All posts by alternativefreepress

Health/Environment

Measles Outbreak Traced to Fully Vaccinated Patient

Science: April 11, 2014

Get the measles vaccine, and you won’t get the measles—or give it to anyone else. Right? Well, not always. A person fully vaccinated against measles has contracted the disease and passed it on to others. The startling case study contradicts received wisdom about the vaccine and suggests that a recent swell of measles outbreaks in developed nations could mean more illnesses even among the vaccinated.

[…] a fully vaccinated 22-year-old theater employee in New York City who developed the measles in 2011 was released without hospitalization or quarantine. But like Typhoid Mary, this patient turned out to be unwittingly contagious. Ultimately, she transmitted the measles to four other people, according to a recent report in Clinical Infectious Diseases that tracked symptoms in the 88 people with whom “Measles Mary” interacted while she was sick. Surprisingly, two of the secondary patients had been fully vaccinated. And although the other two had no record of receiving the vaccine, they both showed signs of previous measles exposure that should have conferred immunity.

A closer look at the blood samples taken during her treatment revealed how the immune defenses of Measles Mary broke down. As a first line of defense against the measles and other microbes, humans rely on a natural buttress of IgM antibodies. Like a wooden shield, they offer some protection from microbial assaults but aren’t impenetrable. The vaccine (or a case of the measles) prompts the body to supplement this primary buffer with a stronger armor of IgG antibodies, some of which are able to neutralize the measles virus so it can’t invade cells or spread to other patients. This secondary immune response was presumed to last for decades.

By analyzing her blood, the researchers found that Measles Mary mounted an IgM defense, as if she had never been vaccinated. Her blood also contained a potent arsenal of IgG antibodies, but a closer look revealed that none of these IgG antibodies were actually capable of neutralizing the measles virus. It seemed that her vaccine-given immunity had waned.

Although public health officials have assumed that measles immunity lasts forever, the case of Measles Mary highlights the reality that “the actual duration [of immunity] following infection or vaccination is unclear,” says Jennifer Rosen, who led the investigation as director of epidemiology and surveillance at the New York City Bureau of Immunization. The possibility of waning immunity is particularly worrisome as the virus surfaces in major U.S. hubs like Boston, Seattle, New York, and the Los Angeles area. Rosen doesn’t believe this single case merits a change in vaccination strategy—for example, giving adults booster shots—but she says that more regular surveillance to assess the strength of people’s measles immunity is warranted.

(Read the full article at Science)

Related:
Ohio & New York 2014 Mumps Outbreaks Only Infect Vaccinated Population

40% of 2014 California Measles Outbreak Had Been Vaccinated

—
Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Tyranny

Senior Mountie charged with sexual assault of 12-year-old girl

Senior Mountie charged with historical sexual assault of 12-year-old girl

By Shawn Knox
Global News: April 15, 2014

RCMP in Saskatchewan have arrested and charged a senior Mountie and one other person in connection with the sexual assault of a minor in the community of Carlyle in the summer of 1982.

In April of 2013 RCMP received information from an adult female relating to the assault, and then in December of 2013 the victim provided a detailed statement of the assault alleging that she had been assaulted by a male member of the RCMP.

The victim was 12-years-old at the time of the alleged assault.

“As soon as we became aware of the allegations we began a comprehensive criminal investigation which has resulted in charges against the two identified suspects,” said Supt. Alfredo Bangloy, Assistant Criminal Operations Officer In Charge of Provincial Policing.

54-year-old Inspector Ronald Patrick Makar was arrested on Tuesday, April 15 at his workplace – the Wood Buffalo RCMP detachment in Fort McMurray, AB. Makar was charged with one count of having sexual intercourse with a female person without her consent and one count of having sexual intercourse with a female person under the age of 14.

Makar has been an RCMP member for 34 years, and until Tuesday was serving as Operations Officer in Charge of the Wood Buffalo detachment. He has been suspended with pay pending further consideration.

Makar also served in Carlyle, Kyle, Fond du Lac, Regina, Milestone and ‘F’ Division Headquarters in Regina.

Additionally, on April 10, RCMP arrested 56-year-old Constance Haduik of Kyle, SK and charged her with one count of indecent assault of a female person.

(Read the full article at Global News)

Corporate Welfare, Drugs

Toronto’s Public EDM Ban Is A Giant Corporate Welfare Handout

Toronto Just Banned Electronic Dance Music Concerts on its Public Grounds

by: Ryan Krahn
Vice: April 14, 2014

Friday morning, Toronto (supposedly the world’s ‘most youthful city’) banned electronic dance music concerts from the Direct Energy and Better Living buildings on its public grounds, Exhibition Place. Exhibition Place, also known as The Ex, is a publicly owned space located by Toronto’s western waterfront, far away from any residential housing, which hosts an annual fair and often rents out their space for concerts of all genres. In the past, these events have included some of the biggest names to ever hit the sync button: Tiësto, Avicii and Laidback Luke.

The shutdown comes at the behest of Zlatko Starkovski, owner of suburbanite DUI destination, Muzik Nightclub. In the middle of January, Zlatko started worrying about the kids, particularly, the ones dancing across the street from his club. After all, there’s something less impressive about a 3000-person mega club with its own free beauty salon when the seats are empty because everyone’s watching Avicii DJ hands-free over at the 10,000-seater next door. So, Zlatko decided to write the city to tell on these kids. Well, first he donated a couple thousand dollars to mayor Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign. And he hired the powerful Sussex lobbying firm too. And then he wrote the letter.

The letter starts off with the outright admission that “competing events in the Better Living Centre and the Direct Energy Centre…has caused Muzik problems in booking the talent for our own shows,” before gears are switched and a moral argument is launched against these “problem rave events,” with their drugs and underage drinking.

While this complaint was sliding its way through the right channels, Zlatko, known to Ford simply by the nickname ‘Z,’ invited the mayor to check out his club and the mayor obliged. And eventually the letter slid right into the hands of Ford’s sidekick, Councillor Mammoliti, who introduced the motion to have electronic music banned from these venues.

Before the motion passed four to three, Z and his lobbyist wheeled out the usual rave bogeyman tropes I remember seeing on daytime television in the late ’90s: kids raiding their parents’ medicine cabinets for scripts to take at the show, pedophiles on the prowl, eight to nine year old ravers (as if Toronto was actually Gabber Holland)! Mammo asked the committee to think of the children “taking ecstasy on government lands owned by the taxpayers” and worried that it was “wrong to be sending that message.” (A refresher: moralist Mammo is the guy who proposed a Red Light District on the Toronto Island and was the very last man defending the mayor amidst his crack scandal). Of course, the irony of it all is that the reason Exhibition Place started hosting dance music events in the first place was due to a Toronto Public Health recommendation that suggested it was the safest, most regulated place to do so. (And by our count, more people have died at Muzik than at any rave at Exhibition Place). Councillor Gord Perks, who opposed the motion, remarked that such a move would mean the loss of a “safe, well-monitored venue for young people and all-ages events and drive them back to the underground where it is really dangerous.” Mammo replied by calling him ‘Councillor Perks-ocet.’

After all of this conflation between drugs, death, and dance music, Mammo finally got to the real point: “If the private industry wants to have [EDM concerts] in a private location then so be it.” And these were the stakes, because the big twist is that Muzik plays (albeit currently to fewer people) the same mainstream EDM that they sold to the committee as dangerous. So, the city sold off its ostensibly bad investment right back to Muzik. As Z’s letter admits,

“Muzik, currently operates with a liquor license that has a capacity of 8,755. This encompasses 5,674 people outside in addition to the 3,081-person capacity inside our venue. However, our current lease has an exclusive use clause for events up to 2,999 people. By increasing this to reflect our actual capacity that we are licensed for, it would provide the necessary protection for these type of one off situations, and will give Muzik Clubs the protection it requires to ensure that our business remains successful.”

The TL;DR is that Muzik wanted to start a moral panic around dance music to shut down concerts at Exhibition Place, so that it could start hosting its own 9000-person EDM concerts on the same premises. That means their competitors, Live Nation or INK, will have to find other places, but this isn’t as much the issue as the fact that approximately one million dollars of lost revenue per year will be moving from the public purse into private hands, and at the cost of further vilifying the name of dance music.

Councillor Perks told THUMP that “Muzik, which is very politically connected, simply wants to get exclusive control of music events on Exhibition Place grounds. So they pretended to be for the welfare of young people, but instead, all they’re interested in is their own bottom line. They want to expand to have exclusive rights.” The councillor emphasized that the board that made the final decision “only exists because the city established it, so I need to figure out what tools city council has to bring the board back into a more sound harm reduction approach… Several of us on the council are just not going to let this go. We’ll figure out a way.”

(Read the full article at Vice)

—-
Alternative Free Press

Privacy, Tyranny

FBI Abruptly Walks Out On Senate Briefing After Being Asked How ‘Insider Threat’ Program Avoids Whistleblowers

Mike Masnick
Tech Dirt: April 14, 2014

While we’ve been disappointed that Senator Chuck Grassley appears to have a bit of a double standard with his staunch support for whistleblowers when it comes to Ed Snowden, it is true that he has fought for real whistleblower protections for quite some time. Lately, he’s been quite concerned that the White House’s “Insider Threat Program” (ITP) is really just a cover to crack down on whistleblowers. As we’ve noted, despite early promises from the Obama administration to support and protect whistleblowers, the administration has led the largest crackdown against whistleblowers, and the ITP suggests that the attack on whistleblowers is a calculated response. The program documentation argues that any leak can be seen as “aiding the enemy” and encourages government employees to snitch on each other if they appear too concerned about government wrong-doing. Despite all his high minded talk of supporting whistleblowers, President Obama has used the Espionage Act against whistleblowers twice as many times as all other Presidents combined. Also, he has never — not once — praised someone for blowing the whistle in the federal government.

Given all of that, Senator Grassley expressed some concern about this Insider Threat Program and how it distinguished whistleblowers from actual threats. He asked the FBI for copies of its training manual on the program, which it refused to give him. Instead, it said it could better answer any questions at a hearing. However, as Grassley explains, when questioned about this just 10 minutes into the hearing, the FBI abruptly got up and left:

Meanwhile, the FBI fiercely resists any efforts at Congressional oversight, especially on whistleblower matters. For example, four months ago I sent a letter to the FBI requesting its training materials on the Insider Threat Program. This program was announced by the Obama Administration in October 2011. It was intended to train federal employees to watch out for insider threats among their colleagues. Public news reports indicated that this program might not do enough to distinguish between true insider threats and legitimate whistleblowers. I relayed these concerns in my letter. I also asked for copies of the training materials. I said I wanted to examine whether they adequately distinguished between insider threats and whistleblowers.

In response, an FBI legislative affairs official told my staff that a briefing might be the best way to answer my questions. It was scheduled for last week. Staff for both Chairman Leahy and I attended, and the FBI brought the head of their Insider Threat Program. Yet the FBI didn’t bring the Insider Threat training materials as we had requested. However, the head of the Insider Threat Program told the staff that there was no need to worry about whistleblower communications. He said whistleblowers had to register in order to be protected, and the Insider Threat Program would know to just avoid those people.

Now I have never heard of whistleblowers being required to “register” in order to be protected. The idea of such a requirement should be pretty alarming to all Americans. Sometimes confidentiality is the best protection a whistleblower has. Unfortunately, neither my staff nor Chairman Leahy’s staff was able to learn more, because only about ten minutes into the briefing, the FBI abruptly walked out. FBI officials simply refused to discuss any whistleblower implications in its Insider Threat Program and left the room. These are clearly not the actions of an agency that is genuinely open to whistleblowers or whistleblower protection.

And yes, it’s equally troubling that the FBI insists that as long as someone “registers” as a whistleblower, the FBI will suddenly, magically agree to stop investigating them as a “threat.” We already know that’s almost certainly bullshit. The stories of Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou are both clear examples of whistleblowers, who then had the DOJ search through basically everything they’d ever done to try to concoct some sort of Espionage Act case against them. In both cases, the eventual charges were totally ridiculous and unrelated to the whistleblowing they had done, but clearly the only reason they had been investigated was because of their status as whistleblowers. Drake was charged with having a classified document, which was just a meeting agenda and was both improperly classified and then declassified soon after. Kiriakou was charged with revealing the name of a CIA operative to a reporter, where the person in question was already widely known to journalists as working for the CIA.

(Read the full article at Tech Dirt)

Privacy

Glass without the glasses: Google patents smart contact lens system with a CAMERA built in

By Mark Prigg
Daily Mail: April 14, 2014

Google has patented a smart contact lens that could see its Glass wearable computer fit inside a smart lens.

The firm has already developed a contact lens for diabetics analyses their tears, warning them if their glucose levels are low.

Now it has revealed plans for a lens with a camera built in – opening the possibility of its Glass system being shrunk down significantly, offering features such as ‘superzoom’ to wearers and even helping the blind see.

According to PatentBolt, the system could even be used to help the blind see.

‘For example, a blind person wearing Google’s contact lens with a built-in camera may be walking on a sidewalk and approaching an intersection,’ it says.

‘The analysis component of the contact lens can process the raw image data of the camera to determine processed image data indicating that the blind person is approaching intersection with a crosswalk and establish that there is a car approaching the intersection.’

The lens also has wireless capabilities allowing it to link to a smartphone, which can be used to process data and give the user audio commands.

Google also says the system will be able to detect faces, potentially allowing the blind to recognise people.

The firm has already developed a smart lens capable of measuring the glucose level of diabetics.

(Read the full article at Daily Mail)

Banksters

Yes, the SEC was colluding with banks on CDO prosecutions

By Felix Salmon
Reuters: April 9, 2014

Back in 2011, I asked whether the SEC was colluding with banks on CDO prosecutions. And now, thanks to an American Lawyer Freedom of Information Request, we have the answer: yes, they were.

This comes as little surprise: it beggared belief, after all, that every bank would end up being prosecuted for one and only one CDO. But now we have chapter and verse: the key precedent, it seems, was the first one, Goldman Sachs.

The SEC filed its case against Goldman and Tourre on April 16, 2010. Three days later Goldman reached out with a $500 million settlement offer, according to an email that Reisner sent Khuzami. Although that proposal was close to the final payment, it took another three months to announce a settlement. As Khuzami described to Kotz, Goldman wanted a global settlement that resolved not just the Abacus investigation but the SEC’s probes into roughly a dozen other Goldman CDOs.

Khuzami didn’t want to give Goldman that public victory. When the SEC and Goldman announced on July 16, 2010, that the investment bank would settle the Abac­us case for $550 million, the SEC said in a press release that the settlement “does not settle any other past, current or future SEC investigations against the firm.”

Khuzami was determined that Goldman’s payment only be linked to ABACUS. “This was not a $550 million settlement for 11 cases,” Khuzami told Kotz. “We may tell Goldman that we are concluding our investigations in these other matters without recommending charges, but that doesn’t mean we’re settling them. And that was an important point for us, because we didn’t want them out there saying, you know, they settled 12 CDO investigations for an average of $30 million each, and, you know, didn’t [Goldman] get a great deal.”

Yet in its statement on the Abacus settlement at the time, Goldman said that the SEC had concluded a review of other CDOs and did not anticipate recommending claims for now.

It’s quite impressive how quickly and accurately Goldman nailed the amount of money that it would have to pay the SEC to settle the case: when it took three months to come to the $550 million settlement, I for one assumed that Goldman had to be dragged kicking and screaming to that point. In fact, however, Goldman was happy to offer half a billion dollars right off the bat. The tough part of the negotiation was not over the Abacus fine — it was over the question of whether the SEC, with the Abacus prosecution successfully under its belt, would then go after Goldman for a dozen other deals which were functionally equivalent.

The answer was a clear no: Goldman might be equally culpable for 11 other deals, but the SEC quietly assured Goldman — but not the public at large — that none of those deals would result in any charges.

And with the Goldman deal now public knowledge, we can assume that the same nod-and-a-wink deal was struck with all the other one-and-only-one CDO bank prosecutions: Citigroup, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch (which evidently included Bank of America), Mizuho Securities, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, UBS. Add them all up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are 100 unprosecuted CDO deals out there, all of whom had victims just as deserving as the ones who got paid out on the prosecuted deals. Basically, there’s a CDO lottery, and, thanks to the way in which the SEC cozied up to the big banks, the average CDO investor has a very small chance of having won it.

As Khuzami says, if you look at them on a per-CDO basis, the big headline numbers suddenly become much more modest and affordable for Wall Street banks. So there’s a real scandal here: firstly, the SEC was not being fully honest with the public about the deals it was cutting. Secondly, the SEC failed to stand up for CDO investors it should have fought for. Thirdly, the SEC tried to make it look as though it was levying massive fines for single deals, when really the settlements were omnibus deals covering some unknown quantity of CDOs.

(read the full article at Reuters)

Health/Environment

Climate Change is Caused By Resource Plundering

Oil and gas sector now Canada’s biggest generator of greenhouse gases

By Will Campbell
The Canadian Press: April 12, 2014

TORONTO – An environmental analyst says the rise of oil and gas production as Canada’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions adds further weight to calls for the federal government to bring in long-promised regulations for the oil industry.

The Environment Canada report quietly released Friday reveals the energy sector has now surpassed transportation as the largest generator of the climate-change causing gases.

The report, covering the period from 1990 to 2012, states that oil and gas now account for one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse emissions, narrowly edging out transportation.

Analyst P.J. Partington with eco think-tank the Pembina Institute said the oil industry becoming Canada’s biggest source of emissions underscores the need for the Harper government to make good on a longstanding pledge to bring in rules cutting the oil patch’s climate impact.

“We can’t hide from the challenge of regulating that sector. If Canada’s going to play its role in the global fight against climate change there’s no avoiding that we need to have strong regulations for our oil and gas sector,” he said Saturday.

The country’s overall emissions were down by less than one per cent between 2011 and 2012, the most recent year available, largely due to reductions in electricity and manufacturing.

Partington said the drop was something of a surprise, given Environment Canada had predicted an uptick. But he said it’s too soon to say what direction the figure will go in the coming years.

Energy sector emissions have seen the biggest jump since 1990 — roughly 70 per cent — due entirely to crude oil and oilsands expansion, the report says. That’s more than twice the growth rate of transportation-related greenhouse gases in the same period.

(Read the full article at Winnipeg Free Press)

—
Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Geopolitics/War

CIA Director Held ‘Secret Consultations’ in Kiev

Russian Media Report CIA Director Held ‘Secret Consultations’ in Kiev

The Moscow Times: April, 13 2014

Russian news agencies reported Sunday that U.S. CIA director John Brennan had a secret meeting with Ukrainian officials in Kiev before they began operations against separatist forces that had taken over buildings in the country’s east.

Brennan landed in Ukraine on Saturday under an assumed name and held a “series of secret meetings” with the country’s “power bloc” Interfax reported, citing an unidentified official in the Ukrainian parliament. The unidentified official said that there were “unconfirmed reports” that the U.S. security official was behind the decision to use force in eastern Ukraine after pro-Russian separatist forces took control of the city of Slovyansk.

Ukrainian parliament Communist Party deputy Vladimir Golub told RIA Novosti that lawmakers were talking about the visit openly and opined that the Ukrainian Security Service had become a unit of the CIA.

(Read the full article at The Moscow Times)

—–
Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Health/Environment

Kitimat residents & Nak’azdli First Nation say ‘NO’ to Northern Gateway Pipeline

Kitimat residents vote ‘no’ on Northern Gateway

Robin Rowland
The Canadian Press: April 13, 2014

The residents of Kitimat, B.C. have voted against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project in a non-binding plebiscite.

The ballot count from Saturday’s vote was 1,793 opposed versus 1,278 who supported the multi-billion dollar project — a margin of 58.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent.

The $6.5-billion project would see two pipelines, one carrying oilsands’ bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat’s port, and a second carrying condensate — a form of natural gas used to dilute the bitumen — from Kitimat back to Alberta.

Kitimat would also be the site of a proposed two-berth marine terminal and tank farm to store the thick Alberta crude before it’s loaded onto tankers for shipment to Asia.

(read the full article at CTV)

Northern Gateway Pipeline Rejected By B.C. First Nation

By Dene Moore, The Canadian Press: April 11, 2014

A group of First Nations with territory covering a quarter of the route for the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline met with federal representatives Friday to officially reject the project.

Officials with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the National Energy Board and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans met with the four clans of the Yinka Dene in Fort St. James, and listened as dozens of elders, hereditary and elected chiefs said “No.”

“We do not, we will not, allow this pipeline,” Peter Erickson, a hereditary chief of the Nak’azdli First Nation, told the six federal bureaucrats.

“We’re going to send the message today to the federal government and to the company itself: their pipeline is dead. Under no circumstances will that proposal be allowed.

“Their pipeline is now a pipe dream.”

(read the full article at Huffington Post)

—-
Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Privacy

Obama Lets N.S.A. Exploit Some Internet Flaws, Officials Say

By David E. Sanger
NY Times: April 12, 2014

Stepping into a heated debate within the nation’s intelligence agencies, President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should — in most circumstances — reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday.

But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” the officials said, a loophole that is likely to allow the N.S.A. to continue to exploit security flaws both to crack encryption on the Internet and to design cyberweapons.

The White House has never publicly detailed Mr. Obama’s decision, which he made in January as he began a three-month review of recommendations by a presidential advisory committee on what to do in response to recent disclosures about the National Security Agency.

(Read the full article at NY Times)

—-
Alternative Free Press