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WHEN THE DAM BREAKS
By Avi Davis
 While the American media is engrossed in reporting baseless accounts of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, far worse atrocities are being perpetrated within throwing distance of the American border.
Unknown and underappreciated by most Americans, the Republic of Mexico is wobbling on the brink of collapse, threatening a humanitarian and security crisis for the United States which could dwarf any terrorism threat from the Middle East.
It is almost routine these days to pick up a paper and find news that eight police officers had been found beheaded in the State of Sinaloa or that 15 people were executed gangland style in Tijuana. The victims in these gruesome killings are often not wanted criminals or cartel operatives but simple citizens – a father and his daughter driving to school; a taco stand vendor setting up his stall or a school teacher preparing for the next day’s class. In 2008 over 6,000 people were reported murdered throughout Mexico as a result of drug related violence. Only a small minority of the killers have been apprehended or brought to justice.
Why is this happening? It is because powerful drug cartels are at war with both one another and with the Mexican government. The lucrative $50 billion drug trade in the United States is at stake and drug lords who were quietly accommodated by a succession of Mexican governments over the past 30 years, have grown powerful and restive. Developing their own militias and possessed of highly sophisticated equipment and training, they are more than a match for the Mexican army which only in recent years has stepped up a campaign to challenge them.
But it may be too late. The influence exercised by the drug cartels has likely already penetrated the highest echelons of Felipe Calderon’s government, the Mexican military, the judiciary and the federal and State police forces. This has severely hobbled any serious attempt to confront the drug lords. With the growing ineffectiveness of government intervention, Mexican citizens in battleground states are finding themselves with very few good alternatives in deciding how to protect the lives of their families. Increasingly, Mexicans in these areas look to the drug cartels for protection and as a result fear has become endemic to modern life.
In such a society a culture of graft and corruption does not come into existence only because of greed. It develops from the sense that the government cannot shield daily life from intimidating elements, and the need to side with those who ostensibly can. This may be a weak moral excuse for paying protection money or becoming a drug collaborator. But these are matters of life and death for many Mexicans, and moral questions are not so easily answered under such deadly circumstances.
A discussion of the troubling consequences for the U.S. of Mexican societal collapse cannot now be avoided.. The abdication of government oversight would induce the kind of mayhem that we who live with a smug guarantee of stability, can barely fathom. As Mexico spirals into civil war, rioting, murder, rape, kidnappings and arson would become commonplace; armed gangs would wander streets of cities and villages imposing curfews and staking out territory; millions of people could be displaced from their homes as violence escalates. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Mexicans would stream toward the U.S. border seeking asylum, while overloaded boatloads of refugees would account for multiple drownings in the treacherous waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Even more telling would be threat of this same struggle spilling over into American soil. And not just into border towns. Urban centers in Texas, New Mexico and California have all reported the escalation of violence in Hispanic turf wars which are increasingly related to drugs. The enormous financial clout of the cartels may also have started to buy them influence and protection in U.S. political, economic and social circles, securing a U.S. beachhead for a new kind of mafia with the muscle to influence American domestic and foreign policy.
All of this is alluded to in a new report from the United States Joint Forces Command titled The Joint Operating Environment. This report identifies both Mexico and Pakistan as failing states whose implosion could pose a significant security risk for the United States. In the case of Mexico, the report hints at the eventual necessity of U.S. military intervention to secure the 2,000 mile long border and to eliminate the drug cartel menace to American security.
It would certainly not be the first time intervention in Mexico has been warranted. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson sent an expeditionary force into Mexico to punish renegade bandits, led by Pancho Villa, who had attacked towns and killed American citizens on the New Mexico border. Villa drew the American forces deep into the Mexican hinterland, cut off their sources of supply and eventually forced an ignominious retreat.
Today the U.S. military and border police would need to play a smarter game. Crushing the cartels and restoring a semblance of order would require the development of guerilla tactics and a broad intelligence network that could play on Mexican disaffection with cartel brutality to its advantage. In the event the United States intervenes, the U.S. military should also not shy away from the creation of a buffer zone which will act as a base for intelligence gathering and spontaneous raids. Military training and aid should today be offered to the Calderon government but only on strict condition of careful screening and a thorough vetting of the Mexican security services.
While Mexico’s collapse is far from a certainty, (as the Joint Operating Environment itself states), we lose nothing by preparing for its eventuality. That kind of preparedness gives us the opportunity to examine the rising waters on the other side of our border and the knowledge of what to do if and when the dam breaks.
Want to comment on this article? See Avi Davis’ blog
WHO IS GOING TO OWN AMERICA
By Avi Davis
The debate in Congress rages this week about President Obama’s $815 billion stimulus package and yet the most important question is not being asked:
Who is going to own America?
The debt that Americans are being asked to assume, which could amount to many trillions of dollars over the next 20 years, is obviously going to be fronted by creditors with deep pockets.
So who exactly are these creditors? The American citizen? Nope. American citizens don’t have that kind of money. The government? It doesn’t keep that kind of cash handy. Private enterprise? Try again.
The sad, invidious answer: Foreign governments. And among those governments are those whose agenda may not necessarily embrace the life, liberty and happiness of the average American taxpayer.
In short, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia are about to become America’s suspect sugar daddies.
To Read more See Avi Davis’ blog
Avi Davis is the Executive Director and Senior Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at isdev@ix.netcom.com
Obama Misunderstands the Global Jihad-Robert Spencer
by Robert Spencer
“My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.” So said Barack Obama in his first interview as President, which, in a highly significant symbolic move, he gave to the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya network. For the new president, it amounted to little better than a preemptive surrender to jihadist ideology. Obama emphasized what he perceived as a break with the past in relaying the instructions he gave to his personal envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell: “What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating -- in the past on some of these issues -- and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved.” (HumanEvents)
NEWS: EUROPE AND AMERICA
FBI Cuts Ties With CAIR Following Terror Financing Trial-Joseph Abrams
The FBI severed its ties with all local branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group, an FBI official told FOX News.
The FBI is severing its once-close ties with the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, amid mounting evidence that it has links to a support network for Hamas. All local chapters of CAIR have been shunned in the wake of a 15-year FBI investigation that culminated with the conviction in December of Hamas fundraisers at a trial where CAIR itself was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. The U.S. government has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. An official at the FBI's headquarters in Washington confirmed to FOX News that his office directed FBI field offices across the country to cut ties with local branches of CAIR. In Oklahoma, FBI officials had worked with CAIR's local branch from its founding in 2007 and attended the fundraising banquet that launched the office. But just over a year later, the local FBI froze all its programs involving CAIR. (Foxnews)
Police Union: Germany Needs More Protection Against Terrorism-DW Staff
Germany's police trade union (GdP) has called for tougher measures to prevent terrorist attacks in the wake of a recent Internet video posted by an Islamist group warning of an attack on Germany.
The police trade union's head, Konrad Freiberg, described the current situation as "very serious," and said Germans were not sensitive to the threats posed by terrorist groups. "Everyone is talking about protective shields at banks and businesses," Freiberg told the daily Ruhr Nachrichten on Monday, Feb. 2. "We need a functioning protective shield from terrorism. He added that the danger of terrorism in Germany exists but remains "absent from people's minds as long as nothing happens." Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Germany's police force has shrunk by some 10,000 people, Freiberg said, adding that this meant Germany "was not able to monitor the risks -- a circle of between 60 and 100 people -- around the clock." (Dw-world)
Counterproductive Counterterrorism-Andrew C. McCarthy
A military judge’s rebuff to Obama imperils the future of military commissions.
If you want to incur the ire of our men and women in uniform, just try calling one of their brethren “petulant.” I did that last week in a post on The Corner, and my mailbox has since been smoldering. But the aspersion stands. It was cast at Army Col. James Pohl, the chief military judge at the Guantánamo Bay detention center, where 245 alien enemy combatants are still being held. Col. Pohl made a splash last week by denying President Barack Obama’s request for a four-month adjournment in a military commission case. Twenty-one Gitmo detainees currently face commissions, which are military trials for war crimes. Obama, whose instincts are all September 10, was hostile throughout the campaign to the Bush administration’s military prosecution paradigm. So far, however, he’s exhibited caution. He’s toned down the rhetoric, conceded that the nation is at war, and even acknowledged that the criminal justice system is not suited to dealing with many people who mean great harm to the United States. (NationalReview)
Police adopt uniform hijab-Leicesteshirenews
Police have opened the door to female Muslim recruits by incorporating the hijab into the uniform.The force has become the latest to approve a design for a headscarf suitable for officers on patrol. Senior officers believe the lack of the option has deterred applications from the considerable number of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab. The police hijab is plain black and made of a flame-retardant material. Officers will be able to wear a standard police hat on top of it. A small number of forces nationwide have taken a similar step, including Thames Valley and the Metropolitan police. Superintendent Geoff Feavyour, who leads the Leicestershire Constabulary recruitment team, compared the development to the incorporation of the turban several years ago, which removed a barrier to the recruitment of male Sikhs. The police's annual report for 2007/08 showed women made up about 23 per cent of the force's officers. The number of officers from black and Asian communities stood at about six per cent – short of the 15 per cent target. (thisisleicestshire.co.uk)
 The Radical Muslims of Germany-Dr. Sami Alabraa
"Jews are the enemy of Allah," declared Ismael Gharaballi during a service in a mosque in Bielefeld, Germany. "This is not only my belief, but also Allah's conviction," the Palestinian imam and Hamas activist declared, waving his Koran in the air. The congregation of about 200 thundered, "Allahu Akbar!" Then Gharaballi turned to another page in the Koran and read, "… and kill them [he explained this to mean unbelievers, especially the Jews] wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you" (Surah 2, verse 191). "What are you waiting for?" he cried. "Allah Himself is telling us kill them. No peace can be made with the Jews." (Familysecuritymatters)
Academic freedom
Hamas on Campus-Cinnamon Stillwell
If further proof was needed that the field of Middle East studies is marred by a politicized, morally vacuous approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the reaction of many of its leading lights to the current war in Gaza should suffice. According to these self-appointed arbiters of international law, Israel ' s military campaign against Hamas following the firing of over 6,000 rockets at Israeli civilian targets since 2005 is unjustified. Hamas, they tell us, is not a terrorist organization bent on Israel ' s destruction, but rather a national liberation movement that seeks only the noble founding of a Palestinian state. Either that or its leaders, all evidence to the contrary, can be negotiated with and cajoled into moderation. They insist Israel recognize that Hamas was democratically elected in 2006, even as they deny any responsibility on the part of Gazans for electing a terrorist government. (Hudsonny.org)
Jew-Hate at UCLA-Eric Golub
A "Gaza and Human Rights" symposium hosted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)’s Center for Near Eastern Studies instructed attendees on how best to spread anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism. Attendees advocated for many unrelated leftists, from Lenin to Che Guevara, while students were busy texting, Twittering, and checking Facebook. Moderator Susan Slyomovics, the director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, offered typical leftist academic condescension. "I have done extensive research on Israel and Palestine. After all, this is not Fox TV. This is UCLA." She must have meant the Fox News Channel, unless she was comparing her research abilities to Homer Simpson. UCLA history professor Gabriel Piterberg followed. He described an "Israeli onslaught on Gaza Palestinians" and labeled IDF soldiers "war criminals." (Frontpagemagazine)
UVM’s president responds to questions about commencement speaker Ben Stein
UVM President Daniel Mark Fogel spoke with members of the media Monday, Feb. 2, about the withdrawal of Ben Stein as UVM’s commencement speaker. The following is a full transcript of the interview. To read UVM’s press release about Stein’s withdrawal, click here.
When, in the press release, you say “profound concerns,” what in particular do you mean?
Fogel: I think the fundamental concern of the people that wrote to me was that, while they are quite open to having a speaker with Mr. Steins views on campus, they felt that he should not be honored at the commencement ceremony when so many of his views seemed to be affronts to the basic premises of the academy, about scientific and scholarly inquiry and collaterally, people were deeply disturbed by his views on the roll of science in the Holocaust. (Straightfromthesource)
Media Bias
Account of Israeli attack doesn't hold up to scrutiny-PATRICK MARTIN
JABALYA, GAZA STRIP — Most people remember the headlines: Massacre Of Innocents As UN School Is Shelled; Israeli Strike Kills Dozens At UN School. They heralded the tragic news of Jan. 6, when mortar shells fired by advancing Israeli forces killed 43 civilians in the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The victims, it was reported, had taken refuge inside the Ibn Rushd Preparatory School for Boys, a facility run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The news shocked the world and was compared to the 1996 Israeli attack on a UN compound in Qana, Lebanon, in which more than 100 people seeking refuge were killed. It was certain to hasten the end of Israel's attack on Gaza, and would undoubtedly lead the list of allegations of war crimes committed by Israel. There was just one problem: The story, as etched in people's minds, was not quite accurate. Physical evidence and interviews with several eyewitnesses, including a teacher who was in the schoolyard at the time of the shelling, make it clear: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA compound, no one in the compound was killed. The 43 people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where all three mortar shells landed. (Theglobeandmail.com)
Ex-Journalists’ New Jobs Fuel Debate on Favoritism-Jim Rutenberg
WASHINGTON — Republicans have long accused mainstream journalists of being on the payroll of President Obama and the Democratic Party, a common refrain of favoritism especially from those on the losing end of an election (see Bush vs. Gore, Clinton vs. Bush and Bush vs. Dukakis). But this year the accusation has a new twist: In some notable cases it has become true, with several prominent journalists now on the payrolls of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership. An unusual number of journalists from prominent, mainstream organizations started new government jobs in January, providing new kindling to the debate over whether Mr. Obama is receiving unusually favorable treatment in the news media. These are not opinionated talkers in the vein of Chris Matthews, the MSNBC host who last year flirted with a run for the Democratic nomination for the Senate — and who more recently said he would do “everything I can to make this thing work” for Mr. Obama. Rather, they are, for the most part, more traditional journalists from organizations that strive to approach the news with objectivity. (NYT)
Freedom of Speech
A free speech killer-Nat Hentoff
On Inauguration Day, after it got the United Nations to pass a gag rule on insulting religions, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) told our new president in a New York Times ad that Muslims "have compelling strategic and moral reasons to cooperate and peacefully coexist with the United States in particular, and with the West in general." Many Muslims here and elsewhere want that partnership; but some, jihadists in the name of Islam, disagree violently. In its address to our new president, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which has permanent status at the United Nations) made no mention of its own strategic skills that resulted, on Dec. 18, in the passage by the U.N. General Assembly of a nonbinding resolution (with strong advice to its members) that condemns "defamation of religion," especially Islam.
In an 83 to 53 vote, with 42 abstentions, the U.N. General Assembly urged nations to provide "adequate protections" in their laws or constitutions against "acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general." (Washingtontimes)
The Islamization of Europe-Geert Wilders
I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The danger I see looming is the scenario of America as the last man standing. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe. The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. The Eiffel Tower and Trafalgar Square and Rome's ancient buildings and maybe the canals of Amsterdam. They are still there. And they still look very much the same as they did a hundred years ago. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world, a world very few visitors see - and one that does not appear in your tourist guidebook. It is the world of the parallel society created by Moslem mass-migration. (Newmediajournal)
ANTISEMITISM
Venezuela's main synagogue desecrated by armed people, slogans such as ‘Jews get out’
CARACAS (AFP-EJP)---About fifteen armed people broke into Venezuela's main synagogue overnight Friday to destroy scripture books and spray graffiti, a Jewish community official said.
The Tiferet Synagogue is located at the seat of Venezuela's Jewish Association in the district of Mariperez of the capital Caracas.
"They stayed in the synagogue for about five hours, tied and gagged the guards, destroyed the offices and desecrated the place where we keep rolls of the Torah," Judaism's holy book, explained Elias Farache, president of the Jewish Association. "Damn Israel," "We don't want Jews here," "Jews get out" and "Assassins" were among the anti-Semitic slogans on the vandalized synagogue, an AFP journalist reported. "Never in the history of Venezuela's Jewish community have we been the target of such an aggression. The climate is very tense. We feel threatened, intimidated, attacked," Farache added.
Around 15,000 Jews live in the country. (EJP)
Wiesenthal Centre to UN Human Rights Commissioner and World Council of Churches: "South African Government Minister's and Church Official's Antisemitism Are Precursors for Durban II"
In letters to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Madam Navanethem Pillay, and the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev Samuel Kobia, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, called for their condemnation of antisemitic incitement in South Africa. At a rally of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) last month in Lenasia, Deputy Foreign Minister Fatima Hajaig, representing the African National Congress (ANC) Government, stated: "America is in the grip of Jewish money power... No matter what Government comes to power, whether Republican or Democratic [sic], whether Barack Obama or George Bush. The control of America, just like the control of most Western countries, is in the hands of Jewish money, and if Jewish money controls their country, then you cannot expect anything else."(SimonWiesenthalCenter)
Ex- Bangladesh Official: Hitler Should Have Killed All the Jews-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
A former senior official and newspaper editor from Bangladesh told a television audience last week that Adolph Hitler should have been more thorough when it came to the Jews. The TV host seconded the opinion. As reported by the editor and publisher of the Weekly Blitz, peace activist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, Mohammad Asafuddowlah said, "My soul bleeds when I recall the recent atrocities against the people of Gaza. And if I was a young man, I would have gone to Gaza with a weapon to exterminate Israel."
It is not just Israel's extermination Asafuddowlah seeks, however. "Now I believe that what Adolph Hitler did during the Holocaust was absolutely correct. He should have done this more extensively, to eliminate the total Jewish population from the world," he added. Abdul Hye Sikder, the host of the TV program on which Asafuddowlah appeared, reacted to the genocidal statements with agreement, echoing the sentiments. Sikder, Choudhury reports, was at one time a leading activist of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. (INN)
 Israeli Apartheid Week 2009 may be coming to a campus near you-Tori Cheifetz
Israeli Apartheid Week will take place on March 1-8 on college campuses in 27 cities internationally, in what has become a growing phenomenon since the annual event was started in 2005. Although the schedule for this year's version has not yet been released, a message on its Web site makes clear what the focus will be: "This year, IAW occurs in the wake of Israel's barbaric assault against the people of Gaza. Lectures, films and actions will make the point that these latest massacres further confirm the true nature of Israeli Apartheid." The event aims "to continue to build and strengthen the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at a global level," according to the site. An archive of past Israeli Apartheid Weeks on apartheidweek.org confirms the event's growing popularity. In 2005, the event took place only in Toronto. The next year, it grew to include Montreal and Oxford. Five locations, including New York, were added in 2007, bringing it to the United States for the first time. From 2007 to 2008, there was a huge jump as 19 locations were added for a total of 24 (certain others were discontinued). This year, with the addition of three new locations, Israeli Apartheid Week will be held in 27 cities. (Jpost)
TERRORISM, INTERNET, JIHAD
Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil-Judea Pearl
When will our luminaries stop making excuses for terror?
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy? The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts. Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition. (WSJ)
 Iraqi woman nicknamed 'the mother of believers' arrested for recruiting 80 female suicide bombers-Mail Foreign Service
A woman suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has been arrested, the Iraqi military said today. The woman, who was identified as Samira Ahmed Jassim or by her nickname 'Umm al-Mumineen,' ('the mother of believers') was shown confessing in a video played for reporters at a press conference in Baghdad. Dressed in an all-encompassing black Islamic robe, she described how she would persuade the women to be bombers, then escort them to an orchard for insurgent training and finally pick them up and lead them to their targets. She said she was acting on behalf of insurgents based in the volatile Diyala province, north of Baghdad. Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the suspect had recruited more than 80 women willing to carry out attacks and had admitted masterminding 28 bombings in different areas. (Dailymail.co.uk)
 The Internet and terrorism: Hamas has recently launched PaluTube, its new file sharing website. AqsaTube, the previous file sharing website, has changed its name and appearance and is now known as TubeZik. Those changes resulted from the refusal of French and Russian Internet service providers to continue hosting AqsaTube. -IICC
Hamas has recently launched a new website called PaluTube . Also launched was a website called TubeZik , being a new version of AqsaTube. The file sharing website AqsaTube was taken offline twice after a French company and a Russian company stopped providing it with technical services. 2. PaluTube and TubeZik are file sharing websites, such as YouTube, in which users can upload video clips. The clips featured on the websites include incitement against Israel , preaching terrorism, and glorification of Hamas and terrorism. Also found on the websites are posters and clips pertaining mostly to Operation Cast Lead, portrayed as a “holocaust”. As is the case with Hamas's other websites, the information published complies with the radical ideology and the terrorist policy of the Hamas movement. Those websites are yet another constituent in the extensive Internet infrastructure of Hamas, which kept developing its websites during Operation Cast Lead and still does so. (IICC)
Radical ENVIRONMENTALISM and Science
Why do Green zealots think they can dictate how many children we are allowed to have?-Melanie Phillips
So the deepest green of them all turns out to be not so much a friend of the earth as an enemy of the human race. Jonathon Porritt, the Government's 'green' adviser, has said that couples who have more than two children are being 'irresponsible' by creating an unbearable burden on the environment. Curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must therefore be at the heart of policies to fight man-made global warming. Apparently this is all because people have to accept responsibility 'for their total environmental footprint'. That's what having children amounts to, apparently, in his mind. The blessings of a large family and the contribution this makes to prosperity and progress don't figure at all. Instead, children are to be measured solely by their burdensome impact on the planet. What kind of sinister and dehumanised mindset is this? It is no coincidence that the country which comes nearest to Jonathon's ideal society is Communist China, which imposed a murderously cruel policy of restricting families to one child apiece. For the desire to reduce the number of children that parents produce is innately totalitarian. (Dailymail.co.uk)
Experiments fail: Controversial human-animal hybrid embryos 'will not deliver medical benefit'-David Derbyshire
Controversial attempts to create human-animal hybrid embryos for medicine may be doomed to failure, scientists say. Tests suggest that combining human DNA with an egg cell taken from a female rabbit or cow does not work. Although the human-animal hybrids looked normal under the microscope, they were genetically flawed, meaning they may be of little use to medicine or science. British cloning pioneer Sir Ian Wilmut described the findings – published today by a team of U.S. researchers – as ‘very disappointing’.The research team claimed that if the same results are repeated elsewhere, it would mean the protracted debate over the ethics of human-animal hybrids over the past couple of years would have been a waste of time. (Dailymail.co.uk)
 Google Earth allows web users to explore world's oceans in 3D-Claudine Beaumont, Technology Editor
A new Google Earth tool will enable internet users to embark on a virtual, three-dimensional tour of the world's oceans.
The Ocean tool combines renderings of underwater terrain with expert content from marine biologists and oceanographers, allowing web surfers to swim around virtual underwater volcanoes, watch videos about exotic marine life, read about nearby shipwrecks, and contribute photos and videos of their favourite diving spots. Google said that humans had only ever explored around five per cent of the world's oceans, which cover more than 70 per cent of the earth's surface and contain 80 per cent of all life. Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said the launch of Ocean in Google Earth provided an opportunity to change people's perspective about the importance of the oceanic ecosystem in the overall health of the planet. (Telegraph.co.uk)
Society and CULTURE
 Professor Uses Mathematics to Decode Beatles Tunes-Easha Anand
HALIFAX, Canada -- It is here, in a cluttered mathematician's office, under blackboards jammed with equations and functional analysis, that one of Western culture's greatest mysteries has finally been solved: Why has no one been able to replicate the first chord in The Beatles' pop hit "A Hard Day's Night"? Not stopping there, this sleuth is using math in his quest to answer an even more-elusive question, about the contested authorship of the Fab Four's "In My Life." "Whether they realize it or not, the best songwriters have always relied on mathematics," says Jason Brown, a mathematician who is tackling such puzzlers in between chairing the math department at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and playing his own Beatles-esque songs. Since the 1960s, Beatles aficionados have pored over the group's recordings and memorabilia in search of answers to questions about both their music and their lives. An as-yet-unpublished Beatles track Paul McCartney recently mentioned made headlines internationally. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn, who is working on a trilogy about the British rock group, examined church records to find the precise day that John Lennon met Mr. McCartney. (WSJ)
Watching too much TV has harmed mental health of a whole generation of children-
Too much television and time spent on the internet can make children mentally ill, according to major survey into British childhood. Excessive exposure makes a child materialistic, which in turn affects their relationship with their parents and their health. That is one of the conclusions of the new wide-ranging survey produced for the Children's Society. It says that children are part of a new form of consumerism, with under 16 year-olds spending £3 billion of their own money each year on clothes, snacks, music, video games and magazines. The report claims that some advertisers 'explicitly exploit the mechanism of peer pressure, while painting parents as buffoons' and that in its most extreme form, advertising persuades children that 'you are what you own'. In addition the 'constant exposure' to celebrities through, TV soaps, dramas and chat shows is having a detrimental effect. It says: 'Children today know in intimate detail the lives of celebrities who are richer than they will ever be, and mostly better-looking. This exposure inevitably raises aspirations and reduces self-esteem.' (Dailymail.co.uk)
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