No Antibodies Required For Immunity Against Some Viruses

A new study turns the well established theory that antibodies are required for antiviral immunity upside down and reveals that an unexpected partnership between the specific and non-specific divisions of the immune system is critical for fighting some types of viral infections. The research, published online in the journal Immunity by Cell Press, may lead to a new understanding of the best way to help protect those exposed to potentially lethal viruses, such as the rabies virus. 

The immune system has two main branches, innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Innate immunity is a first line of defense that relies on cells and mechanisms that provide non-specific immunity. The more sophisticated adaptive immunity, which counts antibody-producing B cells as part of its arsenal, is thought to play a major role in the specific response to viral infections in mammals. However, adaptive immune responses require time to become fully mobilized. 

"Mice infected with vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) can suffer fatal invasion of the central nervous system even when they have a high concentration of anti-VSV antibodies in their system," explains senior study author, Dr. Ulrich H. von Andrian, from Harvard Medical School. "This observation led us to revisit the contribution of adaptive immune responses to survival following VSV infection." 

Read More:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/242403.php

Ethan A. Huff - Water wars: Shortages may destroy entire nations, warns government report

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently released a report entitled Global Water Security that claims water supply issues around the globe will lead to economic instability, civil and international wars, and even the use of water as a weapon in the next several decades. In typical shock-and-awe fashion, the U.S. government paints a grim picture of so-called global warming, water shortages, and other water problems as the causes of major global destabilization, which it also says may be mitigated if certain steps are taken to offset them.

What are these steps, you may ask? As expected, getting the U.S. government involved in water supply issues around the globe is presented as a primary solution. This measure implies, of course, that U.S. models of water management, which include price-gouging the public in the name of water conservation, will also be implemented across the globe as those that run the U.S. government increasingly meddle in international affairs to serve their own interests.

Read More:

http://www.naturalnews.com/035370_water_wars_shortages_government.html

Death Penalty 2011: Alarming Levels of Executions in the Few Countries that Kill

Countries that carried out executions in 2011 did so at an alarming rate but those employing capital punishment have decreased by more than a third compared to a decade ago, Amnesty International found in its annual review of death sentences and executions.

Only 10 percent of countries in the world, 20 out of 198, carried out executions last year.

People were executed or sentenced to death for a range of offences including adultery and sodomy in Iran, blasphemy in Pakistan, sorcery in Saudi Arabia, the trafficking of human bones in the Republic of Congo, and drug offences in more than 10 countries. Methods of execution in 2011 included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting. Some 18,750 people remained under sentence of death at the end of 2011 and at least 676 people were executed worldwide.

But these figures do not include the thousands of executions that Amnesty International believes were carried out in China, where the numbers are suppressed. Nor do they account for the probable extent of Iran’s use of the death penalty – Amnesty International has had credible reports of substantial numbers of executions not officially acknowledged.

Read More:

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/death-penalty-2011-alarming-levels-executions-few-countries-kill-2012-03-27

Pam Martens - Ayn Rand’s Nightmare is Today’s Wall Street

The high priestess of corporate deregulation and free markets, Ayn Rand, wrote a novella in the 1930s.  It was published in the U.S. in 1946 under the title, Anthem, by a corporate front group, a precursor to today’s astroturf groups.  Anthem is currently being pumped into high schools across the U.S. and Canada with financial inducements to both teachers and students by a corporate funded nonprofit that has the financial support of some of the largest hedge funds in the U.S.

The book presents a frightening dystopian world produced by the ever present Randian trademark – an out of control government.  People are known by numbers instead of names; individual rights have been eviscerated. To break the will of the individual, uttering the word “I” results in being burned alive in the  town square.  (Charming high school literature.)

What has happened today, however, proves that in a country dominated by powerful multinational corporations, Rand not only had the wrong target of big government in her cross hairs but the despotic enemy became the very deregulated market she helped design with acolytes like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and her corporate cronies.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/26/ayn-rands-nightmare-is-todays-wall-street/

Dr. Arun Shrivastava - Depleted Uranium Contamination: A Crime against Humanity

This article is part of a longer essay on Depleted Uranium weapons, nuclear reactors and their environmental health impacts. 

In this article the long term consequences of radiation contamination from unilateral aggression of the US and NATO countries on South and West Asia are discussed. Afpak region is being bombed daily and the cold blooded murder of nine kids out of the seventeen killed is just a small blip when billions are done in.

The world needs a public trial of political leaders for war crimes and genocide. 

Depleted Uranium or DU [1] encased bombs that have been used since 1991 by US and NATO forces knowing well that the use of DU weapons is illegal being weapons of mass destruction [WMD] and amounts to War Crimes. These weapons were used in Gulf War 1 against Iraq, then in the Balkans and later, after 9/11 events, in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, Libya and now being used in Drone bombings in Pakistan.

“When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing perhaps 100 years away.” Fidel Castro Ruz - March 21, 2012

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29974

Stephen Gandel - The Wall Street multibillion scandal no one is talking about

Much of the talk about bad behavior on Wall Street since the financial crisis has been about mortgages with a little bit of insider trading sprinkled in. And that makes sense. Everyone immediately understands what a mortgage is. And the housing bust that resulted from all those bad home loans affected us all. And Hollywood has taught us to ooh and ah over insider trading.

But there is another scandal that has come out of the financial crisis that at least to me makes the mortgage underwriting scandal look like small peanuts, and it has been heating up lately. Two weeks ago, the government disclosed that it is looking into bringing criminal cases against traders and banks that manipulated a key bank lending rate, called LIBOR. A source close to the case says the government's "may" will be dropped soon. Both Barclays and Deutsche Bank have disclosed that they have been the focus of investigations. Banks have suspended dozens of traders. Today, Credit Suisse announced that it was cooperating with regulators on the case. Traders at UBS reportedly are already working with the government on its investigation. Looking for instances in which Wall Streeters go to jail, unlike mortgages, this may be the one.

Read More:

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/03/23/the-wall-street-multibillion-scandal-no-one-is-talking-about/

NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS: The Very Real Possibility of A Global Nuclear Catastrophe

Studies show that people are worry about the wrong things. We are terrified of things that will probably never happen, and underestimate the real dangers which face us. As we noted last year, the extreme vulnerability of nuclear power plants to solar flares is a very real threat which we must address:

Nasa scientists are predicting that a solar storm will knock out most of the electrical power grid in many countries worldwide, perhaps for months. See this, this, this, this, this, this and this. Indeed, the Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the sun’s most violent radiation, and yet the magnetic field fluctuates over time. As the Telegraph reported in 2008:

Large hole in magnetic field that protects Earth from sun’s rays … Recent satellite observations have revealed the largest breach yet seen in the magnetic field that protects Earth from most of the sun’s violent blasts.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29951

Bill Black - “The only winning move is not to play”—the insanity of the regulatory race to the bottom

The plot of the movie WarGames (1983) involves a slacker hacker (played by Matthew Broderick) who starts playing the game “Global Thermonuclear War” with Joshua, a Department of Defense (DoD) supercomputer that has been given partial control by DoD of our nuclear forces.  The game prompts Joshua, who has been programmed to win games, to trick DoD into authorizing Joshua to launch an attack on the Soviet Union so that Joshua can win the game.  The hacker and the professor that programmed Joshua realize that the only way to prevent Joshua from attacking is to teach “him” that no one can “win” global thermonuclear war.  The insanity is that the people who created the game “Global Thermonuclear War” thought it could be won.  Joshua races through thousands of scenarios and ends his plan to win the “Global Thermonuclear War” game by attacking the Soviet Union when he realizes that “the only winning move is not to play.”

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play-the-insanity-of-the-regulatory-race-to-the-bottom.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Bill Black - How the Jumpstart Obama’s Bucket Shops Act is Just Another in a Long Series of Fraud-Promoting Legislation

The Washington Post reports tonight that there is some pushback about the decried-by-anyone-who-knows-bupkis-about-securities-markets-and-isn’t-on-take JOBS Ac, which appears to be certain to be signed into law. Bill Black reminds us that tons of absolutely terrible financial regulation (as in deregulation) over the last 25 years have passed with large margins.

The imminent passage of the fraud-friendly JOBS Act caused me to reflect on the fact that the worst anti-regulatory travesties in the financial sphere have had broad, bipartisan support. The Garn-St Germain Act of 1982, which deregulated savings and loans (S&Ls) and helped drive the debacle, was passed with virtually no opposition. The Texas and California S&L deregulation acts – the two states that “won” the regulatory “race to the bottom” – passed with virtually no opposition. Texas S&L failures caused over 40% of total S&L losses and California failures caused roughly 25% of total losses. In 1984, a majority of the members of the House of Representatives, including Newt Gingrich and most of the leadership of both parties, co-sponsored a resolution calling on us to cease our reregulation of the S&L industry.

The Competitive Equality in Banking Act of 1987 (CEBA) was the product of two cynical political deals. The context was that the Reagan administration refused to allow the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) to admit that there was a crisis requiring governmental funds and refused to allow FSLIC to draw any funds on its Treasury credit line. We had spent all but $500 million in the FSLIC fund closing some of the worst S&L control frauds. The S&L industry had over $1 trillion in liabilities and was deeply insolvent, so we were running the insurance fund on fumes and dreading a potential nationwide run. Treasury and FSLIC ginned up a convoluted means of FSLIC receiving the proceeds of a $15 billion (FICO) bond issuance. The repayment of the FICO bonds rested in large part on taking capital and future earnings from the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs). The industry owned the FHLBs, so the S&Ls’ interest in the FHLBs’ capital was treated on their financial statements as an asset. Using the FHLBs’ capital to “defease” the FICO bonds refduced every S&L’s reported capital. The exceptionally powerful S&L trade association (the “League”) opposed the plan. It preferred that the government, rather than the healthier members of the industry, pay to resolve failed S&Ls. Trade associations also do not want to lose members through government closures.

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/03/bill-black-on-how-the-jumpstart-obamas-bucket-shops-act-is-just-another-in-a-long-series-of-fraud-promoting-legislation.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Andre Evans - Made from Genetically Modified Bacteria Waste, Aspartame Risks Public Health

Aspartame is one of the most used artificial sweeteners in the food supply today. It also happens to be one of the most dangerous. Aspartame is used in thousands of products as a substitute to sugar, though consumers would actually be better off eating regular sugar. Specifically, the toxic substance is often found in diet soft drinks and various candies. You should also be aware that aspartame is even present in a number of lesser-known conventional products as well.

Millions either knowingly or unknowingly consume aspartame on a daily basis. However, if the public was aware of the various dangers aspartame poses to individual health, they would stop — or would they?

Aspartame is an addictive substance. Most people who consume diet sodas regularly soon develop a craving for it. This is because of aspartame’s addictive quality. Soon after consuming the ingredient on a normal basis, many people find themselves unable to kick the habit.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/made-genetically-modified-bacteria-waste-aspartame-risks-public-health-1332777062