or about three thousandths of one percent (0.00285%), an incredibly low risk. When they looked at actual admission to the ICU, they found that it was people aged 25 to 49 who made up the largest number admitted. Infants from birth to age 1 year had the higher admission per population, and had a high mortality rate.
Majority of Children Respond POORLY to Flu Vaccine
It is interesting to note that babies this age respond poorly to either the seasonal flu vaccine or the H1N1 vaccine. One of the largest studies ever done, found that children below the age of 2 years received no protection at all from the seasonal flu vaccine.7
The recently completed study on the effectiveness of the new H1N1 vaccine reported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease found that 75% of small children below age 35 months received no protection from the H1N1 vaccine and that 65% of children between the ages of 3 years and 9 years received no protection from the vaccine.8
Flu Vaccine DOUBLES Risk of Getting H1N1
It is also important to view this in the face of the new unpublished Canadian study of 12 million people that found getting the seasonal flu vaccine, as recommended by the CDC and NIH, doubles one’s risk of developing the H1N1 infection. It would also make the infection much more serious. So much for expert advice from the government.
H1N1 Vaccine is NOT Made the Same as Regular Flu Vaccine!!
I am really upset at the insistence by the CDC, medical doctors and the media that all pregnant women should be vaccinated by this experimental vaccine. The media repeats the manufacturers’ mantra that this vaccine is produced exactly like the seasonal flu, when in fact it is not. Yes, they use chicken eggs, but the rest has been fast tracked and many shortcuts on safety procedures have been allowed.
There are 250,000 pregnant women in Australia and New Zealand combined. Only 66 pregnant women were admitted to the ICU, an incidence of 1 pregnant woman per 3,800 pregnant women or a risk of .03%.6 Put another way, a pregnant woman in these two countries can feel comfortable to know that there is a 99.97% chance that she will not get sick enough to end up in the ICU.
Pregnant Women NOT at Increased Risk, Obese Women Are!!
So, why did even 66 pregnant women end up in the ICU? As we shall see in the American study5, a significant number of these pregnant women were either obese or morbidly obese and most had underlying medical problems. The Australian/New Zealand study6 found that one of the major risk factors for pregnant women was indeed being obese and that obesity was associated with a high risk of underlying medical disorders.
They also found that death from H1N1 infection correlated best with increasing age, contrary to what the media says. They concluded the study with the following statement:
“ The proportion of patients who died in the hospital in our study is no higher than that previously reported among patients with seasonal influenza A who were admitted to the ICU.” 6
In fact, they report that of those infected with the H1N1 variant virus who were sick enough to be admitted to the ICU, 84.5 % went home and 14.3% died and that of those admitted with seasonal flu 72.9% were discharged and 16.2% died. That is, more died from the seasonal flu.
Recent NEJM Study of the American Experience
In the same Oct, 8th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine they reported on the American experience with the H1N1 variant virus.5 The study looked at data from 24 states with widespread influenza infection from April through June 2009. Remember, unlike most flu epidemics in the United States, this epidemic began early and by the end of September it was beginning to peak, with late October being the date it may begin to decline.
The study examined 13,217 cases of infection involving 1082 people who were hospitalized. Here is what they found:
Underlying Medical Conditions
Of the total hospitalized patients:
60% of children had underlying medical conditions
83% of adults had underlying medical conditions
They also found that 32% of patients had at least 2 medical conditions that would put them at risk. We are constantly told that it is the young adult aged 25 to 49 who is at the greatest risk. Note that 83% of these people had underlying medical conditions. This means that in truth only 292 “healthy” people out of 1082 in 24 states were sick enough to enter the hospital -- that is 292 healthy people out of tens of millions of people, not much of a risk if you do not have an underlying chronic medical problem.
Underlying Medical Conditions Risk Factor for H1N1 Deaths
When they looked at people over age 65 years of age, that is, the folks who are most likely to die in the hospital, 100% had underlying medical conditions -- all of them. So, there was not one healthy person over age 65 who has died out of 24 states combined.
What about the children, a special target of the fear mongering media and government agencies? This study found that 60% had underlying medical conditions and that 30% were either obese or morbidly obese.
A previous CDC study states that 2/3 of children who died had neurological disorders or respiratory diseases such as asthma.3 If we take the 60% figure, that means out of the 84 children reported to have died by October 24th, 2009, only 34 children considered healthy in a nation of 301 million people really died, not 84. It is also instructive to note that according to CDC figures, the seasonal flu last year killed 116 children.9
Remember, that is, 34 so-called healthy children out of a nation of 40 million children. In 2003 it was reported by the CDC that 90 children died from seasonal flu complications. Ironically, as shown by Neil Z. Miller in his excellent book -- Vaccine Safety Manuel -- once the flu vaccine was given to small children the death rate from flu increased 7-fold.10 Not surprising, since the mercury in the vaccine suppresses immunity.
Pediatric Flu Deaths by Year Made WORSE by Flu Vaccine
1999 -- - 29 deaths
2000 -- - 19 deaths
2001 -- - 13 deaths
2002 -- - 12 deaths
2003 -- - 90 deaths (Year of mass vaccinations of children under age 5 years)
2006 -- 78 deaths
2007 -- - 88 deaths
2008 – 116 deaths (40.9% vaccinated at age 6 months to 23 months)11
Parents should also keep in mind that this study, as well as the Australian/New Zealand Study found that childhood obesity played a major role in a child’s risk of being admitted to the ICU or dying. This is another dramatic demonstration as to the danger of obesity in children and that all parents should avoid MSG (all food-based excitotoxin additives), excess sugar and excess high glycemic carbohydrates in their children’s diets. This goes for pregnant moms as well.
Every Parent Needs to Know Other Vaccines INCREASE Risk of H1N1
One major factor being left out of all discussion of these vaccines, especially those for small children and babies, is the effect of other vaccinations on presently circulating viral infections such as the H1N1 variant virus. It is known that several of the vaccines are powerfully immune suppressing. For example, the measles, mumps and rubella virus are all immune suppressing, as seen with the MMR vaccine, a live virus vaccine.12, 13
This means that when a child receives the MMR vaccine, for about two to five weeks afterwards their immune system is suppressed, making them highly susceptible to catching viruses and bacterial infections circulating through the population. Very few mothers are ever told this, even though it is well accepted in the medical literature.
In fact, it is known that the Hib vaccine for haemophilus influenzae is an immune suppressing vaccine and that vaccinated children are at a higher risk of developing haemophilus influenzae meningitis for at least one week after receiving the vaccine.10,14 These small children receive both of these vaccines.
According to the vaccine schedule recommended by the CDC and used by most states, a child will receive their MMR vaccine and Hib vaccine at one year of age and both are immune suppressing.
At age 2 to 4 months, they will receive a Hib vaccine. Therefore at age 2 to 4 months, and again at age one year, they are at an extreme risk of serious infectious complications caused by vaccine-induced immune suppression. The New Zealand/Australian study found that the highest death in the young was from birth to age 12 months, the very time they were getting these immune-suppressing vaccines.6
The so-called healthy children and babies that have ended up in the hospital and have died may in fact be the victims of immune suppression caused by their routine childhood vaccines. We may never know because the medical elite will never record such data or conduct the necessary studies. Recall also that the seasonal flu vaccine, which is recommended for all babies 6 months to 35 months, is also immune suppressing because of the mercury-containing thimerosal in the vaccine.15
If parents allow their children to be vaccinated according to the CDC recommendations, that is 2 seasonal flu vaccines and 2 swine flu vaccines as well as a pneumococcal vaccine, that will increase the number of vaccines a child will have by age 6 years to 41. This amounts to an enormous amount of aluminum and mercury as well as intense brain inflammation triggered by vaccine-induced microglial activation.16
Risk of Serious Illness from the H1N1 Mutant Virus
Their survey of 24 states found that a total of 67 patients out of tens of millions of people ended up in the ICU. That is, only 6% of the people admitted to the hospital were so sick as to need intensive treatments. Of these 67 patients, 19 died (25%) and of these 67% had obvious underlying long-term medical illnesses. This means that only 6 patients out of tens of millions of people in 24 states that were considered “healthy” before their infection, had died. Is this justification for a mass vaccination campaign?
Of the 1082 hospitalized patients, 93% were eventually discharged recovered and only 7% died, a very low death rate. Their analysis of these cases concluded that those who died fell in three categories:
They were older patients
Antiviral medications were started 48 hours after the onset of the illness
There was no correlation to having had seasonal vaccines
The last item is especially interesting because they assume that having had seasonal flu vaccine would have offered some protection -- it offered none.
What they did find was that none who died had been given antiviral medications (Tamiflu or Relenza) within 48 hours of getting sick. Those given the antiviral medications within the golden 48-hour period rarely died. Relenza is far safer than Tamiflu. This was the only factor found to correlate with survival of severely ill ICU patients.
Pregnant Women Given Vaccine Have Babies with More Health Problems
It has always been a principle of medicine that one should not vaccinate pregnant women, except in extreme cases, because the risk to the baby is too high. Recently, we have seen two examples of violation of this policy. When the HPV vaccine Gardasil was first released the CDC and the manufacturer (Merck Pharmaceutical Company) recommended that it be given to pregnant women.
Shortly after beginning this dangerous practice it was ordered halted because a number of women were losing their babies and babies were being born with major malformations.26
It is known that stimulating a woman’s immune system during midterm and later term pregnancy significantly increases the risk that her baby will develop autism during childhood and schizophrenia sometime during the teenage years and afterward.27
Compelling scientific evidence also shows an increased risk of seizures in the baby and later as an adult.28 In fact, a number of neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems can occur in babies born to women immunologically stimulated during pregnancy.29-32
It is true that serious flu infections or E. coli infections during pregnancy are a major risk for all these complications, but a woman’s risk of becoming infected, as we have seen, is a very small fraction of 1 %, yet they are calling for all pregnant women to be vaccinated with at least three vaccines, two of which contain mercury. There is also evidence to show that a large number of these women will gain no protection from the vaccine.
Dr. Bronze, quoted above, notes that animal studies have shown that vaccines harm unborn babies and that no safety studies have been done in humans. A recent study done by Dr. Laura Hewitson, a professor of obstetrics at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center, found that a single vaccine used in human babies, when used in newborn monkeys, caused significant abnormalities in brainstem development.33 This mass vaccination program for H1N1 variant virus will be the largest experiment on pregnant women in history and could end as a monumental disaster.
How Many Cases are Really Swine Flu?
CBS, to their credit, conducted a three-month long investigation that indicates that we have all been hoodwinked by the governmental “protection” agency called euphemistically, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.34
What they tried to learn from the CDC was just what percentage of the “flu cases” were in fact H1N1. The CDC did all they could to protect this information and only after filing a Freedom of Information request and waiting 2 months did they finally release the data. Now we know why they wanted it protected and why they stopped testing for the H1N1 virus in late July.
The data revealed that in fact very few cases reported as swine flu were in fact H1N1 variant virus. CBS examined the data in all 50 states. What they found, for example, was that in Georgia only 2% of reported cases were H1N1 (97% negative for H1N1); in Alaska only 1% of reported cases were H1N1 (93% negative for flu and 5% seasonal flu) and in California only 2% of reported cases were H1N1 with 12% being other flu viruses and 86% negative for flu.
A recent release from the CDC found that their survey reported that of 12,943 specimens tested from around the country, only 26.3% of cases tested positive for H1N1 variant virus, but that 99.8% of the specimens tested positive for some type of other flu virus, most of which were regular seasonal flu.
The CDC has now changed all data reporting on the flu effects. They did this by stopping viral typing and subtyping and rolled back all previous numbers based on prior data. The new system for collecting data now started on August 30th, 2009.
The only reason I can imagine they did this is that the prior data was clearly demonstrating that the H1N1 variant virus was causing a very mild illness in most people (99.99%) with fewer hospitalizations, fewer cases of pneumonia and fewer deaths for all ages and groups than the prior seasonal flu in past years. This was true for the United States and the Southern Hemisphere, which has gone though the worst of its flu season.
Now that they are no longer typing the virus, they can attribute all cases of pneumonia, hospitalizations and deaths to H1N1, even though the majority of cases appear to be from a long list of other causes. In fact, they can classify many cases of primary pneumonia as caused by H1N1.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Flu Vaccine Exposed
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/26/Flu-Vaccine-Exposed.aspx
Ex Military Prison
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6848238.ece
About 12,000 veterans are on probation or parole, representing 6 per cent of the total, while 8,500 are in prison, representing 8.5 per cent of the jail population, according to the report by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo).
In the United States 10 per cent of the population of both federal and state jails were veterans in 2004, according to US government figures.
The study found that chronic misuse of alcohol and drugs was a big factor in half of 90 cases where veterans had been given a community sentence. Almost half of the veterans were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. The most common conviction was for violence in a domestic setting, which occurred in 39 cases, the Napo paper said. In ten other cases the main offence was against a child. No figures were available for Scotland.
A survey of sentenced prisoners conducted by the Government in 2003 suggested that 4 per cent of prisoners had served in the Armed Forces.
About 12,000 veterans are on probation or parole, representing 6 per cent of the total, while 8,500 are in prison, representing 8.5 per cent of the jail population, according to the report by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo).
In the United States 10 per cent of the population of both federal and state jails were veterans in 2004, according to US government figures.
The study found that chronic misuse of alcohol and drugs was a big factor in half of 90 cases where veterans had been given a community sentence. Almost half of the veterans were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. The most common conviction was for violence in a domestic setting, which occurred in 39 cases, the Napo paper said. In ten other cases the main offence was against a child. No figures were available for Scotland.
A survey of sentenced prisoners conducted by the Government in 2003 suggested that 4 per cent of prisoners had served in the Armed Forces.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Battery Life
History of Battery Development
1600 Gilbert (England) Establishment electrochemistry study
1791 Galvani (Italy) Discovery of ‘animal electricity’
1800 Volta (Italy) Invention of the voltaic cell
1802 Cruickshank (England) First electric battery capable of mass production
1820 Ampère (France) Electricity through magnetism
1833 Faraday (England) Announcement of Faraday’s Law
1836 Daniell (England) Invention of the Daniell cell
1859 Planté (France) Invention of the lead acid battery
1868 Leclanché (France) Invention of the Leclanché cell
1888 Gassner (USA) Completion of the dry cell
1899 Jungner (Sweden) Invention of the nickel-cadmium battery
1901 Edison (USA) Invention of the nickel-iron battery
1932 Shlecht & Ackermann (Germany) Invention of the sintered pole plate
1947 Neumann (France) Successfully sealing the nickel-cadmium battery
Mid 1960 Union Carbide (USA) Development of primary alkaline battery
Mid 1970 Development of valve regulated lead acid battery
1990 Commercialization nickel-metal hydride battery
1992 Kordesch (Canada) Commercialization reusable alkaline battery
1999 Commercialization lithium-ion polymer
2001 Anticipated volume production of proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Figure 1-5: History of battery development.
The battery may be much older. It is believed that the Parthians who ruled Baghdad (ca. 250 bc) used batteries to electroplate silver. The Egyptians are said to have electroplated antimony onto copper over 4300 years ago.
1600 Gilbert (England) Establishment electrochemistry study
1791 Galvani (Italy) Discovery of ‘animal electricity’
1800 Volta (Italy) Invention of the voltaic cell
1802 Cruickshank (England) First electric battery capable of mass production
1820 Ampère (France) Electricity through magnetism
1833 Faraday (England) Announcement of Faraday’s Law
1836 Daniell (England) Invention of the Daniell cell
1859 Planté (France) Invention of the lead acid battery
1868 Leclanché (France) Invention of the Leclanché cell
1888 Gassner (USA) Completion of the dry cell
1899 Jungner (Sweden) Invention of the nickel-cadmium battery
1901 Edison (USA) Invention of the nickel-iron battery
1932 Shlecht & Ackermann (Germany) Invention of the sintered pole plate
1947 Neumann (France) Successfully sealing the nickel-cadmium battery
Mid 1960 Union Carbide (USA) Development of primary alkaline battery
Mid 1970 Development of valve regulated lead acid battery
1990 Commercialization nickel-metal hydride battery
1992 Kordesch (Canada) Commercialization reusable alkaline battery
1999 Commercialization lithium-ion polymer
2001 Anticipated volume production of proton exchange membrane fuel cell
Figure 1-5: History of battery development.
The battery may be much older. It is believed that the Parthians who ruled Baghdad (ca. 250 bc) used batteries to electroplate silver. The Egyptians are said to have electroplated antimony onto copper over 4300 years ago.
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
Bisphenol-A (BPA) UK
Is it safe to use plastic baby bottles? I have heard they contain harmful chemicals.
Plastic baby bottles and other types of plastic food container are safe to use if they are used correctly.
You should always follow the manufacturer's instructions, but, generally, plastic bottles and containers are safe to use and reuse if they're not damaged and can be cleaned properly. Also, you can heat food in plastic containers in hot water or the microwave if the label says it is OK to do so.
Cans should not be reused. Once a can has been opened, any leftover food should be put in a sealable container in the fridge.
One chemical you may have heard of, in relation to baby bottles, is a substance called Bisphenol-A (BPA). It's used to make a range of plastic food containers, including baby bottles. It's also found in the resin used to coat the inside of food cans, to stop the metal contaminating the food.
Very small amounts of BPA can transfer from the packaging into food and drinks. It's possible that BPA might affect the hormone system in people's bodies. That said, there has been a lot of research carried out worldwide and there is still no conclusive evidence that these chemicals do have this effect in people.
Independent experts have calculated how much BPA can be eaten every day over a lifetime without it causing harm to our health. It has been estimated that the amounts we take in from food and drink are much lower than this level. There are also rules in place to protect the public. These rules set a maximum level of BPA that is allowed to transfer into food.
http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/asksam/keepingfoodsafe/asksamstoringpreparing/#A457998
Check
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/05/22/where-to-find-bpa-free-products.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/12/How-Moms-and-Minorities-are-Deceived-About-Dangers-of-Plastic.aspx
Plastic baby bottles and other types of plastic food container are safe to use if they are used correctly.
You should always follow the manufacturer's instructions, but, generally, plastic bottles and containers are safe to use and reuse if they're not damaged and can be cleaned properly. Also, you can heat food in plastic containers in hot water or the microwave if the label says it is OK to do so.
Cans should not be reused. Once a can has been opened, any leftover food should be put in a sealable container in the fridge.
One chemical you may have heard of, in relation to baby bottles, is a substance called Bisphenol-A (BPA). It's used to make a range of plastic food containers, including baby bottles. It's also found in the resin used to coat the inside of food cans, to stop the metal contaminating the food.
Very small amounts of BPA can transfer from the packaging into food and drinks. It's possible that BPA might affect the hormone system in people's bodies. That said, there has been a lot of research carried out worldwide and there is still no conclusive evidence that these chemicals do have this effect in people.
Independent experts have calculated how much BPA can be eaten every day over a lifetime without it causing harm to our health. It has been estimated that the amounts we take in from food and drink are much lower than this level. There are also rules in place to protect the public. These rules set a maximum level of BPA that is allowed to transfer into food.
http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/asksam/keepingfoodsafe/asksamstoringpreparing/#A457998
Check
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/05/22/where-to-find-bpa-free-products.aspx
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/09/12/How-Moms-and-Minorities-are-Deceived-About-Dangers-of-Plastic.aspx
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
RABBI BARUCH KAPLAN
http://www.nkusa.org/Historical_Documents/KaplanInterview.cfm
This is a free translation of a Yiddish transcript of a taped interview made some twenty years ago with the late Rabbi Baruch Kaplan, who was a principal of the Beis Yaakov Girls School in Brooklyn, and who was a student in the Hebron yeshiva (religious school) in 1929 at the time of the killing of a number of Jews by some Arabs. Rabbi Kaplan explains how events unfolded, and how it was the arrogant and cowardly Zionist maniacs who perpetrated the events by provoking the Palestinians
“When I was in Hebron in 1929, there occurred the tragic massacre of over twenty yeshiva students, great scholars, plus another forty members of the Jewish community. I would like to describe the error that has circulated in Jewish communities – a horrible error, that accuses the Arabs in Hebron of being murderers who attacked the Jews simply because the Arabs were “bad people.” In order to correct the record, this error must be corrected. The Arabs were very friendly people, and the Jewish People in Hebron lived together with them and had very friendly relations with them. They worked with Jews, and everybody got along just fine.
To take just one example, I used to have the habit of walking a mile or two out of town all by myself to visit a tree that was believed to be the tree where our patriarch Abraham met the three angels, as described in Genesis. I especially enjoyed visiting the tree in the summertime. Along the way I would talk to the Arabs, though it was mostly using our hands because I didn’t speak any Arabic. Interestingly enough, no one in the yeshiva ever told me it was dangerous to go by myself among the Arabs. We just lived with them, and got along very well.
I have also seen a letter from the Grand Rabbi of the Gerrer Hassidim of those days, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter of Poland, regarding his trip to the Holy Land during the days when people were talking about emigrating to Palestine. He wanted to find out what kind of people the Palestinians were, in order to be able to advise people whether to move there or not. He wrote in his letter that the Arabs were a very friendly and fine people.
Therefore it’s necessary to set the record straight about the accusations that the Palestinians were terrible killers who liked attacking Jews. This was never the situation at all!
Today’s wicked Zionists are just like their predecessors, who were responsible for causing terrible suffering in Palestine with their wars with the Arabs, may G-d have mercy. At that time in 1929, the Zionists had a slogan arguing that the Western Wall in Jerusalem was a Jewish “national symbol.” Of course, the Arabs disagreed with this idea, considering that they had control of the location for over 1,100 years. However, the Zionist mobs were yelling that “The Wall is ours!” It’s hard to understand why they felt that way considering they have no connection to the Jewish holy places whatsoever. An argument erupted in the Jewish newspapers about establishing a permanent prayer area for Jews at the Wall. This provoked the Arabs, and the rabbi of Jerusalem at the time, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld begged them to stop and to be appreciative to the Arabs for allowing Jews to pray at the Wall for so many centuries undisturbed. However, the Zionists wanted a permanent setup under their control.
The Zionists refused to heed the calls of Rabbi Zonnenfeld, and they called a large meeting of Jews in Jerusalem – supposedly some 10,000 people showed up. One of the speakers was their “chief Rabbi” (Avraham Isaac Kook), who proclaimed, “Hear O Israel, the Wall is our Wall, the Wall is One” (which is a ridiculous pun on the blessing, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One”). This began the conflict at the time between the Zionists and the Arabs.
Afterwards, we were studying at the yeshiva in Hebron, and saw a bunch of boys in short pants carrying weapons on bicycles and motorcycles, running around the streets of Hebron. We were very worried about this. What were they up to?
In brief, our rabbi, the supervisor of our religious academy, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, called them for a meeting, but they refused. He was forced to go over to them, and asked them what they were up to. He accused them of wanting to provoke the Arabs. They responded that they were coming to protect us!! We cried out, “Woe is us! G-d have mercy!” They didn’t want to leave town until it was too late!
These arrogant cowards only ran away when the local leaders of the Arabs called for a mass meeting of the people of the surrounding Arab villages. But it was too late; the Arabs got organized, and the Mufti called on his people to be ready Friday night when the yeshiva would be attending prayers. At this point, the yeshiva was alone against the Zionists, but the Arabs didn’t know to distinguish between us and the Zionists. Sadly they attacked and killed some of our people, including the great scholar, Rabbi Shmuel Rosenhaltz.
The next morning we heard about the excitement in town, and even worse, we heard the crying and shouting. I and a friend, Avraham Ushpener, lived in an apartment that was part of a three-story building leased by a Jew from an Arab. We could hear all the noise from our apartment on the third floor. We were terrified to let the Arabs in because we knew how angry they had become, but a while later things calmed down. In total, some 65 people were killed. On the other side of town, however, the Jews were spared.
Why am I telling this story? It is because I wanted to describe how the wicked Zionists, both today and in those days, were the cause of our suffering! They cooperated with the Nazis, and our religion teaches that a person who causes someone to sin is worse than someone who kills him.
It reminds me of an event recounted by Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld, who once visited Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz {Chazon Ish) when the Zionist state was established, and when there was fighting between the Zionists and the Arabs. Rabbi Schonfeld told Rabbi Karelitz about what was happening. Rabbi Karelitz told him that the crimes of the Zionists were much worse, because they were wicked heretics who were uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their faith and that is much greater pain since our Sages stated that a person who causes another person to sin is much worse than if he kills him.
In our own days there is a Zionist leader (Begin), whose arrogance and selfishness is more important than anything else to him, and for which he is prepared to sacrifice hundreds and thousands of Jews. These heretics and evildoers, this Zionist leader of a state that killed the Judaism of the Yemenite and Moroccan Jews, and of many other Sephardic Jews! This is the work of these thugs and gangsters. And there are religious Jewish parties who dare to state that they love this man?! Everyone must know that the anger of the Arabs against us is only caused by the Zionists!
The Arabs were a friendly people to us, and I am a witness to it. We lived very well with them in Hebron. Rabbi Alter attested to this as well, and it is the accursed Zionists who caused them to hate us. The Zionists dare to use their power to expel the Arabs, and even today in Lebanon, they kill and butcher the Arabs; they wipe out whole villages with the airplanes they get from the United States.
Everyone should know who the murderers are – the Zionists are the biggest murderers in the world, who refuse to let the Jewish People live in peace either physically or spiritually!”
This is a free translation of a Yiddish transcript of a taped interview made some twenty years ago with the late Rabbi Baruch Kaplan, who was a principal of the Beis Yaakov Girls School in Brooklyn, and who was a student in the Hebron yeshiva (religious school) in 1929 at the time of the killing of a number of Jews by some Arabs. Rabbi Kaplan explains how events unfolded, and how it was the arrogant and cowardly Zionist maniacs who perpetrated the events by provoking the Palestinians
“When I was in Hebron in 1929, there occurred the tragic massacre of over twenty yeshiva students, great scholars, plus another forty members of the Jewish community. I would like to describe the error that has circulated in Jewish communities – a horrible error, that accuses the Arabs in Hebron of being murderers who attacked the Jews simply because the Arabs were “bad people.” In order to correct the record, this error must be corrected. The Arabs were very friendly people, and the Jewish People in Hebron lived together with them and had very friendly relations with them. They worked with Jews, and everybody got along just fine.
To take just one example, I used to have the habit of walking a mile or two out of town all by myself to visit a tree that was believed to be the tree where our patriarch Abraham met the three angels, as described in Genesis. I especially enjoyed visiting the tree in the summertime. Along the way I would talk to the Arabs, though it was mostly using our hands because I didn’t speak any Arabic. Interestingly enough, no one in the yeshiva ever told me it was dangerous to go by myself among the Arabs. We just lived with them, and got along very well.
I have also seen a letter from the Grand Rabbi of the Gerrer Hassidim of those days, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter of Poland, regarding his trip to the Holy Land during the days when people were talking about emigrating to Palestine. He wanted to find out what kind of people the Palestinians were, in order to be able to advise people whether to move there or not. He wrote in his letter that the Arabs were a very friendly and fine people.
Therefore it’s necessary to set the record straight about the accusations that the Palestinians were terrible killers who liked attacking Jews. This was never the situation at all!
Today’s wicked Zionists are just like their predecessors, who were responsible for causing terrible suffering in Palestine with their wars with the Arabs, may G-d have mercy. At that time in 1929, the Zionists had a slogan arguing that the Western Wall in Jerusalem was a Jewish “national symbol.” Of course, the Arabs disagreed with this idea, considering that they had control of the location for over 1,100 years. However, the Zionist mobs were yelling that “The Wall is ours!” It’s hard to understand why they felt that way considering they have no connection to the Jewish holy places whatsoever. An argument erupted in the Jewish newspapers about establishing a permanent prayer area for Jews at the Wall. This provoked the Arabs, and the rabbi of Jerusalem at the time, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld begged them to stop and to be appreciative to the Arabs for allowing Jews to pray at the Wall for so many centuries undisturbed. However, the Zionists wanted a permanent setup under their control.
The Zionists refused to heed the calls of Rabbi Zonnenfeld, and they called a large meeting of Jews in Jerusalem – supposedly some 10,000 people showed up. One of the speakers was their “chief Rabbi” (Avraham Isaac Kook), who proclaimed, “Hear O Israel, the Wall is our Wall, the Wall is One” (which is a ridiculous pun on the blessing, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One”). This began the conflict at the time between the Zionists and the Arabs.
Afterwards, we were studying at the yeshiva in Hebron, and saw a bunch of boys in short pants carrying weapons on bicycles and motorcycles, running around the streets of Hebron. We were very worried about this. What were they up to?
In brief, our rabbi, the supervisor of our religious academy, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein, called them for a meeting, but they refused. He was forced to go over to them, and asked them what they were up to. He accused them of wanting to provoke the Arabs. They responded that they were coming to protect us!! We cried out, “Woe is us! G-d have mercy!” They didn’t want to leave town until it was too late!
These arrogant cowards only ran away when the local leaders of the Arabs called for a mass meeting of the people of the surrounding Arab villages. But it was too late; the Arabs got organized, and the Mufti called on his people to be ready Friday night when the yeshiva would be attending prayers. At this point, the yeshiva was alone against the Zionists, but the Arabs didn’t know to distinguish between us and the Zionists. Sadly they attacked and killed some of our people, including the great scholar, Rabbi Shmuel Rosenhaltz.
The next morning we heard about the excitement in town, and even worse, we heard the crying and shouting. I and a friend, Avraham Ushpener, lived in an apartment that was part of a three-story building leased by a Jew from an Arab. We could hear all the noise from our apartment on the third floor. We were terrified to let the Arabs in because we knew how angry they had become, but a while later things calmed down. In total, some 65 people were killed. On the other side of town, however, the Jews were spared.
Why am I telling this story? It is because I wanted to describe how the wicked Zionists, both today and in those days, were the cause of our suffering! They cooperated with the Nazis, and our religion teaches that a person who causes someone to sin is worse than someone who kills him.
It reminds me of an event recounted by Rabbi Moshe Schonfeld, who once visited Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz {Chazon Ish) when the Zionist state was established, and when there was fighting between the Zionists and the Arabs. Rabbi Schonfeld told Rabbi Karelitz about what was happening. Rabbi Karelitz told him that the crimes of the Zionists were much worse, because they were wicked heretics who were uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their faith and that is much greater pain since our Sages stated that a person who causes another person to sin is much worse than if he kills him.
In our own days there is a Zionist leader (Begin), whose arrogance and selfishness is more important than anything else to him, and for which he is prepared to sacrifice hundreds and thousands of Jews. These heretics and evildoers, this Zionist leader of a state that killed the Judaism of the Yemenite and Moroccan Jews, and of many other Sephardic Jews! This is the work of these thugs and gangsters. And there are religious Jewish parties who dare to state that they love this man?! Everyone must know that the anger of the Arabs against us is only caused by the Zionists!
The Arabs were a friendly people to us, and I am a witness to it. We lived very well with them in Hebron. Rabbi Alter attested to this as well, and it is the accursed Zionists who caused them to hate us. The Zionists dare to use their power to expel the Arabs, and even today in Lebanon, they kill and butcher the Arabs; they wipe out whole villages with the airplanes they get from the United States.
Everyone should know who the murderers are – the Zionists are the biggest murderers in the world, who refuse to let the Jewish People live in peace either physically or spiritually!”
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