rodneyj43

From the page: "The Health Council of the Netherlands has advised Health Minister Ab Klink that young children and pregnant women should be vaccinated against the A(H1N1) flu virus. The council also says GPs should be less ready to prescribe the antiviral drug Tamiflu. In his fortnightly interview, virologist Ab Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Centre told Radio Netherlands Worldwide about the recommendations.



As expected, the Health Council says flu jabs should be provided for children aged between six months and four years. The most important reason is the pressure that children with serious flu symptoms or bronchial infections would put on hospital intensive care units.

"Every winter, many children end up in intensive care with bronchial infections. Under normal circumstances, we can give them excellent treatment. But if 30 or 40 percent more children need this type of care because of the flu, there would be a problem," says Mr Osterhaus.

As there is no approved vaccine for children younger than six months old, the Health Council says their parents and other children in the family should be vaccinated.

Two jabs
The council also says that women who are over three months pregnant should be offered flu jabs. It aims to clear up any past confusion by giving an unambiguous recommendation. The Netherlands is sticking to two jabs per person, but vaccine stocks are still high enough to meet the needs of an extended vaccination programme.

While in the UK, the antiviral drug Tamiflu is freely available on the internet, for Dutch patients it's harder to get hold of the medicine. The Health Council says GPs should be cautious about writing prescriptions for Tamiflu for fear that the A(H1N1) virus could develop resistance. Up to now, one patient in the Netherlands has been found to be infected with a Tamiflu-resistant virus, but this proved to be an isolated incident.

Photo: Flu vaccine being produced at Novartis. ANP"

From the page: "Newsline 9 November, 2009: The World focuses on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the end of communism 20 years ago today. In a special programme Newsline speaks to Berliners about what this momentous event means to them.

Celebrating the fall of the wall
World leaders are in Berlin to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Listen to a report by correspondent Nik Martin"

These two are mad creative. I love their recordings and videos.


From the page: "Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn collaborate on music. This is what it sounds like.

Contact:
pomplamoosemusic@gmail.com

our music on iTunes:
tinyurl.com/Pomplamo [tinyurl.com/Pomplamo] ...

or download mp3's from our mySpace.
myspace.com/pomp [myspace.com/pomp] ...
Covers are FREE. Originals are $1.
Credit card, PayPal, or Google Checkout:

our mySpace:
myspace.com/pomp [myspace.com/pomp] ...

our Twitter:
twitter.com/pomp [twitter.com/pomp] ...

Nataly's YouTube Page:
youtube.com/Nata [youtube.com/Nata] ...

Jack's YouTube Page:
youtube.com/Jack [youtube.com/Jack] ..."

I've been worried that this run-up was a Dead Cat Bounce and now my fears seam to be confirmed. We are just starting to hear about the recovery of the banking industry; and it's no because they've been loaning money (quite the contrary). New regulations are on the horizon as well and there's no way the "recovery" could have happened this fast and it was disgenuous of the mainstream media to say it 'might be'. Even NPR is guilty of trying to get the small investor back in the market so the large ones can make a good showing at the fiscal year by fleecing them. It's shameful. I'd say stay out of the stock market completely for a couple of more years at least, lest you'll be one of the ones fleeced.
From the page: "The sudden decline, coming only days after the Dow was flying above 10,000, left many traders asking the same question: After a stunning seven-month rally, is the stock market finally running out of steam?

Many economic and financial worries, from the troubles of hard-pressed consumers to the travails of Citigroup, dragged financial shares lower through the day. The losses more than wiped out the market�s gains from the day before, when a government report seemed to suggest that the nation�s longest recession since World War II might be ending.

But even though the worst may be over for the economy, many investors now fear that any recovery will be slow and that the recent optimism in the markets may turn out to have been misplaced. Even after the decline on Friday, the broad market was still up nearly 15 percent this year.

�oeThe market needs and demands to see evidence that things are getting better, not just that they may be getting better,” said Anthony Chan, chief economist for JPMorgan�s private wealth management. �oeWe need to beat expectations before the markets raise eyebrows and say it�s safe to get back into the water.”

The Dow industrials fell 249.85 points, to 9,712.73. The S.& P. 500 was off 29.92 points, or 2.8 percent, to 1,036.18. The Nasdaq declined 52.44 points, or 2.5 percent, to 2,045.11.

The day began with unsettling news from the Commerce Department. A report on consumer spending showed the largest drop in nine months, a dreary data point that met Wall Street expectations but reinforced the notion that the recovery of the United States economy would be slow and halting. The decline was tied to the end of the government�s cash-for-clunkers program, which gave car buyers thousands of dollars in vouchers for the purchase of new vehicles. Overall spending fell 0.5 percent in September, and personal income levels remained flat because of higher unemployment rates and decreases in wages."

I recorded a song I wrote to one of Elledark's poems early last year. I finally got around to making a video of it. Just finished the longer version recently. If you don't blink you'll see imagery from much of america's socio-political and technological history. This piece of art is harsh on the american status quo, but not unduly harsh considering the historical perspective. It isn't simply america-bashing, it's an introspective look at what got us here, and what needs to be changed; starting with the educational level of its participants. If you're an american and you haven't seen all of this imagery before, you need to look it up and help us collectively refresh our memories. Being an american patriot means a whole helluvalot more than being just another marketing bullet-point consumer sheep (or lemming, for that matter).





The Patriot

Lyrics: elledark.stumbleupon.com/review/16021594/ [elledark.stumbleupon.com/review/16021594/]

Everything else: rodneyj43.stumbleupon.com [rodneyj43.stumbleupon.com]

Except the bass track by: myspace.com/djtrejones [myspace.com/djtrejones]

blog entries about it:
rodneyj43.stumbleupon.com/review/16019752/ [rodneyj43.stumbleupon.com/review/16019752/]
rodneyj43.stumbleupon.com/review/16717026/ [rodneyj43.stumbleupon.com/review/16717026/]

From the page: "The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up.

We have had recent reminders of this dismaying retreat from Mr. Obama's passionate campaign promises to make a break with Mr. Bush's abuses of power, a shift that denies justice to the victims of wayward government policies and shields officials from accountability.

In Britain earlier this month, a two-judge High Court panel rejected arguments made first by the Bush team and now by the Obama team and decided to make public seven redacted paragraphs in American intelligence documents relating to torture allegations by a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. The prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British national, says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and at a C.I.A.-run prison outside Kabul before being transferred to Guantánamo. He was freed in February.

To block the release of those paragraphs, the Bush administration threatened to cut its intelligence-sharing with Britain, an inappropriate threat that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton repeated. But the court concluded that the actual risk of harm to intelligence-sharing was minimal, given the close relationship between the two countries. The court also found a "compelling public interest" in disclosure, and said that nothing in the disputed seven paragraphs - a summary of evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in Mr. Mohamed's ordeal - had anything to do with "secret intelligence."

The Obama administration has expressed unhappiness with the ruling, and the British government plans to appeal. But the court was clearly right in recognizing the importance of disclosure "for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law."

In the United States, the Obama administration is in the process of appealing a sound federal appellate court ruling last April in a civil lawsuit by Mr. Mohamed and four others. All were victims of the government's extraordinary rendition program, under which foreigners were kidnapped and flown to other countries for interrogation and torture.

In that case, the Obama administration has repeated a disreputable Bush-era argument that the executive branch is entitled to have lawsuits shut down whenever it makes a blanket claim of national security. The ruling rejected that argument and noted that the government's theory would "effectively cordon off all secret actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law."

The Obama administration has aggressively pursued such immunity in numerous other cases beyond the ones involving Mr. Mohamed. We do not take seriously the government's claim that it is trying to protect intelligence or avoid harm to national security.

Victims of the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques," including Mr. Mohamed, have already spoken in harrowing detail about their mistreatment. The objective is to avoid official confirmation of wrongdoing that might be used in lawsuits against government officials and contractors, and might help create a public clamor for prosecuting those responsible. President Obama calls that a distracting exercise in "looking back." What it really is is justice.
"

From the page: "While it suffers routinely from the usual ebb and flow of the news cycles, net neutrality has once again flared up to levels of heated debate with the recent FCC vote to begin a process that could lead to its eventuality. Because of this, the issue of net neutrality has never been so hotly contested or emergent as it is now. While nearly everyone in this modern, connected world have a stake in the outcome of this battle, there are parties involved with especially potent opinions. These are 15 names of gravitas that have aligned themselves against the push for net neutrality. Some are the very corporations that maintain the Web as we know it, some helped invent the Web in the first place, and others simply have vested interest for political gain. When it's all said and done, though, it's ultimately a fight over something that hasn't happened yet. See who's against it, then do some reading and decide for yourself.


AT&T

Needing no introduction, AT&T is one the world's premier suppliers of bandwidth, be it wired or wireless, though with emphasis on the latter. The telecommunications giant came under heavy fire just days before the FCC vote for what appeared to be an attempted astroturfing. The company's senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs had apparently asked AT&T employees, via mass email, to regurgitate "talking points" on a debate forum using their personal email addresses to sign in. The attempt was not only a failure, but backfired. "

From the page: "Call it Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's big health care gamble.

The Nevada Democrat on Monday announced that the Senate's merged health care bill would introduce a government-sponsored program into the health insurance market.

But it remains unclear whether Reid, who is facing a tough re-election battle back home, has managed to corral the filibuster-proof 60 votes needed to guarantee passage of a final bill containing a so-called public option. That would include all 57 of his fellow Democratic senators and the two independents who caucus with them.

The proposal would allow states to opt out of the public plan, though details of that process were not released.

"I believe there is strong consensus to move forward in this direction," Reid said when pressed by reporters during a press conference about whether he had locked up the 60 votes needed to block Republican attempts to kill the option.

His most strongly worded response? "I feel clearly we'll have the support of my caucus to move this bill and start legislating." "