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The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) would have the power to fine organisations up to £500,000 for serious breaches of data protection principles under plans announced this week by the Ministry of Justice.
The consultation, Civil monetary penalties - setting the maximum penalty, asks just one question: whether the proposed maximum fine will provide the ICO with a proportionate sanction to impose on those seriously contravening the data protection principles.
Justice Minister, Michael Wills, said: "We want to ensure that the Information Commissioner's Office has the powers it needs and is able to impose robust penalties on those who commit serious breaches of data protection principles."
The Government decided not to follow the approach of other regulators that have the power to impose a penalty up to 10% of an organisation's turnover.
"Following discussion with the ICO and consideration of the greater administrative burden involved in operating a turnover-based system, we are consulting only on a fixed maximum amount," says the consultation paper. "However, we consider it desirable that the maximum amount of the penalty should not be higher than the equivalent of 10% of the highest annual turnover of a small company."
The power to impose a civil monetary penalty on data controllers was created by section 144 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, which amends the Data Protection Act of 1988. The power is expected to be in force next April, according to the ICO.
The penalties can only be imposed when certain criteria are met.
* There has been a "serious contravention" of one of the Act's eight principles; and
* It has to have been of a kind likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress and either: o the contravention was deliberate; or o the data controller knew or ought to have known that there was a risk that the contravention would occur, and that such a contravention would be of a kind likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress, but failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the contravention.
According to the Ministry of Justice, the ICO will exercise its discretion to assess the appropriate level of any penalty it imposes and will publish detailed guidance setting out the criteria it will use and circumstances it will take into consideration.
The consultation closes on 21st December 2009.
Return to internet news headlines
View Internet News Archive


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A new study suggests that HIV patients with a higher level of a particular biomarker, or a measurable indicator found in the blood, may respond more favourably to an experimentalimmune activating vaccine.
Experts at St George's, University of London, and Norwegian vaccine company, Bionor Pharma Researchers, believe the findings might lead to a more customised vaccine for certain patients, which potentially might permit them to come off antiretrovirals, drugs used to treat HIV.
The research found that the therapeutic vaccine, Vacc-4x, reduced the amount of virus circulating in the body by more than half in patients with higher levels of the particular biomarker compared to those with lower levels.
Professor Angus Dalgleish, of St George's, University of London, said: "In spite of very effective drugs against HIV these need to be taken daily and have significant side-effects.
"The ability to replace this daily medication with a vaccine that allows several months of being off medication, not to mention the enormous financial gains that would be delivered to health services, is a step closer with these preliminary results."
Further study will be needed to confirm the results
These new results were announced today (July 18) at the AIDS 2014 Conference in Melbourne, Australia.
The results come from a collaborative project between St George's, University of London and Bionor Pharma.
In the UK nearly 78,000 people were receiving specialist care for HIV in 2012.

subset: commoncrawl


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Home > News & Events > Wayland Press Release Archives > 2002 News Releases > March 2002 > Wayland junior wins scholarship to Paris American Academy
Wayland junior wins scholarship to Paris American Academy
Student journalist Rachael Ainsworth was awarded the first Paris American Academy scholarship in a luncheon ceremony at Wayland Baptist University on Tuesday.
Ainsworth was chosen from a field of four finalists to receive the scholarship, which will enable her to attend the Paris American Academy in France for the month of July. While there, she will attend the academy's summer Creative Writing Workshop covering fiction, poetry, screenwriting and creative nonfiction.
The award was presented by Peter Carman, president of the Academy, and Fran Redinger of Ruidoso, who donated the funds for half of the scholarship. Members of Friends of the Paris American Academy donated the remainder of the scholarship, including Plainviewan Bettye Givens, Joyce Pounds Hardy, Peggy Zulicka Lynch, Kaye Abik, Patty Poon, Mary Ruppert, Carmen Sherbert, Charlotte Moffart and Therese Augarde.
A native of Lamesa, Ainsworth is currently the editor of the Wayland student newspaper, The Trailblazer. She is also in Senate, plays JV basketball and works in the Wayland development office. She works part-time at the Plainview Daily Herald photography department and hopes to work someday in a field of writing or photography.
The daughter of Kevin and Lisa Ainsworth of Waco, formerly of Lamesa, Rachael will graduate in December 2002. She is excited about the trip to France.
"I think it will be an incredible opportunity. Being exposed to the different culture will really be an educational experience," she said. "I think it'll help me broaden my perspective."


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Kimi Räikkönen: "We'll keep pushing"
Our Finn heads to India looking forward to the cuisine and hoping for a stronger qualifying position
than of late
What do you think of the Buddh International Circuit?
It's quite an interesting track; one of the better ones from the modern circuits. It's quite similar to
Korea; long straights, not terribly challenging corners and hard braking. It's not as technical as Korea
which was another new track for me last year, but it's good. It's always nice to go to a new place like
India. It's certainly a good track to go fast with a strong car in front of all the others!
How was your first – and only – race at the track so far?
It was okay but it could have been better. We struggled for grip over the weekend last year and we
made life difficult with the change of setup before qualifying. After that there was nothing really to do
on Sunday. In the race itself we had enough speed to challenge for the top positions, but we got stuck
behind slower cars and overtaking was impossible. I can remember spending a lot of the race trying
to get past Felipe [Massa] so that wasn't ideal.
Did you get to see much of India?
No, it was my first visit and I spent my time in the paddock and the hotel. We only come to race and
India is a very big country! The thing I like is eating Indian food, which I really enjoy.
Japan was quite a straightforward race for you?
It was a pretty normal race I would say and it's good that we got some points. I had a very poor start
where I left the line with a lot of wheelspin and lost a few places. This wasn't ideal and it meant I got
stuck in traffic, but I managed to gain some places back later on.
You spoke over the weekend of the car feeling more to your liking, which much be a positive
looking to the remaining races of the season?
The car felt pretty strong all weekend and we've made good progress with it recently. It's still not
exactly as I want it and we're trying to get rid of some understeer which is something I don't like. In
Japan it was hard to show our real pace at the beginning of the race as I was stuck behind slower
cars for quite a long time. After the final pit stop when I got a bit of free air the car was working much
better. It ran well in the last half of the race and I was very happy with it.
We saw some more great overtaking moves from you…
Unfortunately when you don't have an ideal qualifying it makes life a bit harder on Sunday. It's not
easy to overtake at Suzuka and we weren't so fast in a straight line which made it more tricky, but I
got past a few people which was important after the slow start. With Nico [Hulkenberg] I managed to
get a good run on him leading up to the chicane which is what made the difference. We did what we
What's the target for India?
Hopefully we finally get it right in qualifying as the last five qualifying sessions have not been that
great for me. If we don't, it's going to be a difficult Sunday afternoon, although of course we'll keep
pushing. If we do get it right, then we can really go for it!
Romain Grosjean: "I'm on a roll right now…"
After a Japanese Grand Prix where he led for almost half of the race, Romain Grosjean heads into the
remaining four rounds of the season determined to let the good times roll…
Your performance in Japan was pretty fantastic; how are you feeling heading into the
remaining four races of the season?
I'm feeling really good with the car, my confidence is getting higher with every race and I'm very
happy with the team, so I'll keep working hard to improve the areas that need improving and we'll
keep pushing for top results right to the end of the season.
How good was that race start in Japan?
The start was fantastic; the clutch kicked in, I put my foot down and whoosh! It was superb to go past
both the Red Bulls like that and it'll be one of my best memories of the year. I saw Mark [Webber] in
my mirrors and started to pull away which was a big surprise in itself, so I was screaming "come on
baby, let's go!" in the cockpit. After the first lap I honestly thought it was going to be my day, but that
first win will come soon…
How wide were you driving your car to try to keep the Red Bulls behind you?
You never want to concede a place, but when you're leading the race or fighting for a podium position
you can find ways to make your car very wide! Sebastian [Vettel] had a lot more pace than me but we
were able to fight a bit more in the battle with Mark [Webber]. It's a shame we caught the back
markers when we did as I think we'd have had an even stronger fight if it wasn't for them.
What are your thoughts on the Buddh International Circuit?
I like it. I first visited the track as third driver for the team during the inaugural race weekend in 2011
and was really impressed by the facility, then of course I drove it for the first time last year. The layout
includes a nice mix of corners with a bit of gradient change which is always a good thing. There are
some decent straights with wide corners at the end of them to help with overtaking, although it's still
not the easiest place in the world to pass somebody. Then there's the linked Turn 10 / 11
combination, which is a bit like Turn 8 in Turkey in that it seems to go on forever. It's quite a fun track
to drive.
What are your expectations for the Indian Grand Prix?
Our car is really performing well at the moment so I think we could be strong again. It's fair to say we
struggled there a little last year with finding grip and getting the right setup for the cars, so hopefully
we can perform better this time. The tyre allocation was quite hard for the track in 2012, but this year
it's softer which should help us and make for better racing.
What do you think of India as a country?
It's certainly a different experience from a lot of the places we visit and it's great to see a different
Aside from racing what will you be interested in?
I have a great love for cuisine so I'm always interested in local food, and there are so many interesting
dishes, spices and ingredients in India.
How much are you looking ahead to 2014?
Right now I'm working on doing the very best I can at each remaining race in 2013 and I think that's
the best approach for now. As soon as the season's over I'll get a little rest and recharge my batteries,
then we're back to see the new cars launched and to start testing them. It will be a very interesting
challenge with all the new rules that are coming in for next season. A new area is coming for the sport
and that's always very exciting.


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Possible Duplicate:
Compass-and-straightedge construction of the square root of a given line?
I wish to understand how to construct $\sqrt{a}$ for a constructable $0\leq a\in\mathbb{R}$ , the book Abstract Algebra (by David Steven Dummit, Richard M. Foote) offers (in pg. 532) the following:
construct the circle with diameter $1+a$ (looks like a straight line with the point $a$ somewhere on the line and $1+a$ at the right end of the line) and erect the perpendicular to the diameter from the point $a$ (the point with distance $a$ from the leftmost point on the line). Then $\sqrt{a}$ is the length of the perpendicular.
My question is why the length of the perpendicular is $\sqrt{a}$ ? (I'm guessing that there's a theorem in geometry that I don't know about that might help...)
Help is appreciated!


text:
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The victim's breathing is often raspy, and it is abnormally fast, like the panting of a worn-out dog. As the victim's body fights the lung infection, the lungs fill with pus and other fluids, cutting off the flow of oxygen and causing the victim to turn colors — from shades of gray to a bluish purple. The victim's struggle to breathe can last for hours and hours.
Between 30,000 to 40,000 people die of the flu each year according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), so it's understandable that Americans are willing to line up in doctors' offices, and even in grocery stores, to get flu shots to ward off the possibility of catching the flu — especially with the dreaded swine flu prevalent this year. (In 1918-1919, the Spanish flu, an ancestor of the modern swine flu, reportedly killed upwards of 50 million people worldwide.)
Government entities are taking seriously the threat of a repeat of the morbidity and death rates of the 1918-1919 flu. The United Nations recently claimed millions around the world would die if rich countries refused to provide billions of dollars for vaccines. In the United States, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology recently issued a dire warning entitled "On US Preparations for 2009-H1N1 Influenza" about the potential spread of the virus later on this year. It claimed that a "plausible scenario" would be "infection of 30-50 percent of the U.S. population this fall and winter, with symptoms in approximately 20-40 percent of the population (60-120 million people), more than half of whom would seek medical attention."
While acknowledging that the true impact is impossible to predict, the report said the H1N1 virus could result in up to 1.8 million hospital admissions with as many as 300,000 people requiring hospitalization in intensive care units. This would place "enormous stress" on intensive care units, with between 50 to 100 percent of beds occupied.
"It's a plausible scenario that we need to be prepared for," said Marty Cetron, the CDC's director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.
The answer to the swine flu, according to most public officials, is a worldwide flu vaccination campaign. The United States is on board. The coming swine flu vaccination campaign will be the first time the U.S. government has ever attempted to vaccinate so many people in such a short time frame.
But even as governments around the world create vaccines and run TV and radio ads convincing the public to get vaccinated (Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius even promoted the vaccine for the seasonal flu and the swine flu on NBC's Today show), and people prepare to line up to get their shots and boost their immunity, a growing chorus of doctors and researchers is claiming that being injected with the swine flu vaccine may be more hazardous than catching the flu.
How Bad Is the Bug?
A primary reason behind caution toward receiving the swine flu vaccine, besides the possible negative effects of the vaccine itself, is that the H1N1 version of the swine flu is not very deadly in comparison with other variants of the flu.
Dr. Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University, an expert in infectious diseases, said that swine flu death rates have been overblown, and that the effects of the swine flu outbreak so far are comparable to a mild seasonal influenza. "Barring any changes in the virus, I think we can say we are in a category one pandemic," he noted. The CDC has five pandemic levels, with one being comparable to the seasonal flu.
Others agree. "The good news is that so far, everything that we've seen, both here and abroad, shows that the virus has not changed to become more deadly," said CDC director Thomas Frieden, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Swine Flu Remains Mild as Vaccine Advances" and another report by Reuters. "That means that although it may affect lots of people, most people will not be severely ill."
A spokesman for a United Nations agency told a press conference that less than 3,500 people had died so far worldwide because of the increase in infections.
Australia's federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon also highlighted the relative mildness of the disease. "Most people, including children, will experience very mild symptoms and recover without any medical intervention," she explained. The flu season in Australia (where it is now spring) is drawing to a close and varying reports put the number of H1N1 virus-related deaths in the country at significantly less than 200.
In another recent report released about the swine flu, the CDC analyzed the deaths of the 36 American children whose deaths were linked to the virus. According to the analysis, more than two-thirds of them "had one or more of the high-risk medical conditions" like asthma, cerebral palsy, or muscular dystrophy. Many of the others were dealing simultaneously with bacterial infections.
Some experts have also said there is no danger of the virus mutating to become more deadly if it has not happened yet. For instance, Italian oncologist professor Umberto Veronesi said the epidemic is limited in terms of danger since "there will be no mutation in the genes of the flu."
Vaccine Variances
Even though this strain of the swine flu is appearing quite mild, the creation and testing of the vaccine is taking place at a rate that calls into question the safety of the flu shot. Sharon Frey, who is leading the government vaccine testing at St. Louis University, told the Associated Press, "Typically it takes a year to do this," adding, "We're working at breakneck speed."
To cut time, corners are likely being cut: inoculations may start before the speedy trials are even over, according to the head of the flu vaccination program at the CDC. Safety tests are being fast-tracked under "public health emergency" rules.
This fast-tracking is happening worldwide. Dr. Marc Girard, a specialist in medicine who is commissioned by the French courts, told France 24 in a televised interview that the vaccine could very well cause 60,000 deaths in France alone. "We are developing a vaccine under conditions of amateurism that I have never seen before," he said, noting that the nation's immunization program was placing the public health in grave danger. He added that the government has a duty to protect citizens from the corrupt companies pushing their vaccines, and that people who are creating hysteria about the swine flu or promoting the vaccine have other interests. The channel's health expert agreed with him, warning of the elevated mercury levels and other toxins in the vaccine.
A lack of testing is of more than minor concern. In the United Kingdom, the government's Health Protection Agency (HPA) sent a letter to senior neurologists warning that the new swine flu vaccine is linked to the deadly nerve disease known as Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), the Daily Mail reported in an article entitled "Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease." The leaked HPA letter warned recipients to keep an eye open for GBS and report it immediately.
During the swine flu scare of 1976 in the United States, the risk of contracting the paralysis-inducing illness was reportedly eight times greater in those who received the infamous government swine flu vaccine of that year, compared to those who did not. And the shot killed far more people than the actual virus.
According to some researchers, the risks associated with this year's swine flu vaccination are especially profound owing to the use of some questionable ingredients — such as squalene, an adjuvant that is used to reduce the amount of viral antigen required in vaccines, which allows companies to produce more vaccines for less money at a faster rate.
Squalene is a naturally occurring oil found in the human brain, joints, and other places. The problem, according to some experts, comes when it is administered in a vaccine. They claim that in this circumstance, the body creates antibodies to attack the oil. And it is believed by many to be responsible for the wide variety of symptoms eventually called collectively "Gulf War Syndrome," a sometimes debilitating set of phenomena present in a large number of U.S. military personnel who served during the first war in Iraq.
"The substantial majority (95%) of overtly ill deployed GWS patients had antibodies to squalene. All (100%) GWS patients immunized for service in Desert Shield/Desert Storm who did not deploy, but had the same signs and symptoms as those who did deploy, had antibodies to squalene," noted a Tulane Medical School study published in Experimental Molecular Pathology. "In contrast, none (0%) of the deployed Persian Gulf veterans not showing signs and symptoms of GWS have antibodies to squalene." The study has been challenged, but it is still widely cited. The Department of Defense, for example, attacked it for not being peer-reviewed. Once it became peer-reviewed, the Department criticized the lead researcher and the journal that published it.
Another study published in the American Journal of Pathology highlighted problems with the use of the substance as well. One injection of squalene into rats led them to develop what humans know as rheumatoid arthritis, or "chronic, immune-mediated joint-specific inflammation."
It is also going to be somewhat experimental. There is not a single vaccine containing squalene that is approved for use in America, according to Meryl Nass, M.D., who notes that at least Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline will make use of it as a "novel feature of the H1N1 vaccines." The "emergency" allows the use of drugs which are not normally approved, while providing blanket immunity to the vaccine manufacturers and virtually everybody involved in the process. Taxpayers will shoulder the burden if health problems emerge.
"There can be no argument that unnecessary mass injection of millions of children with a vaccine containing an adjuvant known to cause a host of debilitating autoimmune diseases is a reckless, dangerous plan," explained Dr. Joseph Mercola, a health activist, author, and strong critic of the swine flu immunization program. He indicated that there are links between squalene and a host of medical problems, citing among others Dr. Viera Scheibner, a former principal researcher for the government of Australia who connected the adjuvant to "arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, rashes, photosensitive rashes, malar rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, abnormal body hair loss, non-healing skin lesions, aphthous ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, mood changes, neuropsychiatric problems, anti-thyroid effects, anaemia, elevated ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate), systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), Raynaud's phenomenon, Sjogren's syndrome, chronic diarrhoea, night sweats and low-grade fevers."
While a federal official has indicated that squalene will likely not be used in the vaccine, there is much evidence that points in the other direction, and it could always be added at the last minute under the "emergency" powers. Several of the companies acknowledge that the adjuvant is in the inoculation, and some of the fast-tracked safety-test disclosure forms in the United States also reveal its presence. The World Health Organization (WHO) even recommends its use, while acknowledging gaps in safety testing, especially among children and pregnant women.
Another ingredient that causes concern is thimerosal. The controversial substance, a mercury-based preservative that will also be used in the swine flu vaccine, has come under fire from a broad array of medical experts. Despite a number of studies that concluded the substance does not cause autism, there are critics of the various studies and plenty of other studies that show it is indeed responsible for the skyrocketing rates of autism since its introduction. Dr. Mayer Einstein, who runs a vaccine-free medical practice, reports that there are no autism cases among his practice's tens of thousands of patients. Also, critics point to widespread concern about other mercury-related complications, including a host of learning disabilities.
The Food and Drug Administration actually told pharmaceutical companies to stop using the substance in early childhood vaccines. But many vaccines still contain it. And the swine flu vaccine will be no exception, though Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said that because of concerns over the preservative, there will be some vaccines available without it.
Critics, however, are still not satisfied. "We don't have adequate safety studies on this vaccine before we are moving forward to market," noted Lyn Redwood, the president of a non-profit organization called SafeMinds (Sensible Action for Ending Mercury-Induced Neurological Disorders) dedicated to investigating and raising awareness about the risks associated with mercury in medicinal products. "I'm really not convinced that we know for sure that the risk of the disease outweighs the risk of the vaccine, especially since this [adjuvant] is a brand new additive that we have never used before in combination with thimerosal."
And thimerosal and squalene are far from the only concerns. Among other potentially dangerous chemicals and substances commonly found in influenza vaccines are formaldehyde, aluminum, antibiotics, and even ethylene glycol, known as anti-freeze. Health experts have varying opinions about the effects of all of these additives, but it's likely that, at the very least, some people getting the shots may have allergic reactions to the shots' component ingredients.
Exacerbating the likelihood of having an allergic reaction to the vaccines is the use of animal cancers in the vaccine's production. Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, the chairman of the health committee in the German Parliament and the European Council, discussed this concern in an article entitled "German health expert's flu warning — Does virus vaccine increase risk of cancer?" in the German newspaper Bild. "The nutrient solution for the vaccine consists of cancerous cells from animals," Wodarg pointed out, and "we do not know if there could be an allergic reaction." Johannes Löwer, the president of the German government's Paul Ehrlich Institute, also warned that the side effects of the shot could be worse than the actual swine flu, according to the Bild article.
The Effectiveness of Vaccines
Even if the vaccines were being developed in a safe manner, with safe ingredients, vaccines are not necessarily going to protect someone from getting a certain virus. If the disease mutates, as must happen if the swine flu is to become a major health threat, the inoculation will likely be essentially useless because human antibodies are generally virus-specific. But even if the virus were not to mutate, and even if it were extremely lethal (which it is not), the vaccine may not offer protection.
"So-called pandemic vaccines, well we never know whether they'll work," explained Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist at the Cochrane Institute, about what he believed was an unjustified panic regarding the swine flu. "What the evidence shows, from the hundreds of studies that we have reviewed, is that these vaccines have got a performance [record] which is not very good." He told a Swedish television station that the immunizations usually work best in healthy adults, who are the lowest priority for receiving them anyway, and that the reason for the hysteria is the interests of those selling "a product."
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, one of the leading experts on the dangers of vaccines, shows in various presentations — using statistics and data gathered from the CDC and other official sources — that vaccines' efficacy leaves much to be desired, yet they expose recipients to a wide array of risks. She notes that the immunizations given to children usually only last a number of years, and that "the presence of antibodies does not guarantee that you will not get sick." The potential immunity obtained from a hepatitis vaccine, for example, is gone in a majority of people within around 10 years. This is the reason people are often re-vaccinated. According to Dr. Tenpenny, most antibodies babies get are "all gone" by the time they are 12 years old. She continued by explaining: "If they inject you with a substance and it creates an antibody, they call it effective. It is one of the biggest myths — maybe scams — of the entire vaccine industry." Verifying part of her claim, the WHO is already warning that the virus is developing resistance to the vaccine. So even the presence of an immune response does not mean it will offer protection.
Vaccines are not safe and effective, Dr. Tenpenny insists. They are linked to problems like allergies, diabetes, and a host of medical problems. For example, research and published studies by immunologist and president of Classen Immunotherapies Dr. Bart Classen have shown that vaccines cause up to 80 percent of insulin-dependent diabetes in children vaccinated multiple times. In addition, vaccines are not responsible for the elimination of infectious diseases. They may in fact be causing a resurgence of the diseases that they purport to protect against. "I really think that it is the greatest deception ever propagated on an unsuspecting public — that doing something in the name of health and helping is in fact plausibly detrimental and potentially life threatening."
Counterintuitively, the facts seem to back her up. A CDC chart on the efficacy of seasonal vaccines shows that flu deaths were steadily decreasing until vaccine programs were rolled out, then flu cases burgeoned. For example, in 1980, about 20 percent of the elderly population was covered by immunizations, and there were about 20 deaths per 100,000 elderly people. Then in the year 2000, when approximately 65 percent of the elderly population had vaccine coverage, deaths had soared to almost 35 per 100,000. The trend is consistent and immediately obvious even to the untrained eye.
"Most people believe that victory over the infectious diseases of the last century came with the invention of immunizations," writes Dr. Andrew Weil in Health and Healing. "In fact, cholera, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough, etc., were in decline before vaccines for them became available — the result of better methods of sanitation, sewage disposal, and distribution of food and water."
Brief History of Immunizations
Many medical experts agree that, in addition to outright catastrophes that are attributed to vaccines, history shows that the benefits of vaccines are dubious at best.
Criticism of government vaccination programs is nothing new. "The greatest threat of childhood diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent them through mass immunization," noted Dr. Robert Mendelsohn in 1973. "There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease." His damning analysis of vaccines applies across the board.
The most relevant and frequently cited example in relation to the current program is the mass immunization program of 1976 against a supposed outbreak of the swine flu virus. The only people to vote against the program in the House of Representatives were Congressmen Ron Paul and Larry McDonald, both medical doctors. Not only was their vote the only constitutionally appropriate one, the decision to implement the program later proved to be an absolute disaster. "Medically it made no sense to me and politically it sounded like a bad deal," Rep. Paul recalled in an interview with CNN last May. "Dr. Larry McDonald and I said it was bad medicine, it was bad politics, and it turned out that it was pretty perceptive," he added, noting that far more people died from the vaccine than the virus.
The politicalization of the swine flu scare of 1976 followed a predictable course. After some recruits at Fort Dix in New Jersey contracted the swine flu, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the United States Public Health Service recommended that the entire U.S. population be vaccinated. The CDC and the federal government decided it was necessary to spend almost $150 million to immunize "every man, woman and child."
Following a massive government propaganda operation, more potent than the one being witnessed today, millions of Americans dutifully lined up to get their shot. It was safe, effective, and necessary, government officials assured the populace. But the government officials lied.
By the time the dust had settled, only one person's death had been linked to contracting the swine flu, while hundreds of deaths and thousands of grave neurological disorders were attributed to the vaccine. The campaign was suspended after just 10 weeks as the reports of side effects — often fatal — continued to pour in from around the country.
The "pandemic" never materialized, but since the government had agreed to exempt vaccine manufacturers from liability (much like today), taxpayers were on the hook for billions in damages. One of the most common horrors and widely reported consequences of the immunization was the emergence of the paralyzing neurological disease Guillain-Barre Syndrome in some inoculated Americans. Documents prove the CDC knew about the potential for these effects, but citizens were never informed. A CBS 60 Minutes investigation also revealed that the government had even lied in claims it made saying that certain well-known figures had taken the vaccine.
In addition to the 1976 "fiasco," as it was dubbed, a wide variety of other government vaccination debacles have been highlighted by medical experts and opponents of the swine flu vaccine — such as the outbreak of smallpox in the 1920s. Dr. True Ott wrote in a widely publicized article entitled "Vaccine-induced Disease Epidemic Outbreaks" that the spread of smallpox was actually caused by the government vaccine, which used live viruses.
"The Protective Bureau proved in court that there was no epidemic before the vaccinations," he said, referring to the watchdog group Advertiser's Protective Bureau in Kansas City, Missouri, and the smallpox epidemic in the early twenties. "The court record on this case is very clear. In the weeks and months following the 'mass vaccinations' the area's hospital beds were filled to over-flowing with vaccine-induced smallpox cases."
Ian Sinclair, an author and vaccination researcher who has studied the issues for over 20 years, points to a slew of other cases of immunization schemes that in retrospect turned out to be disastrous. He provides compelling historical examples from a variety of sources including governments and medical journals, noting that he believes vaccines are "biological poisons" that offer no protection whatsoever and are actually a contributing factor in disease.
When the German government rolled out its compulsory immunization against diphtheria in 1940, there were 40,000 reported deaths from the illness, Sinclair notes. In 1945, 250,000 people died from the disease. Sweden stopped its whooping cough vaccination program in 1979 when it was discovered that 84 percent of the children who fell ill from the disease had been vaccinated against it three times. And a study published in 1994 in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that more than 80 percent of American children under five with whooping cough had been fully vaccinated.
A 1970s vaccine study in India revealed that tuberculosis occurred more often in people who had taken the shot than in those who had not. In the United Kingdom, Sinclair points out, the Community Disease Surveillance Center acknowledges over 200,000 cases of whooping cough in fully vaccinated children between 1970 and 1990. An outbreak of polio in Oman in the late 1980s struck hardest in areas where vaccination was widespread. The polio vaccine has also been implicated in the spread of a virus known as SV 40 as a result of the monkeys used in its preparation. It is linked to cancer and a host of other problems.
The WHO has also been accused of sparking the AIDS epidemic in Africa via its smallpox vaccination campaign. "I thought it was just a coincidence until we studied the latest findings about the reactions which can be caused by Vaccinia," a WHO advisor told the London Times in a 1987 article entitled "Smallpox vaccine 'triggered Aids virus.''' "Now I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation to the explosion of Aids." The article continued by noting that "the greatest spread of HIV infection coincides with the most intense immunization programmes."
The global health "authorities" have made plenty of other significant blunders and miscalculations as well. In 1967, the WHO declared that Ghana was measles-free after 96 percent of the population was vaccinated. But just five years later, the country suffered its most deadly outbreak of the disease.
A 1990 article about measles in the Journal of the American Medical Association pointed out: "Although more than 95% of school-aged children in the US are vaccinated against measles, large measles outbreaks continue to occur in schools and most cases in this setting occur among previously vaccinated children." And particularly telling, in 1977, Dr. Jonas Salk, the developer of the first polio vaccine, testified with other scientists that the cause of most polio cases in the United States since 1961 was the inoculation itself.
So while governments like to take credit for success in eradicating disease and protecting the public, this is not generally the reality. In fact, governments and their programs often cause disasters under the guise of caring for citizens, and improved health has much more to do with other factors — like capitalism, freedom, and the higher standard of living those entail — than with improved vaccines.
This is just a small sampling of the damning body of evidence mounting against the cause of vaccinations and their government sponsors. Sinclair and others have highlighted many more examples. There are massive amounts of information available about these issues, so it is certainly worth considering in light of the new swine flu program — especially with the revelations that the new vaccine has been fast-tracked through safety tests under the guise of an "emergency" and some side effects take considerable time to appear.
Alex Newman is a freelance writer living in Sweden.
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Stark Reality
Stark Reality circa 1970. Left to right: Phil Morrison, John Abercrombie, Vinnie Johnson, Monty Stark.
Now is the Stark Reality anthology containing their rarely heard gem The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop (1970) together with previously unreleased tracks on an anthology CD and double LP.
Stark Reality's original album, a funky, jazzy, fuzz-toned cult classic, consists of very original interpretations of songs written by Hoagy Carmichael. They've been sampled by the likes of Large Professor, J-Live, Madlib, and Black Eyed Peas.
The previously unreleased songs on the CD anthology (joined with other unreleased tracks) are released as 1969 on vinyl by Stones Throw's Now Again subsidiary.


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Oxygen Forensic Suite 2
|Current version
|Version Number:
|Date Released:
|12 September 2008
|Recent changes
Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 by Oxygen Software is a mobile forensic software for logical analysis of cell phones, smartphones and PDAs. The authors claim that using advanced data access protocols helps to extract much more data than usually.
Regular data extraction
Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 is able to extract general data like:
- device information (IMEI, SW and HW versions, operator, etc),
- contacts (names, phones, notes)
- calendar events,
- messages (SMS),
- log records (incoming/outgoing/missed).
- files (images, sounds, videos, documents, etc)
Unique data extraction
Besides the general data usually extracted, Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 can extract a lot of unique information:
- contacts (last date of contact modification, contacts photos, field labels, contact groups and speed dials)
- calendar events (last date of event modification, all event dates, alarm status, recurrences)
- messages (e-mails and MMS, messages from custom folders, message SMSC time stamp)
- log records (GPRS, EDGE, CSD, HSCSD and Wi-Fi session traffic and time, deleted SMS details)
- files (file system from phone memory and flash card)
- LifeBlog data (all main phone events like sms, photos, events with their geographical coordinates),
Important! The list of supported features depends on a certain phone model.
Device coverage
By the October, 2008 Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 supports more than 1100 devices: Nokia, Vertu, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Blackberry, Panasonic, Siemens, HTC, HP, E-Ten, Gigabyte, i-Mate and other mobile phones. Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 has a strong support for Symbian OS, Nokia S60, Sony Ericsson UIQ, Windows Mobile 5/6 and Blackberry smartphones and communicators.
- The software access devices without using standard protocols like AT, OBEX or SyncML. The Agent installation is required to access smartphones and communicators.
- The software is able to perform data search, to create and print reports.
- The software has a full support of Unicode standard. So the multilanguage information is read and shown correctly.
Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 is a third generation of forensic tools by Oxygen Software.
- 2004, March. Oxygen Phone Manager II for Nokia phones (Forensic Edition) is released.
- 2005, November. Oxygen Phone Manager II for Symbian OS smartphones is released.
- 2007, June. Oxygen Phone Manager II (Forensic Edition) becomes a stand alone project with new name "Oxygen Forensic Suite"
- 2008, May. Oxygen Forensic Suite 2 is released and presented at Mobile Forensics World 2008.


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"Sleepy Hollow." A resurrected revolutionary war hero, a double-ax wielding horseman (headless), ghost trees, Colonial witches, an authority-defying female cop and at least one very funny Starbucks joke? Long before you can say, "Oh, did we mention the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?" I am down with Fox's new literate if historically zany spook-fest of a police procedural. Unleash the Cracken!
Loosely, as in the gossamerist of gossamer threads, based on the famous Washington Irving tale, this modern "legend" turns the traditionally nebbishy schoolteacher Ichabod Crane into a dashing member of Gen. George Washington's army who, after beheading and then killing (still, he walks!) a mysterious masked Red Coat, awakens to find himself in 21st century New York state (so, a little Rip Van Winkle thrown in for good measure.) Unfortunately, ol' headless got awakened first, ax swinging, much to the horror of Lt. Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie), who was just about to shake the dust of this sleepy little town off her standard issues.
When Ichabod (Tom Mison) is mistakenly arrested for the crimes, she hears his tale of a two-century nap and believes. Well, not at first, but soon enough, and they quickly become this season's hottest sleuth couple, tracking down mysterious maps, investigating old graves and bantering as only an 18th century soldier (also, handily, early abolitionist) and a modern-day black woman can.
It's all great fun, until, you know, someone loses a head. No, seriously. The pilot gets more than a little carried away, jamming into one hour what easily could have been spun out over several, but anchored by strong performances and terrific computer-generated imagery, "Sleepy Hollow" could become the love child of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "National Treasure." Who's with me? Fox, Mondays, 9 p.m.
"Brooklyn Nine-Nine." "SNL" alum Andy Samberg stars as the smart-mouth cop every male comedy writer might have become if any of them were willing to tuck in their shirts and wear a belt even sometimes. Not that Samberg's wise-cracking, authority-dissing Jake Peralta does either of these things, and he certainly does not wear a tie, which becomes the pilot's running gag when Mr. Andre Braugher shows up as the new rule-respecting captain. Man-child comedies (and man-children in general) are wearing out their welcome, but this one shows a lot of promise. The pilot really is laugh-outloud funny, and the supporting cast, which includes Joe Lo Truglio ("Superbad"), Chelsea Peretti ("Parks and Recreation") and Terry Crews ("Arrested Development") seems strong enough to keep Jake from crossing the line between hilariously annoying and just annoying. Also, it's from "Parks and Rec" producers Michael Schur and Dan Goor, so you know you're in good hands. Fox, Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m.
"Derek." Ricky Gervais departs from his more typical reliance on scathing humor to expose the flawed heart of the matter in favor of an even more direct approach. Playing Derek, an intellectually and socially challenged worker at a small retirement home, he offers a tribute to those who toil in the care of others in this sweet and funny if imperfect series on Netflix. Unapologetically pressing the big buttons -- love and death, isolation and community -- "Derek" sometimes trips over the directness of its intentions, but they are fine ones, and amid the distracting treacle and unnecessary frankness, moments of real beauty shine through. Netflix, anytime.
"Key & Peele." The Season 3 debut from Keegan-Michael Peele and Jordan Peele, the pair who gave us Barack Obama's Anger Translator, continues to delight with social, political and artistic parody. Their sendup of "Les Miz" is not to be missed. Comedy Central, Thursdays, 10:30.


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Buy the Book today at AMAZON or BARNES & NOBLE
- Have you ever wondered why gay rights activists, feminists, radical civil rights activists and open border's activists regularly call those who disagree with them homophobes, sexists, racists and Islamophobes?
- Have you ever wondered why on college campuses across America the radical left has silenced conservative speech?
- Have you ever wondered why liberals get away with calling conservative women the most vile, misogynistic names without consequence?
- Have you ever wondered why liberals get away with calling black conservatives Uncle Toms, House Slaves and Step "n Fetch Its?
- Have you ever wondered why the left seems to be willing to use any means whatsoever to achieve it's radical agenda?
After reading Fanning the Flames, Peter Christopher Pappas's new book on how the father of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, taught the radical left to use slander, ridicule, propaganda and lies to intimidate and silence conservatives, you won't wonder anymore.
The stories Mr. Pappas relates in his book will shock and disturb anyone with a conscience, which is precisely why he has written about them. People with a conscience must fight back against the radical tactics the radical left is using to stifle diversity of opinion in America.
The political philosopher, Edmund Burke, said that all that was necessary for evil to prevail was for good men to do nothing. In Fanning the Flames, Peter Pappas calls for good men, on both sides of the aisle, to demand a stop of the radical, slanderous and anti-democratic tactics used by the radical left.
Saul Alinsky was a thug in activist's clothing. He taught people how to organize communities in order to steal power from the Haves and redistribute it to the Have Nots. The only question he asked of means was "will it work?"
Today's radicals may not know who Alinsky was and may not have read his most famous book, Rules for Radicals, but they apply his tactics almost to the letter. The ultimate goal of every one of the radical left's tactics is to silence conservatives and remove their views from the marketplace of ideas. Or, as George Orwell said in 1984, "make all other modes of thought impossible."
In Fanning the Flames, Pappas shows just how and why the left does this and what conservatives can do to stop it.
You will learn how radical black civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton have intentionally accused innocent white men of raping black women in order to advance their agenda. You will learn how radical gay rights activists like Dan Savage and Michelangelo Signorile have tried to infect their political opponents with the flu and called for gay conservatives to kill themselves. And you will learn how radical feminists have intentionally falsified rape statistics in order to create a false sense of urgency among women and fan the flames of hatred against men and the male dominated society they supposedly created.
At the end of the book, Mr. Pappas provides a detailed set of rules that conservatives can use to combat the radical tactics of the radical left.


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Andrew Vachss
Andrew Vachss is not a writer in the traditional sense.
He doesn't do it to win awards, even though he's gotten plenty. He doesn't do it for the thrill of seeing his name in print, even though you could fill a whole bookshelf with his work. He's not plumbing the depths of his soul to wrestle with personal demons.
The demons he's wrestling with are very real.
Vachss (pronounced like fax) is an attorney in private practice, exclusively representing children and youths. Before that, he was a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social-service caseworker, a prison director and a labor organizer. In Biafra, he worked to find a land route to bring donated food and medical supplies across the border. He helped to establish a national organization that lobbies of behalf of children, and is a leading expert on child protection and sex crimes.
From that diverse career he's mined the material for 23 novels - 18 of which feature Burke, an abuse victim turned mercenary - as well as short stories, graphic novels and essays. They all further his cause of exposing real-life monsters and the society in which they breed.
It's impossible to summarize the depth of his work while still giving it the proper due, but you can find out more about him on his official Web site, The Zero, an exhaustive catalogue of his career.
He currently has two new books out. The first is The Weight, a noir romance about a professional thief who takes the rap on a rape he didn't commit. The second is Heart Transplant, a stunningly beautiful "graphic novel" about bullying that he developed with artist Frank Caruso.
Vachss was very generous with his time when we spoke. I had initially crossed my fingers for 20 minutes. We spoke for more than an hour, touching on his writing, his career, the blues, the changing face of New York and his law work. It's a long interview (and there's a few spoilers for some of his books), but it's worth sticking through to the end - especially to see him set me straight.
The night before the interview, news had broken of The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, a self-published e-book on Amazon that was sending the blogosphere into a frenzy. That's where we started.
Rob W. Hart: You may have heard about this, but there was this big controversy where Amazon has been selling a guide for pedophiles. It's a self-published book, and they removed it last night, but before they did they defended it by saying that they don't want to infringe on someone's First Amendment rights, and if you don't like it, don't buy it. What do you make of that argument?
Andrew Vachss: It's word on paper, right? It's kind of a scam for people to talk about censorship. Because censorship is when the government doesn't allow you to do something, when something's illegal, something is prohibited, when something's banned. If nobody buys the book, what difference does it make?
The second thing is, all these people getting all worked up and all excited about this, do they know anything at all about what they're talking about? Because it doesn't sound like they do.
RH: In what regard?
AV: You know what I do for a living?
RH: Child protection.
AV: Do you know why I do it?
RH: From your past interviews it's based on a lot of the work you did in your past. You were inspired to do it by some of the previous cases you were disturbed by.
AV: I've been doing it a long time, and let's just leave it there. When I began writing I had the devil's own time dealing with reviewers who said what I was writing about was a product of my sick imagination. So I was grateful when - what you call pedophiles, I don't - but what you call pedophiles, went way above ground and started giving news conferences and publishing books and all of this stuff. All of a sudden I could drop that burden. I didn't have to convince people that these humans exist. If I'm going hunting, what do I want to hunt? Deer wearing camoflauge? Aren't they giving some self-righteous nonsense about this? Do they think this book is going to convert anybody?
RH: I don't think people really think this will change anyone's mind, I think it's one of those First Amendment rights arguments, on how far you should be able to take it, because there's two sides. There are people who say you should be able to say whatever you want whenever you want, and there's people who say this is going too far.
AV: Again, these are people - I'm not trying to be insulting, I don't know you at all - but there's too many writers writing about things they've never experienced, so is a ransom note a First Amendment issue? You see what I'm saying? I'm writing words on paper saying if you ever want to see your kid again alive, is that protected speech?
This wave of self-righteous indignation, how many people in that wave are actually doing anything about this issue other than forwarding an e-mail? To me it never was a First Amendment issue. I'm happy when these freaks say, 'This is what we like to do and this is why we should be allowed to do it and blah blah blah blah blah.' It's not going to change anyone's mind but it's going to make my job a whole lot easier.
As far as Amazon's concerned, c'mon, anyone can self-publish a book. It doesn't mean that Amazon has to sell it, but are they going to appoint a board and review every self published book?
RH: OK. I wanted to also talk a little about Heart Transplant. Considering bullying is currently in the national spotlight, how has the reaction been so far to the book?
AV: I don't think I've ever seen a book with better reviews, better reactions, better endorsements from every source you can imagine, and correspondingly worse sales. It's kind of funny to talk to me about censorship. As far as I know Barnes & Noble won't carry this book.
RH: Really?
AV: Really! Feel free to call Dark Horse and ask 'em.
RH: I don't see anything objectionable or inappropriate in the book.
AV: Of course there isn't.
RH: The thing that impressed me the most [with Heart Transplant], is that, in a lot of work like that, it seems the author is talking down to the reader, which is something you didn't do. You spoke to the reader like they understood what you have to say.
AV: I hope so, because that's the way I talk, period. This isn't supposed to be a thesis on bullying or a lecture or an admonishment. It's supposed to be a dissection. Frank [Caruso] and I put in a lot of work on it.
RH: Why do you think the story needed to be told like that, with a mixture of art and prose?
AV: I can't say it needed to be told like that. It's a new genre that Frank and I have been experimenting with before, with these triptych haikus, and they really worked, insanely well. I didn't want to write a comic book. I didn't want word balloons in the book. I didn't even want the same font used throughout, in regards to who was speaking. The best word is, I wanted to have the person who has this book experience the book, not read it. And it's an experimental form, and we understand that, and we understand that when you experiment, you take risks. But not for nothing, I don't know what Lou [the intermediary who set up the interview] has sent you, but Publisher's Weekly did a long thing on this, USA Today did a long thing on us, it's in King Features Syndicate, it's recommended by all these people. I'm really shocked that nobody can find anything bad to say about the book. Quite the contrary.
RH: The reaction I've read about it so far has been fantastic.
AV: Yea, that's the reaction, but it's not just Banes & Noble that won't carry this book. The New York Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Chicago Public Library, you name it, they don't have it.
Now there's two ways to look at this, and I don't know how much of a journalist you feel like being, but the two ways are, all these people, Barnes & Noble and all these public libraries, were solicited and passed, or they weren't solicited. I don't know because I'm not in the position to ask them. But certainly, if you call Dark Horse, and I think the guy's name is [redacted], he's their book expert, he's the one who passed the news that everyone passed on the book.
But you're talking libraries that have every other thing I've ever written.
[Dark Horse confirmed difficulty in placing the book, but noted that they're buoyed by positive reviews and making headway with Barnes & Noble. While the book doesn't appear to be available in their stores yet, it is available on their Web site.]
RH: That's strange because a lot of the other works you've written are a little more risqué for most audiences.
AV: Yea, you think? On top of that, part of the deal was this book sell for what other books sell for. So it's not a damn art book, although it looks like one. I'm not selling it for $125. It's absolutely accessible from our end going out, but what I'm told is, it's been passed on by this whole pantheon, you know, chain stores and human beings.
RH: I just finished reading The Weight, which I thought was fantastic. What was the inspiration for that story?
AV: It was a true story I didn't think I could tell, except in that form. There's a lot of layers to the book and I do understand that some people will never get all of them and I can still live with that, but there has to be, at least in my mind, a way of showing people how things actually work, and people they may not understand still have a code that they live by. And how debts have to be paid.
RH: One of the more interesting things that jumped out at me from the book, and it's a smaller detail on the whole scale of the story, but how with the sex offender registry, the flaw there is that if someone doesn't appear on registry, it's like a seal of approval. [Clarification: People can and do slip through the cracks]
AV: Too bad Meagan's Law torts haven't said that. And that's exactly what I mean. You just perfectly highlighted that this book of fiction gives me a way, because if it does nothing more for you than to make you inquire, like, 'Is this guy nuts?', well, then you find out.
RH: I wanted to talk a little bit about Burke. It seems like in a lot of past interviews, people ask you how much of you is in Burke, which is usually after you say that Burke is a pretty bad guy. So do you think people come into interviews or situations with you with inaccurate assumptions, or that they're judging you over the work?
AV: That's a really good question. I don't know. I don't know. I don't meet a whole lot of objective people. I don't meet a whole lot of people without an agenda, so I don't know what's really in their mind. All I can do is be consistent and truthful. Am I shocked that the NAMBLA bulletin called me a fascist? No. But do I think they're objective reviewers? Of course not. Any more than I think most book reviewers could be objective, I don't know how they could be. The whole concept of book reviewing is, 'You people are a bunch of sheep and I know what's best and I'll point you in that direction.' What are the qualifications for being a book reviewer?
RH: I don't think there are any.
AV: Of course there aren't! So why should people pay any attention to it? The reason is nobody can read 15,000 books a damn month. So they have to find some way to sort through it. But I've seen human beings walk into a store and say, 'Where's the best seller section?' They're hardly giving - look, I don't think it's a fair fight, bottom line. I don't think it's a fair fight.
There's better actors than you've ever seen on the screen who won't even get a screen test. There are better musicians than anybody else has heard, who aren't ever going to get a record. There are better writers who are never going to get published.
In my other work, you need absolutely cold objectivity. You're not supposed to be wrong. It's not about feeling, if you don't get it right, you can literally make a fatal mistake. But when it comes to books and you strip away the crap, all the book reviewer is saying is, 'I like this book or I don't like this book, and if a book hasn't been made into a movie the odds are the book's not that good,' which is kind of the typical mindset.
RH: Speaking of that, it seems like a lot of your work gets bought up by production companies but they don't go anywhere. Do you have any desire to see that, or are you afraid your message might be corrupted by the entertainment industry?
AV: Look, for several years, I just said no to anybody who asked, but then a young guy, a smart guy from one of these studios said, 'Look, you're all about message, that's why you write these books. Well, let's say we make a movie and the movie sucks, and 10 percent of your message gets through, one percent of your message gets through. More people will see a gigantic flop of a movie than will ever read a book.' So that kind of makes sense to me. The other thing is, I know how to read a contract, so I can't guarantee a good movie, I don't even know what a good movie is, but I can absolutely guarantee some certain things that can't be done in the movie. Indeed, certain people can't work on the movie. I've always done that.
RH: Because you have a rule that if someone's been convicted or involved in a sex crime then they can't be involved, right?
AV: Right, and I also have specific names of people. Look, I don't expect them to screen some third hand grip on the Australian set, obviously I'm talking about the principals, but I don't want anything - I have a right - anything directed by Roman Polanski or Victor Salva. There's the mockery, if I was learning toward that.
But in a way there's nothing artistic about the fact that everything gets optioned and nothing gets made. There's a lot financial about it. I can't claim to be aggrieved when I can sell the same property over and over again.
RH: I mentioned unfair assumptions before, and I think I made one when I was reading Another Life, because you've said Burke is a bad guy and I understand why you used him as a guide, but I thought he might have to die to pay the price for the life he lead. Instead I found that the ending was very hopeful.
AV: I never said he was a bad guy. I said he's not a white knight, and there's a big difference. This is a family, whether it fits some Christian tradition or some Islamic tradition, but it's a family. A family's job is not just to protect its young, but to give them the kind of guidance that will enable them to exceed those giving the advice. You think this family wants its children to follow in their footsteps?
RH: Probably not.
AV: Probably? They're thieves. That's what they do. They're lifestyle criminals, they don't do anything legitimate, except as a front. No. They have one kid well along in college, one kid just beginning, the youngest of their actual crew, who wasn't one of the originals, getting married. They know that all these people have to move off in a different direction. The job is done. The arc is complete. They weren't trying to raise the next wave of avengers. The kids, who are grown now, don't feel that burning hatred that Burke does. Why would they? No one's done these things to them.
RH: You've also made the argument that you don't see yourself so much as writer, as you do a soldier fighting a war, and that fiction is your weapon. What caused that initial spark? Were there writers using fiction for social change who inspired you?
AV: Writers have used fiction to inspire social change at least since Dickens. But no, I don't think I could write The Grapes of Wrath or anything like that. But what I do know is that, my first book, it was a textbook, it wasn't a novel. And I do know that a zillion times more people will read a novel, and I know that if I can bring sufficient narrative force to the table then people will read it. Now, if I slip in enough truth, it's like eating a piece of really good steak. There's fat marbled in it, but you don't want the fat removed, you want the total taste. So, if I can get you to swallow the steak, some of what I'm trying to tell you will stick with you, and of course people will recognize themselves as the ears of proof.
RH: I know you've said you write your books in your head and when you find the time they just sort of come out, but if I can ask, what's your editing process like?
AV: [Laughs]
RH: I mean, do you find its pretty close to the finished product, after the first pass?
AV: I'll go over and, I try to use a scalpel on my books. I really don't want to waste words, and I'll do that, but the beginning, middle and end are what I intended, and I'd say it's pretty damn close. Editing a book is not something I would spend a lot of time doing on any book or any short story or anything else. I either - I don't know how to explain it - have you ever done any fighting?
RH: Not professionally or controlled.
AV: Obviously, I didn't expect that, but box any amateurs or fight in a dojo, anything like that?
RH: I've been in a couple of scraps.
AV: All right, fair enough. When you hit somebody, at that moment you know it was effective enough, right?
RH: Yea, you know whether or not you've connected.
AV: Well, that's the whole thing with me. I know what I want to hit, if I see it reflected in the words I wrote, all right, I'm done. I've tried over the years to learn to hit harder and throw shorter punches. I know how to fight, so if I bring those same skills to the books, I'm better advantaged, and I've always tried to do that.
RH: It's really amazing to me that you have such a deep library and such an involved career, I mean, do you ever actually find any time to sleep?
AV: Well, not as much as I'm told I should, but also remember when one flows into another, it's a whole lot easier. If you're a journalist and you want to write a book about being a journalist, it'll be a hell of a lot easier than someone who said, 'Oh, I think I'll use a journalist as a protagonist.' I'm writing about what I know and that makes it so much easer. I think if you gave me an assignment to write something, I'd probably fall on my face, if it's outside my comfort zone. And my comfort zone is what I know to be true, I don't think I would do real well [outside it].
RH: And you've said you write because these are things that you're angry about and that you're passionate about, but do you find any catharsis in the process?
AV: Nope. None whatsoever.
RH: Really?
AV: Yes. And all this bullshit, about, the protagonist Burke does to certain human beings what Vachss would like to do and can't, that's what it is, it's all bullshit.
The catharsis was, during one of these chats that publishers used to force you to do, somebody said - unlike, by the way, the way started this conversation, screaming and yelling about Amazon - he said, 'Listen, I've been reading your books since the first one and I really want to do something, what can I do?' And my answer was, 'I don't know, what can you do? It depends on your skills, on your commitment, on the time you have to devote to it, etc. But if you're serious, call me at my office'. Well, the guy called me at my office, what he does is he's a political operative, he runs campaigns. It was his idea to start a lobby, not a charity, a lobby, modeled on what I've always been saying about the NRA [that they're an effective lobbying group], and that became the organization known as PROTECT, and that organization has quite literally changed laws. And those laws had operated to virtually enslave children and treat them as property. Now those laws don't exist anymore.
Do you want an example?
RH: Absolutely.
AV: I don't know how much you know, that's why I don't want to bore you.
RH: Believe me, this is not boring in the slightest.
AV: OK. New York's law used to be as follows: If a human being goes next door and sexually assaults a ten year old, that's a B felony, and you're looking at up to 25 years, OK? However, if he does the same acts on the same day to a child of exactly the same age, only it's his child? Even if the criminal law does get involved, because most of the time they don't, but even if they did, the prosecutor, in his or her sole discretion, could charge the person with incest. Now, what's the difference? If you get convicted of incest, the maximum is four years and change, and you are, right upon conviction, eligible for probation. Now, you don't have to be a legal analyst to understand that this means: Grow your own victims.
That law's gone. It took a lot of lobbying and all the things lobbying entails. It was almost impossible to get this thing out of committee, but once it got out of committee, shockingly it passed unanimously. Because nobody is going to stand up in public, no politician, and advocate for the rights of parents to sexually abuse their own children.
So that law's gone. Without PROTECT it would still be in place, and this is a law that's caused me to head-butt the wall dozens of times in my career. I've not only had Miranda-ized confessions, but I've got 12 and 13 year old girls giving birth to their father's kid, when I can obviously prove who the father was. And they're all pleading guilty to incest and getting probation. That's one example.
RH: That's unbelievable.
AV: The thing is, that example stays in place forever. Can you see a politician saying, 'Can we go back to the way we did things, when incest offenders got special treatment?'
RH: Is this reflected in a lot of other states too, or is thing something unique to New York?
AV: Different states have differently oppressive laws, as does the federal government. And PROTECT is a lobby, it's not a not-for-profit, you don't get a tax deduction, so it relies completely on grassroots membership, which costs a whole $35 bucks. That's the money it runs on. And it's always taking on one of these causes at any given time, sometimes two or three or too many, frankly, but it's never going to go out of business, sadly.
I'm going to give you another example. In Florida, if you're 13 years old and you shoot somebody in the head, you will get a lawyer to defend you, an actual lawyer, but if you're 13 years old and your father's been raping you or your mother's been pimping you out, and you end up in Family Court, you won't get a lawyer. You'll get a warm, caring volunteer, you know, like a counselor or something like that. That's ridiculous, it's throwing a guppy into a shark tank. So that law has to go to. Because where do you think you get the monsters that actually terrify people with their very existence? You think it's bad genetics? We make our own monsters. We build our own beasts. And the greatest weapon we have against that is to interfere in the production lines. The earlier and more correct the intervention, the better the end result.
And how do you do that if the kid doesn't even have a lawyer, see? Because, look, everybody overdramatizes crap, let's see you overdramatize this one: In my cases, I go to court, it's the only part of the American criminal justice system where if I lose, the perpetrator takes the victim home.
So don't even bore me about your silly death penalty cases. This is a million times worse. There's no project to help these kids. There's no possibility of doing something, because the perpetrator has told this kid, all the kids life, 'I decide everything, you're my property, whatever I want to do, I can do, nobody can stop me.' Now, you're in court, right? And the judge says 'not guilty,' you think this kid will ever, ever report that he's being abused again?
RH: I would imagine no.
AV: Of course not, what's the point? So the stakes are enormous, and if every time you change a law to level that playing field, you save a gazillion kids, because it's a law that stays on the books. Nobody will go back and change it to the way it used to be.
Well, if it wasn't for the books, none of this happens. So on that basis, of course, they've been a wonderful means of getting to where I think we need to go, but I don't think it's because anybody read the book, any book, and said they'll devote their life to doing this.
RH: You've talked about how you get a lot of threats, how you take special security measures for you and your family. What is it that sets people off? Are abusers that self-righteous?
AV: No, no, no. They don't tell me. They're not writing learned essays, they're sending me funeral cards expressing sympathy for the death of my family, or sending pictures of me with crosshairs drawn over my face. When they do identify themselves - you know, I've had letters from the Hillside Strangler, the one's that still alive, Bianchi - all outrages at the way I unfairly portrayed him. People like that, it's pretty common because they have an insanely narcissistic sense of their own rights. Most of the time they're your garden-variety threat. Sometimes someone's stupid enough to call in a threat, worse yet mention a specific case, that's very easy to deal with that. You're largely dealing with anonymity. One thing I have learned, though, if you go around playing Mister Macho, 'No one's really going to take a shot at me, no one's really going to do this,' that'll be your epitaph.
RH: On the other hand, do you see evidence of people reading your work and experiencing positive changes?
AV: They sure express it, but I'm not in their lives, that's really the problem with this. If I believed that I changed as many people's lives as I have actual written letters attesting to, I'd have an ego too big for this office. I think a lot of people give me way too much credit.
You know, when Bill Clinton's book came out, he had to take a paragraph and say the most important piece of legislation was the one that I wrote, and blah blah blah blah blah. I couldn't have gotten that bill anywhere near his eyes if certain rich and famous people, who can do a lot of things I can't, hadn't, shall is say, called this to his attention.
So to give me credit for that is wrong. To give me credit - people think PROTECT is my agency. No, it's not. It has an executive director. I haven't even been to the new headquarters in Knoxville. But I don't ever go in the other direction and say I'm a writer and that's it. If you want to judge me, judge me by my conduct, don't judge me by what you read. Behavior is the only truth.
RH: I gotcha. Now, in your books there's a lot of unifying themes, and one of those is blues music. What is it about the blues that speaks to you so much?
AV: Well, you know the saying, that blues is the truth? Well, that's it. I didn't really hear the blues until the first time I went to Chicago, and I was a kid, a teenager, but growing up I didn't hear blues music. At least not music I recognized as blues music, because doo-wop is just another form of blues, you see? But when I got to Chicago and I heard some of this, it just blew me away, because of the environment. I've never attended a stadium concert or anything like that, but you go into a bar or a juke joint, people up on that stand, they're playing for their lives. I don't mean that the audience will assault them, I mean that they either bring it or they don't, and that means it has to be hard and insistent so that people - I've been in places where people literally stopped reaching for weapons because something caught them from the stage.
RH: Wow.
AV: Yea, its effect is stunning. It's not dance music, so, yea, if you buy my argument that doo-wop is just the Brooklyn blues, then that's the only music I've ever really been interested in because it's the only thing that speaks to me.
RH: So the character in The Weight named Robert Johnson was named after the blues singer Robert Johnson?
AV: You're a smart guy, yea. And they met at the Crossroads Diner. I didn't name it, but that is in fact the biggest diner in Queens.
RH: I'm a big fan in Robert Johnson, so I thought it was a great reference.
AV: But the whole point is, because you know you got it, right? If you didn't know that it would just pass you by. It's a generic name.
RH: It is. And especially, and I think he's pretty obscure singer. He's become more about his legend than his actual life.
AV: Oh, absolutely, but the concept of making a deal at the crossroads didn't start with him.
RH: That goes a long way back in mythology.
AV: You can read book from the 1800s talking about selling your soul to the devil in exchange for something.
But yea, that was a touch, and the touch you won't get, because of your age, I think is, do you know the significance of the numerals and 'goliath' written under the bloody thumbprint?
RH: No, I don't.
AV: First of all, they're written European style, so instead of month-day-year, it's day-month-year. The second thing is, what are Solly and Albie, back in the 80s, what enterprise could they have been in for so many years? Have you ever heard of the Irgun?
RH: No.
AV: Irgun. They were either freedom fighters, if you were an Israeli, or terrorists if you were a Brit. This is after World War II when they all got dumped in, what is still being called Palestine, and homeland by one group and Israel by another. But the Brits were going to follow their standard model of hanging around, and the Irgun was lead by some pretty vicious guys, like Menachem Begin, and on that date, they blew up the King David Hotel, and that was it for the Brits in Palestine. They left.
So I understand, 99 percent of people won't get this, but if you think about this, why would these guys be together? They're obviously very different people. And what is Solly a traitor to? No one said he was a rat and he informed on the gang, it's obvious that the people visiting Albie at night, who just show up, are hard guys, but they're not crime guys. This is Mossad, and these are very serious people, so what happened was, Albie figured out, if you read the book you see how, that Solly had to be the traitor, and he left the message in the only way he could hope it would work. Solly's a bad guy, it's not about money, what could he possibly need more money for? He's actually gone over to the other side, and they've been together since they were in the Jewish underground, before Israel was established as a state. And that's why this is so critically, desperately important.
You don't need to know that to get the book, you don't need to know that to understand that whatever Solly was traitorous about is something pretty damn important. And you also now get an explanation of why is Albie, who looks, on the surface, like a pretty good guy, why is he always sending up jobs and heists? Because he needs money. Well what does he need money for? There's still an underground, the same way any Irishman would know there's still an IRA. People who started running guns in the late 40s all over the place haven't necessarily stopped.
RH: Well, one of the other things that stuck out for me with The Weight is that, I'm a native New Yorker. I've lived here my whole life, and I'm only 27 so my history doesn't go back that far, but I remember things weren't great in the late 80s and early 90s, and we've seen a lot of changes in the city since then. The crime rate has dropped, the murder rate has dropped, and it was interesting to see a writer refer to how things used to be compared to how they are now. But also the argument that you're making, that a lot of these things, the bad stuff is still around, even though you don't necessarily see it.
AV: Absolutely right. It's a different way of doing the same business. Anyone who thinks that there's no prostitution in New York, no dope trade in New York, c'mon. You'd have to be really lame to do that. I'm a born and raised New Yorker, it's my native home. The place where we lived at one time is now Soho [laughs]. Trust me, it wasn't Soho when we lived there.
Born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, where do you think the Westies came from? Not from Clinton. And there's a double joke inside that, because Dannemora, the Siberian prison, has been renamed. It's now called Clinton. [Dannemora is a prison facility in upstate New York's Clinton County, nicknamed New York's Sibera]
RH: Really.
AV: Yea, check it for yourself. Dannemora is now Clinton Correctional Facility. They couldn't stop with renaming every two square blocks in New York, they have to start renaming prisons? Riker's Island is going to be Riker's Isle? This sort of euphemism that they sell the public, that's a city that's rotting from the inside.
Before you're 40, all the people, the service personnel, that Manhattan needs, are going to be living on what used to be Welfare Island [nickname for Roosevelt Island] and they'll be ferried over once a day, because no working person in the world can afford to live in Manhattan.
RH: No, absolutely not. I live on Staten Island because that's where I can afford to live.
AV: Sure, sure. That's what so ironic, it's amazing the way it is, there's places in Staten Island, there's places in Queens, that are incredible bargains. But they're not Manhattan, so PPHT, you know? You'd have to be nuts, you have to share your apartment with nine people and live in a crawlspace.
RH: It's amazing how you can give so much to the city and grow up there and then feel like you're persona non grata when you can't afford anything.
AV: Absolutely. You're in Staten Island, so you know what people in Staten Island call Manhattan. They call it The City. Well, it's supposed to be a city of five boroughs.
RH: Which most people tend to forget.
AV: And as far as the murder rate going down, all this crap like that, the whole Giuliani initiative, that's about a certain number of square blocks in Midtown, heading up Central Park West and Fifth Avenue to X number of blocks, then they're done. Then they don't care.
RH: They care much more about the crime rate in Times Square than they do in Bushwick or East New York.
AV: Of course. East New York, when I was growing up, anybody who went in there unarmed was an idiot. You'd have to be crazy. I remember, probably going on 20 years now, I took a journalist from another country who said, 'I want to see the real New York.' All right, fine. I took him to Hunts Point [in the Bronx]. And he visibly, within a few minutes, 'We gotta get out of here.'
There's dead dogs lying in the gutter and seagulls ripping them apart, there's whores working under clear plastic raincoats servicing the truckers, there's guys test firing weapons at the cars. [laughs] And it was a little much. And now they're probably building co-ops out there, right?
The New York rule is that every square inch of land is eventually going to be worth something, but it really hasn't worked out that way, and a lot of people haven't grasped the idea that elevators have a top floor. So they're paying stupid money for apartments. Now co-ops? And they just bought themselves hell, they're paying twice what the last guy paid so their assumption is they're going to sell for twice what they paid, and it doesn't work like that.
RH: It amazes me to see the kind of apartments people will live in just to say they live in the city. These little tiny boxes with no room to move around.
AV: When I was your age, before I went overseas, I lived on what we called the Lower East Side, now it's Loisaida or Alphabet City, but you could get a two bedroom apartment for $65, and because of the wage scale then, we'd still have four, five guys living there. But that multiplication table stops once you get past what the working person can reasonably be expected to earn.
And hell, if you make $40,000 a year, in some part of the country you're doing great. In New York, you better not smoke, because there's your salary. Obviously, that's the thing about, going back to your original point, you boycott something, you call attention to it. Why would you do that? So the clowns who think if nobody smokes the world will be sweet and green, now it's $12.75 for a pack of cigarettes. You honestly think people aren't driving semis full of cigarettes from North Carolina without tax stamps?
RH: I'm sure you're aware, there's the Indian reservations [in New York] that the state is trying to collect taxes from.
AV: The Indian reservations are about as hypocritical as anything I've ever heard of. We attempted genocide against you guys, it didn't work, a few of you lived, we're going to make it up to you by letting half a dozen people get rich and have this lovely casino and we'll take our piece, and meanwhile the people on the [reservation] aren't going to do a god damn thing. I have a friend who's a Chickasaw, and he literally calls them Casino Indians, because the whole trick is to prove you have enough blood in you so you're entitled to your benefitsÉ
[My phone drops the call. Thanks, AT&T! I call back.]
AV: I don't know what happened with that.
RH: It was my fault, I apologize.
AV: It's not going to be the worst thing that happens to me today. [Laughs]
RH: Actually, I'm doing pretty good. I covered most of the stuff I wanted to talk about. Do you have anything that you're working on, books or projects you can talk about?
AV: The answer to both questions would be 'yes' and 'always.' I've never stopped working on the same project my whole life, and I don't intend to. Books are a weapon in what I believe is the only holy war actually worthy of that name. It's like asking me, 'Do I have any cases this year?' Yea, sure, of course, all the time, always. Because one flows into the other flows into the other. When I first tried this I would have to be a real demented person or somebody with an insane ego to believe I'd still be doing this a quarter century later.
I understand that bookselling is a business, so bottom line, if you want to know if the writer is successful, see if the same publisher goes back to them. That's the only measure I can think of. And I've been with the same guys since I got away from the first. I've been with the same guys for all that time. They can call me up and say, 'Listen, The Weight turned out to be an anvil dropped in the ocean and it sank like a stone, it didn't sell any copies, it's been nice.' That can happen at any time. I don't take advances. I don't sign contracts to write books. I write a book, when I'm done I show it to them and I ask them if they want it. I don't have an agent. Admittedly it's not the standard way to do that, but I'm really too busy with other things to bother with the sort of party part of writing.
RH: Well, I want to thank you for taking the time to speak to me, and one a personal level, I'm a huge fan and you've been a big inspiration for me as a writer.
AV: Oh, I didn't know that you were a writer.
RH: I'm trying.
AV: Listen to what you just said. Damn. I hate that. You think you're a writer if you're published and if not, you're not a writer?
RH: No, I don't necessarily feel that way, it's just something - I'm still a long way from where I want to be.
AV: Good, but don't let anybody - I remember, I was once at one of these stupid-ass, I don't even know what it was, a literary celebration or something. And this kid who had just written a book was standing next to me talking to me, and some nasty bitch - and by the way, for me that's a gender neutral term - came up and recognized me and turned to the kid and said, 'What are you doing,' and he said, 'Well, I'm a writer', and she said, 'Well, would you have written anything I've read?'
And the kid was just, you know, melting, and I turned to the human and said, 'Name ten books you have read.' 'Uh, bluh bluh bluh bluh.' Who are you, telling someone they're only a writer if you've read their damn book? It's like what I said, a person's not an actor if they don't get cast in a movie? Not a singer if they don't get recorded? Not a painter unless he has an exhibition?
RH: Fair enough.
AV: No, don't back off that. Don't let people ever tell you - I hate that, I truly hate that. It's wrong. It's just wrong. If you're a writer, that's what you are. And if the borderline is, are you published, that's why vanity press has succeeded all these years, because people fell into that trap. Being a writer doesn't mean you're published, it doesn't mean you're any good at it. You certainly know of unmitigated slop that sells year after year, right?
What I'm saying is, it's not a fight, with two guys going inside some ropes and one guy gets his hand raised at the end, it's not that. You never get to meet the enemy. People have gotten published because they're sleeping with this person, or they know this person or their cousin knows this person, and blah blah blah blah blah. I wrote my first book at least a dozen years before I got published.
No one has the right to define what you do except you.
RH: Thank you for saying that.
AV: I would be a hypocrite if I didn't say it.
RH: And thank you again for being so generous with your time today. I thought I would be lucky to get 20 minutes to talk to you.
AV: You would have gotten eight minutes or four minutes if you sounded like someone I didn't want to talk to.
Rob W. Hart is a writer and aspiring novelist. This is his seventh interview for The Cult. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook.


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Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Education
Evaluation of Curriculum and Instruction.
Three semester hours.
A thorough treatment of various standard, research-based techniques for evaluation of instruction (i.e., authentic assessments, alternative assessments, qualitative and quantitative testing methods, and non-specific measurement methods). In addition, this course explores the concepts behind assessment, identifies various assessment tools, and incorporates models of assessment appropriate for a variety of instructional settings. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.
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Spelling Airs
We all know that nearly all cake decorators misspell "congratulations" every day.
(Um, John? I don't think...)
This is obviously because they're either drunk or completely incompetent.
(Okay now, we're totally gonna get in trouble for that...)
Now you might be saying, "I thought all drunk and completely incompetent people were politicians?"
(Well, that's true.)
But you would be wrong!
(I would?)
Which brings us back to cake.
(Oh, good.)
See? Comgratation. Interestingly enough, there are close to 3,000 accepted spellings of "congradulationed" in the decorators' dictionary.
Occasionally, though, they do spell it goodly:
Like so. Of course, sometimes after successfully spelling a word the thrill goes to the baker's head. Thusly we get "Ternifer" - a hybrid creation of "Terrific" and the name of the person who ordered the cake, perhaps?
Here again the decorator got the "hard" word right:
Sure, the number's a bit, well, wrong...but hey, numbers are hard!
Wisites: n. [wi-SET-eez] Small, fuzzy mammals indigenous to Uganda prized for their venom, which is said to cure gout and certain types of restless leg syndrome.
See? No misspellings here!
Well, y'all have a grrr-reat day now. Oh, and decorators? Bottoms up!
Jessica E., Christy C., Dana S., & Jessica, watch out; I hear those wisites spit.
- Related Wreckage: The "Year" of the "Grad"


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They could also be used for making salt and pepper shakers. You just turn a shoulder to size on each piece and glue the rings in position, aligning the grain before the glue sets.
Outside diameters are 30mm (1-3/16") and 42mm (1-5/8") with inside diameters of approx. 3/4" and 1-3/8". Vastly simplify small box work.
The 30mm Box Ring Set is no longer available.