fossil fuel equivalence...,

BBC | How much electricity does the average British family of four use in a day?

To find out, BBC's Bang Goes the Theory attempts to power a house for an entire day solely through human pedal power, while an unsuspecting family inside go about their normal Sunday routine.

in e-mails, science of warming is hot debate

WaPo | It began with an anonymous Internet posting, and a link to a wonky set of e-mails and files. Stolen, apparently, from a research center in Britain, the files showed the leaders of climate-change science discussing flaws in their own data, and seemingly scheming to muzzle their critics.

Now it has mushroomed into what is being called "Climate-gate," a scandal that has done what many slide shows and public-service ads could not: focus public attention on the science of a warming planet.

Except now, much of that attention is focused on the science's flaws. Leaked just before international climate talks begin in Copenhagen -- the culmination of years of work by scientists to raise alarms about greenhouse-gas emissions -- the e-mails have cast those scientists in a political light and given new energy to others who think the issue of climate change is all overblown.

The e-mails don't say that: They don't provide proof that human-caused climate change is a lie or a swindle.

But they do raise hard questions. In an effort to control what the public hears, did prominent scientists who link climate change to human behavior try to squelch a back-and-forth that is central to the scientific method? Is the science of global warming messier than they have admitted?

The stolen electronic files include more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents, all taken from servers at the Climatic Research Unit, a world-famous center at the University of East Anglia in Britain.

Phil Jones, the unit's director, wrote a colleague that he would "hide" a problem with data from Siberian tree rings with more accurate local air temperature measurements. In another message, Jones talks about keeping research he disagrees with out of a U.N. report, "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"

Since then, Jones has stepped down temporarily. And Pennsylvania State University is exploring whether the e-mails, some of which were written by one of its professors, Michael Mann, warrant an investigation. In an interview, Mann said he is confident that neither he nor any of the other researchers whose e-mails were pirated "did anything improper."

But recent debate -- some scientists say the Earth hasn't warmed as predicted over the past 10 years -- show that climate science is still science, with researchers drawing different lessons from the same data. The problem is that it plays out before an audience that won't wait for certainty.

cia authorized to expand use of drones in pakistan

NYTimes | Two weeks ago in Pakistan, Central Intelligence Agency sharpshooters killed eight people suspected of being militants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and wounded two others in a compound that was said to be used for terrorist training.

Then, the job in North Waziristan done, the C.I.A. officers could head home from the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters, facing only the hazards of the area’s famously snarled suburban traffic.

It was only the latest strike by the agency’s covert program to kill operatives of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their allies using Hellfire missiles fired from Predator aircraft controlled from half a world away.

The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.

By increasing covert pressure on Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, while ground forces push back the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan, American officials hope to eliminate any haven for militants in the region.

One of Washington’s worst-kept secrets, the drone program is quietly hailed by counterterrorism officials as a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray. But despite close cooperation from Pakistani intelligence, the program has generated public anger in Pakistan, and some counterinsurgency experts wonder whether it does more harm than good.

hamid mir on the war in pakistan

are american drone attacks counterproductive?

Der Spiegel | SPIEGEL: Since you are already letting the US carry out its drone attacks against militants on Pakistani territory along the border with Afghanistan, why don't you let them help you with soldiers on Pakistani territory?

Part 2: We Need Huge Public Support to Combat Terrorism
Gilani: We haven't stopped them from helping us. In fact, we have a multi-dimensional cooperation with the United States, including defense and intelligence, but also economics, trade, development, health education and even in cultural affairs. But these drone attacks are counterproductive.

SPIEGEL: Really? The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed by an American drone. Don't you call this a success?

Gilani: The political and the military leadership have been very successful in isolating the militants from the local tribes. But once there is a drone attack in their home region, they get united again. This is a dangerous trend, and it is my concern and the concern of the army. It is also counterproductive in the sense that it is creating a lot of anti-American sentiment all over the country. But in order to fight the militants in Waziristan, we have to carry the public with us. One cannot go into any war without the support of the masses. We need huge public support to combat terrorism. But we do not get that if there is American interference, which we do not ask for.

SPIEGEL: But no matter what the Americans do, there will always be anti-American sentiment.

Gilani: Right now, the whole nation is supporting our military action because they feel that terrorism is a menace.

arming goldman with pistols against the public

Bloomberg | “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Pistol Ready

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

worse than enron?

Common Dreams | Enron was the financial scandal that kicked off the decade: a giant energy trading company that appeared to be doing brilliantly-until we finally noticed that it wasn't. It's largely been forgotten given the wreckage that followed, and that's too bad: we may be repeating those mistakes, on a far larger scale.

Specifically, as the largest Wall Street banks return to profitability-in some cases, breaking records-they say everything is rosy. They're lining up to pay back their TARP money and asking Washington to back off. But why are they doing so well? Remember that Enron got away with their illegalities so long because their financials were so complicated that not even the analysts paid to monitor the Houston-based trading giant could cogently explain how they were making so much money.

After two weeks sifting through over one thousand pages of SEC filings for the largest banks, I have the same concerns. While Washington ponders what to do, or not do, about reforming Wall Street, the nation's biggest banks, plumped up on government capital and risk-infused trading profits, have been moving stuff around their balance sheets like a multi-billion dollar musical chairs game.

I was trying to answer the simple question that you'd think regulators should want to know: how much of each bank's revenue is derived from trading (taking risk) vs. other businesses? And how can you compare it across the industry-so you can contain all that systemic risk? Only, there's no uniformity across books. And, given the complexity of these mega-merged firms, those questions aren't easy to answer.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, for example, altered their year-end reporting dates, orphaning the month of December, thus making comparison to past quarterly statements more difficult. In the cases of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, the preferred tactic is re-classification and opaqueness. These moves make it virtually impossible to get an accurate, or consistent picture of banks ‘real money' (from commercial or customer services) vs. their ‘play money' (used for trading purposes, and most risky to the overall financial system, particularly since much of the required trading capital was federally subsidized).

Trading profitability, albeit inconsistent and volatile, is the quickest way back to the illusion of financial health, as these banks continue to take hits from their consumer-oriented businesses. But, appearance doesn't equal stability, or necessarily, reality. Here's how BofA, Citi and Wells Fargo play the game:

dubai and abu dhabi

NYTimes | Dubai is seen as the brash, secular upstart of the seven emirates, and Abu Dhabi is known as the religious and conservative big brother. Tensions between the two are common, but when reporters questioned Sheik Mohammed of Dubai about problems last week, he told them to “shut up.”

Nevertheless, the debt crisis of the last few days has fed the speculation that Abu Dhabi would impose conditions for any bailout, including a stake in prominent Dubai enterprises like Emirates Airlines. Officials of the federation have rejected those rumors.

The United Arab Emirates’ central bank said in a statement Sunday that it would stand behind foreign and domestic banks operating in the emirates. It did not mention Dubai World, which is $59 billion in debt.

Analysts said the statement would not be enough to allay fears that the Dubai government could default on part of its sovereign debt.

Still, as fear from Dubai’s debt crisis circled the globe, an unaccustomed quiet settled here at the center of the storm.

Foreign bankers and other professionals here are simmering in anxiety as the world talks about Dubai like a bad seed of the global economy.

“A lot of people are pretty freaked out,” said one American businessman with long experience in the region, who spoke on condition he not be identified for fear of repercussions. “They’re all watching CNN and going: ‘Is Dubai going to default?’ ”

Many in Dubai have a different perspective.

“Dubai is a victim of media distortion,” wrote one reader to a Web forum of one of the emirates’ most popular newspapers. “All the Western countries have ganged up on Dubai. Why? Because it has succeeded.”

Another reader wrote, “This is all because of jealousy from the Western world,” adding that “Dubai has been at the forefront of development in the Arab world.”

Many Dubai citizens seem inclined to dismiss all talk of tension among the emirates, saying that they are not worried about their country’s future.

“Only a few decades ago, this country was nothing, just a desert,” said Thani al-Falaasi, a 31-year-old Emirati businessman who was shopping Sunday with a friend in the Dubai Mall. Referring to Dubai’s leader, Sheik Mohammed, he said: “He built it up. Even if there is a crisis, he can solve it. We have great confidence in him.”

inequality as u.s. policy since 1979

Post Autistic Economics Review | Since the end of the 1970s, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in economic inequality. While the United States has long been among the most unequal of the world’s rich economies, the economic and social upheaval that began in the 1970s was a striking departure from the movement toward greater equality that began in the Great Depression, continued through World War II, and was a central feature of the first 30 years of the postwar period.

Despite the magnitude of the rise in inequality, the political discourse in the United States refers only obliquely to these developments. The public debate generally acknowledges neither the scale of the increase in inequality nor, except in the most superficial way, the causes of this sudden and sustained turn of events.

This short essay seeks to provide an alternative view of the postwar period in the United States, particularly of the last three decades. My argument is that the high and rising inequality in the United States is the direct result of a set of policies designed first and foremost to increase inequality. These policies, in turn, have their roots in a significant shift in political power against workers and in favor of their employers, a shift that began in the 1970s and continues through today.

The first section of the paper briefly documents the size of the rise in U.S. inequality and puts this change into historical context. The second section sketches an explanation for rising inequality, one that differs from the deeply rooted, but poorly articulated vision that lurks just below the surface of polite political discourse in the United States. The final section focuses on an important part of inequality in the United States that does not receive the attention it deserves.

addicted to happy endings...,

Bloomberg | Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH is banking on sex really being all in women’s heads.

The German drugmaker is putting the finishing touches on a pill designed to reawaken desire by blunting female inhibitions. Unlike Viagra, which targets the mechanics of sex by boosting blood flow to the penis, this drug works on the brain.

The desire drug, the focus of a meeting on sexual disorders in Lyon next week, has the potential to revolutionize sexual medicine much as Pfizer Inc.’s blue pill did a decade ago. That could put family-owned Boehringer at the center of a debate about whether the medicine is a chemical shortcut around a complex dysfunction involving body and mind -- or whether disinterest in sex is a legitimate medical condition.

“This drug has the potential to finally open the door to acceptance of the idea that decreased desire can be something that involves a dysfunctional way the brain works, and not only a bad partner,” said Jim Pfaus, a neurologist at Concordia University in Montreal, who conducted early tests of the drug in rats. “Of course it’s in your head.”

The U.S. market for medicines to rekindle female libido could be bigger than the $2 billion a year in U.S. sales for erectile dysfunction treatments because more women report sexual problems, BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Simes estimated last year.

global commons and common sense

Post Autistic Economics Review | Globalisation is the result of economic growth and technical progress. Production systems have attained global reach. However, the rules and institutions that regulate the systems’ relations of production and exchange are still mostly national. Furthermore, national regulation systems have been drastically eroded in the past three decades of deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation. The present global economic crisis is clearly the result of this inconsistency or contradiction.

We could say with Marx in the famous Preface to the Contribution that the global ‘material productive forces of society [have] come into conflict with the existing relations of production […] From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.’

The reach of the productive force of technology is paralleled by the reach of its destructive power. The real possibility of MAD (mutual assured destruction) gives testimony to that. The maintenance of global peace and security is also an area in which the logic of the commons can suggest possible ways of progress.

As in the case of MAD, competition for common limited resources has sometimes been described as a game of ‘Chicken,’ in which two drivers head against each other from opposite directions — the first to swerve is the loser. In the race for world resources, those who most voraciously exploit and deplete them are the momentary winners of the suicidal game. To avoid mutual destruction, the logic of conflict suggests the formation of a ‘social norm’ to be collectively followed. An ancient social norm, found in most ethical traditions, is the rule of reciprocity, which applied to the utilisation of a common exhaustible resource gives the norm of equal rights for all. Standard utilitarianism also would conclude that aggregate utility is maximised by equal distribution.

The argument applies to other natural resources such as mineral and oil deposits, which also give rise to differential rents. The fact that in most countries oil is a collectively owned resource and underground resources in general are prima facie considered as belonging to the commonwealth, suggests that mineral resources are naturally seen as the common property of the commonwealth. What is not reflected in most natural resource legislations is the legal consequence of collective ownership, namely the equal allocation of dividends, a question that is central to the global redistributive mechanisms discussed here.

However, the question still hovers around who belongs to the commonwealth. Who composes the commonwealth? Wich commonwealth is relevant? Which commonwealth is the legitimate owner of the natural resources? These questions will acquire increasing relevance with rising expected rents accruing from rapidly increasing scarcity, and the resulting wars for the control of resources. Many wars, and perhaps most current and planned wars, are about the control of resources — oil in particular. The unfortunate fact is that there is no factually legitimate form of exclusive/exclusionary ownership. All forms of privately or nationally restricted forms of property are contestable, and in fact often contested. The only stable, uncontestable form of resource ownership is collective ownership by the global society, according to clear and effective rules of use, acceptable to all. And again, the often avoided question of the equal distribution of dividends must be considered simultaneously.

addicted to nonsense..,

TruthDig | What really matters in our lives—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke—doesn’t fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism.

Celebrity worship has banished the real from public discourse. And the adulation of celebrity is pervasive. The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of viewers to Oprah, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. If Jesus and “The Purpose Driven Life” won’t make us a celebrity, then Tony Robbins or positive psychologists or reality television will. We are waiting for our cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and celebrated. Nothing else in life counts.

We yearn to stand before the camera, to be noticed and admired. We build pages on social networking sites devoted to presenting our image to the world. We seek to control how others think of us. We define our worth solely by our visibility. We live in a world where not to be seen, in some sense, is to not exist. We pay lifestyle advisers to help us look and feel like celebrities, to build around us the set for the movie of our own life. Martha Stewart constructed her financial empire, when she wasn’t engaged in insider trading, telling women how to create a set design for the perfect home. The realities within the home, the actual family relationships, are never addressed. Appearances make everything whole. Plastic surgeons, fitness gurus, diet doctors, therapists, life coaches, interior designers and fashion consultants all, in essence, promise to make us happy, to make us celebrities. And happiness comes, we are assured, with how we look, with the acquisition of wealth and power, or at least the appearance of it. Glossy magazines like Town & Country cater to the absurd pretensions of the very rich to be celebrities. They are photographed in expensive designer clothing inside the lavishly decorated set pieces that are their homes. The route to happiness is bound up in how skillfully we present ourselves to the world. We not only have to conform to the dictates of this manufactured vision, but we also have to project an unrelenting optimism and happiness. Hedonism and wealth are openly worshiped on Wall Street as well as on shows such as “The Hills,” “Gossip Girl,” “Sex and the City,” “My Super Sweet 16” and “The Real Housewives of (whatever bourgeois burg happens to be in vogue).”

The American oligarchy—1 percent of whom control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined—are the characters we most envy and watch on television. They live and play in multimillion-dollar mansions. They marry models or professional athletes. They are chauffeured in stretch limos. They rush from fashion shows to movie premieres to fabulous resorts. They have surgically enhanced, perfect bodies and are draped in designer clothes that cost more than some people make in a year. This glittering life is held before us like a beacon. This life, we are told, is the most desirable, the most gratifying. And this is the life we want. Greed is good, we believe, because one day through our acquisitions we will become the elite. So let the rest of the bastards suffer.

american oil in iraq

NYTimes | Iraq’s first stab at opening its oil industry to foreign investment ended in disappointment at an auction in June in which most companies declined to bid. But last month many of those same companies — including Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum, the first American companies to reach production agreements with Baghdad since the 2003 invasion — signed deals at much the same terms they rejected over the summer.

Analysts say the deals on three of the country’s top fields show that Iraq, after an embarrassing start, may be on a path to joining the world’s major oil-producing nations, which could in turn upset the equilibrium in OPEC and increase tensions with the neighboring oil giants Iran and Saudi Arabia. Adding to those strains, development rights to 10 other Iraqi oil fields will be offered to foreign companies at a public auction in Baghdad on Dec. 11.

However, the auction and the contracts come at an awkward time: just months before national elections that could provoke renewed violence or sweep in a new government that could disown the deals.

In the recent deals, the major oil companies have agreed to accept service contracts, in which they earn a fee for each barrel of oil produced. Yet they vastly prefer production-sharing agreements, in which they gain an equity stake in the oil itself. Such deals are far more lucrative to oil companies, but for Iraqis they are reminiscent of the colonial era, when foreign companies controlled the country’s oil wealth. “We have shown that we can attract international companies to invest in Iraq and boost production through service contracts,” Hussain al-Shahristani, Iraq’s oil minister, said recently. “They will not have a share of Iraqi oil, and our country will have total control over production.”

But Iraq has also been forced to acknowledge that it cannot hope to revive its decrepit oil industry without the money and the technical expertise of the major companies. Despite strong anti-American sentiments among the Iraqi public, few officials want to refuse American cash.

homo economicus

EGOS | The standard economic model of homo economicus is characterised by the following assumptions (e.g. Frey 1999):

1. Action is centred in the individual (methodological individualism). Everything that happens in institutions and society can be traced back to the actions of individuals.

2. A strict distinction is to be drawn between preferences (i.e., values which form the basis of motivation) and restrictions (i.e. external stimuli and constraints on the scope for action).

3. An individual’s preferences are given and inalterable (c.f. Becker and Stigler, 1977). The individual’s actions are determined entirely by restrictions.

4. Only self-interested, not prosocial, preferences are assumed to exist. The preferences of other people do not concur with one’s own preferences.

5. The cognitive perception of restrictions is identical in all individuals.

6. Individuals behave entirely rationally. They are able to determine their own maximum utility according to their own preferences within given restrictions.

It is on the basis of these assumptions that the standard economic model is applied to all spheres of life, for instance, to the family, drug abuse, abortion, criminality, art, sport, religion, and suicide.3 This is tied to the withdrawal (or, better, the ejection) of psychology from economics, which, for instance, for Schmölders (1962) was still part of economics.4 Neoclassical standard economics has thus developed an imperialistic understanding of itself as the “queen of the social sciences” (c.f. Hirshleifer 1985; Becker 1976; Frey 1999), a view which has provoked significant aggression and criticism among neighbouring social sciences.

Criticism of standard economics refers chiefly to these assumptions. In particular, this is about the assumptions regarding the cognitive and motivational characteristics of homo economicus and the assumptions regarding the transferability of the economic model across from anonymous market relationships to the relationships within organisations and between individuals.

The criticism of the assumptions about the cognitive characteristics of homo economicus is the least controversial. They go back to Simon (1955, 1956) and have led to the idea of bounded rationality as a consequence of people’s limited capacity to process information. Individuals do not maximise their utility, but can at best achieve satisfactory results. It is on this basis that the institutional economic approaches have been developed (Williamson, 1990). However, the idea of bounded rationality remains vague in institutional economics.5 The research of psychological economics into decision anomalies (Kahneman and Tversky 1986), developed over twenty years, has not been considered. Instead “the same assumptions are still in place as the cornerstones of economic analysis” (Kahneman 2003: 162), though the research on decision anomalies provides precise and situation-specific differentiations of bounded rationality.

interactive unemployment numbers 2007-present

previously established hereabouts....,

the dark side of the internet

Guardian | "The darkweb"; "the deep web"; beneath "the surface web" – the metaphors alone make the internet feel suddenly more unfathomable and mysterious. Other terms circulate among those in the know: "darknet", "invisible web", "dark address space", "murky address space", "dirty address space". Not all these phrases mean the same thing. While a "darknet" is an online network such as Freenet that is concealed from non-users, with all the potential for transgressive behaviour that implies, much of "the deep web", spooky as it sounds, consists of unremarkable consumer and research data that is beyond the reach of search engines. "Dark address space" often refers to internet addresses that, for purely technical reasons, have simply stopped working.

And yet, in a sense, they are all part of the same picture: beyond the confines of most people's online lives, there is a vast other internet out there, used by millions but largely ignored by the media and properly understood by only a few computer scientists. How was it created? What exactly happens in it? And does it represent the future of life online or the past?

Michael K Bergman, an American academic and entrepreneur, is one of the foremost authorities on this other internet. In the late 90s he undertook research to try to gauge its scale. "I remember saying to my staff, 'It's probably two or three times bigger than the regular web,"' he remembers. "But the vastness of the deep web . . . completely took my breath away. We kept turning over rocks and discovering things."

In 2001 he published a paper on the deep web that is still regularly cited today. "The deep web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined world wide web," he wrote. "The deep web is the fastest growing category of new information on the internet … The value of deep web content is immeasurable … internet searches are searching only 0.03% … of the [total web] pages available."

In the eight years since, use of the internet has been utterly transformed in many ways, but improvements in search technology by Google, Kosmix and others have only begun to plumb the deep web. "A hidden web [search] engine that's going to have everything – that's not quite practical," says Professor Juliana Freire of the University of Utah, who is leading a deep web search project called Deep Peep. "It's not actually feasible to index the whole deep web. There's just too much data."

america vs. the narrative

NYTimes | What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?

Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”

What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.

stoning the devil brings outbreak fears

WaPo | Millions of Muslim pilgrims, some wearing surgical masks, jostled one another Saturday to furiously cast pebbles at stone walls representing the devil -- the hajj ritual of highest concern to world health authorities watching for an outbreak of swine flu.

The Islamic pilgrimage draws 3 million visitors each year, making it the largest annual gathering of people in the world and an ideal incubator for the H1N1 flu virus.

So far, about 60 flu cases have been uncovered, but health officials warn that the true impact will be known only after the faithful have returned to their home countries around the world.

Saudi officials, along with U.S. and international health experts, have geared up to try to limit any outbreak here. But they are also using the pilgrimage as a test case to build a database, watch for mutations and look for lessons on controlling the flu at other large gatherings, such as the 2010 soccer World Cup to be held in South Africa.

The stoning-of-the-devil ritual, performed Friday, Saturday and Sunday, is when the crowds of pilgrims at the five-day hajj are at their peak and contact among them is closest.

Under a hot sun Saturday, hundreds of thousands of sweaty bodies pressed against one another near the stoning walls. The majority did not wear masks, and many sneezed, coughed and spat and looked visibly exhausted.

Other parts of the hajj -- such as the circling of the Kaaba shrine in Mecca -- see a lot of physical contact and close quarters, but perhaps not as much as the rites at Mina, in a desert valley outside Mecca.

The epic crowds squeeze together along ramps and platforms that control traffic around the walls. They push past one another to hurl pebbles at each wall, often shouting curses at Satan and rejecting his temptations.

vaccine ineffective against lethal virus mutation

Examiner | One sample of the Ukraine flu virus has been classed as a low reactor to the H1N1 vaccine. If this mutation spreads, it could result in infection for people who have been vaccinated against the swine flu. Other mutations that have been identified include Tamiflu resistance and complete destruction of the lungs.

Virus mutation and reaction to flu vaccines

Vaccines are created to respond to each different type of virus, and must be adapted if the virus changes too much from the original. Influenza viruses are highly susceptible to mutation, which explains the requirement for a new seasonal flu vaccine each year. When a vaccine provides a strong immune response to a virus, that virus is considered to be a high reactor to the vaccine. In the event that the virus mutates to the point where the vaccine provides a limited or nonexistent level of protection, it is considered a low reactor.

H1N1 mutation and the swine flu vaccine

The samples of the Ukraine flu virus that were analyzed by the World Health Organization provide a great deal of information about the mutations found in this strain of the swine flu. For example, each of the samples from fatalities contained a change in the receptor binding domain for the virus to D225G, which affects the lungs. In addition, one sample has been classed as a low reactor, which means that if that strain of virus were to spread, individuals who have been vaccinated would not be protected.