Reflecting back on the H1N1 outbreak during the Michigan 2009 “MacRib Test”:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michigan/news.newsmain/article/1/0/1568739/Michigan.News/114.Michigan.Schools.Closed.by.%27Swine.Flu%27

114 Michigan schools have closed so far this school year [within less than a week], amid concerns that Swine Flu is spreading.

School officials across the state are seeing rising student absentee rates.

Martin Ackley is the spokesman for the State Department of Education. He says schools are reacting quickly to reports of H1N1.

Southwest Michigan by itself had more than half of all schools closed nationwide that week due to H1N1 aka swine flu. Despite that, there was barely a mention of Michigan being the “epicenter” (the word used by the CDC in local coverage) in the mainstream media. However, while Michigan schools were closed down and restaurants went empty that week, the MSM only reported school closings in distant countries like Iraq. But, let’s look back a week before the outbreak happened:

http://www.wwmt.com/articles/kalamazoo-1368197-margin-0in.html

The number of flu-like cases in a nine county region of southwest Michigan is nearly double what it was the year before. Experts say the high number of cases is due to H1N1. There have been 1,100 cases since the beginning of 2009.
 
Now, the first H1N1 vaccination clinic is operating in Kalamazoo.
 
The clinic is by invitation only, and first up was health care workers from around Kalamazoo County.

….

Most of those at the clinic Thursday [10-15-09] were given the flu mist, the shots are being saved for those who can’t get the mist because of other health concerns.
 
Among those at the clinic on Thursday were paramedics and public safety officers who are also first responders.

A few days later that area of Michigan became the CDC’s “epicenter” during the week of 10-19-09. Let’s move over to Detroit on the southeastern side of Michigan:

http://www.freep.com/article/20091016/FEATURES08/91016048/1319/Swine-flu-vaccine-arrives–fire-fighters-roll-up-sleeves

Firefighters and other emergency personnel today rolled up their sleeves and submitted their upper arms for the injectable vaccine at the Wayne County Department of Public Health’s administration building in Wayne, as officials repeatedly urged the public to get inoculated.

….

Authorities said they’ve received both injectable vaccine and nasal mist. The mist is now set aside for emergency preparedness and health professionals; the vaccine is being distributed — at least in the district covered by the Wayne County Department of Public Health — to targeted populations.

….

The Wayne County Health Department has made free shots available at the following locations…

Detroit is a major population center and has easy highway access (via interstate 94) to Kalamazoo, but Detroit schools stayed open. BTW, why would a major outbreak happen in a little rural area instead of one of the major population (incubation) centers nearby like Detroit, Chicago, or Indianapolis? Why did the outbreak never cross the state line south of Kalamazoo and enter rural northern Indiana?

In any case the article itself is a bit confusing: the first responders were getting shots, but later it said they’re supposed to get the mist. I guess it’s just a coincidence that the kids of Detroit where their first responders got shots didn’t get sick while the kids around Kalamazoo where their first responders got mist did get sick a week later.

Let’s move over to some other articles that got my attention on vaccines, resistance, and immunity:

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/700026

Unpublished Canadian data are raising concerns about whether it’s a good idea to get a seasonal flu shot this season.

Drawn from a series of studies from British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario, the data appear to suggest that people who got a seasonal flu shot last year are about twice as likely to catch swine flu as people who didn’t.

A scientific paper has been submitted to a journal and the lead authors – Dr. Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Dr. Gaston De Serres of Laval University – won’t speak to the media. Journals bar would-be authors from discussing their results publicly before they go through peer review.

That got my attention like a 2×4 to the face considering I received my first seasonal flu shot in 3 years in Fall 2008 and became sick with a very high fever for the first time in at least 5 years in June 2009. I would later find out this fever was during a time our state health officials stated that the only active virus roaming the region was H1N1. I guess it’s just another coincidence…

A number of influenza and infectious diseases experts know of but are unwilling to speak publicly about the paper. But several were quick to note that British and Australian researchers haven’t seen the phenomenon either. The lack of corroboration in other jurisdictions is “a red flag,” said one expert, who does not believe the findings are true.

Another flu expert who was willing to speak on the record said they do not make sense to him either.

“I cannot think of a good reason why this is biologically likely, especially since we have sufficient evidence now that … there is priming in the population by the way the vaccine is working,” said Dr. Arnold Monto, of the University of Michigan.

He was referring to the fact that studies of swine flu vaccine show a single dose induces a strong and likely protective response in teens and adults. That suggests humankind’s long exposure to seasonal H1N1 viruses has “primed” or awakened our immune systems to recognize the new virus and fight it off.

Dr. Donald Low, chief microbiologist at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, was reserving judgment on the findings. But he said this kind of effect of previous exposure raising the risk of future illness is seen in some diseases, like dengue fever.

“We don’t see that in flu,” Monto countered.

Unless there is a different sort of “priming” taking place. Or a mismatch. This next article is very important when considering vaccines and the concept of “cellular immunity”:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gJLYIRDvHWdvSLZTUQ_yymuF5rBg

Just when you thought the issue of seasonal and pandemic flu shots couldn’t get any more confusing, European researchers are questioning whether it makes sense to vaccinate little kids against seasonal flu.

The scientists, from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, argue preventing small children from being infected by – and developing immune responses to – seasonal flu viruses might make them more vulnerable when a flu pandemic rolls around.

Note: this is a different set of researchers than the previous article.

But the Dutch scientists, who don’t refer to the Canadian research in their article, say giving kids aged six months to 59 months flu vaccine prevents them from acquiring a broad immune response to flu viruses that can only be induced by infection.

Vaccines trigger development of antibodies to the proteins on the surface of flu viruses, proteins that change often to evade the immune system. But when you catch the flu, something called cellular immunity also kicks in. It teaches the body to recognize other parts of a flu virus; those parts don’t change as much from one virus subtype to another.

The next few paragraphs are extremely important. Read closely:

Without that cellular immunity, the Dutch researchers say, children who experience a pandemic could have more difficulty fighting off the new flu strain. They suggest this may explain why the majority of fatal cases of H5N1 avian influenza have occurred in children and young adults.

They also report that they tested the theory in mice, some of which were vaccinated against the H3N2 strain of flu and others of which were experimentally infected with the same virus.

The mice were then exposed to the highly lethal H5N1 virus. The vaccinated mice died but the mice that had been previously infected with H3N2 suffered milder disease.

….

The Dutch researchers, led by Dr. Guus Rimmelzwaan, say more research is needed to see if their theory is true.

But they also suggest young children who live in areas where H5N1 viruses are endemic in poultry should not be vaccinated against seasonal flu, because blocking the development of cross-protective immune responses in these kids could raise the risk they face if they become infected with H5N1.

I know we started off discussing H1N1 and ended up with H5N1, but this doesn’t change the concept of cellular immunity. This next article explores how parents are approaching the concept of building natural immunity instead of using vaccines:

http://www.thrivinghealthywomen.com/info/infoprint.asp?documentid=397

And although many pediatricians are readying stern lectures in support of vaccinating children, several in Southern California contacted by The Times acknowledged they have doubts about recommending a vaccine that is still in testing for all of their young patients.

“A significant proportion of our population don’t want to get it,” says Sherman Oaks pediatrician Mikayel Abramyan. “I don’t even know whether I will advocate for it right now.”

To date, notes Abramyan, who saw a fair amount of novel H1N1 over the summer, the illness has been mild, and many parents of the children he cares for “want them to get their immunity that way instead of a flu shot,” he says. While Abramyan says he rarely lets such preferences go unchallenged, “it’s a reasonable position, and I understand it on an individual level. . . . I understand where they’re coming from.”

….

“I haven’t seen enough evidence to show that swine flu is as deadly and as scary as it’s made out to be,” says Stuart-Nystrom, who last week was fighting a respiratory infection. Stuart-Nystrom thinks that media outlets have whipped up the threat in a bid to gain viewers. And “anything brought out by big business, by corporations, that makes me wary for sure. . . . I’m not sure they have our interests in mind.”

Nor is the Venice mother confident that the Food and Drug Administration can reliably assure the overall safety of the vaccine. Pointing to a recent spate of contaminated-food recalls, she said that the FDA’s relationship with the industries it regulates may be too close for the agency to operate effectively as an honest broker.

She also voiced the widely held belief that immunity acquired the natural way — through a child’s having caught an illness — is stronger and longer-lasting than that acquired by vaccination. That claim is much debated among physicians and infectious-disease specialists, with evidence falling on both sides of the debate.

….

“There’s so much information out there,” Stuart-Nystrom says. “The scary thing is, you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Since one paragraph in the above article mentioned a “debate” over the long-lasting effects of vaccination, I’d like to jump to another virus, the vaccines promoted, and their not-so-lasting protection. Here’s one link straight from the FDA:

http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm187048.htm

The FDA today approved Cervarix, a new vaccine to prevent cervical cancer and precancerous lesions caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) types 16 and 18. The vaccine is approved for use in girls and women ages 10 years through 25 years.

Genital HPV infections are the most common sexually-transmitted diseases in the United States, and HPV types 16 and 18 are the cause of about 70 percent of cervical cancers worldwide.

….

The primary clinical study for Cervarix included more than 18,000 women ages 15 years through 25 years in the United States and 11 other countries. Of these women, about 9,000 received Cervarix and 9,000 received Havrix, a licensed hepatitis A virus vaccine, as a control.

….

Studies also were performed to measure the immune response to Cervarix in girls ages 10 years through 14 years. Their immune response was similar to that of women ages 15 years through 25 years, indicating that the vaccine should have similar effectiveness in the 10 through 14 year age group.

The current data show that Cervarix provides protection for about 6.4 years, but additional information on the length of protection is forthcoming.

No vaccine is 100 percent effective, and Cervarix does not protect against HPV infections that an individual may already have at the time of vaccination, nor does Cervarix necessarily protect against those HPV types not in the vaccine.

Provides protection for 6.4 years against a virus which I’ve heard other people state that most healthy females will overcome on their own. But wait, what else is in this vaccine:

Cervarix contains the adjuvant ASO4. ASO4 is a combination of aluminum hydroxide and monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL) and is the first vaccine licensed by the FDA that includes MPL as an adjuvant. An adjuvant is a substance incorporated into a vaccine that enhances or directs the immune response of the vaccinated individual.

Little is known about how adjuvants really work and there is a lot of debate in the scientific community. However, every time I hear about a new adjuvant being injected into someone I can’t help but think this is just a modern version of snake oil. Let’s switch to a different HPV vaccine and some recent revelations from one of its former researchers:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews_investigates/main5253431.shtml

Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of the lead researchers for the Merck drug is speaking out about its risks, benefits and aggressive marketing.

Dr. Diane Harper says young girls and their parents should receive more complete warnings before receiving the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Dr. Harper helped design and carry out the Phase II and Phase III safety and effectiveness studies to get Gardasil approved, and authored many of the published, scholarly papers about it. She has been a paid speaker and consultant to Merck. It’s highly unusual for a researcher to publicly criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved.

Dr. Harper joins a number of consumer watchdogs, vaccine safety advocates, and parents who question the vaccine’s risk-versus-benefit profile. She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years.

This raises questions about the CDC’s recommendation that the series of shots be given to girls as young as 11-years old. “If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn’t last… we’ve put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit,” says Dr. Harper. “The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers, they are just postponed, unless the protection lasts for at least 15 years, and over 70% of all sexually active females of all ages are vaccinated.” She also says that enough serious side effects have been reported after Gardasil use that the vaccine could prove riskier than the cervical cancer it purports to prevent. Cervical cancer is usually entirely curable when detected early through normal Pap screenings.

I’m going wrap up this blog post and let you contemplate the “risk-versus-benefit” comment from Dr. Harper. It will be helpful for deeper thinking by putting that comment into context with the earlier articles on cellular immunity, the unintended consequences of vaccinating for weaker (or the wrong) viruses and how this will play into long term health. I will do some more posts on health care in the future. Thanks for reading today.

Defining a “MacRib Test” as used earlier in this post.

Luc Châtel, qui ne peut évidemment concevoir son portefeuille sans réforme, aurait dans l’idée de supprimer l’Histoire Géographie du corpus d’enseignements obligatoires en Terminale S.

Nous nous associons à « l’indignation » provoqué par cette « énième provocation » du gouvernement aux forces progressistes au corps enseignant dont « l’exaspération » ne manquera pas d’être à son comble. Le Ministre sera responsable, cela va de soi, de tous les débordements que ses attaques répétées à « l’intelligence » ne pourront manquer de causer.

Nous dénonçons donc avec vigueur la politique mise en place par ce pouvoir à la solde du capital, désireux avant tout de rompre les dernières digues républicaines qui protégeaient le citoyen du danger fasciste au ventre toujours fécond et de l’insidieuse vulgate néolibérale.

L’abolition de l’enseignement des glorieuses heures de notre République et l’oubli des plus sombres nous laissent craindre un recul sans précédent de nos libertés plurielles.

N’oublions jamais que notre pays, vieux de 220 ans, est né de la prise en main de leur destinée de notre peuple, opprimé depuis l’aube des temps par le joug aristo-clérical.

N’oublions jamais nos glorieux aînés qui ont tant œuvré pour la diversité qui fonde le ciment de notre vivre-ensemble : Robespierre, Auguste Blanqui, Louise Michel, Maurice Thorez, Daniel Cohn-Bendit (au début) et François Mitterrand (à la fin).

Prenons garde que ne succède pas à ces coups de boutoir une tentative de restauration révisionniste de l’enseignement de l’Histoire prérévolutionnaire avec comme corolaire la réhabilitation des sociaux-traîtres ayant échappé au tribunal de la Haye, de Clovis à Richelieu en passant par Beaudouin Ier de Jérusalem et Saint Louis.

Tipo de preso: de conciencia (+)

Filiación Política: Ninguna (+)

Caso: Foro del Agua 2006 (+)

Lugar de detención: Distrito Federal (+)

Penal en que se encuentra: Reclusorio Norte-DF (+)

Status: Preso (+)

Tipo de delitos imputados Fuero federal (+)

Edad: (número de años) 23

Ocupación: Estudiante de bachillerato, trabajador

Filiación política: (Partido u organización, Nombre, Siglas) Ninguna

Estado Civil: Unión libre

Número de dependientes económicos: 1

Fecha de detención: (dd-mm-aaaa) 23-11-2009 Hora: 12:00 Lugar: Se desconoce

Corporación a la que pertenece quienes lo detuvieron: Policía Ministerial

Emmanuel Hernández Hernández era estudiante de la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria # 8 de la UNAM en el 2006, formaba parte del colectivo estudiantil de dicho plantel. Participó activamente en distintas movilizaciones entre ellas cabe resaltar la realizada en el IV Foro del agua en marzo del 2006. Motivo por el cual fue detenido en los torniquetes de la estación del metro Insurgentes junto con otros compañeros de distintas escuelas de la UNAM, los cuales fueron acusados de diversos delitos. El proceso legal llevado a cabo en su contra fue irregular, ya que no había pruebas que lo relacionaran con dichos delitos, por lo que es liberado bajo proceso al día siguiente. Para Emmanuel la situación económica y familiar por la que atravesaba en esos momentos era complicada ya que su madre se encontraba delicada de salud y desafortunadamente fallece a los pocos meses de haber empezado el proceso judicial, quedando a cargo de su hermano que es menor de edad, por lo que Emmanuel no tenía los recursos económicos suficientes para cubrir los gastos del amparo, esta situación le obliga a dejar la escuela y empezar a trabajar, en la actualidad estudia la preparatoria abierta y trabaja al mismo tiempo. Sobre su situación judicial cabe resaltar que en al misma causa penal estaban otros estudiantes, los cuales fueron absueltos de los cargos de los que se les acusaba, siendo Emmanuel el único al cuál se le sigue un proceso judicial que inicia tres años despúes con su detención.

OTRAS ACCIONES

• Cita el martes 24 de noviembre afuera del Juzgado primero de distrito con sede en el Reclusorio Norte (Estación La raza de la línea 3, tomar microbús que va a Reclusorio, Cuautepec)

Reunión URGENTE: Miércoles 25 de noviembre, 16:00 para coordinar las acciones por su libertad (Auditorio Che Guevara-Facultad de Filosofía y Letras)

Via HSToday:

by Anthony L. Kimery

‘Argues for vaccination as the one sure way to combat this disease before it strikes’

Four patients at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, at least five persons in a hospital in Wales, and a father in Quebec, Canada have become infected with an apparently mutated strain of H1N1 that is resistant to Tamiflu (oseltamivir), the leading antiviral of choice to treat influenza in lieu of having a vaccine.

Meanwhile, Norwegian health authorities reported a potentially significant mutation in H1N1 that could be responsible for the severest symptoms in those infected by the strain – especially persons most at risk to the virus – which authorities are monitoring carefully because of concerns that it, too, might become resistant to Tamiflu, and, possibly, other antivirals if they become as widely administered as oseltamivir.

So I forgot that I have a meeting tonight, tomorrow night, and then Wednesday I head north for the weekend. So my posts will be short and sweet. I don’t think you will see much from me Wed – Thur unless I have an inspiration of some sort. Perhaps I will throw up a couple of my favorite videos for you to munch on. I will try to do a post tomorrow night, but like I said I have a meeting that usually lasts till about 10 pm AK time or 0200 hrs. New York time.

I expected an up day today, but I did not expect a mega up day like we had. I did not expect the DOW to make a new high, but it sure did. Now, I know this is not a big deal, or perhaps it is, but it is things like this that irritate me. It is either blatant ignorance or blatant propaganda, but none-the-less, throughout the day I saw this headline popping up.

Now if am not mistaken( I am not) , the housing numbers came out at 10 am mkt. time. So let’s look at a thirty minute chart:

The housing news came out at the high of the day, I know I was watching. The mkt. pretty much sold off from there, despite the “great” housing numbers. Now what does this have to do with all the tea in China? Well it does affect sentiment, not on us traders, but on the headliners, the people who read just headlines or watch Letterman and Leno for their news; Basically, overall sentiment. I don’t think it is a huge deal, just one of those little irritants that we all have, or maybe it is just me. Anyway, one thing it does show is that this mkt. continues, for the most part, to rally on bad news and sell on good news. On to some real “news”:

The VIX dropped to another low, despite me thinking that the bottom trend would hold. However, check out that support line I drew last week, it held up rear pretty. We could easily see a bounce off of this support.

This is a weekly chart of the DOW. I put it on here because it just so happened to rally right into my down trend line that started in Oct of 07. This would be another good area for some resistance, the next beyond this will be over 11, 000, but looking at the other indices, I don’t think we are headed there just yet.

Again, as I said in the video, I expected an up day today, just not this much up. However, the DOW, despite being the lowest of the three percentage wise, seemed a little stronger to me today. It was the only one that made a new high. You can see the SPX got close, but pulled back. In the note above, I point out that we had a similar day in about the same place in all these moves. In fact, the last move down, we actually made a new high, but then sold off strong the rest of the day closing lower.

The NAS rallied right into resistance in the form of the bottom of our short-term up trend. We ended the day selling off and leaving a decent top wick. Further, we now have another gap that will desire to be filled.

The UUP broke down again with an almost exact doji star as last week. That star lead to a nice gap up, and I will be looking for more of the same here.

The TLT found some support on the 20 ma, but is beneath a weak down trend line. It may make a move to fill that gap, but it looks like it is wanting to bounce from here. Again, the 200 ma looms overhead.

Most of the sectors were running high into resistance, but the XBI, seen here, found some support on the 200 ma. Further, v has been declining into this down move. However, I would have liked to have seen a white candle here today. Overall, this looks like a potential inverse head and shoulders if this thing bounces. If the 200 ma gives way, this should be a great short.

Going against my trusty Stock Almanac, I entered a couple of Jan put positions today. This was one of them. I like a lot about this chart and about today’s action. I will use yesterday’s high as my stop.

The other one was from a chart I posted a few days ago. I like this because it is completely different that WSM in that it is not at a high but in a down trend with a mini bear flag breaking support. I think we may stall out on the 200 ma, but I will be tempted to hold and see if it gives way.

In closing: Most of the charts I looked at tonight were against some type of resistance, including most sectors. As expected v is low, we have a lot more news coming out Tues and Wed, and that is a recipe for volatility. History says we will likely go up into Thanksgiving, but the charts seem to be saying else wise to me. I am going with the charts. Trade well and prosper. AKOT

I will post more charts on TWITTER.

It’s a fools game. It always has been.

Someone, probably you, complains about the latest outrage and recommends a call to action. The nearest self-appointed sage—and there always is one—rolls his or her eyes and assumes and indulgent smile. A kindly hand is placed on your shoulder and you’re assured, “This too shall pass.”

This ancient aphorism flies in the face of common sense in that it bizarrely urges the listener to inaction. The message is clear; something so outrageous is clearly an aberration and will burn itself out in due time. Your distress at the situation is unwarranted and foolish. Any effort on your part to oppose the outrage would be a waste of your time and cause unnecessary distress to yourself and, far more importantly, to those around you.

Waiting for things to pass is no longer an option. In fact, it never was. Apathy is not good strategy. A good place to be more proactive is to no longer stew in silent frustration when the local pseudo-sage babbles insipid platitudes to the nodding hordes. When the sage announces that the outrage will pass, call them out. Say, “No, it won’t.” If you’re challenged, remind those around you of the “temporary” income tax levied so long ago.

This is part 7, an interlude in the short story of personal exploration and development by one new to the daily employment of Gmail, long resisted, long desired, and eventually brought to conversion by an Android.

For before I lay out my thoughts on what Google should consider putting on their ‘Should Do’ list, I thought I would share some of the great off-blog thoughts and advice from others who have been or may some day be converted to Gmail — more than a few with whom I agree.

What Other’s See

Posted by Antoine Bonnin

There is so much to do, I’m not sure where to start .

Easy ones could be to allow folder creation (instead of labels) and an option to sort emails in your inbox (by dates, name, etc).

It would also be great to use Ajax instead of refreshing the page when opening an email, the email content would appear as others slide down (tough one to explain without an image).

Posted by Ilana Schwartz

Top 3 wish list for gmail:
1. Preview pane
2. Tabs for inbox, email in progress, other folders. 
3. Sort by (as mentioned)

Posted by Ilana Schwartz

Some are required, by law, to save information and folders seems to be easier conceptually. It does mirror how info is saved to an os.

I could do without folders, but I think that Gmail lacks convenience without preview pane and a variety of sorting methods.

But maybe I’m taking too small a view – I’m quite interested in these fundamental changes you would make…?

Posted by Eric Sunderhaus

Further mirror functionality in Outlook that users have come to rely on.

Such as..
1. Allow screen capture function similar to Outlook.

"Window Key" + "Print Screen"
"Control + V"

2. Allow users to easily change default email in operating system from Outlook to Gmail so that when applications trigger an email message they don’t immediately open Outlook; but rather Gmail.

Posted by Antoine Bonnin

I agree with llana, preview pane would be a nice feature, so you can easily go through each emails without getting lost in the confusing "email UI".

The "search" is so not user-friendly, you can tell Gmail was created by engineers for engineers

Posted by Luca Candela

I think Gmail is ripe for a serious overhaul… most of the features and settings aren’t easily findable, the legibility of pretty much all text is poor, the interface doesn’t make very good use of big screens…

In general I see a lot of space for improvement, although I’m a fanatic of the service.

Posted by Roberto Champney

Luca, has a point. Gmail’s has some serious usability problems. I can’t ever remember where things are and even to create a new message it is hard to find the function (even though it is right there in front of you; but some genius managed to make it almost invisible). I use it as backup and for its calendar sharing feature, that’s about it.

I like the thread approach, but things can get scary after a few threads are going on. Also the lack of a "drag ‘n drop" capability makes it more a hassle than good all outlook (try attaching 5 files and you get my point)…

good luck…

Posted by David Garrett

I think step 1 should be more from a business requirements standpoint than a user experience solution. In other words, they need to accommodate all the services that Hotmail and others provide, such as calendar tools but, at the same time, include some of their own unique tools and link tightly with Maps, YouTube, etc. and seriously consider how those services can play into the evolution of gmail.

Posted by Luca Candela

Matt, I STRONGLY disagree with you. Gmail doesn’t need to be beautiful but needs to get better at being usable. Right now it’s downright distracting. Live mail is way better at letting you know instantly what is what and what’s the purpose of everything.

"If they do it that way there’s a good reason for it" it’s the kind of mentality that keeps progress from doing its job. I grew up in a small town surrounded by farmland, and it’s the kind of rationale old farmers would come up with when they had no better way of arguing against some improvement or change in old ways of doing something.

Gmail is an awesome product that was put together by people worried about a few things but definitely not about making it easy to use. It would take very little to make it a better product and I for one wouldn’t miss the old interface AT ALL.

In fact, you can check some interesting experiments in skinning with the style plugin for firefox, if you can’t find it just let me know and I’ll give you the links.

Posted by Vera Lugovskaya

SORTING
The absence of sorting was a big issue for me. I needed to be able to sort by Sender. After a while I found "Filter". It kinda solved my problem but column sorting would improve usability a lot.

PRINT
Another detail which was bothering me was "Print All" when I needed to print one message from a thread. It seems recently they added "Print" to message features which prints one message though I still feel that "Print All" should be a second choice in the Message window.

LABELS VS. FOLDERS
I agree that labels are limited. Besides they have "Tree" widget in their GWT library. I wonder I they don’t use it in GMail.

Posted by Matt Gist

Gmail should keep pegging away as is. People should get used to the fact that something like a web-based email client should be highly-customizable and ever changing.

Gmail might not be beautiful, but it wouldn’t be designed the way it is without exhausted research and data to support why it is design the way it is.

If people need acclimating, then the best thing would be tutorials and such.

Posted by Bob Stoneburner

Actually what Google is doing is probally the best strategy. Provide Android as an open source platform with multiple communication options in a single client, (email, online presence, schedualing, video conferencing, SMS, ect). Get traditional Microsoft OEMS to build smart phones on your mobile platform. Ultimately cost and level of integration in the cloud (with mobile being a primary access point) will drive adoption of which email system users select.

The Next

First converted to a fan of Android, the platform, then converted to a fan of Gmail, too. I resisted the Android, and succumbed. I, for much longer, both longed for and resisted the conversion to Gmail. Through all of this, despite the long path already journeyed, there remain many more steps to walk, specific steps that those overseers of Gmail can take to further enlighten the experience of ones as of now converted as well as those yet to be. But, that, my friends, that part of this short story, I will save for next week.

Subscribe now (click here) to make sure you don’t miss any part of this series exploring the eventual adoption of Gmail in one’s daily life, by one once thoroughly addicted to, dependent on, the primarily client-based solution of Microsoft’s Outlook,

what brought about this conversion, (1) (2)
why it took so long, and (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
what should be done to encourage greater Gmail adoption. (8)

Enjoy & Tweet!

Jeremy Horn 
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Le députés PS et président de la région PACA, Michel Vauzelle, a annoncé qu’il déposerait début décembre un texte au Conseil constitutionnel pour dénoncer l’inconstitutionnalité du projet de réforme sur les collectivités territoriales.
“Le 2 décembre, en souvenir du coup d’Etat, des Marseillais apporteront un avertissement des élus locaux pour attirer l’attention sur l’inconstitutionnalité d’un certain nombre de projets avancés par la président de la République”, a déclaré le président de la région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur.
“En matière de démocratie nationale, des articles de la Constitution ne sont pas respectés”, a-t-il dit, se référant notamment à l’article 1, selon lequel l’organisation de la République est décentralisée. “Or avec la réforme, on fait une recentralisation”, estime M. Vauzelle.
M. Vauzelle dénonce également l’atteinte portée selon lui à l’article 72 relatif à la libre administration des collectivités par des conseillers élus. “Si elle s’administrent librement, c’est qu’elles ont une compétence générale”.
“L’histoire des millefeuilles, employée par les partisans de cette réforme, c’est insupportable! Sur le plan de la démocratie et de la bonne gestion du territoire, la région est une collectivité indispensable”, a plaidé M. Vauzelle, dénonçant une attitude “mensongère et malhonnête” du gouvernement qui “nous dit que les collectivités locales seraient responsables du déficit de la Nation et jetteraient l’argent par dessus les poches”.
Fin février, M. Vauzelle a lancé une pétition en ligne en faveur d’une proposition de loi constitutionnelle confortant les régions et le principe de l’autonomie des collectivités locales. Déjà 400.000 signatures ont été recueillies, selon lui.
Cette proposition de loi serait destinée à “inscrire dans la Constitution la déclinaison du préambule de la constitution de 1946 et du programme du Conseil national de la résistance sur les services publics et des articles confortant le rôle de la région et l’autonomie de gestion des collectivités locales”, selon M. Vauzelle.

Source : AFP

So many people I work with are taking totally the wrong approach to fat loss and getting lean physiques.

Cardio, cardio and more cardio seems to be the answer for most people. But in reality building lean muscle is the number 1 most important factor in anyone’s fat loss journey.

The more lean muscle you have the faster you metabolism works and the quicker you burn fat. It’s really is that simple! Muscle burns fat super-efficiently.

But please don’t think building lean muscle means you are going to have great big muscles and look like bodybuilders. YOU WON’T! This won’t happen ladies, please believe me when I say that.

Doing weights in the gym is one way of achieving this, but by no means the only way. You can do resistance exercises at home without any equipment whatsoever that will build lean muscle. Search the site and click  the link at he bottom of the page for examples of how.

Today’s Takeaway – Building Lean Muscle = Fat Loss. Simple.

To grab your copy of Rob’s Free Report ‘Cheat’s Guide to Fat Burning From Home – Simple 5 Step Plan,’ plus 2 other great free gifts, click here; ‘www.homeworkoutsuccess.com/free-report.’

The Real Global Warming Disaster By Christopher Booker

Daily Mail | Nov 23, 2009

By Christopher Booker

Just imagine if we learned we were about to be landed with the biggest bill in the history of the world – simply on the say-so of a group of scientists. Would we not want to be absolutely sure that those scientists were 100 per cent dependable in what they were saying?

Should we not then be extremely worried – and even very angry – if it emerged that those scientists had been conspiring among themselves to fiddle the evidence for what they were telling us?

This is the extraordinary position in which we find ourselves thanks to news reported in Saturday’s Daily Mail which has raised huge question marks over the reliability of the science behind the theory of global warming.

Hundreds of emails leaked from the internal computer system of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia show how a small group of highly influential senior British and U.S. scientists have for years been secretly discussing ways in which their evidence could be manipulated to make the threat posed by global warming sound much worse than it is.

To place the significance of these revelations into context, let us recall how exactly a year ago, Parliament passed, virtually unopposed, what was far and away the most expensive new law ever put before it. On the Government’s own figures, the Climate Change Act is going to cost Britain £18 billion a year – that’s £720 for every household in the country – every year from now until 2050.

We shall be paying this through soaring ‘green taxes’ on everything from air travel to the £3,300 tax being proposed on each new car; through rocketing fuel bills to subsidise thousands more wind turbines and to pay for removing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power stations.

In fact, the true cost of the act, if complied with to the letter, would certainly be far higher, because what it lays down is that, over the next 40 years, we must cut our emissions of carbon dioxide by over 80 per cent.

Pretty well every aspect of our lives in today’s industrialised society involves emitting carbon dioxide – and short of some technological revolution as yet undreamed of, the only way we could meet that target would be to close almost every part of our economy. Yet, astonishingly, scarcely a single MP even questioned the need for such a law; only three voted against it.

I recently published a book on what I have no hesitation in calling the most alarming story I have ever reported in all my years as a journalist.

This is the story of how the belief that the world has to fight the threat of global warming has crept to the top of the political agenda, to the point where, not just in Britain but across the world, governments are solemnly discussing by far the most costly series of measures any bunch of politicians has proposed.

This is what they will all be discussing at next month’s great UN conference, when 20,000 politicians, officials, scientists and environmental activists from all over the world gather in Copenhagen to discuss a new treaty to decide just what measures we shall all have to accept to keep the supposed threat of global warming at bay.

We all know the basic thesis: that thanks to mankind burning fossil fuels, the world’s temperatures are hurtling upwards, and that unless the most drastic action is taken, we can look forward to an unprecedented global catastrophe – droughts, hurricanes, killer heatwaves, melting icecaps, sea levels rising to the point where many of the world’s major cities are submerged.

All this is what has been predicted by the expensive computer models relied on by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), which the politicians tell us we must trust as the ultimate source of authority on the future of the world’s climate.

On every side we are told that ‘the science is settled’, that ‘2,500 of the world’s top climate scientists’ agree that these terrifying predictions will all come true unless we take the most drastic action. So carried away have they all been by this belief that scarcely a single politician dares question it.

Yet the oddest thing which has become increasingly evident in the past year or two is the fact that almost none of these things is happening, certainly not in the way those computer models have been predicting. Although carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, temperatures have not been rising in the way the computer models all agree they should have done.

In the past decade, the overall trend of temperatures has been not upwards, but down.

The hard evidence tells us that there have actually been fewer major droughts, hurricanes and heatwaves in recent years than there were in earlier decades.

There is no less ice at the Earth’s poles today than there was 30 years ago. Sea levels may have been rising very slowly, but no faster than they have been for 200 years.

In other words, as a growing army of genuine experts across the world has been trying to tell us, there is not a single item on the list of apocalyptic predictions we have been fed for so long by the IPCC and the likes of Al Gore which is not being called into question by what is actually happening to the world’s climate.

The scientists who have been challenging almost every aspect of the official theory on global warming have ranged from world-ranking physicists such as Professor Richard Lindzen, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professors Will Happer and Freeman Dyson of Princeton University, to 700 scientists of many disciplines.

These include Nobel Prize-winners and former contributors to the IPCC, who signed a ‘minority report’ of the U.S. Senate’s environment committee.

It is beginning to look as though the panic over global warming, which has our politicians so in its grip, may have been no more than a colossal scare story – to line up alongside all those other scares which have raced in and out of the headlines in recent decades, such as the ‘Millennium Bug’, which at midnight on December 31, 1999, was going to crash the world’s computers.

So the real question which arises from this most terrifying of all scare scenarios is: why did the world’s politicians get swept along by it?

One of the more suspicious features of the man-made global warming theory is precisely this extraordinary pressure, which has been built up to insist the evidence for it is so overwhelming that it is a moral crime to question it.

For several years, anyone daring to doubt the theory – not least some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists – has been vilified as a ‘denier’, to be compared with those who try to deny the historical reality of Hitler’s Holocaust.

Al Gore was one of the first to condemn as ‘flat earthers’ anyone who was sceptical of his reckless scaremongering, likening such people to the cranks who believe the Moon landings were all somehow ‘faked on a movie lot in Arizona’ (delightfully, among the scientists who have come out as ‘climate sceptics’ are two of the U.S. astronauts who did land on the Moon, Dr Buzz Aldrin and Dr Jack Schmitt).

In the scientific world, notably in the U.S. and Europe, it has long been a major scandal that those daring to doubt the official orthodoxy on global warming face ostracism from their academic colleagues, have had research funding withdrawn and have not been allowed to publish their papers in the leading scientific journals.

But equally suspicious has been the way the advocates of the warming orthodoxy have been repeatedly shown to have fiddled the scientific evidence being used to promote it.

The most notorious example of this was the so-called ‘hockey stick’ graph, which for years was brandished to show that, after flat-lining for 1,000 years, global temperatures had suddenly soared upwards in the late 20th century to levels never known before in recorded history.

The hockey stick was used by the IPCC and Gore as the supreme icon of their cause. Then, two statisticians revealed that the graph had been created by a computer model programmed to produce hockey stick shapes whatever data were fed into it.

And now come these leaked emails showing that the very scientists who were responsible for championing the hockey stick – all at the heart of the IPCC establishment – have been regularly discussing how the evidence could be manipulated to promote their cause.

The greatest myth of all in this story is the claim that the succession of alarmist reports produced by the IPCC represents a ‘consensus’ of the views of ‘2,500 of the world’s top climate scientists’.

In every way, this is wildly misleading. The vast majority of those who contribute to those IPCC reports are not climate scientists. Many are not scientists at all, but economists or sociologists – even just environmental activists with no scientific qualifications whatever.

The IPCC was never intended to be an impartial body, weighing the evidence for and against man-made global warming and coming up with objective conclusions.

It was set up by a small group of scientists already so firmly committed to the belief in ‘human-induced climate change’ that they were not prepared to examine any evidence which contradicted it.

A detailed study of the contributors to the most recent IPCC report has shown that the number of scientists responsible for the key chapter on the extent and causes of global warming – on which everything else in the report depended – was not 2,500, but barely 50.

Almost all this handful of scientists were firmly committed to the official view on global warming before they were appointed – and they include those whose leaked emails have now created a shock wave running around the world.

Tellingly, what they also all have in common is that their findings are based on computer models programmed to assume the chief cause of global warming is the rise in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

It is precisely this assumption which more than anything else has been called into question by the fact that global temperatures have not been continuing to rise as the computer models insisted they should.

Even some of the most committed scientific supporters of the global warming theory now admit the warming process has come to a halt – although they insist that in a decade or two it will re- emerge again stronger than ever.

The fact remains that the models on which the whole global warming panic was based have been proved dismally wrong, suggesting that the theory on which they were programmed may itself have been fundamentally flawed.

Yet on this basis, the world’s politicians, led by our own in Britain, are nevertheless proposing the most damaging measures ever put forward in history – cuts in carbon emission which, if implemented, would plunge our world back into the Dark Ages – to meet a crisis which it now seems was never going to happen anyway.

Before it is too late, we must insist our politicians re- examine the increasingly shaky scientific case on which all those proposals are based.

For nearly 20 years, from Al Gore to President Obama, they have been intoning to us that ‘the science is settled’. But as ever more scientists from outside the IPCC’s self- selected ‘magic circle’ now maintain, it has never been more obvious that this simply isn’t true.

No one has put this better than Professor Lindzen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, when he wrote: ‘Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st-century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections contemplated a roll-back of the industrial age.’

With the entire future of our civilisation at stake, it is no longer good enough for our politicians just to shout ‘deniers’ and ‘flat earthers’ at all those genuinely expert scientists now begging them to look properly at the evidence. They must be prepared to listen – and, for the sake of our planet, to think again.

German scientists experimented with frogs centuries ago, proving that if the temperature of water where a frog is submerged is gradually increased, the frog will be virtually cooked, and dies in the water it slowly came to accept despite the alarming increase in stifling heat. If, however, a frog is faced with a sudden volume of hot water, that frog will jump and save its retched life. That story came to my mind as I read the headlines of Lebanese newspapers online today as they covered the independence day celebrations and military parade. I had to smile sadly as I read about our so called independence.

What the country is celebrating, as it did since 1945, is independence from French colonial rule. Since then, the country underwent a Palestinian uprising to take over the state, Israeli invasions, various episodes of civil strife, Israeli occupation, Syrian occupation, and now Iranian occupation by proxy. Still we celebrate, a military parade by an army having less stature and arms than the militia armed by the Persians that operate a resistance on demand that takes orders from Syria and Iran. Decisions of war and peace are taken by the mercenary militia independently of the will of the Lebanese government and its citizens. The hapless citizens’ role in the resistance adventures is to die, be maimed and lose their homes and sources of income, and the government’s role is to negotiate a cease fire by begging the international community to pressure Israel to stop bombing the country, and to later beg for funds from the international community to rebuild, reconstruct, fix the economy, and resettle the displaced (who mostly vote for Hizbollah who started the war in the first place). Then that same government is blamed for not rebuilding quickly enough, while the billions that Nasrallah, the leader of the militia, avowed to possessing as a holy gift from Iran – in front of TV cameras – are spent on getting more arms, enlarging and training the militia to make more wars when it suits Iran and Syria’s agendas and political maneuvering. So, yes, independence.

Frogs will stay in that slowly boiling water, getting used to their environment, accepting the way things are, unless there was a jolt. That jolt for Lebanon came on Valentine’s Day 2005. On that day, a sudden infusion of boiling water was dumped in our Lebanese pot, and my country frog-men and -women jumped. They jumped so high, that one of their problems, their most intractable one for the past thirty years, was suddenly solved. The majority of Lebanese felt, rightly or wrongly, that the Syrians went too far with the killing of the ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon, the ex-minister of economy Basil Fuleihan and the people who died with them as a result of the terrorist attack that day. Two million people took to the streets of Beirut, squarely blaming Syria for the terrorist attack, and pressured the International Community to help them rid their country of an oppressive military presence that they have endured for decades. The one time that they united, with one voice, things seemed to work. They jumped.

Since then, Syria and Iran have gone back to the slow but methodic boiling of the Lebanese frog pot. Things are happening so gradually, as they did during the Syrian occupation, that people are back again to their state of stupor, accepting their impending doom while enjoying the dip. Recently a friend told me that we have to be somewhat optimistic when looking at the Lebanese independence that I was questioning. He said that we needed to look at the positive 10% of what is happening, or else we would be too depressed. It is precisely that sentiment of looking at what is going well that is blinding many Lebanese to the overwhelmingly existential catastrophe that is slowly looming over the country. The temperature is slowly rising. We are accepting more and more outrageous practices with the hope of saving the country and what is left of our economy.

Here is a wake up call: There will be nothing worth saving if the country is lost. Not many people seem to be seeing the writing on the wall. As long as there is “Sky Bar” and the nightspots, going out, good food, and plastic surgery to look good and go out to listen to the hundreds of new singers and performers who dot the night scene with their plastic made up faces, the Lebanese are in a kind of coma. I remember that collective feeling when I lived in Lebanon. It’s okay, as long as we make a living, go to parties, and send our fresh graduates around the world to look for jobs and send back remittances, it’s better than an all out war threatened by the Syrians that keep reminding us that they can break the country on our heads. So we cower in the corner, accept the Syrian and Hizbollah reality, and make do with what we have.

Our own President, not too surprisingly-as he is seen by many as a Syrian invention- announced out of the blue recently that Syria and Iran are not interfering in Lebanon. Hang on a minute, where does our President live? If the daily interference and the existence of, um, Hizbollah was something that he didn’t know, it’s a disaster, and if he knows the obvious and glaring truth and is saying that to win points with the forces interfering in the country, it is a bigger disaster. Whatever the reasoning, I think we have ourselves a frog King.

The Syrians have been slowly increasing our level of tolerance of what interference we would collectively accept as a nation since they orchestrated their military advent into Lebanon in 1976. They never acknowledged our independence and have been working methodically to subjugate our country to annex it, with its wealth, water, shore and its people. We are a prime piece of real estate after all. The Syrians blame Lebanon being severed from Syria (although they fail to note that there was no country called Syria at the time) on Sykes-Picot, an agreement between Colonial France and England that divided the loots of land gained after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and created Lebanon and Syria as separate entities. The Syrian selective memory neglects to note that Lebanon had a separate and quite distinct identity since the time of the first civilizations that settled in the region, it was mentioned in the Bible several times, it had a separate form of government under the rule of the Emirs during the Ottoman Empire’s four-century rule, and under the French mandate, we had our “Greater Lebanon” border declared by General Gouraud in 1920 to give us our borders of today. Since that time Syria has carried a campaign of divide and rule, allegedly assassinating whoever threatened to unite the country, as well as waging a military campaign to occupy our land which it did from 1976 to 2005.

The only setback in this long Syrian campaign came when Rafiq Hariri, the builder of after war Lebanon was assassinated under Syrian occupation. Since that date, a steady war was again waged to marginalize the independence movement, March 14th (the day in 2005 when the great majority of resident Lebanese took to the streets to feel and express the national dignity that evaded them for decades under Syrian hegemony). The leaders of March 14th were targeted with assassinations, one by one they perished either by hits by ghost killers or torn to bit by explosives. Explosions were also planted in different parts of the country, especially in March 14-strong areas, Hizbollah started playing the Shi’a card and pulling ministers from the government to claim that it was no longer legitimate without one sect being represented (replacement Shi’ite ministers not belonging to Hizbollah were threatened physically by fatwas being issued that stopped them short of taking part in the government). Then Syria allegedly orchestrated the Nahr el Bared Palestinian camp battle, resulting in civilian casualties as well as the marked killing a large number of Lebanese army soldiers in the process. Soon after that, other Palestinian camps under Syria’s control started showing signs of unrest.

Syria at various stages closed the border with Lebanon, causing severe disruptions to the economic goods and trade movement and claimed that Al-Qaeda was entrenched in North Lebanon and threatened to invade the country. All this time, the International Tribunal for Lebanon to investigate and try the perpetrators of the terrorist attack of February 14th 2005 was going forward with a snail pace in a tug of war game between the Bush administration and the Syrian regime, a stand off that was eventually won by the Syrians by virtue of the very nature of their regime, a family dictatorship which stays in power unchallenged and waits out adversary Western administrations to change as they tend to do in democracies. That happened in the case of Chirac and Bush. Syria then proceeded to instruct its proxies to close the downtown Beirut area, a primary source of income for thousands and the pride and joy of the Beirutis in particular, who were mostly Sunnis and Christians, and while Hizbollah went on what they claimed was a miscalculated unilateral act of war against Israel at Iran’s behest in 2006, Syria was secretly negotiating peace with Israel at the same time as Lebanese children were torn to bits and Lebanese infrastructure was being vaporized by Israeli plane raids.

Much to Syria’s frustration, the independence movement still showed no signs of abetting, despite veering the mercurial General Aoun into Hizbollah’s lair by promising the weak man the presidency, and despite the failed tent city that brought downtown Beirut to a standstill. The Syrians then instructed their agents in Lebanon to attack the two moslem factions of March 14, the Sunnis and the Druze. The military aggression on the Capital and the Druze mountain served to break the resolve of Jumblatt and painted Saad Hariri in a corner. An armed militia stronger than the army had its hand on their throats and they were not armed to protect themselves, nor could they depend on the army to protect them. Hizbollah had already neutralized the army by shooting down a helicopter flying over hizbollah areas, and demanded that the army officers intervening in an armed altercation in the Shiyah area started by Hizbollah be tried and put in jail. The disastrous Doha accord ensued which gave Hizbollah the obstructing third in the government, setting a dangerous precedent in quasi-democratic Lebanon. The parliamentary elections of last June gave a clear win to the independence movement, again to be reversed by forcing the Prime Minister to form a coalition government with Hizbollah and their allies as a result of their veiled and direct threats of going back to May 2008, the date their militia attacked civilians in Beirut and the mountains.

The pressure and temperature is being steadily and slowly augmented by Syria and Iran, and the Lebanese – divided as ever- are failing to see the bubbles in the boiling water around them. One voice which seems to be aware of what is going on and the gravity of the situation is that of the Maronite Patriarch, who has been the target of a never seen before slander campaign by Hizbollah clerics and Christian allies of Syria, this in a land where the moral standing of religious figures is revered by all as has been the case for centuries of co-existence between muslims and christians in the region.

The recent government was formed with a real veto third for Hizbollah, despite appearances of the contrary.

Syrian officials make daily announcements of what should and shouldn’t happen in Lebanese politics, in a flagrant trend of interference in Lebanese internal affairs.

But my fellow citizens seem content to take the transgressions one by one, and slowly but surely, the Syrians and Iranians are gaining ground, taking the country hostage to suit their regional deals at the expense of the hapless Lebanese. And in the middle of all this alarming situation that is threatening to erase the country from the map, we see it fit to celebrate our independence. If that isn’t a shot of morphine to the population and their leaders, what is?

I do hope that enough people who believe in the country and its future as a sovereign nation stay on course, and those following leaders like Aoun wake up and see where their general’s actions are leading what is left of the country. Accountability doesn’t seem to be a buzz word in Lebanon, but I hope it gains prominence before we are served as a meal with garlic, lemon and coriander on the regional table. Frog’s legs, anyone?

Le journal Haaretz rapporte ce lundi que le rabbin Yitzhak Shapiro responsable d’une Yechiva (un centre d’étude de la Torah et du Talmud) dans la colonie Yitzhar en Cisjordanie occupée vient de publier ce lundi 9 novembre un livre « La Torah du Roi » autorisant les juifs à tuer les non-juifs (les Gentils) qui menacent la « nation » juive, même s’ils sont des enfants ou des bébés.

Le rabbin se base sur des passages de la Bible pour émettre son avis et il écrit : « Il est autorisé de tuer les Justes parmi les nations même s’ils ne sont pas responsables de la situation menaçante », et il ajoute « si nous tuons un Gentil qui a pêché ou transgressé l’un des sept commandements, …, le tueur n’aurait fait aucune erreur » !
haaretz
ism

La fameuse haine du Gentil, lol, c’est pas un taré ce rabbin sioniste, franchement, oser dire que ce n’est pas grave de tuer des enfants !!!
Maintenant, j’imagine que certains pourraient me rétorquer qu’en Algérie, lors de la guerre civile, des censés imam faisaient des fatwa en disant qu’il était licite de tuer des bébés, le truc c’est que nous savons maintenant que ces groupes de tarés étaient totalement téléguidés et manipulés par les militaires, et que ces derniers s’étaient lancés dans un violence hallucinante pour discréditer les islamistes.
Cela n’a donc rien à voir; d’un coté, nous avons un rabbin sioniste totalement givré qui, de manière autonome décide de qu’il est possible de tuer des enfants pour sauver ” israél ” et de l’autre nous avions une opération psychlogique destinée à totalement discréditer le FIS.

Israél a de plus en plus de mal à gerer ces extrémistes religieux, déja en janvier 2009, hareetz mettait en avant le poids des religieux et leurs messages exterminateurs :

” Le rabbinat militaire israélien, dans plusieurs de ses publications, a justifié le meurtre de civils palestiniens. Il a utilisé durant l’offensive sur Gaza un ton raciste et fait usage de propagande nationaliste, a révélé lundi 26 janvier le quotidien israélien «Haaretz».
«Haaretz» relève qu’un survol de certaines publications du rabbinat militaire israélien mis à disposition des soldats durant les combats utilise un ton raciste et peut être interprété comme un appel à remettre en cause la loi internationale quand il s’agit de traiter avec les civils ennemis.
Selon Amos Harel, du «Haaretz», les officiers et les soldats religieux ont joué un rôle substantiel en première ligne sur le front de Gaza. Ils étaient pour la première fois soutenus aussi par une importante présence de rabbins.
Encouragés par des rabbins
Le grand rabbin militaire, le brigadier général Avichai Rontzki, a rejoint les troupes au combat à plusieurs reprises comme l’ont fait les rabbins sous son commandement. Ils ont prodigué leurs encouragements aux soldats qui se rendaient au combat, selon le quotidien.
«Haaretz» s’est procuré certaines publications recueillies par un groupe d’anciens soldats, «Breaking the Silence», qui ont documenté le comportement inacceptable de l’armée vis-à-vis des Palestiniens.
On peut lire dans ces brochures distribuées par les religieux des phrases du genre: «Avoir pitié envers un ennemi cruel revient à se montrer cruel envers nos justes soldats… Nous sommes en guerre contre des assassins».
Cette propagande rappelle «l’interdiction biblique» de rendre «un seul millimètre du sol d’Israël aux gentils» (c’est-à-dire aux non juifs).
Ces extraits «religieux» se trouvent dans la publication «Etudes journalières de la Torah pour le soldat et le commandement dans l’Opération Plomb durci», édité par le rabbinat militaire.
Ce texte est issu des livres du rabbin Shlomo Aviner, qui dirige une école religieuse ultranationaliste, l’«Ateret Cohanim yeshiva», située en plein cœur du quartier musulman de la vieille ville de Jérusalem.
Il compare les Palestiniens d’aujourd’hui avec les Philistins du passé et affirme que les Palestiniens ne sont pas des natifs de la région, mais sont arrivés pour la plupart peu de temps avant la «guerre d’indépendance» d’Israël.
Une pitié jugée immorale
Cette brochure affirme encore que si le soldat israélien montre de la pitié envers un ennemi cruel, «il sera cruel envers les soldats purs et honnêtes… c’est terriblement immoral».
Figure de proue de la colonisation des territoires palestiniens, l’ultranationaliste Aviner écrit aux soldats que «la Torah nous interdit de remettre un seul millimètre» de la Terre d’Israël à des non-juifs, «que ce soit par des enclaves, des zones autonomes ou d’autres concessions manifestant notre faiblesse nationale».
D’autres textes ont été distribués par des groupes d’extrême-droite, justifiant la mise à mort de civils et l’extermination de l’ennemi. “
source

C’est dingue de lire ça !!!!! Ils sont complètement fous, ” dieu m’a dit que j’ai le droit de tuer pour garder cette terre ” LOL, comme ils sont à la masse quand même !!!

Si théodore Herzl voyait que ce sont les réligieux le fer de lance du sionisme, il deviendrait fou !!!!

Certains en Israél vont même jusqu’à dire que l’armée est sous l’emprise des religieux sionistes :

” La conférence annuelle tenue par des officiers supérieurs de l’armée israélienne et présidée par le chef d’état-major Gabi Ashkenazi, a récemment eu lieu dans une base militaire dans le centre d’Israël et a été suivie par tous les officiers de grade de lieutenant-colonel ou supérieur.
L’écrasante majorité des officiers ayant assisté à la conférence font partie du courant religieux sioniste ; un reportage diffusé par les chaînes de la télévision israélienne de cette réunion montrait une pléthore d’officiers supérieurs portant une kippa crochetée, ce qui a poussé le chef du renseignement militaire israélien, le général Shlomo Gazit, à déclarer : ces images prouvent que « l’armée israélienne est tombé sous l’emprise des religieux sionistes. »
L’éruption du courant sioniste religieux aux postes de direction dans l’armée et dans les unités d’élite militaire à conduit à une vive polémique en Israël concernant la répercussions de ce phénomène sur l’avenir de l’Etat sachant que les religieux sionistes ne représentent que 8% de la population juive en Israël, tandis que les adeptes du courant religieux ultra-orthodoxe ne constitue que 22% de la population, ces derniers ne sont pas mobilisables dans l’armée et sont exemptés du service militaire afin de leur permettre la poursuite des études à temps plein dans les écoles religieuses.
Le différend entre les religieux sionistes et les religieux orthodoxes réside dans la justification de la création de l’Etat d’Israël. Au début, le courant religieux orthodoxe, s’est opposé à la création d’Israël qui, selon lui, ne pourra intervenir que lors de la venue du Messie, alors que le courant religieux sioniste considère que la création d’Israël est une condition de la venue du messie et non le contraire.
C’est pour cette raison que les religieux sionistes se sont engagés dans les différentes institutions de l’État, en particulier l’armée, alors que les religieux orthodoxes ont accepté Israël comme un fait accompli.
Données significatives
Selon les chiffres publiés par le ministère de la défense en 2008 : 60% des officiers des unités de combat, 70% des brigades d’infanterie et 75% des unités spéciales sont des religieux sionistes. “

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Vous vous rendez compte des chiffres, n’allez pas me dire que cela ne reflète pas une volonté politique.
Les dirigeants israéliens ont bien compris que la guerre contre les palestiniens devenait de plus en plus immorale, mais la morale étant elle aussi subjective, ils ont du trouver des gens dont la structure mentale et psychologique leurs permettent de tuer des civils sans une once de pitié. Et rien de mieux que des gens qui croient réellement que ce n’est pas mal de tuer des innocents, parceque Dieu le veut.

Je ne pense donc pas que tsahal soit sous l’emprise des religieux, ou du moins que cette emprise est volontaire, c’est la seule solution que les dirigeants ont trouvé.Radicaliser une partie de la jeunesse et la mettre sous les drapeaux pour aller faire le sale boulot.

C’est une structure normale dans un état fasciste et raciste, comprenez que pour les élites, les concepts les idées, la religion, ne sont que des supports psychologiques qui permettent de socialiser dans un but précis.Que ce soit, le nazisme, le communisme, les extrémistes juifs, musulmans ou chrétiens, les dirigeants se servent de ces idées dans lesquelles les gens croient pour ensuite les manipuler et manoeuvrer pour la réussite de leur projet politique personel ou collégiale.

Il y a peut de temps j’ai vu un documentaire sur l’établissement du communisme en Allemagne de l’Est et j’ai été sidéré de voir dès la fin de la guerre des grandes manifestations, des parades pro communistes, alors que quelques années plus tot, les communistes étaient le super ennemi !!! Je veux bien que le régime n’était pas aimé de tous et que la stasi veilait mais quand même !!!
Quelque soit la musique, les gens dansent !!!!!

Enfin bref, ces rabbins sionistes sont une menace gravissime pour les palestiniens, une sorte de SS rabbinique prête à tout a été mis en place par les dirigeants israéliens, dans une dangereuse fuite en avant.La radicalisation de la population israélienne est la seule option possible, la surenchère dans la violence va nous mener au désastre, comme par exemple ashkenazi qui menace Gaza d’un autre « petit holocauste. “