Bohemian Mama

With increasing signs that bird flu is becoming established in Asia and several worrisome human cases that can't be linked directly to exposure to infected poultry, it's only a matter of time until such a virus adapts itself to spread more easily from person to person and cause a severe worldwide outbreak, he said.


"We believe that we are closer to the next pandemic than we ever were," Stohr said Sunday in an interview before a speech at an American Society for Microbiology meeting in Washington, D.C.

[...]

Flu kills about 36,000 people in the United States and a million worldwide each year by conservative estimates, Stohr said. But tens of millions die in a pandemic, which occurs every 20 to 30 years, when a flu strain changes so dramatically that people have little immunity from previous flu bouts.


There were three pandemics in the 20th century; all spread worldwide within a year of being detected.

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".

It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.

An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."

Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot. (Mama's emphasis)

[...]

Purging soldiers

At least 50 persons on the list are in the military, most stationed at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville. They now face challenge because some, like Randall Prausa of Atlantic Beach, have been shipped overseas.

Private detective

In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows.

The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.

On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.

Both [groups] have already raised concerns about the integrity of electronic voting equipment, particularly the lack of paper trails; management of elections by partisan secretaries of state; the potential for voter coercion; and widely varying balloting and vote-counting procedures across the country.

Worries about a repeat of "voter suppression" efforts that surfaced in 2000, including fliers circulated in minority neighborhoods that falsely informed voters they could still cast ballots after Election Day or could be barred for voting for minor legal infractions. Michigan state Rep. John Pappageorge, a Republican, caused a stir last summer when he said, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election."

(this is a sticker on an ATM):

Bush is coming to Medford, Oregon Thursday. John Edwards is here Wednesday morning. Edwards' visit is already sold out. There are tickets available for Bush, even though his visit was planned in advance. This is in republican-leaning rural southern Oregon.

I tried to get tickets to both events. Edwards was sold out, but I could still get them for Bush, provided I:

1. was a registered republican

2. wrote an essay about why he should be president

3. promise to support him

At the International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan in Tokyo last December, a team of attorneys from Japan, the United States and Germany indicted Bush on a number of war-crimes charges--among them the use of depleted uranium in armor-piercing weapons. Leuren Moret, president of Scientists for Indigenous People, testified at the trial and later reported that a U.S. government study conducted on the babies of Gulf War veterans conceived after the soldiers returned home found that a full two-thirds suffered from serious birth defects or illnesses, including being born without eyes or ears, or with missing or malformed organs or limbs. In Iraq, Moret said, the defects are even worse. But those are just some of the images of war we never see on the evening news.

More recently, the Uranium Medical Research Center, an independent group of U.S. and Canadian scientists that has conducted studies of Afghan civilians, found evidence that the United States is also using nondepleted uranium in its weapons, which is far more radioactive than depleted uranium. (Mama's emphasis)

- Every 44 seconds a baby is born into poverty.
- In 2002, 12.1 million children (16.7%) of all children under age 18, were poor - a larger percentage than any other age group.
- 4.1 million children experiencing poverty lived in families with at least one full-time, working adult.
- 6% of children live in extreme poverty with household incomes below 50% of the poverty level ($9425 for a family of 4 in 2004).

- Every fourth person standing in a soup kitchen line is a child.
- Children are twice as likely as adults to live in households where someone experiences hunger.
- More than 40% of low-income children live in households that are hungry or at risk of hunger.
- Out of 23 industrialized countries, the U.S. was the only country with children under 5 suffering from underweight, wasting, and stunting in 2000.
- Hungry children suffer two to four times as many health problems as those who are not and are more likely to be ill or absent from school.
- Hungry children are less likely to interact with other people or explore or learn from their surroundings. Hunger interferes with their ability to learn from an early age.
- Chronic hunger causes anxiety, low self-esteem and hostility in children.

- More than half of all Food Stamp recipients are children.
- Low-income children depend on the School Lunch Program for one-third to one-half of their daily nutrition.
- 40% of all clients using food banks or pantries are children.

- 40% of homeless people in the U.S. are children. About 1.35 million children, most pre-school and elementary age, will experience homelessness over the course of a year.
- Children without a home are in fair or poor health twice as often as other children, and have higher rates of asthma, ear infections, stomach problems, and speech problems.

- More than 9 million children in the U.S. do not have health insurance.
- In 2002, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provided health insurance coverage for 47.6% of all low-income children (children living in families with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line).
- 1 in 5 children have an untreated dental cavity. Children in low-income families are more than twice as likely to have untreated dental cavities and 20% more likely not to have had a dental visit in the past year.
- Poor children are twice as likely as non-poor children to suffer stunted growth or lead poisoning or be kept back in school.