December, 2011 Browser Clean Up

Two from Zero Hedge:

It's Official: US Debt-To-GDP Passes 100%  Excerpts:

With precisely one year left for the world and all of its inhabitants, at least according to the Mayans, not to mention on the day of the Winter Solstice, it is only fitting that US debt, net of all settlements for all already completed bond auctions, is now at precisely $15,182,756,264,288.80. Why is this relevant? Because the latest annualized US GDP, according to the BEA, was $15,180,900,000.00. Which means that, as of today, total US debt to GDP is 100.012%. Congratulations America: you are now in the triple digit "debt to GDP" club!

Mark Faber: "I Am Convinced The Whole Derivatives Market Will Cease To Exist And Will Go To Zero"  Excerpts:

"I am convinced the whole derivatives market will cease to exit. Will become zero. And when it happens I don't know: you can postpone the problems with monetary measures for a long time but you can't solve them... Greece should have defaulted - it would have sent a message that not all derivatives are equal because it depends on the counterparty." And on the long-term future: "I am ultra bearish. I think most people will be lucky if they still have 50% of their money in 5 years time.."

Bárðarbunga: more seismic unrest at another one of Iceland’s large volcanoes  The Extinction Protocol.  Excerpts:

During the night there was an small earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano. The largest earthquake in this earthquake swarm was ML 3.04 in magnitude. It had the depth of 8.5 km. This might have been a dike intrusion. But it is hard to know that for sure at the moment. This earthquake swarm only lasted for an about 2 to 3 hours before it stopped.

..There are signs that magma is rising at great depth underneath the Bardarbunga volcanic centre.

Historic! HIV Vaccine Approved for Human Clinical Trials  Unicorn Booty.  Excerpts:

The vaccine, developed by researchers at the University of Western Ontario, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start being tested in humans in January.



It is the first preventive HIV vaccine approved for clinical trials to use a whole HIV-1 virus, which has been both killed and genetically engineered, to activate immunity. In this way, the new vaccine is much like the killed whole virus vaccines that are successful against polio, rabies and influenza.

Gingrich: I’ll ‘ignore’ any Supreme Court ruling I disagree with  What a wonderful "democratic thinker!"  Idiot.  The Raw Story.  Excerpts:

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is doubling down from Thursday’s Fox News debate on his vow to abolish federal courts if he disagreed with their decision.



According to The Hill, in a conference call with reporters, Gingrich indicated that it was in the president’s power as commander-in-chief to deem any Supreme Court ruling irrelevant if he or she in the White House disagreed.


The former House Speaker used the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Bush administration exceeding its constitutional authority in handling suspected terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay in 2008 as a basis for his extreme view.
 
“They just ignored it,” he said. “A commander-in-chief could simply issue instructions to ignore it, and say it’s null and void and I do not accept it because it infringes on my duties as commander-in-chief to protect the country.”
 
I love that Romney and Ron Paul are beating the shit out of this douchebag with negative, but all too true attack ads.  I've been waiting a loooong time to see Herr Gingrich(pronounced "Gin-greck") drown in the political cesspool of his own creation!  Merry Christmas to all!
 
“The FBI Estimates That 80 Percent Of All Mortgage Fraud Involves Collaboration Or Collusion By Industry Insiders”  Washington's Blog.  Excerpts:
 
Fraud By The Big Banks – More Than Anything Done By The Little Guy – Caused The Financial Crisis



The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Thrift Supervision noted last year (page 7):


The FBI estimates that 80 percent of all mortgage fraud involves collaboration
or collusion by industry insiders.


This confirms what one of the country’s top fraud experts has said for years: that it was fraud by the big banks – more than anything done by the little guy – which caused the financial crisis:

Breaking News: Programmer of Fukushima confesses “Fukushima had a cyber attack”  Under-reported, huh?  Fukushima Diary.  Excerpts:

A computer engineer found out operating system of Fukushima plants have been attacked and those attacks were mostly from / via Russia.　This engineer is counted as one of the members of Fukushima 50.
..
Because the system was shut down after black out they could not operate the systems to control the pressure, water injecting, radiation shield etc. and that had to be done by him.



He managed to reboot the system and restart it in manual mode but he encountered series of troubles such as password entry screen did not come out or his password entering was disturbed by compute bug. He sorted it out by formatting the system but it was obvious that someone sent virus to the system.


He tried to send virus backward and it reached to Russia. Someone sent virus from or via Russia.

Every crazy CIA plot you’ve heard of originated with one man  IO9.  Excerpts:

There are stories that have come to light, over the years, that make the Central Intelligence Agency look like a collection of Looney Tunes shorts. The violence, the slapstick, and the over-the-top ridiculousness of the experiments that have been conducted over the years boggle the mind. They came from the (slightly-boggled) mind of one man: Sidney Gottlieb.

Medical Marijuana Laws Shown to Reduce Traffic Fatalities  Popular Science.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  Marijuana;  Is there anything it can't do?  Excerpts:

..A new study out of University of Colorado Denver and Montana State University shows that legalizing medical marijuana sales in various states over the past two decades has led to a nearly 10 percent drop in traffic fatalities. What the study really shows--by way of causal chain--is a five percent drop in beer sales, and that has in turn led to fewer fatalities on the road. Put that in your pipe and smoke it (couldn’t resist just one).

Happy holidays, and enjoy this randomly sampled information!

First man ‘functionally cured’ of HIV

First man ‘functionally cured’ of HIV.  Found it through Americablog.  Cool on several levels.  Someone has been "cured" of HIV--Really good for him, right?  This result provides new pathways of research and medical direction in future conventional treatment.  And score another victory for stem cell research!   All good.


It also establishes, rather firmly, too, that a percentage of people have some-to-possibly-total resistance.  From Wired's article Genetic HIV Resistance Deciphered


Studies released this week and last year suggest that the roots of AIDS immunity extend back for centuries, long before the disease even existed. Our ethnic backgrounds and the illnesses suffered by our distant ancestors appear to play a crucial role in determining whether our genes will allow HIV to take hold in our bodies.
..
All those with the highest level of HIV immunity share a pair of mutated genes -- one in each chromosome -- that prevent their immune cells from developing a "receptor" that lets the AIDS virus break in. If the so-called CCR5 receptor -- which scientists say is akin to a lock -- isn't there, the virus can't break into the cell and take it over.


To be protected, people must inherit the genes from both parents; those who inherit a mutated gene from just one parent will end up with greater resistance against HIV than other people, but they won't be immune. An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of those descended from Northern Europeans have the lesser protection.


This foundational assumption which is integral to this new development's understanding, contradicts some of the conventional wisdom associated with the virus:  All are equal in the cross hairs of HIV.   Heterosexuals never fully bought into the epidemic panic (not for themselves, anyway..), but mainstream medicine scoffed at alternative theories, and suppressed information by not financially backing any data not in line with "HIV=AIDS," including theories about HIV having Nothing To Do with AIDS..


This information is not new.   From 1992:


Another possibility is that HIV doesn't have anything to do with AIDS. This is what Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley has been saying for five years: that HIV doesn't attack the immune system, doesn't cause AIDS, and is in fact harmless. A professor of molecular biology, Duesberg is one of the world's leading experts on retroviruses. I called him at his Berkeley lab and asked what he thought of the news from Amsterdam, and the possibility that we may now have one more lethal virus to worry about.
..
Duesberg is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and was the first to map the genetic structure of retroviruses. He is not popular with the National Institutes of Health, the government agency that has been funding and policing AIDS research for the last decade. For years he was supported by an NIH "outstanding investigator" grant, but after he attacked the HIV theory of AIDS, his grant was cut off.


Down the hall from Duesberg at Berkeley's Stanley Hall is the lab of Professor Harry Rubin, another skeptic. He also believes that HIV has not been shown to be the cause of AIDS. I spoke to Bryan Ellison, a doctoral candidate with Rubin. Retroviruses have never been observed to kill cells, he told me. If you microscopically examine healthy cells in a dish, and a virus such as polio is added to them, the virus multiplies inside the cells and bursts them open in a matter of hours. Soon you can see nothing but "debris and garbage and dead cells," he said. But if you put HIV, or any other retrovirus, into the same dish with healthy cells-an environment where the body's immune system cannot interfere-the cells just sit there and continue healthy growth.
..
Something has been attacking the immune system, he agrees. The T-cells of AIDS patients do dwindle away, and there has been an increase in such opportunistic diseases as pneumocystis in the past decade. But HIV has never been shown physically to attack T-cells. The virus in fact is very difficult to find, even in patients dying of AIDS. Usually only antibodies can be detected-which is why an antibody test is used for HIV. Indications are that HIV is swiftly neutralized by the body's defenses. Yet it is said to kill after a ten-year (average) latency period. This has been lengthened to account for the failure of AIDS cases to keep pace with projections. Another oddity: researchers still have no "animal model" for AIDS. Over one hundred chimps have been infected with HIV since 1985 -- and the virus does "take," or replicate within them-but none has yet come down with AIDS.
..
Duesberg also makes the following claims: there are no cases in the medical literature of health-care workers contracting AIDS through accidental needle-stick. In a footnote to its latest AIDS report, the CDC says there have been four such cases, but they have not been identified or described. There are a few disputed cases in the courts "and they want their money," Duesberg says. By contrast, about 15,000 cases of needle-stick hepatitis infection are reported every year.
..
About 75 per cent of the 20,000 U.S. hemophiliacs are HIV-positive, but there has still not been a properly controlled study of them. Do those with HIV come down with more AIDS diseases, or die sooner, than those without? It has been found that hemophiliacs in general are living longer than ever, even though three-fourths are now infected with the "deadly virus" and virtually all of these have been infected for eight years or more. Since the relevant data are already in place and await only statisticians, perhaps NIH could spend some of its research billions on a hemophiliac study.



"There is not a single controlled epidemiological study to confirm the postulated viral etiology of AIDS," Duesberg wrote in 1990. True? San Francisco's Project Inform recently put out a discussion paper, very critical of Duesberg, referring to "studies" comparing HIV-infected homosexuals with uninfected controls with "similar patterns of drug use and frequency of sexual contacts." None of the latter came down with AIDS, apparently. These studies were not identified or footnoted, so I phoned Martin Delaney, the executive director of Project Inform, and asked for the reference.


His "source," it turned out, was a person, not a paper. He gave me the name of a doctor who is identified in Randy Shilts's book, And the Band Played On, as having helped persuade CDC a decade ago that AIDS was caused by a virus. I phoned him but so far haven't heard back.



Delaney seemed dismayed that journalists were interested in Duesberg. I mentioned the series of articles that came out recently in the (London) Sunday Times about Duesberg and his critics. "When the Sunday Times publicizes what Duesberg says," Delaney replied, paradoxically, "it has an obligation to ask, 'What is your source for this?' They don't apply skepticism."


I spoke to Neville Hodgkinson, the Sunday Times's science correspondent and author of the series. He said he had never checked anything so carefully before publication. He was concerned that there might be a study he didn't know about. "What was the response?" I asked.


"Anger and indignation, but no factual rebuttal," he said. "I've never seen anything like it." He was solemnly told that there is a "consensus" that HIV causes AIDS, and it shouldn't be challenged.

Ultimately, we're closer to a cure to whatever AIDS is because of doctors and scientists who couldn't accept the Official Story, those strong enough to follow the data through through the shitrain opposition that is  Institutionalized Thought Under Attack.  Those strong enough to continue their work for the truth of it.

Maybe this is the beginning of Their time.