Archive for January, 2013


DAFOH Advisory Board:

Jacob Lavee,
 MD, Associate Professor of Surgery, Director of Heart Transplantation Unit,
Sheba Medical Center,
 Tel Hashomer, ISRAEL

J. Wallis Marsh,
 MD, Professor of Surgery, Specialist for Liver Transplantation,
 Pittsburgh, USA

Narinder Mehra, 
MD, Professor and Head of Department of Transplant Immunology & Immunogenetics (AIIMS), 
New Delhi, INDIA

Maria A. Fiatarone Singh,
 MD, FRACP, Professor of Medicine, John Sutton Chair of Exercise and Sport Science, University of Sydney,
 Sydney, AUSTRALIA

Eric Jay Goldberg,
 MD, Senior Medical Director, Shire Regenerative Medicine, 
La Jolla, USA

Ghazali Ahmad,
 MD, Senior Consultant and Head Department of Nephrology Hospital Kuala Lumpur, 
Chairman of National Renal Registry,
Head of Nephrology Services,
Ministry of Health,
Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA

 

NONONO

Julian Assange recently addressed the Oxford Union (UK) via videolink from the Ecuadorian Embassy, see earlier interpretOr post, and the accompanying audio (of his speech) via YouTube is currently muted. So, for the record, here is a synopsis of what was actually said (source: Oxford Union)

Julian Assange begins his address by saying that in 2007-08 he was looking at what was happening in Iran. He says that a lot of people did good work, especially Thomas Fingar in:Trying to correct the movement towards war with Iran based on lies.He says one of the worst modern deceptions of the western world happened only in 2003 where we went to war with Iraq based on lies where over 100, 000 people were killed and millions of Iraqi refugees displaced as a result.In 2008 WikiLeaks published Iraq's classified rules of engagement for the US army. In those rules there was a section that permitted a border skirmish to start up that allowed US troops to go into Iran under a variety of circumstances. Because of the leak Iran held a press conference saying that in no way are the US allowed into their territory. After this a second rules of engagement was published omitting the border skirmish. Between 20% and 50% of all wars have started as a result of these border skirmishes. 45 hostile military bases surrounds Iran's borders, because of this there is a constant fear of being invaded making for a very tense atmosphere in the country.He makes the point that WikiLeaks is not against intelligence agencies but mentions that corruption within intelligence agencies is born out of secrecy.Intelligence analysts mustn't be held responsible to the public through cultural bias but must be responsible to historical record.He mentions the WikiLeaks movie saying that it's a mass propaganda attack against the WikiLeaks organisation, also it fans the flames for war on Iran as is demonstrated in the opening scene of the film that is read out by Assange who has the script. The movie shows Iran as having an active nuclear program when intelligence reports have revealed in high confidence that this is not the case.Filmed on Wednesday 23rd January 2013

(London: HRW/Amnesty) – Iran’s judiciary should quash death sentences against five members of Iran’s Ahwazi Arab minority and immediately cancel their execution, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today. The sentences were handed down by a revolutionary court and upheld by the country’s Supreme Court on January 9, 2013.

The five men – Mohammad Ali Amouri, Sayed Jaber Alboshoka and his brother Sayed Mokhtar Alboshoka, Hashem Sha’bani Amouri, and Hadi Rashidi (or Rashedi) – are all activists in Iran’s Arab-majority Khuzestan province, in southwest Iran. A branch of the Revolutionary Court sentenced them to death on terrorism-related charges following an unfair trial in July 2012. On January 18, authorities informed families gathered outside Karoun Prison in the south-western city of Ahvaz that the five men had been transferred out of the prison. Their whereabouts are unknown…click here for more on this story @ HRW

more interpretOr pieces on Iran:

‘rOmney betrays Iran protesters —really’ (world war 4 report 23/10/12)

January 24th, 2013 | by  | Published in All StoriesCovert Drone WarTop Stories  |

A UN investigation into the legality and casualties of drone strikes has been formally launched, with a leading human rights lawyer revealing the team that will carry out the inquiry.

The announcement came as the latest reported US drone strike in Yemen was said to have mistakenly killed two children.

UNDRONEQCBen Emmerson QC, the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, told a London press conference that he will lead a group of international specialists who will examine CIA and Pentagon covert drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
The team will also look at drone strikes by US and UK forces in Afghanistan, and by Israel in the Occupied Territories. In total some 25 strikes are expected to be examined in detail.
The senior British barrister will work alongside international criminal lawyers, a senior Pakistani judge and one of the UK’s leading forensic pathologists, as well as experts from Pakistan and Yemen. 

Also joining the team is a serving judge-advocate with the US military ‘who is assisting the inquiry in his personal capacity.’
Emmerson told reporters: ’Those states using this technology and those on whose territory it is used are under an international law obligation to establish effective independent and impartial investigations into any drone attack in which it is plausibly alleged that civilian casualties were sustained.’
But in the absence of such investigations by the US and others, the UN would carry out investigations ‘in the final resort’, he said.

Based at City University, London, the Bureau works in collaboration with other groups to get its investigations published and distributed. To date, TBIJ have worked with BBC File On FourBBC PanoramaBBC NewsnightChannel 4 DispatchesChannel 4 Newsal Jazeera Englishthe Independentthe Financial Timesthe Daily Telegraphthe Sunday TimesLe Monde and numerous others.

Assange mentions the WikiLeaks movie saying that it's a mass propaganda attack against the WikiLeaks organisation, also it fans the flames for war on Iran as is demonstrated in the opening scene of the film that is read out by Assange who has the script. The movie shows Iran as having an active nuclear program when intelligence reports have revealed in high confidence that this is not the case.

Filmed on Wednesday 23rd January 2013

“We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australia once reached out for us. Didn’t Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? Did it not for the poor of Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries of Europe and Asia? Isn’t it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkable harmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions to the problems which beset the first Australians – the people to whom the most injustice has been done.”

Paul Keating, 1992, then Australian Prime Minister,  gave a speech at Redfern Park – in an inner city suburb of Sydney with an historically large Aboriginal population – for the Australian Launch of the ‘International Year for the World’s Indigenous People’. 

martyfe

“I’m not anti-Arab. I’m not anti-Israeli either. I really feel rather strongly about the Palestinian refugees. Sorry to get serious and political, but there’s an old American saying: ‘you can’t make an omlette without breaking eggs.’ Why is it always other people’s eggs they have to break? So my stand on the Middle East situation is very ambivalent, I’m afraid. I feel more for the people whose eggs are broken.”

Marty Feldman, circa ’73.

10 of the best psychology links from the past week:

1. There’s More to Life Than Being Happy – by Emily Esfahani Smith for the Atlantic. “Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a ‘taker’ while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a ‘giver’.”

2. The latest issue of the Wellcome Trust’s free Big Picture magazine is devoted to the brain and brain scanning techniques.

3. Psychologists discuss the cocktail party effect – BBC Radio 4.

4. How switching tasks maximises creative thinking.

5. The Examined Life by Stephen Grosz – stories and case studies from 25 years as a London psychoanalyst – was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week. The book is “already something of a literary sensation“, says the Guardian.

6. The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational.

7. Psychological insights into human attention from the skills of a pick-pocket– by Adam Green for the New Yorker.

8. The jobs with the most psychopaths.

9. Psychologists discuss disgust – BBC Radio 4.

10. New book that’s definitely worth a look – The World Until Yesterday in which Jared Diamond explores what we can learn from traditional societies. Tom Payne, the Telegraph reviewer, said it left him “riveted and thinking hard“. But Wade Davis for The Guardian was less enthusiastic: “the lessons [Diamond] draws from his sweeping examination of culture are for the most part uninspired and self-evident.”
_________________________________
Post compiled by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.

Message for My Daughter

Like a deep red river you flow through my existence

Collecting gentle raindrops that fall on distant mountains

Into a singing dancing torrent that rushes into life

Tumbling crazily through joy and pain and love

Carrying mysterious remnants of dark green jungles

And wild memories of animals and exotic ancient lives

You nourish my spirit as you pass through my heart

Linking my being to the fibres of the universe

Though time inexorably draws your life forward

Until you flow on to meet the great ocean

We have exchanged precious particles of our lives

That you carry with you beyond mortality beyond oblivion

To a distant fertile region outside of our imagination

There you will plant gardens to nourish new generations

Connecting their being with the beginning of time

Jim Scott

hague

Look, it gives me great, great pleasure to present you, William Hague, with this memento of your visit…your visit here to Menzies Central…

Tony, wha thankyoo…I like it very mooch. At the end of the day, these lightweight cagoules are ideal for wholesome outdoor activities where inappropriate moisture could be a hindrance. As I’ve said to David, David…many of our cycling conservative broothers purchase these as a lightweight party conference adornment, as they are available quite frankly, available in the popular Tory colours.

Heck, my diplomatic cagoule can be folded ‘into’ itself by using a built-in-kangaroo-pouch or packed in the protective case that can be stored or worn on the belt that’s attached to my helmet!

Huhahuhahuhha…

I said to Tony, Tony, please note – when sizing, most cagoules are a generous fit with elasticated cuffs…

Huhahuhahuhha…

Let’s talk variants. A cagoule which can be rolled up into a very compact package and carried in a bag or pocket was invented by Noel Bibby of Peter Storm Ltd. in the early 1960s.[2] It has an integral hood, elasticated or drawstring cuffs, and a few poppers or a short zip at the neck. It does not open fully at the froont and must be, must be pulled on…over the head. In some versions, when rolled up, the hood or front pocket doubles as a pouch into which the rest of the coat is pushed. It became very popular in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, going by such trademarks as Pack-a-Mac & “Cag in a Bag”.[citation needed]  When John Winston How…

 

lemonde

Arab Spring, Act Two: are the monarchies next? decoding Syria’s Alawites; Mali, is the war postponed? how Occupy Wall Street fell in love with itself; nuclear power, conflicting aims; fished out, our oceans privatised; enter China’s new photographers; Upstairs, Downstairs, our fascination with the past; if we only had the time… and more…

Current issue: January 2013

“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,”

Aaron Swartz

NegMonk

Gina, dear, dear Gina…when I was but a child, there was a fox by the name of Basil…Basil the fox…phneuhhh…

Ooooo yesss, Lord Chwissie…A weal fox…a weal one with a bwight bushy tail???

Ohh Gina, dear, dear Gina…Basil Bwush was in some wespects a figment…

Ooooo yesss, Lord Chwissie…a…a…a figmented fox?

Gina, dear, dear Gina, where was I…where are we now…right…Basil the fox had a catchcry, a cathcry of “Boom, Boom!”

Ooooo yesss, Lord Chwissie…a cwy of…of a jolly big “Boooom”! I like mine, though. I like my boom.

Gina, dear, dear Gina. Indeed, I like it too. I weally, weally like your boom.

Hahhhh! D’you know what, d’you know what, Lord Chwissie…? The latte dwinking lefty masses who don’t like my boom…the latte dwinking lefty masses in Western Austwaylia just have to live with my boom too…Hahahhh, they now pay an average of awound 60-80% of their do-gooder weekly scwaypings to keep a woof over their heads…Hahahhhh!!

Gina, dear, dear Gina. Thet’s maaarvelous news. Survival of…survival of…

Survival of…survival of…the FATTEST!

Boom, Boom.

“Climate change clashes with the myth of a land where progress is limited only by the rate at which resources can be extracted…”

George Monbiot’s prescient piece calls fireman Abbott on “the most cynical kind of stunt politics” and articulates the challenge we all face in confronting the vested and powerful interests of those hereditary beasts – Rinehart, Murdoch, fair-dinkum-Andy Forrest et al. Click below to go through to Monbiot @ the Guardian…

…Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal – the most carbon intensive fossil fuel. It’s also a…

oligarchs vs. everyOne else?

Alternet continues to cut through the conventional media lansdcape of celeb-twaddle, gobbledigook and managerialist mendacity…

"The owners (or “Takers”) own vast wealth, and loan it out at interest to everybody from students to governments.  They’re continually receiving that interest back in ways that are either tax-free or taxed at very low levels.  (Here in the US we call it “capital gains,” “Interest,” “dividends,” and “carried interest.”  While a working person will pay as much as 39% in federal income taxes, the federal income tax to the Mitt Romneys, Paris Hiltons, and Lloyd Blankfeins of the world is now capped at 20%.  As Leona Helmsley famously said, “Only little people pay taxes.”) "

click here for the piece in full…’There’s a Violent World War Going on Right Now, with Millions of Casualties’ @ Alternet… 

 

here @ the interpretOr, we’ve just had a quick perusal of this morning’s Oz tabloid press and…it ain’t pretty…

Real-life Barbie is no blonde bimbo”     Finch’s not-so-secret wedding

Dannii’s successful 2013 in the bag

In marked contrast, over at Green Left Weekly, there’s an appeal by veteran journalist, John Pilger:

“Australia has the most restrictive media in the western world. Censorship by omission denies Australians their democratic right to make sense of whole stratas of political and foreign policy. That’s why Green Left Weekly is a beacon, doing a job of honourable journalism, as an agent of people, not power.”

John Pilger

click here for Green Left Weekly

@ the interpretOr, we maintain that when media organisations are answerable to share holders and the markets, the public interest is necessarily compromised. Objectivity cannot serve two masters. When media organisations collude and offer a seeming consensus of content and treatment, there is tremendous power in their ability to shape perceptions of actual and restrict perspectives of possible.