Friday, 5 February 2010

Papandreou on tax measures

New Delhi (ANA-MPA/V. Mourtis) --Prime minister George Papandreou on Thursday announced that measures will be taken for those "who are not paying today but should be paying", referring to the new tax bill to be tabled next week, while speaking to reporters in New Delhi on his official visit to India during which he will attend and address the 2010 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS). In that context, Papandreou stressed that low-salary and small and medium size concerns need to be protected, adding that his government is determined to make the necessary changes because "if those changes are not made, thing will get worse". The premier noted that the government has sought the input of all sides with respect to the changes, and especially of those who have the biggest privileges and must contribute more to the effort. "None of us are happy with the difficulties the country is facing," Papandreou explained, adding though that "we must turn the crisis into an opportunity, and today is a historic opportunity that we must make use of".
"The changes will be to the benefit of the citizens," he added.
Papandreou noted that the current situation is the outcome of the many mistakes made in the past, stressing that it is a national need that the changes are made, particularly given that "the country is at risk". He also stressed that the inability and lack of determination of the previous years to introduce changes were what created the present-day problems "which we are paying".
Papandreou is due to meet on Friday with Indian Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, and the discussion will also review the 1982 five-continent "Initiative of the Six" peace movement founded by his father, then prime minister of Greece Andreas Papandreou, Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid, Argentinian prime minister Raul Alfonsin, Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere, and Sonia Gandhi's late mother-in-law, then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, urging the superpowers to put an immediate halt to all nuclear weapon tests.
The Initiative won the international peace award of the Beyond War Foundation in 1985. He did not rule out the prospect of revival of the initiative, since the threat of nuclear arms still exists today.

http://dominore.blogspot.com

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Stop the fraud : EU Company Registration EU Business Services Ltd / International Directories Group Ltd

All use misleading forms sent by Email as PDF attachments, the forms are
ambiguous, appearing to offer a free entry but hidden in the small print is
an onerous contract costing thousands of Euros. Persons who refuse to pay
are hounded by debt collectors Waldberg & Hirsch.


----- Original Message -----
From: "EU Company Registration" <donotreply@eucompanydirectoryonline.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 5:07 AM
Subject: Registration of EU Companies 2010/2011

EU Company Registration
Dear Madam/Sir,

In order to have your company inserted into the registry of EU
companies for 2010/2011, please print, complete and return the enclosed
form (PDF
file) to the following address:

EU Company Directory
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA UTRECHT
The Netherlands
Fax number: + 31 205248107
Email: mail@eucdnow.com
Updating is free of charge!

To unsubscribe, please send an email to unsubscribe@eu-businessservices.com

Avoid any relation with this FRAUD!

Avoid any relation with this FRAUD!

----- Original Message -----
From: "EU Company Registration" <donotreply@eucompanydirectoryonline.com>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 5:07 AM
Subject: Registration of EU Companies 2010/2011

EU Company Registration


EU Company Registration
Dear Madam/Sir,

In order to have your company inserted into the registry of EU
companies for 2010/2011, please print, complete and return the enclosed
form (PDF
file) to the following address:

EU Company Directory
P.O. Box 2021
3500 GA UTRECHT
The Netherlands
Fax number: + 31 205248107
Email: mail@eucdnow.com
Updating is free of charge!

To unsubscribe, please send an email to unsubscribe@
eu-businessservices.com

Friday, 29 January 2010

Professors Against Plagiarism: Plagiarism in Turkey !!!

Professors Against Plagiarism: Plagiarism in Turkey

 

 
From

Professors Against Plagiarism: Plagiarism in Turkey

French ex-PM Dominique de Villepin has accused President Sarkozy of pursuing a vendetta against him, after prosecutors promised to appeal over his acquittal.

Mr de Villepin was found not guilty on Thursday of having a role in a smear
campaign against Mr Sarkozy.
But the Paris state prosecutor said there was scope for an appeal as not all
the facts of the case had emerged.
The ex-PM, Mr Sarkozy's one-time rival for the presidency, said the
president was acting out of "hatred".
"This decision is a political decision and what it shows is that Nicolas
Sarkozy, president of the Republic, prefers to continue in his
relentlessness and hatred instead of assuming the responsibilities of his
office," he told French TV.
Minutes earlier, Paris state prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin announced the
appeal, saying it was "surprising" that Mr de Villepin had been acquitted.
He told French radio: "All has not emerged in this case. There is still
scope for a part of the truth to emerge. "Whatever happens, there will be a
second trial." Mr Marin added that the appeal could be heard later this year
or early in 2011. On Thursday Mr de Villepin was cleared of four counts of
complicity to slander, to use forgeries, dealing in stolen property and
breach of trust.
Mr Sarkozy had promised he would "hang from a butcher's hook" for trying to
smear his name.

Bribe allegations:
http://blogiasis.blogspot.com
In 2004, Mr Sarkozy's name appeared on a list of top politicians and
businessmen who were wrongly linked to an illegal bank account in
Luxembourg. It was alleged those named on the list had received bribes from
international arms sales.
The list was sent to people including Mr de Villepin, who was accused of
failing to stop the conspiracy.
During the investigation, Mr de Villepin admitted he knew of the documents -
but the court found no evidence to prove he had known they had been faked.
At the trial, prosecutors had called for him to receive an 18-month
suspended sentence and a fine of 45,000 euros (£39,000). Three other
defendants were convicted, including a former executive of the EADS
aerospace group, Jean-Louis Gergorin, who admitted leaking the fake list to
investigators, and Imad Lahoud, a computer specialist, who confessed to
adding Mr Sarkozy's name to the list. Both men were fined 40,000 euros
(£34,500; $56,000). Gergorin must serve 15 months in prison and Lahoud must
serve 18 months. A fifth defendant was cleared.

http://blogiasis.blogspot.com

Thursday, 28 January 2010

Professors against Plagiarism in IRAN http://professorsagainstplagiarism.blogspot.com/

http://professorsagainstplagiarism.blogspot.com/
Senior officials in the Iranian government are suspected of plagiarizing
published scientific content for political gain.
Nature, the international weekly journal of science, reported last week that
its research unearthed even more plagiarism allegations against prominent
figures in Iran. The first person to be implicated more than a year ago was
Masumeh Ebtekar, the head of the Environmental Protection Organization under
President Khatami.
A few months ago, Nature tabbed Transport Minister Hamid Behbahani, who
supervised President Ahmadi-nejad's doctoral thesis, for plagiarism in a
paper he co-authored. Nature says the paper appeared based on three earlier
articles by three different authors. The journal Transport retracted the
paper in October, but the Iranian government has not investigated the
allegations.
Behbahani told the public he did not plagiarize and that only parts of the
article were identical to earlier work. He called the plagiarism allegations
a "media attack, far from fairness and integrity" and "an illegitimate
accusation."
The Majlis did, however, informally investigate Science Minister Kamran
Daneshjou and the four papers he co-authored. Daneshjou oversaw this year's
elections in his previous post of deputy interior minister. The Majlis
Science and Education Committee held an informal inquiry into the case and
dismissed it after Daneshjou's colleague and co-author, Majid Shahravi, took
responsibility for the content in the papers. Three of the four papers have
been retracted from publications. The fourth paper was published in an
Iranian journal.

Nature speculates that the frequent cases of plagiarism in Iran are partly
the result of poor fluency in English. Nature said the culture in Iran and
some other developing countries expects officials to have strong academic
credentials. That encourages resort to plagiarism to uphold this cultural
expectation and gain promotions.
Nature notes many of Iran's best scientists left Iran after the 1979 Islamic
revolution because universities were asked to eliminate Western influences
and staff. Iranian research improved and became more credible in the late
1990s with the help of President Mohammad Khatami who made academic
appointments based on merit, Nature said. It said research in Iran has gone
downhill since Ahmadi-nejad took power in 2005 because political influence
directed promotions within universities.

http://professorsagainstplagiarism.blogspot.com/

US President Barack Obama has said in his first State of the Union address that creating jobs must be the nation's number one focus.

Mr Obama accepted Americans were "hurting" and that his election pledge of
change had not come quickly enough. He defended his healthcare reform
efforts and bank bailout policy, but said there would be a spending freeze
from 2011 to tackle the budget deficit. Bob McDonnell, for the Republicans,
criticised the expansion of government. The Virginia governor said the
federal government was "simply trying to do too much".

'Devastation remains': Mr Obama was given the traditional warm welcome by
all sides of Congress and received several standing ovations. He opened his
address by saying the US had to "answer history's call".

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has spent the night in hospital after being taken ill with high blood pressure, Brazilian media report.

Lula, 64, became ill after boarding a plane in the north-eastern city of
Recife to fly to Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.
Presidency officials said he had felt "tired and indisposed". Local media
say Lula is expected to be discharged later in the day but may still require
more medical tests. Central Bank President Henrique Meirelles will travel to
Davos to represent Brazil. President Lula had spent Wednesday in Recife,
following a busy agenda. The president had complained of a sore throat and a
pain in his chest during the day and showed signs of high blood pressure as
he was about to depart. Mr Lula's personal doctor, Cleber Ferreira, who
advised that he be taken to hospital, said: "I took the president off the
plane. He didn't fly on doctors' orders, but right until the last minute he
wanted to travel." Mr Lula was due to become the first head of state to
receive the World Economic Forum

Sad News: The pioneer of the science of Fuzzy Logic, Professor Mamdani (You know "Mamdani Model") passed away.

Sad News: The pioneer of the science of Fuzzy Logic, Professor Mamdani (You
know "Mamdani Model") passed away.
"The premature passing away of Abe Mamdani is a deep loss for his family,
the fuzzy logic community and all who knew him"
Lotfi Zadeh
See more details:
http://mybisc.blogspot.com/2010/01/in-memoriam-premature-passing-away-of.html

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Just what we need out of Washington: More wind.

The White House took time out Tuesday to plug what it called a success story
ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address. Citing a new report
by the American Wind Energy Association, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said
the administration's much-criticized economic stimulus bill turned what had
been a projected decline in new wind electricity generation in 2009 to a
sharp increase. Gibbs said the association predicted the amount of new
electricity produced by wind turbines would dip by 50 percent in 2009,
compared to the capacity added in 2008. "Instead, this tax credit came
through the Recovery Act, and we saw a 39 percent increase in the number of
wind plants, wind power, generated over the course of last year," Gibbs
said. Gibbs pointed to the administration's assistance to the renewable
energy industry as an example of "investments for the future."
Did Gibbs correctly characterize the report's findings? Yes. But while the
industry credits the stimulus bill with spurring new growth in 2009, it says
the new growth hasn't necessarily translated into new jobs.
The industry did add nearly 10,000 megawatts of generating capacity in 2009,
"shattering any expectations we had for the year, given the financial
crisis," said Elizabeth Salerno, the AWEA's director of industry data and
analysis.
Utilities had a strong first quarter of the year based on projects that were
already in the works before the financial meltdown of 2008. But projects
dried up quickly in mid-year, before about $1.9 billion in renewable energy
tax credits from the stimulus bill began to kick in, Salerno said.

Once the rules for qualifying for those credits were drafted, companies
began using them to raise private capital and the year finished
"significantly stronger" than expected, she said. "That really is due to the
Recovery Act."

Wind power produced about 1.6 percent of the electricity used in the United
States though October 2009, according to U.S. Department of Energy figures.
That's up from about 1.25 percent in all of 2008, and the final figure for
2009 is likely to be close to 2 percent, Salerno said.

But while the wind projects produced new jobs for people installing and
maintaining the new generating units, the stimulus funding "doesn't
necessarily translate to increases in manufacturing," Salerno said.

"Overall, we've had some gains and some losses," she said. "I think we've
been able to remain steady at about 85,000 jobs, which is about where we
ended up at the end of 2008."

Salerno said the industry will be closely watching Obama's budget proposal,
expected next week, for signs of continued support.

"Manufacturing needs a much longer time horizon to make investments," she
said.

Monday, 25 January 2010

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Irish counterpart Brian Cowen are travelling to Northern Ireland for further talks on policing and justice.

Earlier, talks between the DUP and Sinn Fein ended after less than an hour.
SF's Martin McGuinness said he was "frustrated" at the DUP because of the
lack of progress on devolving policing. The impasse over the issue is
causing a growing crisis, with mounting speculation on the future of NI's
political institutions. Sinn Fein and the DUP - Northern Ireland's two
biggest political parties - have been arguing for months over the transfer
of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont.

Sinn Fein want the completion of devolution to happen as soon as possible,
but the DUP argue there must be unionist "community confidence" before
powers are put in the hands of local politicians. The "confidence" issue
causing most division is over the handling of parades. The DUP wants to
scrap the Parades Commission, which puts conditions on some of the most
contentious marches, but Sinn Fein has accused them of giving the Orange
Order a talks veto. Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street on
Monday afternoon, Gordon Brown said he believed difficulties could be
overcome. He said: "We believe that the problems that exist in devolving
policing and justice are all soluble problems. "We believe that it is right
for Northern Ireland to move forward in this way now and we believe that
together we can assist the completion of these talks.

"And while I recognise that there are difficult issues, we believe that
these issues can be overcome." The Irish prime minister Brian Cowen said he
was confident progress would be made. http://dominore.blogspot.com

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- also known as Chemical Ali -- was executed Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said.

Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed -- also known as Chemical Ali -- was executed Monday, an Iraqi government spokesman said.

SOURCE: http://blogiasis.blogspot.com/

He was hanged after having been convicted on 13 counts of killings and
genocide, Ali al-Dabagh said.
Al-Majeed had been sentenced to death in four separate trials, including one
that focused on his involvement in a poison gas attack against Iraqi Kurds
that killed about 5,000 people. His execution had been delayed for political
rather than legal reasons. It is not clear what change, if any, led to the
reported execution. Al-Majeed had been held in United States custody since
his capture in 2003. But he was handed over to the Iraqi authorities in the
24 hours before his execution, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill told CNN's
Diana Magnay on Monday. The 1988 poison gas attack on the village of
Halabja, which earned al-Majeed his nickname, was part of the Anfal
campaign, in which the Hussein regime killed at least 100,000 Iraqi Kurds.
The campaign is believed to be worst poison gas attack on civilians ever.
Al-Majeed was sentenced to death separately for his role in putting down a
Shiite uprising against Hussein in 1991, and for his part in putting down a
Baghdad revolt in 1999. Estimates of the Shiite death toll in the 1991
rebellion range from 20,000 to 100,000. Al-Majeed was convicted of playing a
key part in the slaughter during the revolt in southern Iraq that followed
the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
One of his co-defendants in the Anfal case, Sultan Hashem, is a prominent
Sunni leader who is considered a key player in efforts to reconcile the
country's once-dominant Sunni community with the Shiite majority that now
wields political power.
Hashem was also sentenced to death, but Iraq's Sunni Arab Vice-President
Tariq al-Hashimi has long refused to sign his execution order. That delayed
the execution of al-Majeed and another defendant as well.
Iraqi law requires all three members of the Iraqi presidency council -- the
president and two vice-presidents -- to sign execution orders. It does not
say what happens if they do not sign.

SOURCE: http://blogiasis.blogspot.com/

Plagiarism and the Web Revolution and Bogus Conferences

Professors Against Plagiarism:

Plagiarism and the Web Revolution

Web Plagiarism has become an epidemic in academia largely as a result of the high precision and recall of the Google search engine and the huge volumes of intellectual property on the web.

According to the Northern Kentucky University (library.nku.edu) many students think that it is acceptable to “paraphrase” the works of others and they have one of the best definitions that I have seen:

Students anxious about committing plagiarism often ask:

"How much do I have to change a sentence to be sure I'm not plagiarizing?" A simple answer to this is: If you have to ask, you're probably plagiarizing. This is important.

Avoiding plagiarism is not an exercise in inventive paraphrasing. There is no magic number of words that you can add or change to make a passage your own.

Original work demands original thought and organization of thoughts.

As a retired Adjunct Professor Emeritus who makes my living selling my words I find plagiarism especially offensive. Plagiarism, by its very definition cannot be an accident, and it is an intentional act of theft. No amount of excuses or pleas of ignorance can exonerate a plagiarist from their fundamental dishonesty.

The Semantics of Plagiarism

As we have noted, the detection of plagiarism involves the stealing of “original work and thought”. Plagiarism can be subtle, and many students believe that they can change one or two words in a sentence and avoid detection. So, how do we detect the work of the sly plagiarist who replaces words with synonyms and alters the sentence structure?

· Synonyms – A reference to “House” could be changed to dwelling, abode, apartment, etc.

· Word Stems – A reference to “house” could be changed to housing, home, etc.

· Semantic Structure – Adverbs and adjectives can be replaced and altered to conceal the crime.

Fortunately, despite these attempts to hide their wrongdoing, the plagiarist is still detected thanks to sophisticated web tools and the world of applied Artificial Intelligence. Sophisticated software such as those found at Turnitin.com employ pattern matching algorithms that glean the “meaning of each phrase” and compare it to existing works on the Internet.

Let’s take a closer look at how this works. Software such as the Princeton Wordnet provides hierarchies of synonyms that can replicate the plagiarist’s attempts to conceal their theft. This author worked extensive with semantic networks and they can often lead to surprising results. Once, I entered a semantic search against a major legal database to see of any published court ruling had ever used the profane “F” word.

I ran the search using full synonym expansion and was surprised to find dozens of results, each with the highlighted word “Congress”. Confused, I consulted the semantic network and discovered that a “Congress” like the “F” word, is a union of two bodies!

Other web search engine companies are developing search tools that have the surprising side-effect of being able to detect plagiarism. Their goal is to allow web users to highlight a paragraph of text and press a button called “Show me more like this”.

Internally, these tools analyze the paragraph, apply structure, word stem and synonym rules, and scour the web for a suitable match.

The epidemic of web content Theft

According to a televised investigation report on the hit TV show Primetime Thursday, they found a growing problem of cheating and plagiarism, facilitated by the massive volumes of content on the web. From junior high schools to the Ivy League, Primetime found that students find the temptation to cit-and-paste from the web an irresistible temptation. According to the Primetime Thursday report, many students believe that “everyone” plagiarizes, and they use this as an excuse for their theft:

"It's unfair on your part, if you're studying, you know, so many hours for an exam and everybody else in the class gets an 'A' cheating," says Sharon, a college student.

"So you want to get in the game and cheat, too."

The web is a double-edged sword. Just as it has facilitated the theft of content, it has also enabled tools for publishers and professors to quickly detect stolen content. Let’s take a closer look.

Detecting Plagiarism

Fortunately, it’s just as easy for someone to detect plagiarism as it is for the scumbags to copy it off of other people’s web pages. There are several web sites that aid in detecting plagiarism.

· Amazon – The Amazon “search inside the book” feature has resulted in dozens of lawsuits for plagiarism as unscrupulous authors were caught within days of the introduction of the feature.

· Google – The Google search engine is used by almost all College professors today and the new Google Print facility is now indexing thousands of books into the Google engine.

· Turnitin.com – This wonderful web site is available to academics everywhere and provides instant web content matching for papers and College essays. (www.turnitin.com)

Now that the web has given us tools to detect the plagiarist, the threat of getting caught has acted as a deterrent. However, the punishments for the plagiarist can run the gamut from a slap-on-the hand to loss of

Professors Against Plagiarism

A Question of Honor

Since I make my living selling my work, I have an intense hatred for those who steal the work of others. When I was a professor at a major state university I would always make sure that all of my students understood the difference between “fair use”, author attribution, and the seriousness of stealing the works of others and calling them your own.

The punishments for plagiarists are the most severe at schools that employ and enforce an honor code such as the U.S. military academies.

“We will not Lie, Cheat, Steal, nor Tolerate Among us those Who Do”

Please note that the honor code requires any student to turn-in any other student who they suspect of lying, cheating or stealing. This created a self-policing system to ensure personal honor and integrity.

John Garmany, a noted author with Rampant TechPress and a Graduate of West Point notes that the honor code made plagiarism virtually non-existent:

“We were well versed in plagiarism and we would never think of using someone else’s work without giving them credit.

An honor code violation meant dishonor and dismissal from West Point and we took it very seriously.

For example, we were allowed to ask another cadet for help, but we were required to mention the helper by name, even if we did not use any of their ideas directly”

Sadly, enforcement of web content theft is sporadic at best, even among the top schools.

Punishment for Plagiarists

In my experience as an Adjunct professor, plagiarism is largely tolerated at major U.S. colleges and universities, and I found it to be extremely frustrating.

I remember one case where a U.S. Military officer submitted a computer program that matched the work of another, line for line. Upon investigation I discovered that he had lifted someone else’s work from a trash bin and copied it, adding only his name, as the author.

I was especially offended because this officer was a graduate of a U.S. Military academy, and was completely familiar with the honor code and the ethics of an officer and a gentleman. Upon confrontation, he was completely unremorseful and gave the lame excuse “everyone does it”.

In this case I wanted to show no mercy, and I attempted to flunk the student and file a complaint against him with the university. I was fully aware that the Armed Forces would not be favorable to him, that he would loose his security clearance and could be summarily dismissed from the armed forces, perhaps loosing his retirement and most of all, his personal honor.

Unfortunately, the Dean of my College was far more tolerant than I was, and refused to allow me to pursue my complaint. To me, it seems that no threat of consequences enables the web thief.

Plagiarism, intentional or not, is considered stealing and can expose you to serious liability. In 2004 I was reviewing a job interview book and discovered an entire page that I had written which had been stolen and published by one of the world’s largest publishers. Fortunately for the publisher, I was also one of their authors, and I was familiar with their contract that holds the author solely responsible for ensuring that their content is their own work.

Those who are victims of plagiarism are entitled to the following remedies:

· To have the offending book recalled from distribution – This can cost the publisher over $100k, and the author was required to pay for it.

· To an official published apology – The plagiarist must publicly admit their theft and acknowledge the rightful creator of the material.

· Civil damages – In one case, the victim sued the author and received over a quarter of a million dollars. The author lost his house, savings and was ruined by their act.

Laws against Plagiarism

According to the United State Constitution, “The Congress shall have power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writings and discoveries”. The U.S. Supreme court has also addressed the plagiarism issue, and also uses the “Latham Act” to justify punitive damages for plagiarism.

In 1948, Doubleday copyrighted and published General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s book, Crusade in Europe, which was about the D-Day invasion and Fox later created a TV series from it.

For the fiftieth anniversary of World War II, a third party company named Dastar edited the Crusade in Europe television series, added some new material, and released a video set called World War II Campaign in Europe without attribution to Fox.

In the famous Dastar vs. Twentieth Century Fox case (539 US 23), the court found Dastar guilty of plagiarism for copying Twentieth Century Fox material without giving them proper credit:

their complaint […] claims that Dastar's sale of Campaigns “without proper credit” to the Crusade television series constitutes “reverse passing off” in violation of § 43(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)

In this case we see that the U.S. Supreme court doubled the amount of the damages. When plagiarism is intentional and with malice, courts are allowed to impose “punitive” damages, doubling and even tripling the amount of the actual damage to punish the plagiarist:

From

Professors Against Plagiarism

SOURCE: http://professorsagainstplagiarism.blogspot.com/


From the same web site (Professors Against Plagiarism) we received also the following information


The Professors Against Plagiarism say

Looking over the Internet we discovered this story:

http://diehimmelistschoen.blogspot.com

Really very interesting

So, the Universities that organize WSEAS Conferences must be very careful in the review

After this mistake of IEEE, we must be careful

Also, we found via Wikipedia this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen
which is a collection for many bogus conferences (outside the WSEAS).

WSEAS is very proud that we have a very strict review process.
So, I copy from WIKIPEDIA this TEXT

In 2008 and 2009, several computer generated (gibberish) conference articles, with fictitious authors, appeared in IEEE Xplore Data Base coming from many IEEE Sponsored events. Other poor quality conference articles have also, occasionally, appeared in IEEE Confererences and consequently in IEEE Xplore. The IEEE itself accepted (see http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/corporate/board/ad_hoc_committees/qualityofconferencepapers.html )that such articles hurt the reputation of IEEE and destroyed confidence in the quality of IEEE publications. IEEE tried to find solutions against this vulnerability but in vain, because many more bogus papers appeared in the next months (see http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com and http://blog.marcelotoledo.org/2008/12/26/how-can-someone-trust-ieee )


List of works with noticeable acceptance

  • Rob Thomas: Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, 2005 for WMSCI (see above)
  • Mathias Uslar's paper was accepted to the IPSI-BG conference[4].
  • Professor Genco Gülan published a paper in the 3rd International Symposium of Interactive Media Design[5].
  • Students at Iran's Sharif University of Technology published a paper in the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation (which is published by Elsevier)[6]. The students wrote under the false, non-Persian surname, MosallahNejad, which translates literally as: "from an Armed Breed". The paper was subsequently removed when the publishers were informed that it was a joke paper[7].
  • Conferences of Wessex Institute of Technology [8].
  • It seems also that the IEEE IARIA Conference accepted another bogus paper: http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2008/12/we-have-letter-of-acceptance-fantastic.html
  • A paper titled "Towards the Simulation of E-Commerce" by Herbert Schlangemann got accepted as a reviewed paper at the "International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering" (CSSE) and was briefly in the IEEE Xplore Database [9]. The author is named after the Swedish short film Der Schlangemann. Furthermore the author was invited to be a session chair during the conference[10].Read the official Herbert Schlangemann Blog for details[11]. The official review comment: "This paper presents cooperative technology and classical Communication. In conclusion, the result shows that though the much-touted amphibious algorithm for the refinement of randomized algorithms is impossible, the well-known client-server algorithm for the analysis of voice-over- IP by Kumar and Raman runs in _(n) time. The authors can clearly identify important features of visualization of DHTs and analyze them insightfully. It is recommended that the authors should develop ideas more cogently, organizes them more logically, and connects them with clear transitions"
  • In 2009, the same incident happened and Herbert Schlangemann's latest fake paper "PlusPug: A Methodology for the Improvement of Local-Area Networks" has been accepted for oral presentation at another international computer science conference [12]. Recently, Denis Baggi, Chairman, IEEE CS confessed, according to a comment on the Schlangemann Blog, that "Selection criteria such a refereeing etc. are meaningless", probably means that IEEE has accepted the unreliability and bogosity of its conferences. Denis Baggi also adds: "Articles should be written only if someone has something to tell others, in which case the validity of the paper is obvious",

A letter from Evan M. Butterfield (IEEE)

A letter from Evan M. Butterfield (Director of Products & Services, IEEE Computer Society10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, Los Alamitos, CA 90720714.816.2165) informed in Jan 17, 2009 the following:

The IEEE Computer Society (CS) has evidence that multiple (IEEE) conferences are receiving machine-generated papers. In two cases, conferences have actually accepted an obviously fraudulent submission. This is a serious issue that threatens the credibility of your conference, the quality of the digital library, and the reputation of both the IEEE and CS. It requires your immediate attention. Please take this opportunity to ensure that your peer review processes are being followed, and adapt to any new requirements that may be communicated by the IEEE or the Computer Society. No conference published by CPS should rely on an abstract review. It is very important that you review carefully the full text of all papers submitted to your conference. If you have already accepted papers, your program committee should review the full text again. While CPS staff will be conducting random spot-checks of conference papers in the publishing queue, we are relying on you to authenticate the content of your proceedings. Any papers that were not actually presented at your conference need to be brought to our attention, and should receive close review. In known cases, the machine-generated origin is obvious from a reading of the first few paragraphs of the paper; the abstracts are human-generated and do not indicate the quality of the paper itself. In the past, papers have been submitted by “Herbert Schlangemann,” but be mindful that the perpetrator of this fraud will change the approach over time. In the event you discover any evidence of questionable content or behavior, please communicate that to us immediately along with an action plan for addressing the problem. Thank you for your help in maintaining the quality of our products. See: http://bogusconferences.blogspot.com/2009/05/bogus-conferences-ieee-confess.html


Criticism concerning publishers

Recently, many fake papers appeared in several IEEE conferences, because the IEEE grants its name and its logo to many local organizers who supposedly do not conduct a thorough review process. It is being argued that such conferences only exist to make money out of researchers that are looking for a simple way to publish their work, in particular publishers like IARIA, http://www.iaria.org, HIGHSCI http://www.highsci.org and SRP http://www.scirp.org appear questionable. As seen from their web sites, IARIA, HIGHSCI and SRP use the name of IEEE and the IEEE publishing services, thus attracting numerous papers. Some people to test some conference go further and sent the paper "A Statistical Method For Women That Can Help Our Sexual Education" in the IEEE Conference organized by IARIA. This paper received automatic acceptance within a few hours with simultaneous "command" of direct payment. Unfortunately this paper was not published because the authors did not pay the registration fee. However the letter of acceptance is published on the web and anybody can check it: http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/, http://scamieee.blogspot.com/

Other protest blogs are:

  • Official Protests[13].
  • Bogus Conferences [14].
  • "Netdriver"[15].
  • "Another Letter of acceptance in an IEEE Conference"[16].
  • Anti-Plagiarism Web Log[17].
  • "How can someone trust IEEE?"[18].
  • "Open Letter"[19].
  • "A letter from Evan M. Butterfield (IEEE) "[20].

See also

In September 2008 the Journal for Scientific Publications of Aspirants and Doctoral Candidates published machine translation (with some human intervention) of Rooter into Russian, undersigned by a certain "Mikhail Zhukov" (a feigned name, used by journalists from Troitsky variant newspaper, who wanted to demonstrate low quality of scientific publications and peer review process in Russia). Rooter got good-to-excellent comments from the peer, praising high practical applicability of the matter researched and the novelty of the material; the only negative comment was given in regard of the style, which was claimed to be more appropriate for a newspaper than for a scientific journal. After the "author" corrected stylistic drawbacks, the article was accepted for publication.

Following the publication and consequent scandal, the presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission of Russia struck the Journal for Scientific Publications of Aspirants and Doctoral Candidates from the official list of journals authorized to publish research materials of aspirants and doctoral candidates.

Notes

  1. ^ Stribling, Jeremy; Aguayo, Daniel; Krohn, Maxwell. "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" (PDF). http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/rooter.pdf.
  2. ^ Rob Thomas. "The Dangers of Spamferences" (HTML). http://thepeerreview.ca/view.php?aid=221.
  3. ^ "SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator". MIT. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/.
  4. ^ "Mathias Uslar's paper.". http://www.mwise.de/blog/index.php/2005/12/29/scigen-for-scientific-research-a-case-study/.
  5. ^ "About Genco Gulan's paper.". http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/blog/index.php?entry=entry060414-130910.
  6. ^ Rohollah Mosallahnezhad. "Cooperative, Compact Algorithms for Randomized Algorithms" (PDF). http://ce.sharif.edu/~ghodsi/soft-group/misc/AMC-paper.pdf.
  7. ^ John L. Casti. "REMOVED: Cooperative, compact algorithms for randomized algorithms". http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2007.03.011.
  8. ^ "Conferences of Wessex Institute of Technology without review". http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~wp/videa.html.
  9. ^ "Paper on the IEEE Database". http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/freesrchabstract.jsp?arnumber=4723109&k2dockey=4723109@ieeecnfs.
  10. ^ "CSSE Conference Program". https://sites.google.com/site/herbertschlangemann/Home/csse2008_program.pdf?attredirects=0.
  11. ^ "Schlangemann's blog". http://diehimmelistschoen.blogspot.com/.
  12. ^ [http://www.ieee-ecommerce.com/ "IEEE International Conference on e-Business and Information System Security"]. http://www.ieee-ecommerce.com/.
  13. ^ "Some other conferences of IEEE". http://anti-ieee.blogspot.com/2008/02/iti-2008.html.
  14. ^ "Bogus Conferences". http://bogus-conferences.blogspot.com/.
  15. ^ "Conferences that you must avoid". http://netdriver.blogspot.com/2009/01/from-site-httpwwwanti-plagiarismorg.html.
  16. ^ "Another Letter of acceptance in an IEEE Conference". http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2008/12/we-have-letter-of-acceptance-fantastic.html.
  17. ^ "Other IEEE Conferences". http://netdriver.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-is-shame-for-ieee.html.
  18. ^ "How can someone trust IEEE". http://blog.marcelotoledo.org/2008/12/26/how-can-someone-trust-ieee.
  19. ^ "Open Letter". http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-am-freelance-journalist-who.html.
  20. ^ "A letter from Evan M. Butterfield (IEEE)". http://bogusconferences.blogspot.com/2009/05/bogus-conferences-ieee-confess.html.

MRS. OBAMA: Remarks by The First Lady during Department of Commerce visit

MRS. OBAMA:  Hey!  (Applause.)  All right, so who would have thought that the Department of Commerce was so happening?  (Laughter.)  You guys are alive.  There's energy here.  Thank you.  I am thrilled to be here.  It is exciting for me to come and see you.  I've been planning to come for a little bit, but now I'm here.
 
I want to thank your dear Secretary, Secretary Locke, for that kind introduction and for his outstanding work for this Department.  And I want to take this moment to wish him a happy birthday, yes -- (applause) -- as a fellow Capricorn, right -- (laughter) -- that's what you are, that's what it is, yes.  And he doesn't look a day over 30, 35, right?  (Laughter and applause.)  Whatever the number, my husband and I wish you a happy birthday, and we are so proud of the work that you're doing here at the Department of Commerce.
 
You didn't exactly start this job at a quiet time for the agency, right?  From the economic challenges that we face, to the challenge of conducting our census, which I know many of you are involved in -- let's hear it for the census people -- (applause) -- I think that it's fair to say that your Secretary has had a pretty busy year.  But he's risen to the occasion, leading by example, calling on more than 50,000 employees of this Department to give their jobs everything they've got.  And it feels like, in here, that you all are doing just that.  Am I right?  (Applause.)
 
And all of you, and your colleagues all across this city, the nation, across the world, quite frankly -- and I know some of them are watching -- you all have answered the call, and we're proud of you.
 
Some of you have been here for decades now -- (laughter) -- as we just heard, like these folks on stage, who are some of the longest serving employees here.  I'm always excited to meet people who have worked at a place longer than I've been alive.  (Laughter.)  So that's a good thing.  And they look wonderful.  (Applause.)
 
And then there are others of you who may have started just this year in this administration, so we want to give the newbies a shout-out.  (Applause.)  Take a look onstage with responsibility, dedication, focus.  This could be you.  (Laughter.)  Don't laugh.  It's a job, right?  (Laughter.)  But we welcome you all.
 
But I know that all of you are working, and working hard every day for the American people, and I'm here to do what I love doing most, and that is to say thank you to all of you for the work that you're doing.  This is something that I've been doing for an entire year now as First Lady, one of the many things, is coming to the agencies and thanking you for your work and your service, because a lot of times we forget that behind all the news headlines and the reports, there are people who are making sacrifices and working long hours and sometimes not feeling appreciated at all.   And it's been a wonderful part of my job to be a representative from the White House to tell you how much we value your work and your sacrifice over the years.
 
But it's been substantively useful for me, as well, coming here, listening, learning, getting a better understanding of what happens at each agency, using the spotlight to share with the rest of the country all that you do.
 
So I'm pleased to have the chance to be here today at this Department to make one more stop, because what you all do to spur innovation, support America's businesses, and keep our economy competitive is so very important.  It's important at any time, but it is particularly critical during the tough economic times that this nation is facing right now.
 
And we know that there are a lot of families out there who are struggling.  Some of you are struggling right here.  You know people in your communities and your families and your churches who are struggling.  We know that a lot of young people are worried about whether they'll have the opportunities that they need to build their own careers, and make a life of their own, and to provide for their families, and to build their future dreams.
 
But we also know this -- that in difficult times like these, we have always as a nation come together, always.  And as my husband says, these are not the most difficult times by far in this nation.  In these times, we come together and we overcome and we're able to face these challenges.  And we have what it takes to do that again today.  I'm sure of it.
 
Right now, there are scientists and innovators who are working around the clock.  You know them.  You're supporting them.  They're chasing the breakthroughs and the discoveries that are going to change the way we live and work from this point forward.
 
There are entrepreneurs in garages and basements and college dorm rooms who are brainstorming late into the night about how they're going to turn that good idea into a viable business.
 
Workers across this country are pouring themselves into their jobs every single day, determined to offer the best products and services on the planet.  That is the nation that we live in.
 
And that's where all of you come in, all of you here in this Department, because CEOs don't just flip a coin to decide whether to set up shop here in America or overseas.  You know that.  Products don't just sell themselves.  And businesses don't succeed by accident.
 
These things happen in part when companies have the right conditions for growth and the right markets for their goods and the kind of support they need to get off the ground in the first place and keep growing and expanding.
 
And that's the kind of assistance that all of you do to support and provide these businesses with the opportunities they need -- helping people protect their ideas and to make their businesses more productive; opening new markets for their products, and connecting them with resources and customers around the world.  And that's what it's going to take for us to create new jobs and promote new prosperity.
 
And it's important for America to know how important this Department is in making all of that happen.  And that is the real human story behind the work that you do.
 
Again, it's important for America to understand that connection -- how every innovation that you spur here, every business you help, every dream that you nurture means a livelihood for another family out there somewhere; a source of income for another community; it means another building block for our economy.
 
And you all aren't just helping create jobs today.  This isn't just about right now.  Your work doesn't just strengthen our economy this year or this decade.  You are laying the foundation for our economic prosperity for generations to come.  You're going to be helping my girls by connecting underserved communities to the Internet, for example; driving innovation in everything from nanotechnology to cyber security.  I hear that you're even fast-tracking patents for inventions that promote clean energy, something that my husband has talked about since the day he took the oath of office.
 
And all of this speaks to the broader mission of this Department -- again, something that people don't know that you're here doing.  It's the mission at the heart of the NOAA's work -- can I hear it from NOAA?  -- (applause) -- to protect our oceans and our environments.
 
It's the mission of the Census Bureau's work -- yes, again for the Census Bureau -- (applause) -- to ensure that everyone is counted so that our government can truly serve all our people.
 
And I learned that you have even hit the road with your Portrait of America Road Tour, which is really fascinating, covering more than 150,000 miles to encourage people across the country to participate in the census.  What a wonderful idea to encourage people to engage, to paint that picture of why the census is so critical.
 
In the end, everything that you do here at the Department of Commerce is in service of a common purpose, and that is to protect and promote what's best about this nation -- the industry and the ingenuity of all the people who live in this country; the vitality of our national resources; the success of our democracy.
 
And for all of that, we should honor you and thank you.  We're very proud of you.  And this year is going to be even more important.  The focus of this administration has always been but it really will be in this year on job creation, because, again, people are hurting.  So what you all will be doing over the next year, everything you do, will mean something to someone in this country.
 
So we want to make sure that you feel good as we enter this new year, that you feel ready, that you feel inspired, and you feel passionate and engaged.  (Applause.)  And we look forward to working with you in the years to months to come.  I'm going to be back.  (Applause.)
 
So thank you all again, and I'll come out and shake some hands.  Good luck with the year.  (Applause.)
 
 

Solar EnerTech Modules Get UL Certification

California, United States
Solar EnerTech Corp. announced that it has received its Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) certification for a wide range of its crystalline solar photovoltaic power modules. A UL certification ensures that Solar EnerTech's PV products (trademarked as SolarE) fully complies with all safety, environmental and other performance requirements established by UL.
A list of the Solar EnerTech modules that have been UL certified is below.
Models
SE160-M155
SE160-M160
SE160-M165
SE160-M170
SE160-M175
SE160-M180
SE160-M185
SE190-P170
SE190-P175
SE190-P180
SE190-P185
SE190-P190
SE190-P195
SE190-P200
SE190-P205
SE190-P210
"Achieving our UL certification is a notable accomplishment for our company and will provide us with the ability to more easily penetrate the market in North America," commented Leo Young, Chief Executive Officer of Solar EnerTech. "Having already completed certification for IEC, VDE and TUV in the European markets, we are also setting our sights on the rapidly growing U.S. and Canadian markets focusing on grid-tied utility-scale installations and roof top projects. The UL certification gives assurance to our customers in North America that Solar EnerTech fully complies and meets government subsidized PV project requirements in the region."

GOOGLE vs CHINA ( CONTROVERSY)

Prior to Google China's establishment, Google.com itself was accessible,
even though much of its content was not accessible due to censorship.
According to official statistics, google.com was accessible 90% of the time,
and a number of services were not available at all. Since announcing its
intent to comply with Internet censorship laws in the People's Republic of
China, Google China has been the focus of controversy over what critics view
as capitulation to the "Golden Shield Project" (also known as the Great
Firewall of China). Because of its self-imposed censorship, whenever people
search for prohibited Chinese keywords on a blocked list maintained by the
PRC government, google.cn will display the following at the bottom of the
page (translated): In accordance with local laws, regulations and policies,
part of the search result is not shown. Some searches, such as (as of June
2009) "Tank Man" are blocked entirely, with the only the message "Search
results may not comply with the relevant laws, regulations and policy, can
not be displayed" appearing. Google has argued that it can play a role more
useful to the cause of free speech by participating in China's IT industry
than by refusing to comply and being denied admission to the mainland
Chinese market. "While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's
mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience
that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission," a
statement said. A PBS analysis reported clear differences between results
returned for controversial keywords by the censored and uncensored search
engines. According to The New York Times, Google has set up computer systems
inside China that try to access Web sites outside the country. If a site is
inaccessible (e.g., due to the Golden Shield Project), then it is added to
Google China's blacklist. In February 2006, Sergey Brin, Google's
co-founder, was quoted as saying virtually all of Google's customers in
China were using the non-censored version of their website.
Google critics in the United States claim that Google China is a flagrant
violation of the Google motto, "Don't be evil."
On April 9, 2007, Google China spokesman Cui Jin admitted that the pinyin
Google Input Method Editor (IME) "was built leveraging some non-Google
database resources". This was in response to a request on April 6 from the
Chinese search engine company Sohu that Google stop distributing its pinyin
Input Method Editor software due to the fact that it allegedly copied
portions from Sohu's own software.
In early 2008, Guo Quan (??), a university professor who had been dismissed
after having founded a democratic opposition party, announced plans to sue
Yahoo! and Google in the United States for having blocked his name from
search results in mainland China.
On January 12, 2010, Google announced that it is "no longer willing to
continue censoring" results on Google.cn, citing a breach of Gmail accounts
of Chinese human rights activists. The company found that the hackers had
breached into two Gmail accounts but was only able to access 'from' and 'to'
information and subject headers of emails in these accounts. The company's
investigation into the attack showed that at least 20 other companies had
been similarly targeted. Additionally, "dozens" of Gmail accounts in China,
Europe, and the United States had been regularly accessed by third parties,
due to phishing or malware on the users' computers rather than a security
breach at Google. Although Google did not explicitly accuse the Chinese
government of the breach, it said it was no longer willing to censor results
on google.cn, and that it will discuss over the next few weeks "the basis on
which we could run an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We
recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and
potentially our offices in China. Google.cn transiently turned off its
search result filtering. However, the filtering was later re-enabled without
any acknowledgment or explanation; search query in Chinese on the keywords
Tiananmen or June 4, 1989, for examples, returned censored results with the
standard censorship footnote.
On January 13, 2010, the news agency AHN reported that the U.S. Congress
plans to investigate Google's allegations that the Chinese government used
the company's service to spy on human rights activists. In a major speech by
the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, analogies were drawn between the
Berlin Wall and the free and unfree Internet. The issue of Google's changed
policy toward China has been cited as a potentially major development in
world affairs, marking a split between authoritarian capitalism and the
Western model of free capitalism and Internet access. The Chinese government
has since made numerous standard and general statements on the matter. It
also criticizes google for failing to provide any evidence of its
accusation.As of January 24, 2010, the government has not taken any concrete
actions on this matter.

We received this email and we would like to publish it

IEEE goes only for your money!!! "Without registration and payment of the registration fee, the paper will NOT be published in the proceedings!"

From the http://netdriver.blogspot.com/



IEEE goes only for your money!!! "Without registration and payment of the registration fee, the paper will NOT be published in the proceedings!"

We found this comment in the blog:
http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-shame-for-ieee-computational.html#comments

Please, check this phrase: "Without registration and payment of the registration fee, the paper will NOT be published in the proceedings!"

It does mean that IEEE goes only for your money!!!

Enjoy this IEEE Spam:
----------------------------------------

Dear Colleagues,

Le us remind you the most important informations.
The deadline for paper submission is approaching. Please submit your paper as soon as possible to avoid congestion and server problems in the last days.

Please check carefully if your paper submitted to the EEEIC Conference (http://eeeic.eu) does comply with the requirements (correct formatting formatting, number of pages not greater than 4, PDF IEEE Xplore compatible format).

Please check carefully all requirements enumerated here: http://eeeic.eu/information-for-authors/ and : http://eeeic.eu/2009/09/22/ieee-pdf-express/

All submissions must be electronic in PDF format and must follow the two-column format of IEEE Conference Proceedings. Authors are strongly recommended to use the style files available at the website. The maximum length of a manuscript is four (4) pages.
PLEASE use the PDF converter for IEEE Conferences - PDF eXpress. To use it, please register for an IEEE PDF eXpress account with the Conference ID: eeeic10x.

All papers not compatible with IEEE Xplore will be rejected. This is required by IEEE Xplore.



IMPORTANT:
For each accepted paper, at least one author must register Completed registration is required for all accepted papers and/or presentations that are to be included in conference proceedings. Without registration and payment of the registration fee, the paper will NOT be published in the proceedings!

Best regards,


Zbigniew Leonowicz, PhD



SOURCE:
http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2010/01/what-shame-for-ieee-computational.html#comments


http://netdriver.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

IEEE and SCIGEN

We strongly believethat many IEEE conferences are ... victims of SCIGEN.
I guess that this SciGen is a good tool to prove the anomalies of the IEEE Conferences.

One more BOGUS IEEE Conference!

One more BOGUS IEEE Conference uses Spam Bombing
As we know this conference has already accepted in the previous years many
sily papers (some of them were copy-paste from on-line Football Newspapers)
========================================


We should be very grateful if you would share this CFP with your colleagues that are interested in multi-disciplinary issues related to creating future digital living environments.

IE10 6th International Conference on Intelligent Environments

Co-sponsored by the IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society Technical Committee on Computational Intelligence and the Association for the Advancement of AI

July 19-21, 2010
(workshops: July 18-19)

Monash University (Sunway campus), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

http://intelligentenvironments.org/conferences/ie10/

Intelligent Environments are everyday settings such as homes, offices, hotels, restaurants, shops, hospitals, teaching-rooms, stage/studios, manufacturing environments, cars, trains, aircraft, boats, cities, public spaces and electronic clothing/fashion that are equipped with advanced networked computer based systems, which enable better or new lifestyles for people. For example, such technology can lead to design of living environments that are more comfortable, usable, productive, secure, caring, social, entertaining or energy efficient.

Each year, the International Conference on Intelligent Environments provides a leading edge forum for scientists, researchers and engineers from industry and academia to present theoretical and practical research results on Intelligent Environments, their multiple aspects and their application in various domains of activity. IE'10 is the sixth edition in a series of highly successful conferences that were organized in Colchester (UK), Athens (Greece), Ulm (Germany), Seattle (USA) and Barcelona (Spain) in the past five years; in 2010, the IE conference will take place in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) hosted by the Monash University.

The IE'10 conference program will include workshops, invited lectures and special sessions of full and short papers and posters. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing, Intelligent Agents, Context Awareness, End-User Programming, Human-Computer Interaction (Speech, Vision and Haptics), Smart Sensors, Affective Systems, Wearables (smart clothes, digital fashion etc), Domestic Robotics, Virtual & Mixed-Reality, Middleware, Networking, Communications, Development/Testing/Evaluation Methodologies, Building Architecture, Art and Design, Cultural, Social, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Intelligent Environments. Other issues of interest include novel computational models and new theories that support advances in these areas.

Forums:

For updates on the Intelligent Environments research community and conferences, we invite you to join:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/2578102/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/IE_Forum <http://twitter.com/IE_Forum>
WikiCFP: http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=7472

Important dates:

* Paper submission: 22nd February 2010
* Notification of acceptance: 12th April 2010
* Paper final submission (with revisions): 26th April 2010

Organizing Committee

General Chair
Simon Egerton (Monash University, Malaysia)
Ichiro Satoh (National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo)

Program Chairs
Victor Callaghan (University of Essex, UK)
Achilles Kameas (Hellenic Open University)

Workshops Chairs
Juan Carlos Augusto (University of Ulster, UK)
Vincent Lee (Monash University, Australia)

Strategic Planning Chair
Hani Hagras (University of Essex, UK)

Posters and Short Papers
Martin Colley (University of Essex, UK)
Gregory O'Hare (UCD, Ireland)

Doctoral Colloquium Chairs
Albert Yeap (AUT, New Zealand)
Dolors Royo (UPC, Spain)

Publication Chairs
Michael Weber (University of Ulm, Germany)

Publicity Chairs
Angélica Reyes (UPC, Spain)
Minjuan Wang (Sand Diego State University, USA)
Zheng Xiaoxia (Essex University)

Professional Society Liaison Chairs
Dianne Cook (Washington State University, USA)

IEEE Appointed SMC Liaison Chairs
[To be announced]

Industrial Liaison Chairs
Wong Chek Yoon (Monash University, Malaysia)
Brian Johnson (Intel Research Labs, USA)
Hiew Pang Leang (BT Malaysian Research Centre)

Student Liaison
Anushia Inthiran (Monash University, Malaysia)
Shumei Zhang (University of Ulster, UK)

Treasurers
Michael Weber (University of Ulm, Germany)
Lee Sock Wee (Monash University, Malaysia)

Web and Online System Administration
Konstantinos Togias - (CTI, Greece)

Intelligent Environments Steering Committee (alphabetical listing)
Vic Callaghan (University of Essex)
Dimitris Charitos (University of Athens)
Diane Cook (Washington State University, USA)
Hani Hagras (University of Essex) - President
Sumi Helal - (University of Florida, USA) Achilles Kameas (Hellenic Open University, Greece)
Wolfgang Minker - (University of Ulm, Germany)
Gearge Rousos (University of London, UK)
Michael Weber (University of Ulm, Germany)

Geographical Advisory Committee
Europe
Wolfgang Minker - (University of Ulm, Germany)
North America
Sumi Helal - (University of Florida, USA)
South America
Victor Zamudio - (Instituto Tecnológico De León, Mexico)
China
Liping Shen (Shanghai Jiao Tong University,)
Indonesia
Susie Daryanti (Universitas Gadja Mada, Indonesia)
Malaysia
Borhanuddin Bin Mohd Ali (Universiti Putra Malaysia)
Australia/New Zealand
Waleed Abdulla (The University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Middle East
Dr. Fatmah Baothman (King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia)

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Prof. DARIO PETRI petri@ieee.org accepted the bad quality of IEEE Sponsored conferences

Also, we found in the blog: http://netdriver.blogspot.com/ the following very interesting new post yesterday

WE RECEIVED THIS EMAIL:

Prof. DARIO PETRI petri@ieee.org accepted the bad quality of IEEE Sponsored conferences
fpinto@estg.ipleiria.pt,janez.zerovnik@fs.uni-lj.si,balas@inext.ro,zamfir_andreea_ileana@yahoo.com,zkurt@pbf.hr,zlin50@yahoo.com,"myrealbox.com" <voula@myrealbox.com>,quartieri@sa.infn.it,quartieri@unisa.it


An impressive declaration from Prof. DARIO PETRI
petri@ieee.org

Dear Mario,

I believe that many IEEE (sponsored or co-sponsored) conferences are quite bogusbecause they have published a lot of fake papers from SCIgen automatic machineor papers of low quality...We must be careful, otherwise our massive policy for giving the name of IEEE to strangeorganizers will harm the reputation of IEEE conference, if we have kept any rank of such an old reputation.

Prof. DARIO PETRI
IEEE Italy Section

petri@ieee.org

********************************************************


Posted athttp://anti-plagiarism-org.blogspot.com/2009/12/impressive-declaration-from-prof-dario.html

The comment of PETRE DINI in the blog http://bogusconferences.blogspot.com

The blog http://bogusconferences.blogspot.com/
published 10 hours ago
today, Wednesday, 2 December 2009
rhe following

While browsing the net, I found two more fake journals
They say
"
We received this comment from some PETRE DINI

We do not know if the name PETRE DINI is real or not

This was the "PETRE DINI's"

Comment in our blog

While browsing the net, I found two more fake journals in Computer Science:(1) Computer Science Journalshttp://www.cscjournals.org/csc/home.php(2) International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI) (http://www.ijcsi.org/)

Petre Dini

"

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

My name is Arye Nehorai and I am IEEE Fellow

We received this by email and we post it

My name is Arye Nehorai and I am IEEE Fellow
I sent the follwoing email to IEEE , but i did not receive any answer



"Arye Nehorai" arye.nehorai@ymail.com
To:
"mcm-info@ieee.org" , "mps@ieee.org" , "ieeemaltasection@ieee.org" , "florentfourreaux@hotmail.com" , "president@ieee.gr" , president@ieee.org, sales@IEEE.ORG
Cc:
"Arye Nehorai"
CAN YOU REPLY? I SENT THIS EMAIL YESTERDAY. WE NEED A CLEAR ANSWER

*********************************************

Dear IEEE France, IEEE Malta and IEEE Greece,

I wonder, if it is real that you sponsor all these conferences of IARIA
http://www.iaria.org
For example, in every place that IARIA has a congress, it seems that has alreadyan agreement with the local IEEE. Is it true for your case?Example: Is the Greek Section of IEEE sponsor or not for these 2 conferences?

http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/SENSORCOMM09.html
and

http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/MESH09.html

and some other conferences in Greece that you can see through the portal http://www.iaria.org/


The reason is that this IARIA Conferences have accepted many SCIgen, auto-generated papers (remember: papers Nagib Callaos style) and some sites have also posted the letter of acceptance of these fake papersAnyway, as a member of IEEE, this is only a caution for you because the IARIA name destroyes the reputation of IEEELooking forward for your replyNot only these are non-reviewed conferences, but they ask also from companies huge amounts of
money:

http://www.iaria.org/confsponsorship.html

Look also this:http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/ICN09.html

If the IEEE in France was sponsor,

then why didn't the IEEE france have a link to them?

Sincerely,

Arye,

Friday, June 5, 2009

New Spam from IEE. I am not a member of IEEE. Why did I receive this email?

New Spam from IEE. I am not a member of IEEE. Why did I receive this email? Note how many clever tricks the IEEE use in order to attract "customers"
They sent SPAM email to me to ask me to be in the committee. The email did not have my name!!!!!!!
It was a massive unsolicted email!!!



Proceedings publication: by CPS(IEEE CS)


(Click here to download the IEEE CS format: MS-WORD or PDF)

The proceedings will be published by CPS of the IEEE CS and will be included to Ei only if:
Click here to view the instructions of CPS of the IEEE CS

The proceesings of ICCIT 2007 and 2008 had been published in IEEE CS/CPS and the all registered
papers had also been indexed to EI (COMPENDEX) and archived to digital libraries such as CSDL, and
IEEE Xplore.

Important Dates
Conference Dates: 24-26 November, 2009.
Deadline for paper submission: July 15, 2009.
Review period by reviewers: July 5 - August 10, 2009.
Acceptance notification: August 5-10, 2009.
Deadline for Registration and final camera ready paper to IEEE system: August 25, 2009.

Special issues:
Distinguished selected papers will be invited in the special issues of the following international
journals indexed by SCI(E).
The authors of the selected papers must follow any additional comments/suggestions so that it meets
the journals requirement.
- IETE Journal of Research
- International Journal of Information Technology and Decision Making
- IETE Technical Review
- FGCS: Future Generation Computer Systems (Elsevier)


Call for papers Nov. 24~26, 2009, Seoul, Korea

ICCIT09: Call for Papers/ Workshops/Special Sessions

4th ICCIT: 2009 International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology

Evolution and Innovation: We’re in Progress:
We will make a new chapter as the leader of the Information Sciences

November 24-26, 2009, Seoul, Korea
http://www.aicit.org/iccit

Call for Papers

Conference Dates: 24-26 November, 2008
Deadline for paper submission: July 15, 2009.
Review period by reviewers: July 5 - August 10, 2009.
Acceptance notification: August 5-10, 2009.
Deadline for Registration and final camera ready paper to IEEE system: August 25, 2009.

Format: The papers submitted for review must be in the IEEE format (8.5" x 11", two-column). Please strictly follow the formatting instructions and layout instructions (read the instructions in PDF, DOC )

ICCIT09, the Fourth International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology will be held on November 24-26, in Seoul, Republic of Korea. The conference proceeding will be published by IEEE CS. Selected papers will be included as revised monographs in the international journals. For more details, visit the conference web site at http://www.aicit.org/iccit.

This premium international conference provides a forum in which to present research results in all areas related to the Theory, Development, Applications, Experiences, and Evaluations of convergence/hybrid information technology and next generation information technologies and Services fields

Mission and Aims
ICCIT fosters the development of Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technologies needed in various application areas. Convergence Information Technologies in partnership with Computational Science are essential in solving many real-world problems. Through publications, research, and community, the mission of ICCIT is to build cooperation between informatics and the worlds of science and technology.

The International Conference on Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technology (ICCIT 2009) aims to

  • Promote further development of Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technologies
  • Provide an open forum of discussions and exchanges between researchers interested in Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technologies and related fields
  • Bring together theoreticians and practitioners from different scientific groups and establish new collaborations
  • Present recent results in the theory and applications of Computer Sciences and Convergence Information Technologies

Call for Workshop Proposals:
http://www.aicit.org/iccit/cfw.html

Call for Invited Session Proposals:
http://www.aicit.org/iccit/cfss.html

Workshops/Invited Sessions may concern any topic within the conference scope. The goals of the workshops/Invited Sessions are to establish a common understanding of a certain aspect, to share experiences, to foster research communities, to learn from each other, to identify open problems and/or to explore future
directions of research. Workshops will be held in parallel with the main conference.

Paper Types: Full paper/ Letter
Presentation Types: Oral/ Poster (Choice)
Track Types: Research Track/ Technical Experience Track

Research Track (General Track)
The purpose of the Research Track is to present and discuss the latest, best, most profound, and most
important research results in the research field of Convergent and Hybrid Information Technology. Topics of
interest are specified on the Call for Papers page.
High quality submissions are invited for technical papers describing original unpublished results of
theoretical, empirical, conceptual or experimental research. Papers should describe a new contribution to
Convergent and Hybrid Information Technology and should support claims of novelty with citations to the
relevant literature.

Technical Experience Track
The purpose of the Technical Experience Track is to establish a meaningful forum between practitioners and researchers with useful solutions in various organizational environments, diverse systems or different cultures. The Technical Experience Track includes all kind of practical applications which are principles, projects, missions, techniques, tools, methods, processes, and etc.Submissions should discuss experiences to researchers and practitioners. We invite original, unpublished
submissions in two categories:

  • Case studies
  • Experience reports
Scope and Topics: For more details, click here! http://www.aicit.org/iccit/scope.html

Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed. The topics includes, but not limited to, the followings:

  1. Research Issues on Convergent Aspects of IT and Ubiquitous Technology
  2. Research Issues on Convergent Aspects of Management, Service and Culture
  3. Hybrid Approaches of Information Technology
  4. Multimedia, Game, and Culture Technology
  5. Bioinformatics and Healthcare
  6. Management, Finance and Service
  7. High Performance Data Processing and Digital Content Technology
  8. High Performance Information System and Communication
  9. Information Security and Cryptology

Thousands of people were pushing for rescue efforts in Haiti to continue Sunday, after a 24-year-old man was pulled alive from the ruins on Saturday, 11 days after the nation's devastating earthquake.

The Haitian government says it will be switching from a search and rescue operation to a search and recovery mission.
But families of Americans who were staying at the leveled Hotel Montana are fighting that, and started an online petition Saturday in an effort to continue search efforts there "until all the survivors are accounted for." As of Sunday morning, 2,395 people had signed the petition and sent 6,216 messages to the Senate, Congress and the White House, said Sue Keller, a friend of a family whose relatives are among the missing. The families hope to have at least 5,000 signatures by Monday, she said. The Haitian government has said more than 111,000 people died in the January 12 quake, which registered 7.0 in magnitude. But on Saturday, a French rescue team was able to save one life as they pulled Wismond Jean-Pierre from the rubble of the Hotel Napoli Inn in Port-au-Prince. According to his brother, Jean-Pierre worked in the hotel's grocery store and survived his week and a half in the rubble by consuming cookies and beer. Dehydrated but apparently without injury, Jean-Pierre was even talkative as he was placed in an ambulance and driven to a hospital. Rescues like Jean-Pierre's, and others that have happened in the week following the disaster, sparked hope among families of the missing. But the emotional rescue came on a day when much of Haiti was mourning as operations largely shifted from rescue to recovery, and the country's president attended the funeral of an archbishop who was one of the victims. A Mexican rescue team had pulled the body of 63-year-old Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot from ruins near the national cathedral, which he oversaw as archbishop of Port-au-Prince. The cathedral was destroyed. At the funeral, President René Préval was asked to respond to criticism that he has not shown strong public leadership and has been largely unseen in the aftermath. "This is not about politics today," he said.
 
The most recent death toll is the worst caused by an earthquake since the 2004 Asian tsunami that resulted from a temblor, and the second-highest death toll from an earthquake in more than three decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
"Rescue teams continue to work in Port-au-Prince, we continue to hope that they will be able to find people still alive, but as time passes, we must gradually shift our resources from rescue to recovery," Nick Birnback, spokesman for U.N. peacekeeping operations, said Saturday. International search teams have rescued at least 132 people since the quake struck, the U.N. said. Birnback said the priority now is to remove bodies and clean up affected areas to avoid health hazards and the spread of disease. He said the United Nations will start bringing in heavier equipment, which will allow teams to move concrete and damaged homes. More than 600,000 people have also been left homeless in and around the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
 
Meanwhile, up to 140 flights a day are regularly arriving at the single-runway Port-au-Prince airport, compared with 25 in the immediate aftermath of the January 12 quake, OCHA said Saturday. To relieve congestion at the airport, humanitarian cargo is being moved to a forward dispatch area at one end of the runway.
The Las Americas airport in Santo Domingo, in neighboring Dominican Republic, is starting to report congestion as it becomes increasingly used as an alternative airport, OCHA said. It will now be open overnight to accommodate the extra traffic.
Those managing the land transport of supplies from Santo Domingo will need fuel, and OCHA said there is enough in Haiti to last an additional 18 to 19 days. But it said it expects no shortage of fuel because supplies of fuel will be able to enter the port during that time. One concern with cross-border traffic is the unauthorized departure of Haitian children, OCHA said.
Charities and aid groups have said in recent days that they are concerned about the danger of child trafficking after the earthquake. Groups including Save the Children and World Vision have called for a halt to adoptions, saying many children may appear to be orphaned but have simply been separated from their families. "If children must be evacuated from Haiti because their protection needs cannot be met in country, the evacuation must be carefully documented, the children must be registered with the proper authorities and all efforts must be made to reunify them with family before any adoption proceedings are considered," the U.S.-based Women's Refugee Commission said. The number of unaccompanied children needing support is greater than the capacity to respond, OCHA said. Authorities are working with unaccompanied children who are being released from hospitals, it said.

From BBC today: Theodorakis - Greece's Musical Revolutionary

From BBC today:

Theodorakis - Greece's Musical Revolutionary

85 this year, Mikis Theodorakis is best known for the music to 1974 film Zorba the Greek, but as Miranda Hinkley discovers, there's also a wealth of chamber, opera and symphonic music. Part of the resistance during the Second World War, imprisoned during the Greek Civil War, exiled during the military dictatorship, his story mirrors that of modern Greece. And he's been responsible for a musical revolution, a uniquely Greek sound. Mikis Theodorakis is joined by singers Maria Farantouri and Marios Frangoulis and by violinist Georgos Demertzis, to look back on a 60-year career.

.

GOOGLE vs CHINA

Google made headlines when it went public with the fact that Chinese hackers had penetrated some of its services, such as Gmail, in a politically motivated attempt at intelligence gathering. The news here isn't that Chinese hackers engage in these activities or that their attempts are technically sophisticated -- we knew that already -- it's that the U.S. government inadvertently aided the hackers. In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts. This feature is what the Chinese hackers exploited to gain access.
Google's system isn't unique. Democratic governments around the world -- in Sweden, Canada and the UK, for example -- are rushing to pass laws giving their police new powers of Internet surveillance, in many cases requiring communications system providers to redesign products and services they sell.
Many are also passing data retention laws, forcing companies to retain information on their customers. In the U.S., the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act required phone companies to facilitate FBI eavesdropping, and since 2001, the National Security Agency has built substantial eavesdropping systems with the help of those phone companies.
Systems like these invite misuse: criminal appropriation, government abuse and stretching by everyone possible to apply to situations that are applicable only by the most tortuous logic. The FBI illegally wiretapped the phones of Americans, often falsely invoking terrorism emergencies, 3,500 times between 2002 and 2006 without a warrant. Internet surveillance and control will be no different.

Thursday, 21 January 2010

The new hot trend: Professors that Make Plagiarism

Old and busted: Students that Make Plagiarism

The new hot trend: Professors that Make Plagiarism

http://professorsagainstplagiarism.blogspot.com

The Tragedy of Haiti

Port-au-Prince, Haiti  Breathlessly, they came, carrying suitcases, plastic bags and just about anything that would hold the few belongings they still had.
Thousands of Haitian people, most of them homeless, have flooded the port, hoping for a ticket to hope, on board a ferry, being paid for by the Haitian government.
This ferry, the Trois Rivieres, is headed for Port Jeremie on Haiti's far western tip, far away from the hopelessness that has become Port-au-Prince.
"The government gave us 1500 gallons of fuel to go back to Jeremie to evacuate more people," said Roger Rouzier, director general of Marinetec, the ferry boat owner.

Anaika Clement has been here three days with her mother and her friend. Their homes have been destroyed.
She and the others wait at a filthy wharf, littered with garbage and human feces, with cracks in the ground, from the day the earth moved in Haiti, last week. In creole, Anaika told CNN's Ivan Watson that they came here after Wednesday morning's 5.9 aftershock.
"I don't know how many days we're going to stay here," said Anaika.
Wednesday's seismic rattle appeared to have pushed desperate people into action. For some, it didn't matter where the ferry would take them, as long as it left Port-au-Prince.
With the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship in sight of them, mothers, fathers, children, infants, and their belongings, packed themselves into small, overcrowded row boats.

In the words of one man, "All of our hopes are with the international community. We are not able to sustain ourselves," he said.
Many of the rowboats sat with too many people, too low in the water, and had the look of a potentially new tragedy.
They would row about a mile, to the Trois Rivieres ferry, which was docked at the other end of the port. The owner docked it far away so that people could not board it, while it sat awaiting fuel from the government.

iReport: Search list for missing and found
"First of all I have to put fuel on board. And I would prefer to put fuel on board before the people get in," said Roger Rouzier, the ferry boat owner.
"It's a little bit dangerous while you are refueling to have people on board," he said.
Seeing the ferry boat, the people used the row boats to make their way out to the ferry, to board themselves.
Once there, they climbed up the side of the boat, and designed their own assembly line of people to help pass luggage, and children, from one person to the other, on board the ferryboat. CNN witnessed one infant passed up along a sea of hands from their dinghy all the way to the top of the ferryboat.

iReport: Are you there?
"No one is helping us with crowd control here. No one. We don't have any help from no one. Even from the government," said ferry owner, Roger Rouzier.
"The government gave us fuel and told us to evacuate people to Jeremie and that's it," he said.
CNN watched as one lone Haitian coast guard vessel tried to approach the ferryboat to curtail the rowboaters, but they were quickly overpowered by the sea of people fleeing.
The ferry's owner told CNN his ferry is licensed to carry 600 people, but on the last trip to Port Jeremie, there were over 3000 onboard.
With no serious crowd control and no lifeboats on board, Rouzier's only option to stop the crowds, is to leave.
"They'll do anything to get on the boat. And then it becomes very, very dangerous," he said.
CNN took their own rowboat onto the Trois Rivieres, and saw a boat, slowly filling with the desperate refugees. They all appeared to relax once onboard. Perhaps, now they can begin to have hope about tomorrow.

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Bulgaria nominee for EU Commission steps down

Bulgaria's nominee to the new European Commission has resigned - a move that could delay confirmation of the new 27-strong team.
Rumiana Jeleva's move followed tough questioning from Euro MPs about her financial interests. 
Last week doubts were expressed about her competence for the role of EU commissioner for humanitarian aid. Kristalina Georgieva, vice-president of the World Bank, has been put forward as the new Bulgarian candidate. Ms Jeleva's resignation came in a letter to Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, Reuters news agency reports. She had also been serving as Bulgaria's foreign minister. MEPs can veto the whole Commission if they oppose one of its members. 
The row over her candidacy centred on her past management of a consultancy firm. She denied any wrongdoing.A Bulgarian liberal MEP, Antonyia Parvanova, disputed Ms Jeleva's declaration that she had ended her involvement with the Bulgarian firm Global Consult in 2007.
Ms Parvanova claims she was still managing the company until 2009. 
Any undeclared financial interest would put Ms Jeleva in breach of European Union rules. 
The European Parliament's legal service cleared her of wrongdoing, but MEPs also doubted her competence.  Her resignation sparked an angry reaction from her centre-right political allies in the parliament, the BBC's Dominic Hughes reports from Strasbourg. The head of the European People's Party (EPP), Joseph Daul, said she was "the victim of a contemptible political squabble". The EPP is the biggest grouping in the parliament.  But the leader of the UK Labour MEPs, Glenis Willmott, said "common sense has prevailed".  "The issue was her competence. She did not give a good account of herself at the hearing."  It is still possible that other would-be commissioners could get caught up in the parliament's political in-fighting, our correspondent says.  MEPs are expected to vote on 26 January on the new Commission line-up - but that might now be put back. The commissioners, who have a five-year mandate, cannot take office without the MEPs' approval. The new Bulgarian nominee, Ms Georgieva, has been World Bank vice president since March 2008. She joined the bank in 1993 and specialised in environmental issues.  She was the bank's director for environment in 2000-2004, and in 2004-2007 she oversaw the bank's projects in Russia.

Haiti police ill-equipped to handle crisis

A crowd plunders buildings crumbled by last week's earthquake, hauling off water, food, candles and anything else recoverable. Suddenly, a pickup truck hauling a half dozen armed policemen squeals to a halt.

The mob scatters as the police officers in military style camouflage fire shots in the air and apprehend a few stragglers, some with a kick or a punch.

Such scenes occurred with increased frequency Monday in Port-au-Prince, the devastated Haitian capital, as frustrated survivors resorted to scrounging and looting due to a lack of relief aid. The rising tension raised questions about the ability of the Haitian National Police to maintain order and its tactics in doing so.

While the United States is sending thousands of troops to assist in relief efforts, U.S. officials say the Haitian police are responsible for security on the streets, with backing from U.N. peacekeepers.

"The first line of law and order here is, number one, the Haitian police, number two, the U.N. forces," U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten said Monday. "The U.S. forces are standing by to provide security as needed."

That seems to be an overwhelming task for the Haitian National Police (HNP), a force of about 9,000 that is the impoverished Caribbean nation's lone security apparatus.

Latest updates | Full coverage

National Police Chief Mario Andresol told CNN Monday that the department has been severely affected by the earthquake, with thousands of officers injured, killed or unaccounted for. The Port-au-Prince force of 4,000 has dropped to about 1,500, he said.

Friday, 15 January 2010

Professors Against Plagiarism

From Professors Against Plagiarism we received this:

Welcome to the home page of the University of Leeds Plagiarism Awareness web site. On this site we have brought together a range of resources for both staff and students, to raise awareness of ways to reduce plagiarism and improve academic integrity.
Topics covered include:
student information iconFor students:

* The university’s definition of plagiarism.
What is it? Why is it important?

* Penalties and procedures – what to expect
if your tutor thinks you have plagiarised

* Examples of good and bad practice

* How to avoid plagiarism – tutorials on steps

you can take to ensure your work is plagiarism free

* Test your knowledge - quiz



staff information iconFor staff
* Definitions, penalties and procedures

* Examples of good and bad practice

* Tools to support detection

* Designing assessments that avoid opportunities for plagiarism

* Teaching resources to help you teach students about plagiarism



To explore these resources use the navigation links on the left hand side of the page.



If there is anything that you feel should be included within these pages please contact the web team for this site so that we can continue to provide an accurate and up to date service for the University community.

VISIT
http://www.ldu.leeds.ac.uk/plagiarism/
Internet plagiarism among college students
Six hundred ninety-eight undergraduates (85.9% between the ages of 17 and 23; 87.5% in the first through fourth year) from nine colleges and universities completed a survey on Internet plagiarism. A substantial minority of students reported they use the Internet to copy and paste text into their papers without citation.

Student cheating has garnered much public attention recently. A perception reflected in media accounts is that acts of academic dishonesty among students in college as well as high school have increased sharply. The cover of the November 22, 1999 issue of U.S. News & World Report, for example, announced that "a new epidemic of fraud is sweeping through our schools" ("Cheating, writing, and arithmetic," 1999). Nearly universal access to the Internet has been cited as a reason for this perceived decline in academic integrity, in particular regarding plagiarism. A July 6, 2001 article in the Chronicle ofHigher Education reported that "several indicators point to widespread plagiarism on campus," and that "officials at some colleges say that in recent years they have seen a sharp increase in students cutting and pasting material into papers from Web sites without attribution, or purchasing term papers from online term-paper mills" (Young, 2001, A26). Four years ago a count of term paper mills on the Web-including A-Plus Termpapers, Paperz.com, School Sucks, and Research Assistance by Collegiate Care-set

President Barack Obama has said Wall Street must repay $117bn (£72bn) to taxpayers and criticised banks for "massive profits and obscene bonuses".

The tax is to recoup money US taxpayers are expected to lose from bailing out the banks during the financial crisis.
"My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed," the president said.
The move follows populist anger at banks, seen as being responsible for causing the recent economic crisis.
Average American
"My determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people," the president said.
He said the aim was not to punish Wall Street firms but to stop abuses and excesses from happening again.

European car sales rose by 16% in December, marking signs of recovery in the sector after another tough year.

However, total sales for 2009 were down 1.6% on 2008, according to figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA).
Some countries with scrappage schemes saw rises in sales in 2009, including France and Germany.
Sales in the UK were down 6.4% for the year as a whole, though December sales were up 39% compared with a year ago.
A total of 14.5 million cars were sold across 28 European countries in 2009.

Thursday, 14 January 2010

The US is sending up to 3,500 soldiers and 2,200 marines to Haiti to help rescue efforts in the wake of the devastating earthquake.

President Barack Obama pledged one of the biggest relief efforts in US history and said Haiti would "not be forgotten" in its hour of need. The search for survivors continues but rescuers lack heavy lifting equipment and many are using their bare hands. Tens of thousands of people are feared dead and up to three million affected. BBC correspondents say the situation is increasingly desperate, with aid only trickling in.Mr Obama confirmed that some US rescuers were already working on the ground in Haiti. The first 100-strong contingent from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division is expected to arrive in Haiti by the end of Thursday, with several hundred more due by Friday. They will join Haitians and international search and rescue teams already on the ground. Aid groups say there is a race against time to find survivors under the rubble of the collapsed buildings - the first priority of the rescue effort. Heavy lifting gear and sniffer dogs are desperately needed to seek out and free trapped victims. Medicine, food and water are in short supply. Elisabeth Byrs, of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said: "The priority is to find survivors. We are working against the clock." The head of Medecins du Monde, Olivier Bernard, told AFP news agency that aid had to arrive by Thursday evening. "To save lives, surgery must be available ideally within the first 48 hours," he said.

Doctor's assistant Jimitre Coquillon told Associated Press: "This is much worse than a hurricane. There's no water. There's nothing. Thirsty people are going to die." A few US aid planes and a 50-strong Chinese rescue team with sniffer dogs have landed at the airport serving the capital, Port-au-Prince. Other plane-loads of rescuers and relief supplies are on the way from the EU, Canada, Russia and Latin American nations. A British rescue team with heavy lifting gear and dogs has landed in the Dominican Republic and will be in Haiti later on Thursday. UK International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said: "This is a tragedy on a massive scale. Britain is playing its part in the huge international response." US President Barack Obama said the "people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States" in an "aggressive" aid campaign.

China has said that foreign internet firms are welcome to do business there "according to the law".

The statement, from Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu, is Beijing's first response to Google's threat to stop filtering content in China. Google said cyber-attacks originating in China aimed at rights activists, and increased web censorship, might force it to end its China operations. Ms Jiang insisted the internet was "open" in China. Google announced late on Tuesday that it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn. The search engine said it would hold talks with the government in the coming weeks to look at operating an unfiltered search engine within the law in the country, though no changes to filtering have yet been made.

'Holding statement'

At a regular foreign ministry news briefing, Ms Jiang said: "China like other countries administers the internet according to law. "China's internet is open, and the Chinese government encourages development of the internet." She was responding to a reporter's question on Google and US concerns about the business environment in China in light of Google's reported cyber-attacks."Chinese law proscribes any form of hacking activity," she said.When Google launched google.cn in 2006, it agreed to censor some search results - such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or Falun Gong - as required by the Chinese government.The BBC's Chris Hogg in Shanghai says Ms Jiang's comments sound like a holding statement, until officials can have talks with Google. Google currently holds about one-third of the Chinese search market, far behind Chinese rival Baidu, which has more than 60%. China has more internet users - about 350 million - than any other country and provides a lucrative search engine market worth an estimated $1bn (£614m) last year. It is difficult to see how the situation can be resolved, our correspondent says, with Google potentially losing its market share and the government reluctant to give up its right to control the internet.

'Don't be evil'

In a blog posted late on Tuesday, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond announced "A new approach to China". He said the accounts of dozens of US, China and Europe-based users of its Gmail service who are advocates of human rights in China had been "routinely accessed by third parties".At least 20 other large companies from a wide range of businesses were similarly targeted, it added.


Israel apologises to Turkey over snub

Israel has apologised to Turkey in an effort to defuse a row over the treatment of its envoy in Tel Aviv.

Israel's prime minister said he hoped this "would end the affair".Ankara had threatened to withdraw the ambassador unless it received a formal apology from Israel by Wednesday evening. The row began when the envoy was summoned to Israel's foreign ministry over a Turkish TV series portraying Israeli agents kidnapping babies. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon summoned Ambassador Oguz Celikkol to rebuke him over the fictional television series Valley of the Wolves, popular in Turkey. Mr Ayalon ensured the ambassador was seated on a lower chair and removed the Turkish flag from the table. Turkish President Abdullah Gul said the ambassador would "return on the first plane" on Thursday unless Israel issued a public apology. In the letter of apology, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "again expressed his concern over the cooling of the ties between Israel and Turkey" and instructed officials "to find ways to prevent this trend", according to a statement from his office. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had received the apology it "wanted and expected in diplomatic terms."But at a news conference he added that "Israel must put itself in order and must be more just and more on the side of peace in the region."

"Repeated provocation"
Footage of Mr Ayalon urging journalists to make clear the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while the Israeli officials were in much higher chairs, has been widely broadcast by the Israeli media. He is also heard pointing out in Hebrew that "there is only one flag" and "we are not smiling". "In terms of the diplomatic tactics available, this was the minimum that was warranted given the repeated provocation by political and other players in Turkey," he said, according to Reuters. One Israeli newspaper marked the height difference in a photo, and captioned it "the height of humiliation". Last October Israel complained over another Turkish series, which depicted Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians. In one clip, an Israeli soldier shoots dead a smiling young girl at close range. The row comes ahead of a planned visit by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to Turkey on Sunday. Turkey has long been an ally of Israel, but relations have deteriorated as Ankara has repeatedly criticised Israel for its offensive in Gaza a year ago. Rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians died during the operation, which Israel said had been aimed at ending rocket fire by Hamas. Thirteen Israelis died during the violence.


Wednesday, 13 January 2010

Talks on reunifying the divided island of Cyprus are intensifying, with the leaders of the Greek and Turkish communities starting new negotiations.

Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat will hold two three-day sessions. After this week's talks, the second round will be held later in January.
But the two men have held 60 meetings in the past 16 months and a solution to the Cyprus problem still seems elusive. Mr Christofias' new year message to his Greek Cypriot community was downbeat, and he said the two sides were not close to compromise. Several issues had yet to be discussed adequately because of continuing disagreements, he added. Slow movement This week's talks are being held in the UN buffer zone that divides Nicosia. Despite the renewed dialogue, there is little optimism in Cyprus that the talks will lead to anything conclusive, says the BBC's Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia.

A 7.0-magnitude quake which hit south of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince is feared to have killed hundreds of people across the Caribbean country.

In the space of a minute, Haiti's worst quake in two centuries wrecked the HQ of the UN mission, the presidential palace and numerous other buildings. A "large number" of UN personnel were reported missing by the organisation. The capital is now said to be in total darkness with many people sleeping outside amid fear of more aftershocks. Describing the earthquake as a "catastrophe", Haiti's envoy to the US said the cost of the damage could run into billions. A number of nations, including the US, UK and Venezuela, are gearing up to send aid. The quake, which struck about 15km (10 miles) south-west of Port-au-Prince, was quickly followed by two strong aftershocks of 5.9 and 5.5 magnitude. The tremor hit at 1653 (2153 GMT), the US Geological Survey said. Phone lines to the country failed shortly afterwards. Aid workers and reporters at the scene estimated the number of dead to be in the hundreds or even thousands.

Sunday, 10 January 2010

The Pope has called on Italians to respect the rights of illegal migrants, after a wave of violence against African farm workers in southern Italy.

He said migrants may have different cultures and traditions, but were human beings entitled to respect.
Some 70 people - including migrants, police officers and local residents - have been injured after days of violence in Rosarno, in Calabria.
Hundreds of Africans have now been bussed by police out of the town.
Pope Benedict XVI spoke out strongly in favour of the rights of poor African farm workers, who have been the target of violence in recent days.
"We have to go to the heart of the problem, of the significance of the human being," the Pope said.
The Italian government says it intends to expel hundreds of illegal migrants from north and west Africa who have been earning starvation wages as seasonal fruit, olive and tomato pickers.



Mafia link
But the problem is also closely related to organised crime in southern Italy.
The local mafia, called the 'Ndrangheta, controls the labour market which employs ever growing numbers of illegal seasonal day labourers.
The workers live in sordid conditions and are paid very low wages, out of which they have to pay kickbacks to their bosses.
At the moment they are picking mainly citrus fruit. It is backbreaking work which Italians now shun.
Wages are handed out in cash, labour laws and safety and health regulations are ignored, and no taxes or welfare contributions are ever paid.
The Calabrian mafia has become one of the most powerful criminal organisations in Italy in recent years, controlling much of Europe's narcotics trade, and has now expanded into the lucrative field of immigrant management.

China's exports rose 17.7% in December, state media has reported, suggesting the country has overtaken Germany as the world's largest exporter.

The rise, compared to a year earlier, breaks a 13-month decline in trade as a result of the global downturn.
Xinhua said total exports for 2009 were $1.2tn (£749bn), but total foreign trade over the year was down 13.9%.
Correspondents say the figures will lead to new demands from China's competitors that it devalue the yuan.
Last year saw a continuing decrease in China's trade as the global economic downturn led to a fall in demand for its products.
But in the last few weeks of the year, there was a far greater rise than forecasters had expected, with foreign exports reaching $130.7bn, up 17.7% on the previous December.
China's General Administration of Customs (GAC) said exports overall in the year were $1.2tn, down 16% from in 2008, while imports were 11.2% down from a year earlier at $1.01tn.
The politically sensitive total trade surplus was down 34.2% to $196.1bn, a fall of almost a third.
The figures suggests China will surpass Germany's export total for the whole of 2009, although this will not be confirmed until Germany's full-year data is published in February.

Croatia is voting in elections for a new president, after the winner of a first round in December failed to secure an outright majority.

Opinion polls suggest Social Democrat Ivo Josipovic, who won December's vote with 32% of the ballot, is in the lead.
His challenger is the current mayor of Zagreb, Milan Bandic.
Croatia's president has little power to direct policy, so the election campaign has been focused on personality, rather than ideas.
The BBC Balkans correspondent Mark Lowen says the difference between the two men is stark.
Left-wing Mr Josipovic is a mild-mannered classical music composer and doctor of law, credited for his untarnished background but criticised for lacking charisma.
He has promised voters he will launch an "uncompromising fight against corruption" if elected.
Mr Bandic, on the right, is a long-distance runner who says he is close to the people, but has been hit by corruption allegations.
He has urged Croatians to "vote for a man and not for a party".
As he cast his vote in Zagreb on Sunday, he said he had "no doubt Croatian people, citizens of Croatia will choose the best candidate".
Corruption has been the dominant theme in the campaign, with Croatia determined to clean up its image in order to gain EU membership by 2012.
Tihana Colak, a 27-year-old voting in Zagreb, said she was backing Mr Josipovic because he was "an educated man and he's clear of corruption".
She told the AFP news agency Mr Josipovic had the "credibility to represent Croatia in the world as a civilized and decent country".

Saturday, 9 January 2010

Italian authorities have evacuated hundreds of migrants from a southern town and brought in extra police after violent protests broke out.

Some 320 African migrants, many of whom work as fruit-pickers in Calabria, were taken by bus to an emergency centre.
Extra police were deployed after two days of riots, during which 37 people were injured and cars were set alight.
The violence broke out after two migrants were shot at with pellet guns by a group of local youths.
'Difficult situation'
Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni prompted a storm of criticism from the leftist opposition by suggesting that the violence was the result of not addressing the issue of illegal workers in the country. There's a difficult situation in Rosarno, like in other places, because for years illegal immigration - which feeds criminal activities - has been tolerated and nothing effective has ever been done about it," he said according to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.
Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani said: "Maroni is passing the buck ... We have to go to the root of the problem: mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism."
Some 320 African migrants - mainly from Ghana and Nigeria - were taken by bus from the southern town of Rosarno to a reception centre at Crotone, some 170km (105 miles) away.
Local residents applauded as the eight buses carrying the migrant workers left the town, AFP reports.
Police said reinforcements had been called in at intersections and squares in the town to keep order on Saturday.
Many of the migrants, most of whom work as fruit-pickers in the region's citrus farms, live in difficult conditions - camped in abandoned factories and buildings with no running water or electricity, and paid as little as 20 euros ($30) per day.

Togo's footballers are being recalled from the Africa Cup of Nations by their government following a deadly attack on the team's bus in Angola.

An assistant coach, press officer and driver were killed. Two players were shot and injured in Friday's attack.
The Angolan government and tournament officials had been pressing Togo to stay for their group games in Cabinda.
Togo government minister Pascal Bodjona said the team was coming home because the players were in a state of shock.
He added: "We cannot in such a dramatic circumstance continue in the Africa Cup of Nations."
Togo were due to play Ghana in their opening match on Monday. Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso are the other teams in Group B. Angola's prime minister Paulo Kassoma met with African football officials in Luanda to offer reassurances on the safety of the players on the eve of the tournament.
"The prime minister considers the incident in Cabinda as an isolated act and repeated that the security of Togo's team and the other squads is guaranteed," his office said in a statement.
But his efforts appear to have been in vain, with the Togolese government telling its team to leave Angola.
Earlier, Togo coach Hubert Velud told French radio station RMC that he thought consideration should be given to cancelling the entire tournament.
"We can at least pose that question," he said. "It's an act of barbarism while we are here to celebrate African football."
In an interview with a French radio station, Togo's first-choice goalkeeper, Kossi Agassa, said none of his team wanted to remain in the tournament.
"None of the team is ready to play, we're all devastated, everyone wants to go and see their family," he said.
"We came here to take part in a festival of African football, but it's as if we've gone to war."

Thursday, 24 December 2009

Important Announcement for Academicians: Many University Web Pages consider that many IEEE Conferences are garbage.

Most of you remember our previous post:
Today we received an email and we would like to share it with you:


Many University Web Pages consider that many IEEE Conferences are garbage. Some of them consider that even in the IEEE Journals the review is quite ridiculous and has only to do with your public relations in IEEE and its conferences or if you have put as co-author
some important editor of IEEE

See these link and examine the word: unrefereed

http://www.ece.ncsu.edu/imaging/Publications/unrefereed.html

http://sekmen-cs.tnstate.edu/sekmen/sekmen/ConferencePapersNonRefereed.html

http://www.utdallas.edu/~rmt042000/publications.htm

http://www.math.duke.edu/~das/cv/unrefpub.html

http://web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~rdv/publications.html

http://www.yawlfoundation.org/arthur/publications/index.php

http://softbase.uwaterloo.ca/~ddbms/projects/multimedia/publications.html

http://npal.ucsd.edu/publications/index.htm

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~awm22/publications/index.html



From http://netdriver.blogspot.com
Forward this message to your mailing lists with reference to us
http://netdriver.blogspot.com/2009/12/many-universities-consider-that-many.html

See also

http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com

Monday, 21 December 2009

Mexico City legalizes same-sex marriage, adoptions

Mexico City, one of Latin America's largest metropolises, on Monday legalized same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples.
By a vote of 39 to 20, the city's legislative assembly approved revisions to the civil code to permit same-sex marriages. Five legislators abstained.
In a separate motion, the assembly voted 31 to 24 in favor of legalizing adoption by same-sex couples, with nine abstentions.
The revision will change the definition of marriage to a union between two people, instead of the current version, which specifies a union between a man and a woman.
Civil groups in favor and opposed to the vote had gathered since early in the morning outside the legislative building.
In 2007, the legislators approved same-sex civil unions.
Mexico City is the second major Latin American city to legalize same-sex marriage.
In November, a Buenos Aires, Argentina, court legalized same-sex marriages. The first marriage to be held under the new law, however, was delayed over legal wrangling in the courts.

See: http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/12/mexico-city-legalizes-same-sex-marriage.html

COPENHAGEN, HOPENHAGEN, HOAXHAGEN

FROM: http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/12/copenhagen-hopenhagen-hoaxhagen.html

Redfaced and fuming Jose Barroso, Goering of Fourth Reich, points out the Copenhagen accord is better than no accord. Copenhagen was not Hopenhagen, but Hoaxhagen! Barroso was hoping to hoodwink the conferees with his superhoax, but venitists were one step ahead of him, distributing three messages to all conferees:

* Basil Venitis, twitter.com/Venitis, has proven that climate change is heliogenic, not anthropogenic. Nevertheless, carbonstruck kleptocrats, using buzzwords like carbon footprint and clean energy, are growing a socialist movement that won't actually benefit Gaia, but will make our lives miserable, spread by the cancer of socialism. Temperature fluctuations are only due to Sun cycles, but are used as an antivenitist instrument, not a real object of interest for socialists who camouflage the environmental game. Climate scaremongers ask for an unprecedented socialistic control of our lives. Socialism camouflaged as environmentalism! Those who accept the alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change are marionettes of antivenitist pullpeddlers, socialist kleptocrats, producers of green technologies, agribusiness producing ethanol, and trading firms dealing in carbon emission rights.

* Venitis muses that kleptocrats selling pollution permits to industry reminds us of the Catholic Church selling indulgences to sinners! Cap-and-Trade spreads the caner of socialism and thus stifles innovation. We also know that strong economies innovate better than weak ones, but cap and trade weakens economies. Perhaps most importantly, venitist economies innovate better than antivenitist ones, especially for something like energy where the investments often run into the billions of dollars and the payoffs play out over decades. But cap and trade adds a significant element of antivenitism, with wild swings in the price of carbon allowances, and energy companies less interested in long-term investment and more interested in short-term gaming of the system.

* Cap-and-Trade does not cap environmental sin but merely trades a self-serving socialist agenda for economic misery. Environmental health and longevity has a shrine in venitism. This shrine, free from the yoke of excessive regulation, protects and rewards the good steward of conservation. It nurtures the economy, promotes venitist policies that ensure environmental immortality, and persecutes those who abuse our natural resources. Rather than being wary of venitism's ability to shepherd good energy and environmental policy, we should protect our flocks from promises of false profits made by antivenitist pseudoprophets.

Barroso now claims the Copenhagen superjunket was a positive step but clearly below Fourthreichian ambition. Fourthreichians have to be honest when they analyze this result, there are many bad things, some good things and some not so good things. Barroso cannot hide his disappointment regarding the ambition in terms of the binding nature or non-binding nature of the future agreement. On this particular point, the accord falls far short of his expectations for the future flow of kickbacks to his Eurokleptocrats!

Herman Van Rompuy, Fuehrer of Fourth Reich(EU), points out Fourthreichian level of ambition has not been matched, especially as there was not an agreement on the need to have a legally binding agreement. And this is of course is a matter of concern for Fourth Reich, because Eurokleptocrats believe it is important that globokleptocrats commit globally to the actions that they need to develop to hoodwink climate change.

Catherine Ashton, Ribbentrop of Fourth Reich(EU), points out this was the first time globokleptocrats could put, in an agreement at this scare level, the actions that have been now pledged by many other parties, parties that so far had not committed to these kinds of actions. And Eurokleptocrats believe that the fact that Fourth Reich has committed, and already has in its legislation, these kinds of actions was, in fact, a very important trigger for announcements that have been made on development and from developing countries.

Pierre de Boissieu, Hess of Fourth Reich, points out globokleptocrats have three pillars in this text on which they can build pseudoprogress: emission reductions, finance, and pseudotransparency. But the climate scare hoodwink to achieve a higher level of ambition goes on, and this hoodwink is one Eurokleptocrats cannot afford to lose.

Viviane Reding, Himmler of Fourth Reich, points out Copenhagen was a first step, but globokleptocrats need many more steps in the future. And Fourthreichians will pursue with their ambition. Fourth Reich's commitments will be delivered - that will not change - Fourthreichian commitments are not just words in press releases, they are binding for all Fourth Reich slave States and Fourthreichians reiterated during the conference that Fourthreichians are even ready to go further if they see some more movement from other partners.

Maros Sefcovic, Goebbels of Fourth Reich(EU), points out especially important was the fact that Eurokleptocrats kept their commitment regarding the support to Third World countries. Their African partners and others very specifically thanked them for that, because not all have contributed to what Eurokleptocrats believe is a very important obligation, which is the need to support the poorest, the most vulnerable in their hoodwink for climate scare. 100 billion euros will be squandered to Third World countries, which will find their way to the secret offshore accounts of motherfucker Afrokleptocrats!

The Fuehrer muses that the untouchable Graecokleptocrats, the most corrupt politicians on Earth, those freaks that enjoy full impunity and full parliamentary immunity, assert that Eurokleptocrats now need to take this process into a new phase and learn new hoodwinking lessons from this mumbojumbo experience. Their conclusion is that this is global challenge that they cannot ignore, because it will bring many kickbacks to all Eurokleptocrats!

Globokleptocrats have no alternative but to keep working together to maintain their flows of kickbacks. This was the first experiment in working together, there are important points that have been agreed, after all it is a kleptocratic agreement. But the level of agreement is honestly not what they have been hoping for the flow of their kickbacks.

Basil Venitis, twitter.com/Venitis, points out Eurokleptocracy, gigaregulation, Antitrust Armageddon, and gigataxation, especially VAT, are the real causes of the European financial meltdown. Democracy in Fourth Reich(EU) has deteriorated to kleptocracy, and Fourthreichians, aka Europeans, are mad as hell. Eurokleptocracy thrives on waste, fraud, and abuse(WFA), and Fourthreichians who don't know what they're talking about. European Union(EU), aka Fourth Reich, an illegal unvoted confederation, condones the European Commission(EC), aka Eldorado of Corruption, the European Parliament(EP), aka Eldorado of Prostitutes, and Graecokleptocrats, the most corrupt politicians on Earth. No Graecokleptocrat has ever gone to jail! Venitis asserts that impunity of Graecokleptocrats is the most freakish justice in the world!

The Fuehrer notes that most of the money promised in the Copenhagen accord will come from VAT. Venitis asserts that VAT is a trademark of slavery and a destruction power of myriad watts. VAT is the main culprit of the Fourthreichian financial meltdown. The Fourthreichian taxation is based on the VAT monstrosity against poor people! The most unfair tax is VAT, the calamity of Fourth Reich(EU); that's why Vatbuster Venitis urges all Fourthreichians to evade this tax of misery as much as possible! Fourthreichians are yoked with a 15-25% VAT, value added tax. In Canada, VAT is only 5%. The burden of VAT falls on final consumers of products.

The Fuehrer points out VAT, aka kleptocrat's grab, is a regressive tax; the poor pay higher percentage of their income. Revenues from VAT are much lower than expected, because they are difficult and costly to administer and collect. Since any double-digit VAT leads many venitists to underground economy, most vatstruck Fourthreichians evade VAT! As a matter of fact, if you are a real patriot, you should boycott shops that charge VAT! VAT is the cacothanasia of Fourth Reich!

Venitis asserts that VAT and kleptocracy are two good reasons to get out of Fourth Reich(EU) now. Vatstruck Fourthreichians are looking for a Moses to liberate them from the yoke of Brussels. They have to do it now, before a new imposed treaty between Eurokleptocrats tie their hands forever. Californians and Texans want to get out of USA, but Uncle Sam does not allow it. The same thing might happen with Britons and Greeks. Infinite infinitesimal amendments to treaties might accumulate over time, leading to huge changes of original intent, enslaving all Fourthreichians to antivenitist Brussels forever!

Vatmonger Eurokleptocrats declare that Fourth Reich aid to Third World is a manifestation of Fourth Reich's benevolence! To whom vatbuster Basil Venitis replies: It's not yours to give! Antivenitist Eurokleptocrats cannot understand how much it hurts when a poor vatstruck Greek mother who cannot pay the rent and feed her children learns that the VAT money she pays goes to motherfucker cacodemon kleptocrats of Third World! Arafat's widow inherited two billion euros; that's Fourth Reich aid money Yasser Arafat stole from the Palestinian people! Most Fourth Reich aid money finds its way to the secret offshore accounts of kleptocrats and the laps of terrorists. This is Euromalevolence, pure and simple!

Venitis asserts that when an economy suffers from erectile dysfunction, via-grab does not work, but only via-cut. The via recommended is to cut taxes, not grab more taxes. There are limits to how much government can tax before it kills the host. Even worse, when government attempts to subsidize prices, it has the net effect of inflating them instead. The economic reality is that you cannot distort natural market pressures without unintended consequences. Market forces would drive prices down. Government meddling negates these pressures, adds regulatory compliance costs and layers of bureaucracy, and in the end, drives prices up.

It's your venitist duty to avoid and evade taxes all the way! Venitis points out that tax competition between jurisdictions holds down the cancer of government, and all people experience more opportunities and more wealth. If businesses and individuals are discouraged from investing outside their own jurisdictions, they will simply choose to work less and take no major business risks. All antivenitist governments are corrupt, and without the last bastions of freedom, aka taxhavens, enforcing financial privacy, citizens would have no place to protect their financial assets from kleptocrats, kidnappers, extortionists, blackmailers, and thugs. Evade taxes now as much as you can! Allons enfants de la Patrie!

The Fuehrer notes the Fourth Reich originates from the Red House Report, a detailed account of a secret meeting at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg, a couple of blocks from today's Eldorado of Prostitutes(EP), on August 10, 1944. There, Nazi officials instructed an elite group of German industrialists to plan for Germany's post-war recovery, prepare for the Nazis' return to power, and work for a strong Fourth Reich. The three-page, closely typed report, marked Secret, copied by British spies and sent to the US Secretary of State, detailed how the industrialists were to work with the Nazi Party to rebuild Germany's economy by sending money through Switzerland. They would set up a network of secret front companies abroad, wait until conditions were right, and then take over Europe.

Venitis muses that Lisbon Treaty is the climax of the Red House Report! After eight years of popular rejection, political cajoling, and endless hand-wringing, Fourth Reich ratified the Lisbon Treaty without a shred of democratic legitimacy or public support. The Lisbon Treaty was born from the twice rejected European Constitution, which was voted down in public referenda held in France and Holland in 2005. The Lisbon Treaty itself was rejected in a referendum held in Ireland in 2008, until Dublin was forced into holding a second referendum in October 2009. Ireland's Fourth Reich Commissar, Charlie McCreevy stated that if the Lisbon Treaty had been put to a public vote across the Fourth Reich, it would have been rejected by 95 percent of Fourthreichians.

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/12/copenhagen-hopenhagen-hoaxhagen.html

Even if climate change is a fiasco (which it isn't, as I know well, being an Environmental Engineer)

Even if climate change is a fiasco (which it isn't, as I know well, being an Environmental Engineer) it would actually be quite wrong to not wane ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels in general, so as to renew our energy security and economic independence. It would also lessen the amount of money these various dictators receive from exploiting the fossil riches of their countries. Therefore, even if you don't believe that we are in imminent danger (and it could well be that those of us alive today will not experience catastrophic climate change in our lifetimes) there are many better reasons for actually supporting the Copenhagen resolution, such as it is, than just the welfare of your unborn children in their old age.
Those of you who still doubt the science despite not being scientists yourselves and thus unable to understand the mathematics underpinning the science, you would do the whole world a favour by supporting energy independence and deliverance from imported oil DESPITE your reservations about the truth of climate change.

Wednesday, 16 December 2009

Iran tested an upgraded version of a surface-to-surface missile with a range that makes it capable of reaching parts of Europe,

Iran tested an upgraded version of a surface-to-surface missile with a range that makes it capable of reaching parts of Europe, state-run television reported Wednesday.
Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said on Press-TV that the solid-fuel, high-speed Sajil-2 missile has "great maneuverability" and can access targets more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) away, making Israel and U.S. military bases in the Gulf reachable.
Vahidi said the missile has a shorter launch time and is intended to boost Iran's deterrent capability.

Iran tested the initial version of the Sajil-2 back in May.

Then in September, days before a key meeting over nuclear issues with industrialized powers, Iran tested two types of long-range missiles. Those tests drew condemnation after the Islamic republic revealed the existence of a covert uranium enrichment site near the city of Qom.
Iran shocked the world with that revelation. Since then, it has allowed inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to visit the plant.
Western powers fear Iran is intent on developing nuclear weapons. That's a claim Tehran denies, but the latest test-firing of the Sajil-2 could add to existing tensions.

SOURCE: CNN

Very Interesting Blog about FUZZY LOGIC

http://mybisc.blogspot.com/

Sunday, 13 December 2009

BRAIN DAMAGING HABITS and FOODS THAT CAUSE CANCER

BRAIN DAMAGING HABITS

1. No Breakfast. People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.
2 . Overeating. It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.
3. Smoking. It causes multiple brain shrinkage and may lead to Alzheimer disease.
4. High Sugar consumption Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.
5. Air Pollution. The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our 20 body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.
6 . Sleep Deprivation. Sleep allows our brain to rest.. Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells..
7. Head covered while sleeping. Sleeping with the head covered increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decrease concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain damaging effects.
8. Working your brain during illness. Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.
9. Lacking in stimulating thoughts. Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulation thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.
10. Talking Rarely Intellectual conv ers ations will promote the efficiency of the brain


The main causes of liver damage are:

1. Sleeping too late and waking up too late are main cause.
2. Not urinating in the morning.
3 . Too much eating.
4. Skipping breakfast.
5. Consuming too much medication.
6. Consuming too much preservatives, additives, food coloring, and artificial sweetener.
7. Consuming unhealthy cooking oil. As much as possible reduce cooking oil use when frying, which includes even the best cooking oils like olive oil. Do not consume fried foods when you are tired, except if the body is20very fit.
8. Consuming raw (overly done) foods also add to the burden of liver. Veggies should be eaten raw or cooked 3-5 parts. Fried veggies should be finished in one sitting, do not store.
We should prevent this without necessarily spending more. We just have to adopt a good daily lifestyle and eating habits. Maintaining good eating habits and time condition are very important for our bodies to absorb and get rid of unnecessary chemicals according to 'schedule.'

The top five cancer-causing foods are:
1.. Hot Dogs

Because they are high in nitrates, the Cancer Prevention Coalition advises that children eat no more than 12 hot dogs a month. If you can't live without hot dogs, buy those made without sodium nitrate.

2. Processed meats and Bacon

Also high in the same sodium nitrates found in hot dogs, bacon, and other processed meats raise the risk of heart disease. The saturated fat in bacon also contributes to cancer.

3. Doughnuts

Doughnuts are cancer-causing double trouble. First, they are made with white flour, sugar, and hydrogenated oils, then fried at high temperatures. Doughnuts, says Adams , may be the worst food you can possibly eat to raise your risk of cancer.

4. French fries

Like doughnuts, French fries are made with hydrogenated oils and then fried at high temperatures. They also contain cancer- causing acryl amides which occur during the frying process. They should be called cancer fries, not French fries, said Adams .


5. Chips, crackers , and cookies

All are usually made with white flour and sugar.. Even the ones whose labels claim to be free of trans-fats generally contain small amounts of trans-fats.

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/12/brain-damaging-habits.html

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

How can you take the Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Obama, while fighting wars in two countries???

President Obama -- fighting wars in two countries -- will arrive in Norway on Thursday to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

The president will spend 26 hours in Oslo meeting the royal family, accepting the Nobel at an afternoon ceremony and attending an award banquet that evening.

At the ceremony, Obama will accept a $1.4 million prize check, a gold medal and a diploma.

He also will speak at the ceremony, which will be streamed live on CNN.com starting at 7 a.m. ET. He will touch on the war in Afghanistan, for which he last week announced a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Obama's day will begin with a trip to the Nobel Institute, where he will meet for the first time the five-member panel that unanimously picked him for the prize, said Mette Owre of the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama will then meet with Norway's King Harald V and Queen Sonja before heading to the award ceremony.

"Then he goes to the hotel where he is staying. He will have some downtime. He is governing America at the time," Owre said.

In the evening, the president will be the guest of honor at a banquet where the king and queen and the Norwegian prime minister will be among 250 attendees, Owre said.

Obama's Nobel Prize win, announced in October, elicited swift reaction -- some hailing the choice; others asking what he had accomplished to deserve it.

Nominations for the prize had to be postmarked by February 1, only 12 days after Obama took office. The committee sent out its solicitation for nominations last September, two months before Obama was elected president.

The Mexican military has tortured and illegally killed citizens and committed other serious human rights violations ...

The Mexican military has tortured and illegally killed citizens and committed other serious human rights violations as it battles the nation's drug cartels and organized crime groups, Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

The human rights group accuses authorities of failing to investigate allegations of abuses by the military, including abductions, extrajudicial and other unlawful killings, torture, ill treatment and arbitrary detentions.

"There is a disturbing pattern of crimes committed by the military in their security operations, abuse that is being denied and ignored by both the civilian and the military authorities in Mexico," said Kerrie Howard, deputy director of Amnesty International's Americas program.

The Mexican government issued a statement late Tuesday saying the country's interior secretary will analyze the report carefully and will make recommendations at the appropriate time.

"The federal government recognizes the work that the armed forces are doing in combatting crime and organized delinquency," the statement said. "At the same time, the government recognizes the consequences its actions could generate in its contact with the citizenry, so it has adopted preventive measures.

"In this sentiment, the Mexican government has full intent and ability to punish authorities and public servants who could commit any violation of human rights in the exercise of their functions and duties."

Mexican President Felipe Calderon did not address the report but mentioned human rights at a ceremony Tuesday.

"It is time to redouble our efforts to leave our children the Mexico that we want, and that Mexico that we want should be, of course, a Mexico that scrupulously respects the fundamental rights of people," Calderon said.

Analysts said Mexican officials are keenly aware of the situation.

"It's an issue that has raised concern on both sides of the border," said Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. "It's an issue that everybody's talking about."

The Mexican military has played an increasingly important role in the war on drug cartels that Calderon declared after assuming office in December 2006. Nearly 50,000 troops have been posted nationally to troubled areas such as Ciudad Juarez, where vicious drug gangs have outmatched and outgunned local and state police.

Nearly 14,000 drug-related killings have been reported in the nation from January 2008 to July 2009, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission said. Ciudad Juarez, on the U.S. border, has accounted for more than 3,000 deaths from January 2008 through September 2009, the Human Rights Commission said.

The abuses are a consequence of that violence and the stepped-up military presence, some analysts said.

"Once a decision was made that the military was going to take a frontal role in the combat against organized crime, it had to be expected that the number of complaints was going to increase a lot," said Ana Maria Salazar, a TV and radio commentator in Mexico City.

"The issue here," she said, "is whether there is a pattern, and is there a pattern being approved by Mexican authorities? Is it something that the Mexican government is using as a strategy to fight organized crime? I don't think that's the case."

London, England-based Amnesty International said it sees a "growing trend of abuses."

The National Human Rights Commission received nearly 2,000 complaints of abuse by the military between January 2008 and June 2009, Amnesty International said. By comparison, there were 367 complaints in 2007 and 182 in 2006.

Amnesty International said it believes many more cases go unreported.

For example, the international organization said, a human rights group in Nuevo Laredo reported receiving 70 complaints involving arbitrary detention, torture and other ill treatment by the military between January 2008 and September 2009. But only 21 individuals lodged legal complaints. The rest feared reprisals, Amnesty International said.

"The cases that we have been able to investigate are truly shocking," Howard said in a release. "But what is more shocking is that we know that this is only the tip of the iceberg."

The human rights group said the military investigates few cases, and those that are looked into "are dealt with in virtually closed military courts where victims and their relatives have no access to information or status on which they can challenge judicial or court proceedings."

A lack of independence and impartiality by the military legal system has resulted in the denial of justice to victims and impunity for perpetrators, Amnesty International and other observers said.

"In situations where there is no transparent military judicial system in place, that creates incentives for abuse," said the Mexico Institute's Selee.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue policy institute in Washington, said he sees no easy solutions.

"The question is how you deal with it," Hakim said. "I just don't know."

Human rights violations could make the fights against the cartels even more difficult, Amnesty International said.

"The abuses we have seen contribute to the deterioration of the security situation in Mexico," Howard said. "By failing to take action to prevent and punish serious human rights violations, the Mexican government could be seen to be complicit in these crimes."

TV analyst Salazar said she wonders if the military is alone in committing abuses.

"What I don't know," she said, "is whether the number of complaints against police have gone up. That would be interesting."

Amnesty International urged Mexico to "take immediate steps to ensure prompt and impartial investigations by the civilian authorities so those responsible are brought before the civilian courts and victims receive reparations."

Mexican officials must "recognize the seriousness and scale of the reports of human rights abuses committed by members of the military as well as the level of complicity of civilian authorities in covering up these abuses and to make the issue a government priority," Amnesty International said.

Thousands of American Indians would receive as much as $1,000

Thousands of American Indians would receive as much as $1,000 each if they accept a proposed $1.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit over government mismanagement of tribal lands.

The suit, filed in 1996, accused the U.S. Department of the Interior of failing to account for and provide revenue from a trust fund representing the value of Indian assets managed by the government.

As part of the settlement, the federal government would agree to establish a $2 billion program to buy small fractions of land to help sellers obtain value from ancestral property, which then would be held by tribal governments.

The missing funds at the center of the class-action case involve what are called Individual Indian Money accounts, which are supposed to represent the property of individual American Indians. The accounts are held by the United States as trustee.

The lawsuit had accused the government of failing to account for the money, failing to make proper payments, and converting tribal money for the government's own use.

A federal judge must approve the plan, and Congress would have to enact a bill to implement it.

At a Tuesday news conference, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar acknowledged the need for a "historical accounting for funds that the government held in trusts for Native Americans."

Attorney General Eric Holder, accompanying Salazar to announce the settlement proposal, said the deal addresses allegations "the government has mismanaged acres of land and millions of dollars that it holds in trust for Native Americans."

But one of the American Indians who filed the suit in 1996 suggested the years of litigation had simply worn them down.

"It's not fair," said Elouise Cobell, but "in the future we may be treated more fairly."

Cobell, a member of Montana's Blackfeet Indian tribe, said those who could benefit from the payments are getting old and dying off.

Pressing for a higher settlement figure would be tough, she said, since she "can't handle how the mismanagement of this trust has hurt people."

Cobell said many of those represented in the class-action suit "subsist in the direst poverty," and that the settlement is "significantly less than the full amount to which the Indians are owed."

Confirmation of a proposed settlement was a tightly kept secret ahead of the news conference at the Interior Department. Part of the reason may have been that the deal nearly fell through just hours earlier, according to an agency official.

"It's confidential," said Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli in response to a reporter's question as to the sticking point.

News of the deal was buried in a statement released in advance from the Interior Department that mentioned "the Cobell settlement," as part of a broader plan being announced to address land ownership by Native Americans.

The group ownership of land by American Indians dates back more than 100 years before American Indians were permitted to write wills. As a result, the government says large parcels of tribal lands are held by owners with "miniscule interests" received from ancestors who conveyed the property to descendants as tenants-in-common.

Officials say the purchase project will allow individual landowners to receive greater value for their share, while cutting administrative costs for the federal government, which manages the Indian land trust.

Salazar said, "It is common to have hundreds -- even thousands -- of Indian owners for one parcel."

The initiative would consolidate ownership through purchases from willing sellers, and tribal governments would have control, according to a "fact sheet" put out ahead of the announcement.

Without the purchases, "Millions of acres of land will be owned in such small ownership interests that very few individual owners will ever derive any meaningful financial benefit from that ownership," the statement said.

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

A series of car bombings has killed at least 127 people and wounded 448 in the centre of the Iraqi capital,

A series of car bombings has killed at least 127 people and wounded 448 in the centre of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The first blast targeted a police patrol in the Dora district of the city.

Four others occurred near official buildings within minutes. Veteran politician Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, an ex-national security adviser, blamed al-Qaeda militants for the attacks. He told the BBC their aim was to destabilise the country ahead of general elections due in March.

Al-Qaeda has been active in Baghdad recently," Mr Rubaie said. "The aim is to show the government is unable to protect civilians and its own people and also to deter people from going to ballot boxes." The explosions on Tuesday shook houses across the capital. After the attack in Dora, a bomb blew up in Shourja Market, near the health ministry. Official buildings located near the other blasts also include the interior ministry, a university and the institute of fine arts. There were civilian and security force personnel casualties, officials said. Survivor Ahmed Jabbar, emerging from a damaged ministry building, told the Associated Press news agency: "What crime have we committed? Children and women were buried under debris." Rescue workers at the scene have been climbing through twisted steel bars and crushed concrete, and dozens of vehicles were burned, AP reported. Another witness told Reuters news agency: "We were stuck in a heavy traffic jam when a powerful blast took place. A car exploded. A large number of people were wounded and killed." A spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown condemned the attacks "in the strongest possible terms".

Restrictions limiting the H1N1 flu vaccine to high-risk groups could be lifted in many U.S. states now that

Restrictions limiting the H1N1 flu vaccine
to high-risk groups could be lifted in many U.S. states now
that production of the vaccine has increased, state health
officials said Monday.


Illinois could open up vaccinations to the
general public as soon as Friday, while Oregon plans to
re-evaluate the progress of its vaccination program next
week, representatives of those states' public health
agencies said. Arizona also wants to open its vaccine
stocks, but some of its large counties need more time to
make sure high-risk populations get vaccinated, said interim
Department of Health Services Director Will Humble.


"I think all the states are thinking the
same thing," Humble said.


The federal

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
says 73
million doses of H1N1 vaccine are now available, up from
about 42 million in mid-November. The agency has said
children, pregnant women, parents of infants who can't be
vaccinated, health-care workers and people with chronic
illnesses should get the first inoculations, but CDC
Director Thomas Frieden told reporters last week that some
states have been opening up vaccinations as the number of
available doses has increased.


"The focus is the priority group, the people
who will benefit the most from the vaccine," Frieden said
Friday. "But increasing numbers of communities and states
are providing vaccines to larger groups of people."


Humble said Arizona has received about a
third of the 4 million doses of H1N1 vaccine it expects to
receive this flu season. Local health officials are
attempting a "balancing act" between getting their high-risk
patients vaccinated and opening the vaccines to the wider
population while there is a "sense of urgency" about the
virus, he said.


The disease, commonly known as swine flu, is
in decline, but authorities expect another wave of cases in
early 2010, Humble said.


"I don't want to move too early, but I don't
want to wait too late, either," he said.


Two other states contacted by CNN on Monday
said they also are examining the issue.


In Illinois, health officials expect to ease
their restrictions on the vaccine "in the very near future,"
perhaps as early as the end of the week, said Kelly Jakubek,
a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health. In
Oregon, Public Health Department spokeswoman Christine Stone
said authorities plan to re-examine the issue next week, but
she added, "Every week things are changing."


"The number of doses coming into the state
has been much more impressive over the last few days," Stone
said. Doctors are "really, really pushing the priority
groups this week," she said.


The state has so far vaccinated nearly
892,000 people, about 46 percent of its high-risk
population, and received an allotment of 126,000 doses of
swine flu vaccine this week, Stone said.


All three states have widespread outbreaks
of the

H1N1
virus. Illinois has reported 2,187 hospitalizations
from the disease, with 67 confirmed deaths. In Oregon, 1,258
people have been hospitalized and 57 people have died, while
Arizona has recorded 1,488 hospitalizations and 125 deaths.


Nationwide, the CDC
estimated the number of U.S. deaths in mid-November at about
3,900.

PAKISTAN: A blast hit near a building housing Pakistan's intelligence service,

A blast hit near a building housing Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, in the eastern city of Multan on Tuesday, killing at least 12 people and wounding 20 others, police said.
The explosion took place at a security checkpoint, said Jamshed Akram of the city police.

Four soldiers and four children were among the dead, said Dr. Kaleem Ullah of Multan's emergency services.

Pakistan has blamed the violence on Islamic militants who have vowed to avenge a intense military offensive to rout them from their haven along the country's border with Afghanistan.

The nation has come under increasingly frequent attacks. On Monday, a blast at a crowded market in Lahore killed 54 and wounded more than 150 people.

The same day two other bombing attacks -- in Peshawar and Quetta -- killed at least 11 and wounded at least 41.

The attacks came three days after militants armed with guns and grenades stormed a mosque in Rawalpindi frequented by military personnel. At least 36 were killed and 75 wounded.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the mosque bombing, but there were no immediately claims for Monday's attacks.

In an e-mail to CNN about the mosque attack, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan said: "We reconfirmed it, that the TTP has done it, and will do more which are already planned. We once again mention that we are not against the innocent people and the state of Pakistan but against those officers and ministers who are American by hearts and minds and Pakistani just by faces."

Video: Tailban waiting for winter
Video: Pakistan mosque attack

The United States has pressed Pakistan to rout out Taliban militants.

Fighting the war in Afghanistan is "inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan," President Barack Obama said Tuesday of U.S. strategy.

"We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country," he said in a speech at West Point. "But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border."

The United States says Pakistan looms large because Taliban and al Qaeda militants operating in Afghanistan also have had a presence in Pakistan's northwestern region near the Afghan border and have threatened the governments and troops in both countries.

Who is the President of the "Independent Turkish Democracy of Thrace"

President: Hoca Salih EfendiArmy: Standing force of 29,170, largely infantry. Commander of the Armed Forces was Süleyman Askerî
As soon as independence was declared the government of the Republic of Gumuljina determined the borders of the country, put up the new flags on the official buildings, commissioned a national anthem, raised an army, published its own stamps and passports. It also prepared the budget of the new country.
A Jewish citizen, Samuel Karaso, was tasked by the government with establishing an official press agency and to publish a newspaper named Müstakil (Independence) in Turkish and French. The Ottoman Laws and Regulations were adopted without any change and the cases started to be heard by the Court of Western Thrace.
Bulgaria, after a brief period of control over the area following the Istanbul Convention, passed the sovereignty of Western Thrace to Greece at the end of the World War I, when Greece entered the war against the Central Powers. The republic was revived between 1919-1920 under French (occupied the region from Bulgarian in 1918) protectorate before Greece took over in June, 1920. The Muslim population of Western Thrace was excluded from the population exchange of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, and possesses a legal minority status in Greece.
See also
Republic of Tamrash
Muslim minority of Greece
Turks of Western Thrace
Further reading
This article cites its sources but does not provide page references. You can help to improve it by introducing citations that are more precise.
AYDINLI Ahmet, Batı Trakya Faciasının İç Yüzü, Akın Yayınları, İst. 1971
BATIBEY Kemal Şevket, Bati Trakya Türk Devleti, Boğaziçi Yayınları, İst. 1978
Batı Trakya’nın Sesi, Sayı: 65, AÄŸustos 1988
BIYIKLIOÄžLU Tevfik, Trakya’da Milli Mücadele, Cilt I, II. Baskı, TTK Yay., Ank.1987
GÜNDAĞ Nevzat, Garbi Trakya Hükümet-i Müstakilesi, Kültür ve Turizm Bak. Yay. Ank.1987
ÖZKAN Tuncay, Mit’in Gizli Tarihi, Alfa Yay., İst.2003
YALÇIN Soner, Teşkilatın İki Silahşörü, Doğan Kitap, İst. 2001
Tahir Tamer Kumkale, Batı Trakya, Önce VATAN 17-20 MAYIS 2003

FLAG OF THE INDEPENDENT THRACE

For an Independent Turkish Democracy of Thrace??

The Provisional Government of Western Thrace (Ottoman Turkish: غربی تراقیا حكومت موقته‌سی - Garbi Trakya Hükûmeti Muvakkatesi), later renamed to Independent Government of Western Thrace (Ottoman Turkish: غربی تراقیا حكومت مستقله‌سی - Garbi Trakya Hükûmeti Müstakilesi), was a small, short-lived republic established in Western Thrace from August 31 to October 25, 1913. It encompassed the area surrounded the rivers Maritsa (Evros) in the east, Mesta (Nestos) in the west, the Rhodope Mountains in the north and the Aegean Sea in the south. Its total territory was c. 8.600 km².
The state was created during the Second Balkan War by a Turkish and Pomak rebellion against withdrawing occupying Bulgarian forces in that area. It existed for 3 months, between two Balkan treaties; between the May 1913 Treaty of London and the August 1913 Treaty of Bucharest that ended the Second Balkan War. It was founded as a provisional state, in order to be annexed by Ottoman Turkey again. Soon after, Greek forces occupied major cities (Porto Lagos, Komotini and Alexandroupolis) and handed them over to Bulgaria, according to the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). The area remained a part of Bulgaria until 1919 and the republic was revived under French protectate. Finally it was annexed by Greece in 1920 except Bulgarian occupation between 1941-1944. Its capital was Gümülcine (Greek: Κομοτηνή, Komotini), now in Greece.

There are a growing number of smartphone applications aimed at assisting medical professionals or improving personal health.

- From AirStrip OB, which lets obstetricians remotely access real-time data about newborn babies, to Epocrates, a kind of drug encyclopedia for medics, phone apps have the potential to be lifesavers.
Then there are the apps aimed at improving people's general health, such as RunKeeper, designed to make it easier to keep fit, and Absolute Fitness, which could help you keep tabs on your diet.
We take a look at just a few of the health-related applications now showing on a smartphone near you.

Fake Conference Fake Conference Fake Conference Fake Conference (from IEEE)

Fake Conference Fake Conference Fake Conference Fake Conference (from IEEE)
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.austria/browse_thread/thread/cc880555a293c5a8

This year the academic hackers invaded with their fake papers to the
8th Annual IEEE Conference on Sensors. This conference was without
review and accepted 3-4 fake papers
The IEEE was informed this terrible incident by the organisers
See: IEEE SENSORS 2009 Conference, 25-28 October 2009
http://www.ieee-sensors2009.org/

See also

http://academic-spam.blogspot.com/


So, one more fake conference passed in the history of fake conferences.
It seems that (mainly from IEEE) a fake conference every 3-4 weeks is
a frequent phainomenon and maybe the fake papers in a fake conference does not make sense.
The IEEE should take measures against these fake conference
organisers. Fake conferences that scam money out of academics that want to enlarge
their CV artificially with bogus publications in bogus .
Now after the new fake IEEE conference (I wonder how many fake conferences of the IEEE we
know now), I absolutely accept this information
It's that time of year again. Suddenly, your inbox is filled with
letters requesting that you submit a paper to the "The 14th World
Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI
2010" or "WESSEX INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY" or "The International Multi-
Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation: IMETI 2009",
or the "IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity (that published
many garbage papers last year)

Never heard of any of this because you are a philosopher getting the
emails, too? Don't worry, serious computer scientists don't usually go
to the conferences, although people do easily get impressed by all the
names and submit a paper. Strangely enough, all papers are accepted, as long as you have paid
your registration fee. You don't actually have to come and give the
paper, although the family will surely love following you to Orlando.
The "Acceptance Policy" is spelled out in pseudo-scientific detail on
the conference site. I paraphrase: We accept everything, because there
might happen to be a good paper in there, and because a reviewer might
plagiarize a paper they reject. This conference accepted a paper back in 2005 that had been generated by a computer programmed by some MIT students, SCIgen. A nice blog
discussion of that and the conference is found here. There was quite a
row about this back in 2005, as one must question how scientific a
conference is that accepts random (albeit well-worded) garbage and is
willing to publish it. It is said that more than 1500 papers are
accepted (at $ a pop that isn't chicken feed), and the "majority" are
actually presented. That is not what a real conference is about, where
you meet and discuss with peers working in similar areas.
How many of these thousands of papers ever get cited? That is perhaps
an indication of how good the papers really are. I just searched the
ACM Digital Library. There are 19 (nineteen) citations of the WMSCI
conference. There have been 12 such conferences taken place.
That's not too many, so I went through the references for all 19
papers. Eleven of these papers were written by at least one of the
authors of a WMSCI-published paper, so over half are self-citations.
One paper is Peter G. Neumann's note of the acceptance of the fake
paper in his "Risks to the Public" column in Software Engineering
Notes. As an aside, there's a fascinating paper on bibliometrics for
discovering low-quality conferences published in 2007: Measuring
conference quality by mining program committee characteristics.
Glancing down the lineup of invited speakers can cause quite some
hilarity: Karl H. Müller, is given at CCCT2008 as being with the
"University of Ljubljana (Austria)". I don't think that Austria has
acutally annexed Slovenia, and a search of their web site turns up Mr.
Müller as having given a talk therea few years back, but he is not
listed as a teacher. He lists himself in his CV on the pages of his
institute as teaching at any number of Austrian schools, but
strangely, they don't list him. Dr. Subhas C Misra is listed for this conference as being a visiting
Scientist at Harvard, for another conference as being a visiting
scientist at State University of New York. At another conference he is
listed as the "NSERCPDF Scientist, Harvard University", but I find no
mention of this program outside of his CV. Harvard includes CVs of its
visiting scientists on its home page, there is no mention of Misra.
Who are these guys?
It seems that anyone can make up a fancy institute name and make
themselves director, declare themselves teachers at University X (and
may actually have taught there a semester or so before being put out
on their ear), make up papers and fancy conferences and rush around
finding themselves soooo important - but this has nothing to do with
science! They can even pretend to be from some institution. Most are
so large, no one can be sure that they are not actually from that
place.

What can be done to stop this pseudo-science? Or do we just ignore
them, but watch young people and unsuspecting colleagues pour
departmental travel money into attending these conferences to present
their papers? We do get a publication point out of it.....

In this blog, you will find many alerts for junk conferences i.e.
conferences that you must not go. Conferences (like the IEEE
Conference on Computational Complexity or the Conferences of Wessex
Institute of Technology or the Nagib Callaos Conferences) that pollute
our mailbox with much Spam every day.
A very good effort http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/ gave us the idea
to creat our own blog.
Not to mention of course, the hundred fake conferences of IARIA,
HIGHSCI, IASTED that pollute our academic world with junk or "almost"
junk "conferences.
But, we will have all the academic winter 2009-2010 with many posts
informing you this unacceptable situation where the first teacher was
the IEEE and the IEEE Sponsored Events of IARIA, IIISCI (Nagib
Callaos), WESSEX Institute of Technology and the other fruits of the
academic basket!

Thanks
Have a nice winter!
Similar Blogs
http://academic-spam.blogspot.com/

http://bogusconferences.blogspot.com


http://netdriver.blogspot.com/

SOURCE:
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.austria/browse_thread/thread/cc880555a293c5a8

Fake Conference Fake Conference Fake Conference Fake Conference (from IEEE)

Monday, 7 December 2009

The United States and China have not offered to go far enough to combat climate change, a top European Union official said as a major international su

The United States and China have not offered to go far enough to combat climate change, a top European Union official said as a major international summit on the subject opened Monday.
Final negotiations at the conference "will be mostly about what will be delivered from the United States and from China," said Andreas Carlgren, the environment minister of Sweden, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.
The two countries "together cover half of the world's emissions," Carlgren said. "It will be absolutely decisive what they can deliver."
He pressed U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver more than he promised in a statement in the run-up to the conference.
"It would be somewhat astonishing if Obama would come here and deliver ... just what was promised in last week's press release," Carlgren said.


Obama had been planning to attend the early stages of the Copenhagen summit that could lay the groundwork for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions well into the century.
But the White House announced last week that he would come at the end instead.
Jonathan Pershing, U.S. deputy special envoy for climate change, defended Obama's late attendance, saying the country's goals extended beyond the summit.
"The president has put a remarkable amount on the table," he told a news conference in Copenhagen.
"What the president has put on the table is a commitment for the United States to move forward: a commitment on emissions, a commitment on financing, a commitment on engagement -- what we need to now do is see how these negotiations proceed."
Pershing rejected EU criticism saying U.S. goals for reducing emission went far beyond those offered by the European bloc.
He added: "What the United States has put on the table is a trajectory that is not only consistent with, but meets the criteria of a robust scientific outcome.

THE ETHNIC TURKISH MINORITY

In Greece there is an ethnic Turkish minority,1 whose religiousaffiliation is Islam. The Turks are the most numerous (about 130,000)among the minorities in Greece although they are not the only one.^ Theethnic Turks are concentrated in a small (8578 sq. km.) Balkan territory called'Western Thrace', which is bordered on the east by Turkey, on the west by theGreek part of Macedonia, on the north by Bulgaria and on the south by theAegean Sea. The area stretches from the Maritza (Meric) river in the east asfar as the Mesta (Karasu) river in the west. The region includes the Rhodopemountains in the north. The Maritza river divides modern Thrace into the'Eastern' (or Turkish) and the 'Western' (or Greek) portions. A part of Thraceis, then, within the borders of European Turkey.*The terms 'ethnic Turkish minority', Turkish community' and 'Muslim Turks'will be used in this text to designate the Turks of Western Thrace in Greece.An overwhelming majority of the Turks are Islamic while not all but againthe majority of the Muslims there are Turks. The rest of the Muslims arePomaks and Roma (Gypsies) with a small number of Circassians (Cherkez),just as there are also a small group of Christian Turks (Gagauz), whocongregate mainly in the northern parts of the Balkans.'-Apart from the Muslim and Christian Turks, Greece has (Slav) Macedonians,(Muslim) Pomaks, (Muslim) Circassians, (Muslim) Albanians (of Camuria),(Christian) Albanians, (Christian and Latin-speaking) Vlahs (Koutsvlahs orAromani), Jews, Armenians and others. Tilrkkaya Ataov, "The EthnicMinorities of Greece," A.O. Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi Dergisl,46/3-4 (1991), 15-33.90 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXHThe Turks have been living in both sides of Thrace since the mid-14thcentury. They constitute the whole of the population in the eastern part, andused to make the majority in the west as well until the 1920s. The OttomanEmpire abandoned Western Thrace to Bulgaria, in accordance with the 1913Treaty of Istanbul, Greece annexed it in 1920 under the Treaty of Sevres. TheTreaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), which opened up a new era in Turkishhistory, ceded the region to the Greeks. Under a protocol of the same year,Greece and Turkey decided on a compulsory exchange of Greek and Muslimminorities in each other's country with two exceptions.^ The exceptions werethe Greeks of Istanbul, who formed a minority there and the Muslims ofWestern Thrace, who composed the majority then. The Turkish communityoutnumbered the Greek four to one. It had been on this basis that the firstTurkish republic' in history, in the form of a 'Western Thracian ProvisionalGovernment' was formed in 1913.4 The Turks not only outnumbered theGreeks, but also owned most (close to 84 percent) of the land. Had there beenno steady outflow, since 1923, of the Turkish population, the number wouldhave reached perhaps half a million today. For the last eight decades, a fewhundred-thousand Turks, who have a high rate of population growth, leftWestern Thrace, mostly going to Turkey. It is on account of constantmigration that their number has stayed the same and that they have lostproperty, now owning a third of the land.^Western Thrace presently contains three administrative provinces:Xanthi with capital Xanthi (tskece); Rhodope with capital Komotini(Giimulcine); and Evros with capital Alexandroup (Dedeagac.). The Turksliving there, now reduced to a minority, on account of migrations, strippingsof citizenship and new Greek settlements, do not represent a separatistFor a Greek source on the exchange of populations and other agreementsbetween Greece and Turkey that followed Lausanne, see: DimitriPantzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and ItsImpact Upon Greece, The Hague, 1962. A Turkish source: T.C.,Hariciye Vekaleti, Lozan Konferansi: 1922-1923, Istanbul, 1340-1924.A Turkish source on the establishment of a Turkish republic in WesternThrace: Ahmet Kayihan, Lozan ve Bati Trakya: 1913'de Ilk TurkCumhuriyetl, Istanbul, 1967.Turkish delegation at Lausanne stated that the Turks in Western ThraceWere 129,120 (67 percent) and the Greeks 33,910 (18 percent). The Greeksclaimed that the Turks were slightly above 100,000, but neverthelessconstituting the overwhelming majority. The Turks also insisted that theyowned most of the land while the Greeks, being largely traders, possessedonly five percent. The Greeks contested these figures as well, admitting,however, that most of the land belonged to the Turks. Great Britain, Cmd.1814, Turkey No. 1 (1923). Lausanne Conference on Near EasternAffairs, London.1992] THE ETHNIC TURKISH MINORITY IN WESTERN THRACE, GREECE 91movement but have been asserting for decades that the policy of the GreekGovernment was one of deliberate discrimination with a long-term aim ofassimilation. Over the years, the Turks have complained of denial of ethnicidentity, discrimination and abuse of human rights.6 It is only recently thatnon-Turkish sources have come to recognize the restrictions on the lives ofthe Turks and the degrading treatment accorded to them.7 For decades, theGreek public and the government stood unmoved to the cries of the Turkishminority for justice.8 The government started taking some steps in mid-19916Two Turkish sources: Haluk Baytilken, 'Turkish Minorities in Greece",Turkish Yearbook of International Affairs: 1963, Ankara,Faculty of Political Science, 1965, pp. 145-164; Baskm Oran, Tflrk-Yunan lllskilerinde Bati Trakya Sorunu, Ankara, MUlkiyelilerBirligi Vakfi, 1986.'For a long time it was assumed that Greece, being the 'cradle of Westerncivilization', could not possibly mistreat its own minorities and thatdiscussions of democracy ought to stop at the borders of this country. Forinstance. The Economist of London mentioned several Balkan minoritiesbut failed to report on the Turks, Macedonians and the Albanians of Greece.For my reply, see: The Economist, 22 June 1985, 6. Authoritativeworks came in the 1980s: Hugh Poulton, The Balkans, London, MinorityRights Group, 1991; Helsinki Watch, Destroying Ethnic Identity:the Turks of Greece, New York, 1990; Minority Rights Group,Minorities in the Balkans, London; Fred De Jong, Names,Religious Denomination and Ethnicity of Settlements inWestern Thrace, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1980; 'The Muslim Minority inWestern Thrace", pp. 95-100, in G. Ashworth, ed.. World Minoritiesin the Eighties, London; Iwao Kamozawa, The Case of Turks InWestern Thrace, Tokyo, Mediterranean Studies Research Group,Hitotsubashi University, 1982; Bjorn Cato Funnemark, The TurkishMinority in Greece, tr. by Ame Bakke, Oslo, the Norwegian HelsinkiCommittee. 1991. Professor Erik Siesby made the following statement atthe Conference in the Folketinget, Denmark (1990): "In Greece the Turkishminority is much too small to present any danger to the society. Thetreatment of this population as second class citizens has harmed, not onlythe ethnic Turks, but even more the reputation of Greece as a civilizedsociety." Minority Rights Group, Minority Rights in Europe,London, 1990.°K.G. Andreades, a Greek writer, formerly an officer of the jendarmerie inWestern Thrace, asserts that Greece "protected and still protects, in the bestway possible, the Muslims living within its boundaries". He ends his bookwith the following conclusion: "It can also be taken for granted that thereneed be no fear for the Moslems of Cyprus when this island comes to beunited again with Greece". K.G. Andreades, The Moslem Minority inWestern Thrace, Thessaloniki, Institute for Balkan Studies. 1956;Amsterdam, Adolf M. Hakkert, 1980, p. 59. Another Greek author tries tolink Turkey's interest in the Turks of Western Thrace to "Turkishirredentism". Paul Hidiroglou, Western Thrace In the Light of theNational Ideal of the Turks, Athens, Herodotos, 1990. On the other92 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL XXHto improve conditions for the Turks, who nevertheless still face importantproblems.II. Legal Guarantees and Positive Steps:The Greek Government's obligations to guarantee the rights of theTurkish community stems from a number of treaties and agreements.According to Articles 37-45 of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the Greek andthe Turkish governments are obliged to protect the respective minorities intheir territories. They agreed to provide equality before the law, protection oflife and liberty, free use of any language, free exercise of religion, the right toestablish and control their own institutions and schools, the right to giveinstruction in their own languages, freedom of movement and all other rightsenjoyed by the majority. To be more precise, all these guarantees werementioned (in Articles 37-44) in respect to the Greek minority in Istanbuland the last one (Article 45) shortly but equally bindingly stated that thesame rights were recognized by Greece in relation to its Muslim minority.The safeguards under the Lausanne Treaty were mainly political and cultural,the Greek minority in Turkey being generally well off economically TheTurkish minority in Western Thrace, on the other hand, needed, not onlypolitical and cultural protection, but also economic safeguards. In any case,not even the former was observed to the extent of denying the existence of anethnic Turkish community.Although the Lausanne text employed the term 'Muslim1, what wasmeant, in terms of Greece's relations with Turkey, was the Turks, as manyother successive documents identified them as such. For instance, the Greekand the Turkish governments signed (1968) a protocol guaranteeing that eachcountry would respect the ethnic and religious consciousness of the Greek andTurkish minorities. Greece also signed a number of international documents,including the European Convention for Human Rights, which establishesbroad guarantees for fundamental freedoms. The Helsinki Final Act (1975)specifically requires the signatories to respect the rights of nationalminorities. Further, the documents of the follow-up meetings of theConference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) ensure the rightsof the same.The Greek Constitution also protects the rights of the Turkishminority in Western Thrace. According to the letter of the constitution, allcitizens are equal before the law, withdrawal of Greek citizenship is permittedhand, a five-page report, issued by a group of Greak scientists, representingthe Greek Greens Party and led by Panayotis Dimitros, an academics fromthe Economic Faculty in Athens, recognized that Greece was discriminatingagainst the Turkish community. Reported in the Turkish Daily News,Ankara, 25 July 1990.1992] THE ETHNIC TURKISH MINORITY IN WESTERN THRACE, GREECE 93only in voluntary acquisition of another citizenship or in case of acts contraryto national interests, all persons enjoy full protection of their life, honor andfreedom, measures restrictive of free movement are prohibited, and the pressis free.But in spite of these international and national guarantees, the Turkishminority is suffering from serious human rights abuses. The Greekgovernment has allowed ethnic Turks, since 1991, to buy or sell land andhouses, repair dwellings and mosques, obtain licenses for tractors, trucks andcars, and open shops. None of these was possible until very recently. PrimeMinister Constantine Mitsotakis went to Western Thrace in May 1991 andadmitted that mistakes had been made in the past. Some of these errors havebeen corrected, but other blunders still continue.III. Continuing Problems:The core of the conflict is that the Greek Government denies even theexistence of an ethnic Turkish minority and moreover subjects it to adegrading treatment in a number of ways. Although the Turks living there arethe sons and daughters of Turkish-speaking people who settled centuries ago,the Greeks refer to them as 'Hellenic Muslims', which is an inept andmisleading description. A great majority of them are Muslims in terms ofreligion, which was a criterion for identification, in accordance with Islamiclaw and practice. The Turks, however, also have a national or ethnic identity,just like the other Muslims in Greece, such as the Pomaks or even the non-Muslims like the Vlahs.There were brief times when the Turkish identity was recognized. Twoorders, dated 1954 and 1955 and signed by the (Greek) Chief Administrator ofThrace, pursuant to the instructions of the Prime Minister, asked allconcerned to use the terms of 'Turk' or Turkish', instead of 'Muslim'.9 Forsome time, protocols for educational programs referred to Turkish schools',old photographs showed inscriptions on the buildings as Turkish elementaryschool', diplomas identified the holder as 'Turk', and some textbooks weredescribed as 'Turkish books'.The change occurred later, especially after the communique of thepresident of the Greek Parliament, dated 10 October 1985, in which he statedthat the term 'Greek Muslims' must henceforth be used. The Greek courtseffectively outlawed the use of the word 'Turkish'. Officials conformed to theorder first by removing all signs which carried that word. It culminated withthe arrest and imprisonment of two Turkish candidates (Dr. Sadik Ahmet andIsmail S.erif), who ran in elections (of June and November 1989) for theGreek Parliament and who by name referred to the Turkish minority. They9Andreades, op. cit., 14-15.94 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL XXIIwere charged with violating the Penal Code (Article 192) by 'openly andindirectly inciting citizens to violence or creating rifts among the populationat the expense of social peace1 simply by the use of the word Turkish1. Theirtrial, filmed by the Dutch TV, was a political demonstration, after whichmobs of Greeks attacked Turkish shops and offices and beat ethnic Turks.Several foreigners and Greeks concurred that not a single Christian-ownedpremises was attacked, and that there was little or no police intervention.10It is still illegal in Greece for a Turkish association to be calledTurkish'. Youth and professional organizations, the few that used to exist,were all closed down by the order of the courts for having that name in theirtitles.The freedom of expression of the Turks are also violated. The Turkishminority brings out single-sheet newspapers (like Dr. Ahmet's Balkan) inTurkish, but similar publications printed in Turkey are not allowed entry intoWestern Thrace, and propriators or writers are too often punished either byimprisonment or heavy fines for articles critical of the Greek Government.Turkish TV and at times Turkish radio broadcasts are jammed. Even in 1992a press conference by the Greek section of the London-based Minority RightsGroup was banned at government instigation.11The three chief problem areas in education, which is of great concernto the Turkish community, are textbooks, teachers and lack of place insecondary schools for Turkish children. Generations of young Turks havebeen using the same obsolete educational material, with pages torn ormissing. The 1968 protocol allows Turkey to send schoolbooks, which areheld up by the Greek officials. The Turkish minority objected to the use of aTurkish language book, prepared by the Greek GovernmentThe Turkish teachers often have difficulty in obtaining permits fromthe Greek Embassy in Ankara. The Greek teachers offer courses in ancientGreek, Greek language, history, sociology and related subjects, and thechildren consequently follow only half of the program, teachers from Turkeynot being available. Local Turks, with degrees in teaching from Turkey aregenerally not allowed to fill the vacancies although their salaries are met bythe Turkish community. The non-Turkish teachers, trained in a specialschool in Thessaloniki, are either selected among the Pomaks of from peoplewho are either unqualified or know little Turkish.There are not enough places in the Turkish high schools for all whowish to pursue further education. The Turkish community cannot get the10Athens News, 4 and 10-11 February 1990.nThe Financial Times, 2 February 1992.1992] THE ETHNIC TURKISH MINORITY IN WESTERN THRACE, GREECE 95permission to build new schools or use the existing empty space. Accordingto a protocol (1952), reflected in Greek law no. 2203, the director of the(Turkish) Celal Bayar High School has to be Turkish. The present one isGreek. Since an entrance examination in Greek determines who will beenrolled in the two Turkish secondary schools, many youngsters prefer to goTurkey to pursue education. There is a suspicion that the Greek Governmentwants the young Turks to go to Turkey because most of them may not comeback and eventually draw their families as well. In any case, their diplomasare not officially recognized when they return to Greece. Or they might loosetheir citizenship altogether.The notorious Article 19 of the Greek Nationality Law (1955) statesthat "a person of non-Greek ethnic origin leaving Greece without theintention of returning may be declared as having lost Greek nationality..."This article, amply applied in the past in the case of the Turks and still inuse, violates the Greek Constitution (Article 4) and the ConcludingDocument of the Vienna Follow-up Meeting to the CSCE (1989). ThoseTurks who go abroad to study or their parents who leave the Greek soil tovisit their sons and daughters where they receive their education find out,while trying to return, that they have lost their citizenship. Police merelyasks the opinion of the neighbors if the Turks in question intend to return ornot. If one of the replies is 'no', then, a note to the Ministry of Interior leadsto the cancellation of his citizenship, without even notifying the person.There are even cases of those who lost their citizenship while away doingmilitary service. There is no judicial review, and appeals are expensive andtime-consuming.The Greek Government restricts the freedom of movement of theTurks by seizing their passports. Such confiscation, without a hearing and aright of judicial review, violates the Greek Constitution and the internationalagreements which Greece has signed. The freedom of movement of the Turksis further hindered on the basis of the so-called 'restricted military areas', i.e.,land bordering on Bulgaria, where the inhabitants may move only as far as 30kilometers from their dwellings and where the whole area is closed anywaybetween midnight and 5:00 a.m.The Turks generally face a degrading treatment. The Greek policefrequently harasses them and outside observers who try to help them.Lawyers who represent the Turkish minority are often called in forinterrogation, their passports are confiscated, their homes are watched andforeigners who investigate this situation also become targets, involvingbeatings by the police and the mob. Such harassment has lessened, but stillexists.Ethnic Turks are discriminated against in employment and in theprovision of services. They come up to special difficulties especially in civil% THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXIIservice appointments, very few and low level of which go to the Turks. Theyare deprived of certain public services, such as obtaining private telephones,which are readily available to the Greeks.The government awards free land to some Greek Christians. The landsof the Turks, on the other hand, are frequently confiscated. Although land isso important in this farming area, it has been seized a number of times,allegedly to build the University of Thrace or an open-air prison, but only asmall portion has been used as school buildings. The Turks loose morefertile land at a significantly faster rate. This comparison is more distressingfor the Turks since they are dependent on agriculture. In some instances, asevident in the Inhanh (Evlalon) case in the Xanthi district, the Greek courtsfrequently rule that the Turkish farmers are 'unlawful interferents' and the landin question is not returned to their owners in spite of the over-ruling decisionof a higher court. ^Although all Greek citizens have the right to vote in elections, justicehas not been done to the Turks in this respect as well. In several recentparliamentary elections the Turkish-Greek border was closed to bar thoseTurks returning to Greece from casting their vote; bus service to WesternThrace was cancelled, and air connection blocked; Greek soldiers were broughtin from other parts of the country to outweigh the ethnic Turks; the numberof ballot boxes diminished from one election to another, ethnic Turks werenot allowed to vote until late in the afternoon; polling stations in Turkishareas were closed early; vote totals were not announced in some areas; novotes at all for Turkish candidates were listed in such a Turkish stronghold asthe village of Sofular, and the applications of the Turkish candidates wererejected in the wake of the elections.The Turks are also no longer able to elect their own muftis, orreligious leaders. The Treaty of Lausanne provides for the free exercise ofreligion, including the selection of muftis. The Greek Law No. 2345 (1920)also states that the denominational heads must be elected by the respectivecommunities. And the CSCE documents recognize religious freedom for theminorities. There are three muftis in Eastern Thrace, one for each administrativedistrict. Following the death of the Komotini mufti (1985), theGreek authorities appointed a new one without consulting its Muslimcitizens. A new law (No. 1920, 1990) further announced that the muftiswould henceforth be appointed by the government for ten years. The Turkishminority, nevertheless, elected its own muftis, creating in each communitypairs, one appointed and the other democratically elected. The former is paid12Baskin Oran, "The Inhanh Land Dispute and the Status of the Turks inWestern Thrace", Journal, London, Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs,9/2 (1984), 360-370.1992] THE ETHNIC TURKISH MINORITY IN WESTERN THRACE, GREECE 97by the government, and the latter supported financially by the community.When the Muslim Turkish community held a demonstration (1991) inXanthi to protest the new law, the Greeks attacked Turkish dwellings andshops, the police doing virtually nothing to stop them.The Turks are not allowed to control their own charitable foundations(waqfs). The Treaty of Lausanne and the CSCE documents provide thatminorities shall have the right to establish, maintain and control theireducational, cultural and religious institutions. Although the directors of thewaqfs were elected by the community before the military junta (1967), Greeklaw No. 1091 (1980) brought the practice of a board of five administrators,selected by the Greek nomarch. The latter are the real administrators althoughthe appointed muftis seem to be technically involved.Being religious endowments supported by the local people, the waqfsare also expected to be in charge of Muslim Turkish architectural heritage inGreece.1-* The heritage in question is the immovable cultural works of acivilization that played an important role in an area on which there are now24 nation-states. It is, in fact, a mutual heritage fostered by local variations.For the Turks, it is a part of their cultural identity. Bu in Greece, theOttoman Empire is generally considered as non-existent. The terms "post-Byzantine" or "pre-modern" are used instead, when referring to the OttomanEmpire. The touristic publications mention Ottoman invasions only.Ignoring the facts of recent history has eased the destruction of the culturalheritage belonging to the Ottoman period. This heritage has been destroyeddeliberately in various periods. There are still a number of examples whichhave survived but only left exposed to the devastation of nature.IV. Conclusion:When an independent Greek state was established in 1830, a Greeknation still had to emerge. The 18th century Ottomans considered the Greeksas part of the Orthodox millet (or religious group), and the Greeks describedthemselves not as "Hellenes", but as "Romaioi", the Byzantine identification,the Turkish version of which was "Rum". The Greeks were widely but thinlydistributed within the Ottoman Empire from the Adriatic to the Black Sea13Tilrk KulturUne Hizmet Vakfi, The Problem of Protection of theOttoman Turkish Architectural Heritage in Greece, Istanbul,1992. M. Kiel, "Notes on the History of Some Turkish Monuments inThessaloniki and Their Founders," Balkan Studies, 2, (1970), 126-156;M. Kiel, "Observation on the History of Northern Greece during the TurkishRule," Balkan Studies, 12 (1971), 415-462; Filiz Yenisehirlioglu,Ottoman Architectural Works Outside Turkey, Ankara, Dis.is.leriBakanhgi, 1989.98 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXIIcoasts, and there were Greek merchant communities in many WesternEuropean cities.Reminding the dichotomy between the Slavophiles and Westernisersin Tsarist Russia, the Orthodox church resented the mixture of classics andrationalism, introduced by Adamantios Korais, but nevertheless accepted thenew concept of "Ellinismus", which reflected the whole Greek community inthe world and Greek civilization. Irrespective of the divisions between thetraditionalists and the westernizers and also between those who upheld a "pureGreek" language and who widely spoke the "demotic" variant, the Greeksseemed to agree on including within the Greek state all Greeks and landsconsidered by them to be Greek. This was the "Great Idea" (Megali Idea) thatmotivated many Greek intellectuals. The history of modern Greece isdominated by a process in which the Greek state expanded territorially whileEllinismos, as people and civilization, retreated.From the point of view of the Greeks, the Turks "stood on the way".The latter were either killed or forced to flee. This was also the tragic fate ofthe Balkan, Crimean and the Caucasian Muslims in general. Before the Greekrevolt (1821), a vast Muslim land existed from Bosnia to the eastern fringesof the Caucasus (and beyond), incorporating the Crimea and its hinterland inbetween. The Muslims were, not only the rulers there, but also constitutedeither the majority, plurality or sizable minorities. Millions were killed, andmore millions were made refugees. The new states were established on thesufferings of the departed Muslims, mostly Turks, who had lived on thoselands for five centuries or more. The Greek revolt, which had started with themurder of Ottoman officials, continued with ethnic cleansing because theTurks of Greece were on the way of a purely Greek state. Small pockets ofMuslims and Turks remained, nevertheless, in various parts of the Balkans,such as in Western Thrace.Greece, still judging contemporary Turkey by the memories of thelatter's Ottoman past, continues to ponder over real or mythologized losses.Greek failure to abandon the myth of ethnic homogeneity within its presentdayfrontiers is part of its new identity. Therefore, in Greek eyes, the Turksof Western Thrace are only a "Muslim minority", and Macedonians are nomore that "Slavophone Greeks".The Greek Government has taken some steps in 1991 to improveconditions in some areas for the Turkish minority. But important problemsremain. Associations and schools cannot call themselves 'Turkish1. Turkishlanguagepapers and books cannot be brought from Turkey into WesternThrace. Turkish TV is still jammed. Hundreds of Turks are deprived of theirGreek citizenship. Police still harasses ethnic Turks. They are discriminatedagainst in employment and in services. Their lands are confiscated. They facedifficulties in education, in elections and in the selection of their own1992] THE ETHNIC TURKISH MINORITY IN WESTERN THRACE, GREECE 99religious leaders. They cannot control their own charitable foundations. TheGreek Government should abide by its obligations under international andnational law to protect the Turkish minority's human rights.There have been many individual complaints, demonstrations andappeals by Turks of Western Thrace to outside bodies such as the UnitedNations and the Council of Europe. While the official Greek attitude seemsto be a deliberate policy of discrimination and assimilation, the situation hasthe potential of becoming more serious with the polarization of thecommunities in the whole of Western Thrace. Justice may be served andtension lowered when the Greek government abides by its obligations.

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Sunday, 6 December 2009

The Extended Fraud of the so called "EURO BUSINESS GUIDE" (Netherlands)

The Extended Fraud of the so called "EURO BUSINESS GUIDE" (Netherlands)


We are the Victims of the EURO BUSINESS GUIDE FRAUD. The scope of this web page is to protect innocent colleagues and innocent companies to sent money
We are the Victims of the EURO BUSINESS GUIDE FRAUD. The scope of this web page is to protect innocent colleagues and innocent companies to sent money to the so called EURO BUSINESS GUIDE (Scam)

Please, promote this web page everywhere and give links to us from your web pages, especially if you consider yourselvesvictims of the so called "EURO BUSINESS GUIDE"Euro Business Guide,P.O. Box 2021,3500GA UTRECHT,The Netherlands,Our story is as follows:7-8 months ago we received an email from some "company" (read FRAUD / SCAM / etc..)with the name EURO BUSINESS GUIDE.They asked us to give them permission to include our company in their catalogue. We did it, i.e. we gave information for our companyto them for inclusion in their Year Book.After that they asked us money. We refused.They sent us FAXes , several times asking us money.We replied to them that we do not want their services.Then, they asked it again and again.Finally we decided to make a phone call to them to stop disturbing us.We did it, but in vain.They continued sending us emails and FAX (clearly SPAM, great SPAM) askingus to pay them (actually for nothing!)Now, they asked from us 1124 EUR plus a Penalty of 300 because we did not pay them immediately with their first letter.As we found via the web, they are common frauders.It seems that the authorities in the Netherlands stopped their illegal activities and now they move their company to West Indies (maybe they discovered also a taxation paradise)At the moment they have also these emailsinfo@eurobusinessguide.netalexandra@eurobusinessguide.netTelephone: 0031 203 120 377
It seems that their old name was:Camping Guide, Tourist Directory Restaurant Guide, Travel Agency Tourist Directory and Tourist Directory Guide D'Hotelsbut because of their extremely bad reputation, they launched the name EURO BUSINESS GUIDEThey also claim in their emails and letter thatLet's continue with our story:We have a small company and they made us a phone call telling us to insert us in their guide. Nothing else. Stupidly we told yes, because we did not know the sequel. Then, they started sending us FAX every week asking us to send them 1000 EUR.We have never recalled to authorized them such a thing. Of course we shall not pay.Now, they asked from us 1124 EUR plus a Penalty of 300 because we did not pay them immediately with their first letter.We wonder now how many other companies are victims of them exist Please, send me an email because my company is also victimpanos.danilakis (AT) gmail.comWe found also the following in the web pagehttp://stopecg.blogspot.com/2006/11/euro-business-guide.htmlEuro Business GuideMisleading ‘contracts’ sent via EmailWhen your company starts to get a bad reputation what is the best thing to do, change the name! Or at least spin off a new company with a slightly different name. We first saw the tactic employed by Novachannel AG, where we have had reports of many different names on the mailshots E.g. Camping Guide, Tourist Directory Restaurant Guide, Travel Agency Tourist Directory and Tourist Directory Guide D'HotelsNext up came the ECG who at the start of this year began mailing new forms under the trading name E.C.G., S.L. the forms had titles such as Industrie En Handel 2006 and Commerce Et Industrie 2006.Now another guide that has been getting bad press has done it. EU Company Directory has begun sending new forms using the trading name Euro Business Guide See contract (PDF)This contract is, in our opinion, more misleading than the previous one (which has lead to many disputes). Euro Business Guide are currently sending it via unsolicited email, the emails we have seen originate in Timisoara, Romania, printed versions may also exist.Analysis of the main misleading elements.The first thing that meets the eye is the Euro symbol encircled by the stars of the EU, for anyone in a recent Accession Country (Quite possibly reading this in a language other than their mother tongue) this could give the impression that the form has official EEC sanction.Scan Right and in bold Writing it reads Company Data Control, Hardly an indication that this is an advertising solicitation!Depending on how you read the document, you will then come across one of 2 bodies of text, let’s give Euro Business Guide the benefit of the doubt and suggest that next you will read.To update your company pro­file, please print, complete and return this form(Updating is free of charge). Only sign if you want to place an insertion.Yes the 'Free of charge' bit is in bold on the form, at least this sentence contains the only indication in the upper part of the document that this purports to be a contract (Only sign if you wish to place an insertion) this is the favoured phrase used by many of the guides featured on stopECG.org. We consider it unacceptably vague; why not state the price here?Then the block of text on the Left….Dear Sirs,We are compiling information for The EURO Business Guide. We wish to be able to inform other companies about your activities and what languages are spoken in your company. In order to list your company in the internet for European businesses, just ­ll in and return the form. Any additional material of your company that can make your pro­le up to date is very welcome. We thank you for your cooperation.Again, no indication that this purports to be a contract.But the peach is the bit at the bottom under the word ORDER, We have seen many so-called contracts over the years, never one where the text is as dense as this, printed entirely in capitals the font appears stretched vertically making it almost unreadable without a magnifying glass, in common with most of these contracts the price is written as EURO 965 (A currency symbol is more likely to be spotted than the name as a word)Go on, read the block of text at 100% magnification and see how quickly you can spot the price! In case you are struggling we transcribed the text belowFinally it should be noted that the email to which this form was attached states:‘Please print and fill the enclosed document and send it back to:Euro Business Guide,P.O. Box 2021,3500GA UTRECHT,The Netherlands,updating is free of charge!If you want to unsubscribe send an email to eurobusinessguide@yahoo.com’Within the email there is no mention whatsoever of contracts or costs.Offer to the directorWe wait with interest to see if Euro Business Guide will attempt to enforce this ‘contract’ in the courts and if they do what their arguments will be. Or will they follow the example of the guides they appear to mimic and threaten court action without ever taking it, instead relying on the small percentage of signers who pay up when hassled.Of course Director, Cornelis Boot, may wish to post a response here. If he would like to defend this document or his companies marketing tactics in general StopECG will gladly publish his comments.There is advice for people in dispute with EU Company Directory and Euro Business Guide on the stopECG website.Full Text of the Order Section readsTHE SIGNING OF THIS DOCUMENT REPRESENTS THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS AND THE CONDITIONS STATED IN ‘THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR INSERTION’ ON WEB PAGE: http://www.eurobusinessguide.net/ THE SIGNING IS LEGALLY BINDING AND GIVES YOU THE RIGHT OF AN INSERTION ON THE ONLINE DATA BASE OF THE EURO BUSINESS GUIDE, WHICH CAN BE ACCESSED VIA THE INTERNET. AND A CD ROM WITH EUROPEAN BUSINESSES IS GRANTED, ALL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONTRACT CONDITIONS STATED IN ’THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR INSERTION’ ON WEB PAGE: WWW.EUROBUSINESSGUIDE.NET. THE VALIDATION TIME OF THE CONTRACT IS THREE YEARS AND STARTS ON THE EIGHTH DAY AFTER SIGNING THE CONTRACT. THE INSERTION IS GRANTED AFTER SIGNING AND RECEIVING THIS DOCUMENT BY THE SERVICE PROVIDER. I HEREBY ORDER A SUBSCRIPTION WITH SERVICE PROVIDER EU BUSINESS SERVICES LTD ‘EURO BUSINESS GUIDE’. I WILL HAVE AN INSERTION TO ITS DATA BASE FOR THREE YEARS. THE PRICE PER YEAR IS EURO 965. THE SUBSCRIPTION WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY EXTENDED EVERY YEAR FOR ANOTHER YEAR, UNLESS SPECIFIC WRITTEN NOTICE IS RECEIVED BY THE SERVICE PROVIDER OR THE SUBSCRIBER TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE EXPIRATION OF THE SUBSCRIPTION. YOUR DATA WILL BE RECORDED. THE PLACE OF JURISDICTION IN ANY DISPUTE ARISING IS THE SERVICE PROVIDER’S ADDRESS. THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE SERVICE PROVIDER AND THE SUBSCRIBER IS GOVERNED BY THE CONDITIONS STATED IN ‘THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR INSERTION’ ON WEBPAGE:WWW.EUROBUSINESSGUIDE.NETLabels: , , # posted by stopECG @ 4:48 PM Comments:I also got the same contract.Unfortunatly i did sign and stamp it.This company is annoying me till 7.4.2007 to pay 965 EUR for ther advertisment.The currency is in not right form EUR 965.I am refusing to pay such payment as i though this is free of charge.They send me 2 reminders ,after second one they agreed to forgive the Late payment fee EUR 96+administration fee EUR 35 )again in wrong currency ).If there is some else who did the same mistake ,please contact me on NGanna@seznam.cz or skype name Novotna Ganna .Good Luck# posted by Ganna Novotna : 2:34 PM, July 04, 2007 I received the email this morning with a PDF contract attached, the 'fine print' of the order said 990 Euros. I checked out the website and they have terms on there which state 'Unless agreed otherwise beforehand by the service provider, the price stated corresponds to the price of one year insertion. The price of the first three years is Euro 2970. In the event of the extension of the contract under the terms defined in the order section, the price of the access for each year shall continue to be that originally stated.'Thought this may be of interest.Good luckSandra# posted by Sandra : 8:20 AM, December 11, 2007 I have the same situation, but I did not sign, it was only stamp. Now I have 2 reminders about payment, i refusal to pay money, because unsigned order has no validity. I have sent official letters to Utrecht and Nevis. What can I do?Please, advice!Best regards,Lucy NigrovskayaTallinn# posted by Lucy : 7:16 AM, January 18, 2008 I would to inform you, that i have the same situation, but we did not sign, only stamped like confirmation of information. Now i have two reminders, I have wrote a letters, that unsigned order has no validity. What can I do? Please advice!Best regardsLyudmila NigrovskayaThe secretary Loigoinfo@loigo.ee# posted by Lucy : 7:17 AM, January 18, 2008 go to this website http://www.stopecg.org/eu_company_directory.htm , write to all authorities and keep denying to pay. If you have any questions you can email me on ella@jongleurs.com# posted by Ella : 3:27 PM, February 27, 2008 Hello from Bulgaria also!I have unfortunatelly signed plus stamped the form. I got the reminders, faxes, emails, even today telephone call. Please, advice how did you manage with these "people". Miss Neli NachevaGospodinov i sinove LTD9300 Dobrich, Bulgaria00359886400430nelinacheva@gs-bg.com# posted by Neli : 11:18 AM, April 24, 2008 I am the marketing director of a small company, I signed, stamped and sent the letter more, than one year ago. After findig out this was a trick, immediately sent back the whole package, incl. CD and a complaining letter. Since then we had some annoying letters, e-mails, even from some lawyer - but we never paid, never replied. Now I think we will never have more bothering letters and similar. So I reccomend NOT to pay and just keep not responding to them. Regards, Csaba# posted by Csaba_A : 2:57 PM, April 28, 2008 They are now using Waldberg & Hirsch Global Debt Collections Ltd, www.whgcollections.com if this proves to be a real company they may wish to drop this client Euro Biz when they see the amount of MPs amd MEPs in Europe calling for the closure of this company.Remeber the last lot got there offices raided by the Swizz police and are now being investigated fully for fraud.# posted by Davies Law : 1:54 AM, May 01, 2008 Guys,Don't worry!Waldberg&Hirsch is NOT registered dutch company according to the Dutch KvK! Every single thing is a big fraud and every single scrap of paper you receive from them has no validity at all!Relax and joke with them when you have time to waste!Regards from Belgrade....Nenad# posted by Nenad : 1:49 PM, June 20, 2008 hi my name is eliei am the director of a company in dubai.I signed and stamped the paper like you and they are sending me mails the last one was from waldberg and hirsch asking for the money but i can assure you that writing an amount of money in numbers without letters is not accepted because u may read it with a point between numbers and the small letters they are using at the end is a kind of trick anyways i hope that we support each other in this similar situation and i am spreading the news in dubai in the arab emirates among the companies i know to pay more attention and i hope we can stop these people from misleading othersgood luck# posted by elio : 1:40 PM, June 22, 2008 Hello everyone,I can see I`m anotherone in a row. I also signed and stamped. After realizing that was a mistake. I immediately wrote to 'unsubscribe@eucompanydirectory.com' in order to cancel my registration and I sent that bloody CD-ROM back too. So far I have received 2 letters. One was a reminder about payment for EUR 995. So I replied about canceling that registration again. After that I have received another letter stressing the terms and conditions I should be fulfilling.I`m glad I came across this website where I can get more information about this dirt.Thanks for you commentsKamilizbar@email.cz# posted by Kamil : 8:47 AM, July 03, 2008 Hi, my name`s Magdalena and I`m a vice president of a Polish company that has been also cheated by this Euro Business Guide.Guys, did you finally pay them anything? I am still receiving letters from them saying we can cancel the 2nd and 3rd year, but we should pay 990euro for the first year (plus extra fees for late payment etc.)Anyways, do you have any idea how to stop this swindle? I just informed some of my friends about the whole process of "ordering insertion" so that they would not make mistake of sending them an "order". Any other ideas?I feel so bad we all felt into a trap,good luck!Magdalena FilaberPossible Ltd# posted by magdam_pl : 4:39 PM, September 18, 2008 Love the Internet sometimes...Like all the above, received the stupid CD, sent it all back registered post, but then emails/faxes etc, and then this Waldberg/Hirsch letter. I was pretty worried as i thought there may be plenty they could do. But then i googled the solicitors and found you guys! Cheers nice one... I may now toy with them now and again for fun. Also when you actually look at the letter...No reference number / another deadline after the so-called final deadline / Signed by Mr K Van Ruler...! They're having a laugh...# posted by highgate : 7:11 PM, October 15, 2008 EU Business Guide and EU Business Services has been trying to extort money from us for sometimes. They have been using our registered name to promote their so called website without our concent. We have billed Ramona for using our name to promote their website. They did not pay the bills neither took our name off their scam website. Currently they owe us EURO 1.8 Million. 300EURO per day until they remove our company from their scam site. I have been reminding them to pay and billing them and their lawyer for nearly 3 months without a single mail or beep out of them. Wonder where the crooks are now. I just saw you guys today but my tactic was to go for head on confrontation. My policy is that if you want to remove dirt you get dirty. So I got dirty first to remove the dirt.I too got the invoice and Debt collector notice. Since then I have been having a field day sending the most abusest mails anyone can send. To both Debt collector and the EU Business guide / services mails.Most unfortunate that these crooks did not reply.Rasheed# posted by Ibrahim : 6:23 PM, December 04, 2008 Hi gays, what a relief actually finding this blog. THANKS to his Author.We are a Bulgarian company. In July 2008, I signed and stamped the order too. After receiving the invoice for the 990 euro we rejected it right away, but up no now we have received the full collection of letters, reminders, final reminders and finally the letter from the Waldberg&Hirsh. I have to admit that it was quite stressing. I have even engaged our layer to search some legal barriers against these imposters.Now we will send a signal to the authorities in Bulgaria and those in Brussels hoping for a reaction.Our contact for possible common actions:Sofia 1000, Bulgaria, 6 Septemvri Str. n.18Tel. +3592 9889470 Fax. +3592 9889472 dimitrov@metromedia.bg www.metromedia.bg Good luck to you All!Alex Dimitrov
at 9:51 PM

1 comments:

Adyana said...
I am the Asst. meeting director of one company in Jakarta, I signed, stamped and sent the letter more, than 2 months ago. After findig out this was a trick, until Today they still sending our company the Invoice and reminding letter and I refused to paid and also I've already informed to The Netherlands Embassy Office here in Jakarta and they said they will help me regarding this case and also because I'm not the first one who reported this Freud to the Embassy - Thanks - Adyana
I participate also in this blog: http://junk-conferences.blogspot.com

August 24, 2009 10:22

Thursday, 3 December 2009

Justin Rowlatt embarks on a 6,500 mile "low carbon" journey around the United States

Taking buses and trains, and even hitchhiking across America, he meets coal miners and car manufacturers, activists and politicians, a pig farmer and a Hollywood star.
He goes ice fishing in Michigan, finds a thriving wind industry in the oil state of Texas, and in Detroit he drives a billion dollar car of the future.
Along the way he finds a divided nation. The White House has gone green. President Obama and his team have high ambitions for tackling America's emissions but others see his plans as an attack on fundamental American freedoms.
So who will win? And can America help save the world?

More than 20 countries plan to send more troops to Afghanistan following a US decision to deploy an extra 30,000 there, Nato officials have said.

The news comes as the alliance's foreign ministers gather in Brussels for two days of talks.
They are expected to focus on a request by US President Barack Obama for Nato allies to send some 10,000 more troops.
A Nato spokesman said members were set to pledge more than 5,000, but more army and police trainers were needed.
Several European nations have been reluctant to commit more forces to the eight-year-old conflict.
But Italian Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa told the Corriere della Sera newspaper on Thursday that Rome would send about 1,000 extra troops to Afghanistan. It currently has 3,200 soldiers there.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, speaking after a meeting with Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, indicated that Russia would also do its part in Afghanistan.
"We are ready to support these efforts, guarantee the transit [of troops], take part in economic projects and train police and the military," he said.
Meanwhile, the German parliament has voted to extend by a year the mandate allowing the government to send troops to Afghanistan, but did not lift the upper limit of soldiers, currently set at 4,500.
'Significant shortfalls'
Speaking on Thursday ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting, Nato spokesman James Appathurai said: "There are well over 20 countries that are indicating or have already indicated that they intend to increase their troops numbers in Afghanistan.

On Thursday in Washington, President Barack Obama is holding a jobs summit, focused on job creation.

With the US unemployment rate above 10% for the first time in 27 years, a sense of urgency is growing.
On Thursday in Washington, President Barack Obama is holding a jobs summit, focused on job creation.
Despite his inclusion of business leaders among the 130 experts attending the summit, any new spending plans aimed at reducing unemployment will run into opposition from Republicans in Congress.
They are already irritated by the billions of dollars spent on emergency bail-outs for banks and carmakers, begun under one of their own, President George W Bush.
Running up budget deficits to be paid for by future generations has a bad name in Washington. So does "big government".
Recession fears
But an economist on the conservative side (he advised Republican presidential candidate, John McCain in 2008), Mark Zandi of Economy.com, says deficits are a big concern, but not something we can afford to worry about right now.
"That's a problem not for 2009, not for 2010. That's a problem for 2011, 2012 and beyond," he says.
"We have to make sure that we don't go back into a recession, because if we go back into recession, the cost to taxpayers will be even greater.
"The deficits will be measurably larger, so I think it's important to spend more money now."
Mr Zandi says some government spending needs to be focused on state and local governments, whose tax revenues have fallen, so that they do not have to lay off workers.

Barack Obama is searching for new ways to fight unemployment
Another top priority is unemployment benefits, which normally run out after six months in the US, though they have been extended in states with the highest unemployment rates.
Mr Zandi sees continuing benefits to unemployed workers as key to maintaining demand, because people who do not have money do not buy things.
That can lead to a downward spiral: if consumers do not consume, businesses cut back on workers, who then have no money to spend either.
Long-term solutions
Another area where Mr Zandi feels the government can make a unique contribution is providing credit to small and medium-sized businesses.
After last year's credit crisis, banks are still reluctant to lend. However, traditionally they have provided capital to smaller companies for start-up and expansion, and these smaller companies typically create the majority of new jobs in America.

A suicide bomber disguised as a woman has killed at least 19 people, including four government ministers, in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

A suicide bomber disguised as a woman has killed at least 19 people, including four government ministers, in the Somali capital Mogadishu.
Officials say the attack hit a hotel in the city during a crowded graduation ceremony for medical students from a local university.
Witnesses said the attack appeared to have targeted government officials.
Islamists are fighting the UN-backed government, which only controls small pockets of territory in the country. Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmad described the attack as a national disaster.
Information Minister Dahir Mohamud Gelle said the male bomber had been dressed in women's clothing, "complete with a veil and a female's shoes".
The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan, who was at the scene, said there was a huge explosion in the hotel's meeting hall where hundreds of people were gathered for the graduation.
Five government ministers were reported to have been in the hotel at the time.
Health Minister Qamar Aden Ali, Education Minister Ahmed Abdulahi Waayeel, Higher Education Minister Ibrahim Hassan Addow and Sports Minister Saleban Olad Roble were all killed, officials said.
A security official told the AFP news agency most of the dead were believed to be students. At least two journalists were also among the dead.
"A lot of my friends were killed," medical student Mohamed Abdulqadir told Reuters.
"I was sitting next to a lecturer who also died. He had been speaking to the gathering just a few minutes before the explosion."

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/12/suicide-bomber-disguised-as-woman-has.html

FAKE CONFERENCE IN CARDIOLOGY!!!

From : http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55895/


Confusion over an upcoming cardiology conference in Shanghai has forced registered scientists and clinicians to fight for reimbursements, including one who faced more than $2000 in spurious credit card charges he suspects are related to the conference.
Image: Wikimedia Commons"This is the strangest thing that I've ever been involved in -- it's very weird," said C. Richard Conti, a professor of cardiology at the University of Florida and editor-in-chief of Clinical Cardiology, who was listed as one the meeting's four plenary speakers and as such, paid no registration fees but has already purchased his airline ticket to Shanghai. A month or two ago, David Iovannisci, a geneticist studying heart disease at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California, received an email invitation to speak at the "1st International Cardiology Conngress" in Shanghai, to be held on 5-7 December of this year. The email, signed by Alex Li, provided a (now defunct) link to the conference program at www.internationalcardiologycongress.com, which listed several speakers from well-known institutions, both in the US and abroad. "It looked pretty legit," Iovannisci told The Scientist. He receives email invitations to conferences every once in a while, he said, which he has occasionally attended. He had never traveled to China, and decided to go. Two weeks or so after registering online -- and paying a $600 registration fee as well as about $1200 for a tour of the country arranged by the conference organizers -- he checked his credit card account and saw more than $2000 in false charges -- three charges of more than $700 each to "Great America," the California amusement park, and a single small charge for access to a wireless internet hotspot, both of which Iovannisci said he never visited. (His credit card company has since reimbursed him for all of the charges.) Just days later, on July 30, he received an email from a man named Andy Liu, who identified himself as a lawyer for BIT Life Sciences, a company based in Dalian, China, which, according to its Web site, claims as its mission "to create a global life science intelligent exchange channel," in part by organizing conferences on biomedical topics. The email, which Iovannisci forwarded to The Scientist, informed recipients that the conference "has been officially banned by the court according to Chinese Law." "The court has found out that the organizers have transferred the money to their personal accounts from the offical [sic] bank account which has been listed on their website," the email continued. "Whoever has paid the fees, please withdraw your payment as soon as possible." (Bold in original text.) An attached document, translated from Chinese for The Scientist by a fluent native speaker, asked victims affected by the fraud to contact the police at two Shanghai precincts, with the phone numbers listed in red. The email also informed recipients of a lawsuit "against the infringe of BIT's Intellectual Properties." Several researchers and clinicians who had been listed on a version of the program downloaded by Iovannisci from www.internationalcardiologycongress.com on July 30 (which he forwarded to The Scientist) said they had received the same email along with a flurry of other emails related to the conference. One of the listed speakers, Celine Fiset at the University of Montreal, said that after informally agreeing to a proposed talk title, she had decided not to go. She hadn't paid the registration fee, she said, because the organizers told her that her fees and expenses would be covered. They never confirmed that, though, and neither did she confirm her participation, she said. "I was not aware that my name was on their program," she wrote in an email. "You don't put the name of someone before they confirm their participation." Fiset's invitation to the conference had come from Tom Lee, who said he was the program coordinator of the International Cardiology Congress. But on July 23, Fiset too received an email from Andy Liu, the lawyer of BIT Life Sciences, describing "an unpleasant confusion" between "two Cardiology conferences." Lee and his colleagues, Liu said in the email, are "non-professional" and had usurped BIT "using our internal planned programs proposed last year." A document attached to the email from Liu laid out the conference plans of the two groups, from the speakers to the sponsorship. Another researcher, Rex Wright from the University of Alabama, received an invitation from the International Cardiology Congress via "Alex Li," and also agreed to go but paid no fees. Shortly thereafter, he received an almost identical invitation from BIT, whose Web site now lists a conference program. When he asked Alex Li for an explanation, he was told that the BIT conference was not legitimate. After several conflicting emails from both parties, "I saw too many flags waiving," Wright wrote in an email, so he withdrew on July 23. Hector Mobine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he received the emails and was listed on the program sent by Tom Lee and Alex Li, though he told The Scientist in an email that he had never expressed interest or otherwise replied to the invitation. "I actually paid for that airline ticket thinking that the first people who invited me were legit, and I would get reimbursed," said Conti, who was listed as one of the plenary speakers on both conference programs. After the emails he has received from both groups, "I have no idea who's doing what here," he said. The Web site www.internationalcardiologycongress.com is no longer functional; emails sent by The Scientist to the return address in emails sent to several researchers (tom@internationalcardiologycongress.com, presumably conference organizer Tom Lee) bounced, and there was no answer at a telephone number listed in a description of the conference posted on an online bulletin board. When contacted by The Scientist, Liu said in an email that his client would "prefer not to release any process of the case to the media at the moment." A representative of BIT, reached by phone via an interpreter, declined to give details about the case but said that the conference is going forward. The conference program listed on BIT's Web site, which had been blank between August 4 and August 11, now lists speakers filling some of the slots, though many of them differ from those in the original program. (Fiset, Wright, Mobine, and Iovannisci, for example, are not listed.) Several speakers on the program posted on BIT's Web site told The Scientist they had agreed to participate but had not paid their registration fee or booked their flight. Dan Fintel a cardiologist at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern University in Chicago, is listed as one of the plenary speakers on both the defunct program and the current program, and already booked a flight for himself, his wife and his son. But he said that BIT has now told him he must pay a $700 registration fee, unless he recruits four other cardiologists to participate in the meeting. In that case, in addition to waiving the fee, "they will give me $500 and pay my hotel," Fintel said. "I've never in my life been invited to speak at a symposium, and run a symposium, and pay an entrance fee," he said, adding that he is still interested in going, but doesn't plan to "waste a lot of my time" searching for cardiologists who might also attend. Plamen Ivanov, a physicist and sleep medicine researcher affiliated with both Boston University and Harvard Medical School, also paid approximately $600 to register for the conference via Tom Lee. After he began the process of canceling the charge, however, he received an email on August 11 from someone calling himself "Tom" and writing from the email address "icc_2009@126.com" -- presumably Tom Lee -- saying that the group's Web site and email "have been hacked continually." (Iovannisci, too, received a similar email from "Alex" at alex_cardiology@hotmail.com".) The email, which Ivanov forwarded to The Scientist, went on to say that the organization would refund Ivanov's money and "will hold the speech opportunity" and "offer the re-registration" for him. Indeed, he learned from his credit card company on August 18 that the money had been refunded. Neither "Tom" nor "Alex" replied to an email request for explanation sent by The Scientist to the addresses from which they wrote. Kerry Huang provided translating services for this article.

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

One more bogus organisation in UK is the WESSEX INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

A conference organised by the the Wessex Institute of Technology: "The Second International Conference on Design & Nature" entered into the debate between Evolutionists and Intelligent Design community. A paper by Microbiologist and Intelligent Design proponent Dr. Scott Minnich, entitled "Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits in pathogenic bacteria" was presented. It has been alleged that this paper was accepted through the peer review process. The Intelligent Design community claimed this to represent a scientific proof refuting Darwin's Theory of Evolution as the lack of such peer reviewed papers had been a criticism often levelled at ID proponents by evolutionary scientists.
This is not the first instance of controversy regarding WIT's approval. In 1995, WIT organised the VIDEA 1995 conference. Professor Werner Purgathofer, Vienna University of Technology, a member of the VIDEA 1995 program committee, became suspicious of the conference's peer review standards after not receiving any abstracts or papers for review. To confirm his suspicions, Professor Werner Purgathofer wrote four absurd and/or nonsensical "abstracts" and submitted them to the conference. All were "reviewed and conditionally accepted. He subsequently resigned from the program committee. http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/%7Ewp/videa.html and http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/%7Ewp/videa-paper.html

An impressive declaration from Prof. DARIO PETRI petri@ieee.org

An impressive declaration from Prof. DARIO PETRI petri@ieee.org

Dear Mario,

I believe that many IEEE (sponsored or co-sponsored) conferences are quite bogusbecause they have published a lot of fake papers from SCIgen automatic machineor papers of low quality...We must be careful, otherwise our massive policy for giving the name of IEEE to strangeorganizers will harm the reputation of IEEE conference, if we have kept any rank of such an old reputation.
Prof. DARIO PETRIIEEE Italy Sectionpetri@ieee.org
********************************************************Posted athttp://anti-plagiarism-org.blogspot.com/2009/12/impressive-declaration-from-prof-dario.html

Thursday, 9 July 2009

Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Francis Collins is a person who believes God uses evolution to make his creation with the aim to develop its thinking relationship with himself. In his 2006 book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Collins considers scientific discoveries an "opportunity to worship." In his book Collins examines and subsequently rejects Creationism and Intelligent Design. His own belief system is Theistic Evolution which he prefers to term BioLogos. -- Charles Long—who is not doing his house cleaning this pm. With love to those who deserve it. We all have some doubts about God very likely. But we who have looked at the incredible magnitude of the universe have much hope. And we who love music have that relationship sometimes.

Here is the copied material about our new leader of NIH, a former leader of the human genome project, and author of a book on God.

In an interview with National Geographic published in February 2007, interviewer John Horgan, an agnostic journalist, criticized Collins' description of agnosticism as "a cop-out". In response, Collins clarified his position on agnosticism so as not to include "earnest agnostics who have considered the evidence and still don't find an answer. I was reacting to the agnosticism I see in the scientific community, which has not been arrived at by a careful examination of the evidence. I went through a phase when I was a casual agnostic, and I am perhaps too quick to assume that others have no more depth than I did."[9]

During a debate with Richard Dawkins, Collins stated that God is the explanation of those features of the universe that science finds difficult to explain (such as the values of certain physical constants favoring life), and that God himself does not need an explanation since he is beyond the universe. Dawkins called this "the mother and father of all cop-outs" and "an incredible evasion of the responsibility to explain", to which Collins responded "I do object to the assumption that anything that might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That's an impoverished view of the kinds of questions we humans can ask, such as 'Why am I here?', 'What happens after we die?' If you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the natural world because it doesn't convince you on a proof basis. But if your mind is open about whether God might exist, you can point to aspects of the universe that are consistent with that conclusion."[10]

In reviewing The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath, Collins says "Addressing the conclusions of The God Delusion point by point with the devastating insight of a molecular biologist turned theologian, Alister McGrath dismantles the argument that science should lead to atheism, and demonstrates instead that Dawkins has abandoned his much-cherished rationality to embrace an embittered manifesto of dogmatic atheist fundamentalism."[11]

Collins remains firm in his rejection of Intelligent Design, and for this reason was not asked to participate in the 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which tries, among other things, to draw a direct link between evolution and atheism. Walt Ruloff, a producer for the film, claimed that Collins was "toeing the party line" by rejecting Intelligent Design, which Collins called "just ludicrous." [12]

In 2009, Collins founded The BioLogos Foundation to "contribute to the public voice that represents the harmony of science and faith." He is currently serving as the foundation's president.[13]

Quotations
"Evolution is God's way of giving upgrades" (Stephen Colbert Interview, December 7, 2006)
"I concluded at the age of 15 or 16 that I had no interest in biology, or medicine, or any of those aspects of science that dealt with this messy thing called life. It just wasn't organized, and I wanted to stick with the nice pristine sciences of chemistry and physics, where everything made sense."
"I wish I had learned sooner that biology could be fun as well."
(When asked, "What do you say to your fellow Christians who say, 'Evolution is just a theory, and I can't put that together with my idea of a creator God'?") "Well, evolution is a theory. It's a very compelling one. As somebody who studies DNA, the fact that we are 98.4 percent identical at the DNA level to a chimpanzee, it's pretty hard to ignore the fact that when I am studying a particular gene, I can go to the mouse and find it's the similar gene, and it's 90 percent the same. It's certainly compatible with the theory of evolution, although it will always be a theory that we cannot actually prove. I'm a theistic evolutionist. I take the view that God, in His wisdom, used evolution as His creative scheme. I don't see why that's such a bad idea. That's pretty amazingly creative on His part. And what is wrong with that as a way of putting together in a synthetic way the view of God who is interested in creating a group of individuals that He can have fellowship with -- us? Why is evolution not an appropriate way to get to that goal? I don't see a problem with that."[14]
"Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things."

Friday, 19 June 2009

Scrutiny turns to Iran's supreme leader on Friday, when he will deliver a sermon to a nation that has been swept up in several days of post-election p

TEHRAN, Iran -- Scrutiny turns to Iran's supreme leader on Friday, when he will deliver a sermon to a nation that has been swept up in several days of post-election protests.Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Friday sermon is being anxiously awaited in Tehran and the rest of Iran.
http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/06/scrutiny-turns-to-irans-supreme-leader.html

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is to speak at mid-day Friday during prayers at Tehran University. That's according to the Basij militia, a voluntary paramilitary force that takes orders from the government.

Khamenei's speech will be scrutinized for signs of how the government plans to resolve a political stalemate that ensued after Iran's hardline president won re-election by a huge margin, quickly prompting allegations of ballot fraud.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, sermons during Friday prayers have been delivered by prominent officials, including by the supreme leader on occasion.

If Khamenei supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as he did immediately after the election results were announced, he risks being seen as ignoring the groundswell of opposition calling for a new election.

But if he appears to support the election's putative loser, Mir Hossein Moussavi, he could be seen as undermining both the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's regime and perhaps even his own position as supreme leader of Iran.

The Guardian Council, which supervises the country's elections, said Thursday it is looking into the complaints questioning the validity of the election outcome.
On Thursday, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Iran's capital for the sixth day in a row to protest the election results. Some estimates put the total number of participants in the hundreds of thousands.Don't Miss

* Special coverage: Iran election fallout * Cries in the dark: 'God is great' * Ahmadinejad: Remarks taken out of context * Online world is watching, acting

Moussavi spoke through a bullhorn from atop a building to the throngs of marchers who snaked through the city, in what was described as a peaceful protest. He spoke hours after the Iranian government agreed to meet with candidates to discuss complaints stemming from the election, a journalist at the scene told CNN. Video Watch latest CNN report »
Ahmadinejad has not made a public appearance since Sunday. Daily protests quickly followed his re-election.

The demonstrations have claimed at least eight lives, according to Iran's government-funded Press TV. Seven of those were protesters who were killed as they attacked a military post after a rally Monday, the government said.

There have been several other incidents of violence since the election, some of which Moussavi supporters blamed on the Basij militia. Video Watch militia crackdown »

Press TV reported Thursday that Iran's Intelligence Ministry said it had arrested a number of "main agents" behind vandalism during the daily demonstrations.
The government refused to allow international reporters to cover Moussavi's remarks Thursday, but messages sent on the social networking site Twitter said he talked about the country's economic problems and corruption.
"Twenty-five percent inflation means ignorance, thieving, corruption. Where is the wealth of my nation," Moussavi said, according to a Twitter message.

"Iran must participate in fair elections, it is a matter of national importance," the messages quoted him as saying.

The current Iranian government is not what Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic revolution, would have wanted for Iran, the Twitter messages quoted Moussavi as saying.
Because of the government restrictions on newsgathering, CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the messages.

Moussavi, 67, was a confidant of Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989. Moussavi also served as the country's prime minister in the early years of the Islamic republic and during the country's war with Iraq in the 1980s.

A journalist at the scene said the opposition rally in Tehran proceeded peacefully. See where protests have taken place »

Many of the marchers wore black, signifying mourning for those who have died in post-election violence. The demonstrators -- many of whom also wore bands of green, showing support for Moussavi -- started their marches from mosques across the Iranian capital and converged Thursday afternoon in a city square.

Some began their march from Imam Khomeini Square, near the city's Grand Bazaar. That starting location is significant because it was there, three decades ago, that supporters of the Islamists now in power turned out en masse to criticize the regime of the shah of Iran. Video Watch marchers in Khomeini Square »

The journalist at the scene told CNN that marchers converged in Imam Khomeini Square and then snaked through streets toward Revolutionary Square near Tehran University.
Conditions were more relaxed and less vocal than they had been on Wednesday. Marchers drank juice and mineral water as they tramped through the streets. The journalist said there were no reports of injuries and he saw only ordinary police -- not anti-riot police -- on the scene. Read about Iran's power structure »advertisement

In some cases, witnesses said, Moussavi supporters -- carrying placards, posters and peace signs -- approached police officers in silence and smiled; the officers smiled back.
On reaching Revolutionary Square, the marchers dispersed, he said.

Thursday, 18 June 2009

it's "too little, too late."

President Obama's decision to grant some benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees is seen by some as his attempt to extend an olive branch to the gay and lesbian community, but critics say it's "too little, too late."
Some critics say President Obama has let the gay community down.

Some critics say President Obama has let the gay community down.

"It seems to me at least to be a nice gesture, but a disappointment," said Richard Kim, a senior editor at The Nation magazine.

The memorandum Obama signed Wednesday is not expected to grant health and retirement benefits to same-sex partners, as that is prohibited under the Defense of Marriage Act.

"It will absolutely be seen as something good -- but I think, for example, it not including full health insurance -- that is going to put a real microscope on that question. You know, why not?" Kim said, adding that the memo applies only to federal employees, so most people will not be affected by it.

Charles Moran, the spokesman for the Log Cabin Republicans, said the lack of full benefits in Thursday's memorandum shows a lack of commitment to the gay community.

"That's the part that just shows that the Obama administration really isn't serious about their promises to the gay and lesbian community. Things like the health benefits, things like retirement benefits and coverage for spouses. These are the core issues," Moran said.

"Why start the marathon if you're not serious about ending the race?" he added.

White House officials involved in discussions with gay-rights advocates say that Obama favors extending full health care benefits to same-sex couples but that will take legislation to accomplish.

Moran said Obama has had multiple opportunities to fulfill his promises to the gay and lesbian community -- including by repealing the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and standing against the Justice Department motion filed last week in support of the Defense of Marriage Act.

"Here we are, several months after he's been inaugurated, and we've gotten basically nothing. So it is too little, too late," Moran said.

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama will keep his word.

"[Extending benefits to same-sex couples] is a matter of fairness. The president is committed to ensuring that fairness as well as working on and fulfilling other promises that he has made in the campaign around things like 'don't ask, don't tell,' " Gibbs said.

The president has faced sharp criticism over the Justice Department's filing in support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which opposes same-sex marriage. The act used the government's interest in opposing incestuous marriages to support its position against same-sex marriage.

Openly gay Rep. Barney Frank said the Obama administration made a "big mistake" and is calling on the president to clearly explain his views on the matter.

"The wording they used was inappropriate," the Massachusetts Democrat told the Boston Herald in an interview published in the paper's Wednesday edition.

Many gay activists have called on Frank and other gay members of Congress to speak out against the recent Department of Justice brief.

The rancor threatens to disrupt a big Democratic National Committee gay fundraiser in Washington next week.

Vice President Biden is the guest at next Thursday's DNC's LBGT Leadership Council 10th Annual Dinner in Washington. Critics are calling for Frank and other gay congressional leaders to boycott the dinner, for which tickets go for $1,000 to $30,000 a plate.

Activist David Mixner and blogger Andy Towle, two well-known gay rights advocates, announced that they were pulling out, citing disappointment with the Defense of Marriage Act brief.

The president also rankled gay advocates before his inauguration when he named megachurch pastor the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his swearing-in. Warren, in an interview with Belief.net, likened homosexuality to bestiality and incest. He also supported California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state.

During the Warren controversy, Obama -- who frequently spoke in favor of gay and lesbian rights during the campaign but has said he opposes same-sex marriage -- declared himself "a fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans."

Given the support Obama received from the gay community during the campaign season, Kim said so far, the Obama administration has let gay and lesbian rights activists down.

Obama got 70 percent of the vote from those who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to CNN exit polls.

"I think there is an overwhelming feeling that he has not lived up to expectations on these matters," he said.

But, he added, "there's some sympathy for him -- there's the worst recession since the Great Depression, troops are in two different countries in the Middle East -- so there's a lot on his plate."

Kim said Obama's full agenda, however, shouldn't be used as an excuse to delay action on gay rights issues. If the administration waits until there is a news hole, then the issues will be subject to a lot of debate, he said.

"In the middle of the health care debate, saying we're going to do health care, we're going to fix the economy and then this other [gay rights] stuff -- of course it's right. It doesn't require a national debate," he said. "This is stuff that's been debated forever. America does not need a huge national debate on some of these issues," Kim said.

Kim said while Obama has disappointed the gay community, he still has some time to make good on his campaign promises.

"I think people will wait through the first two legislative sessions, but then after that some of this stuff does need to move to the front," he said

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

President Obama will sign a memorandum Wednesday granting health care and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, ...

President Obama will sign a memorandum Wednesday granting health care and other benefits to the same-sex partners of federal employees, two senior administration officials said.
http://dominore.blogspot.com

President Obama has been criticized by gay rights activists for not doing more since taking office.

The signing will take place in the Oval Office and follows sharp criticism of the president over a Justice Department motion filed last week in support of the Defense of Marriage Act -- which opposes same-sex marriage -- that used the government's interest in opposing incestuous marriages to support its position against same-sex marriage.

Gay and lesbian advocates have also faulted the Obama administration for not moving to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars officials from asking about a service member's sexual orientation but also bars the service member from revealing it.
The president rankled gay advocates before his inauguration when he named megachurch pastor the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his swearing-in. Warren, in an interview with Belief.net, likened homosexuality to bestiality and incest. He also supported California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state.
During the Warren controversy, Obama -- who frequently spoke in favor of gay and lesbian rights during the campaign but has said he opposes same-sex marriage -- declared himself "a fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/06/president-obama-will-sign-memorandum.html

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged China to publicly account for those killed in the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests 20 year

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged China to publicly account for those killed in the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests 20 years ago.

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-secretary-of-state-hillary-clinton.html

Mrs Clinton said China should release those still held over the protests and stop harassing those who took part.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people died in the crackdown and open discussion of the events remains taboo.

There is very tight security in Beijing, with police stopping foreign journalists reaching the square.

Uniformed and plain-clothed officials even stopped TV crews filming the daily flag-raising ceremony at dawn.

Many dissidents say they have been told to leave Beijing or are confined to their homes.


Even in Hong Kong, where freedom of expression is guaranteed, some dissidents have been denied entry.

But Mrs Clinton said in a statement that the anniversary was a chance for China to "reflect upon the meaning of the events that preceded that day".

She said China "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."

"China can honour the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally-recognised human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform," she added.

Mrs Clinton's views were echoed by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said that while China had made "big improvements in economic and social rights" since Tiananmen, progress on political and civil rights had been "far slower".


The statement from Mrs Clinton represents a tougher line than the Obama administration has taken so far when addressing China's human rights record, the BBC's Kim Ghattas reports from Washington.


She says Mrs Clinton had disappointed activists at the start of her tenure by saying human rights should not interfere in discussions with China about other issues, like climate change and North Korea.

The Chinese Communist Party has never held an official inquiry into what happened in and around the square 20 years ago, and discussion of the issue is banned on the mainland.

Earlier, Xiang Xiaoji, now a US citizen, was trying to come to Hong Kong to join commemorative events being held to mark the anniversary. But he was refused entry and returned to New York.

Another prominent protest leader, Wu'er Kaixi, flew from his home in Taiwan to Macau on Wednesday, but was detained on arrival.

Mr Kaixi told reporters that he had wanted to go from Macau into mainland China, to see his parents.

Tiananmen Square was open to visitors on the eve of the anniversary, but police were examining visitors at checkpoints and checking the bags and papers of people in the area.

From http://dominore.blogspot.com

at

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/06/us-secretary-of-state-hillary-clinton.html

Languishing in a Cairo prison last year, a prisoner noticed that every day, the prison staff would clean the adjacent cell, even though there was no

Languishing in a Cairo prison last year, a prisoner noticed that every day, the prison staff would clean the adjacent cell, even though there was no one in it.
http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/06/languishing-in-cairo-prison-last-year.html

Ayman Nour prayed for an Obama victory, but does not plan to hear him in person.

Ayman Nour prayed for an Obama victory, but does not plan to hear him in person.

Why, the prisoner asked his guards, did they do it? It's for Barack Obama, they responded. Because when he loses the election, he'll surely be thrown in jail, so this way, a cell will be ready for him. Every day, the prisoner said, he prayed in his cell that Obama would win.

The prisoner was Ayman Nour, a liberal politician who in 2005 ran against and lost to Egypt's aging ruler, Hosni Mubarak, in the country's first multiparty presidential elections. Soon afterward, he was convicted of electoral fraud and sent to jail. He was released earlier this year.

Nour said he had received an invitation from the American Embassy to attend President Obama's address to the Muslim world at Cairo University on Thursday. He said he doesn't plan to attend, but will watch it on television.

"That way," he said, "if I hear something I don't like, I can always change the channel with my remote control."



The way that Nour prayed for an Obama victory, but will not go to hear him in person, is typical of the ambiguities in how many in Egypt and throughout the Muslim world view Obama's much touted address to the world's nearly 1.5 billion Muslims. Watch shopkeepers say what they want from Obama »Video

On the one hand, at least in Egypt, Obama is the most popular American president in years. Almost everyone you meet is almost starry-eyed over the new American leader.

On the other hand, the region has a long history of disappointment with the United States.

Egyptian reformists look back bitterly on their experience during the Bush administration, which, after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, launched an initiative to push for political liberalization in the Middle East.

In 2005, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a speech that sent a shockwave through Egypt. Journalist Ethar El-Katatney recalled, "She said that in the last 60 years, the U.S. pursued stability at the expense of democracy. We all said, 'wow!' "

The mounting American pressure on the dictators, the demonstrations, the rediscovery of long-lost voices raised against authoritarian regimes like Egypt's sparked talk of an "Arab spring," a long-overdue blossoming of freedom and democracy in the political desert of the Middle East.

But the Bush administration's passion for Arab democracy cooled dramatically when Egypt's powerful Islamist network, the Muslim Brotherhood, made stunning gains in parliamentary elections in late 2005. And the passion went stone cold in January 2006, when the militant Palestinian Islamic group Hamas was swept to power in democratic elections in Gaza and the West Bank.

Sensing Washington's worry, Arab dictators and their ruthless security services saw their chance, and slowly started to squeeze the brave few who had been calling for change.

Award-winning Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas experienced the thrill of the "Arab spring," but since then has had plenty of run-ins with Egypt's secret police. He has no illusions about what matters to the United States, Obama's charisma notwithstanding.

"It's OK for these countries to be oppressive," he said, "as long as they are allies [of the United States], as long as they are not communists, as long as they allow investment, as long as they allow McDonald's and Hardee's and whatever businesses to be open here. But if they are dictators, [the United States] doesn't care about human rights, as long as they are allies, as long as they keep peace with Israel, it's OK."

"We have a fundamental problem with America," Nour said in an interview at his flat Monday. "America always takes positive steps, then setbacks happen, and usually America puts its interests above its principles."

From: http://dominore.blogspot.com

http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/06/languishing-in-cairo-prison-last-year.html

Energy is The “Zeroth Religion”, by Prof. KOSTIC

Energy is The “Zeroth Religion” -

Energy, as the ‘building block ’ of all material and space existence, and as the cause for all (re)creations in time, could be metaphorically considered as the most basic "Zeroth Religion," with all due respect to the "First Religion," the way the Zeroth Law of thermal equilibrium is more basic than the Grandiose First Law of energy conservation in Thermodynamics.


►Energy Provides Existence and is Cause for Change (hopefully progress): Energy is possessed (thus equilibrium property) by material systems and redistributed (transferred) between and within system(s), due to systems' non-equilibrium, via forced-displacement interactions (process) towards the equilibrium (equi-partition of energy over mass and space); thus energy is conserved (the 1st Law) but degraded (the 2nd Law).

►The Grand Law of Nature: The universe consists of local material structures in forced equilibrium and their interactions via forced fields. The forces are balanced at any time (including inertial - process rate forces) thus conserving momentum, while charges/mass and energy are transferred and conserved during forced displacement in space all the times, but energy is degraded as it is redistributed (transferred) from higher to lower non-equilibrium potential towards equilibrium (equi-partition of energy). * See also www.ZerothReligion.com * www.kostic.niu.edu/Energy * Energy Pyramid


►Effects are consequences of Causes except at Equilibrium they are equal (reversible) [by M. Kostic] (see also Definition of ENERGY and Definition of ENTROPY)
SEE - Society Energy and Environment: The “Zeroth Religion” for Everybody! [PDF][EPESE'09]Professor M. KosticDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringNORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITYDeKalb, IL 60115-2854, USAE-mail: kostic@niu.edu Web site: www.kostic.niu.edu SPEAKING Enquiry
Synopsis:
Energy, as the ‘building block’ of all material and space existence, and as the cause for all (re)creations in time, could be metaphorically considered as the most basic "Zeroth Religion," with all due respect to the "First Religion," the way the Zeroth Law of thermal equilibrium is more basic than the grandiose First Law of energy conservation in Thermodynamics. Energy is more than universal currency. The world view, from inside to outside, is only possible, figuratively and literally, through the energy prism. From shining stars to rotating planets, to global water, atmospheric and life cycles, to evolution, industrialization and modernization of civilization, energy is the cause and measure of all there has been, it is, and will be.
Energy is the cause for all processes across all space and time scales, including global and historical changes. Energy is both cause and consequence of formation and transformation within the universe at the grand scale, down to the smallest sub-nano-structures within an atom nucleus and electromagnetic radiation (everything we are capable of observing and comprehending). Energy warms our planet Earth and keeps it alive. It moves cars and trains, and boats and planes. Energy bakes foods and keeps them frozen for storage. It heats and lights our homes and plays our music. Energy makes our bodies to grow and alive, and allows our minds to think. Through centuries people have learned how to harvest and use energy in different forms in order to do work more easily and live more comfortably.
Zooming in through space and history from the formation of our planet Earth some 4.5 billion years ago, it has been changing ever since due to energy exchanges or “energy flows” in different astrophysical, geological, thermo-physical, electro-chemical, biological, and intellectual processes. Hundreds of millions of years ago, life emerged from the oceans and transformed the landscape. Just a few million years ago the first human species evolved and began their own process of interaction with the environment, our planet Earth. About one million years ago our own species, homo sapiens, first appeared, strived most of the history and boomed with agricultural and industrial revolution, after learning how to harvest, control and use energy.
The human metabolism, to maintain life, is approximately equal to the dietary energy reference value of 2000 kcal/day, which is equivalent to 97 Watt. Human sustained working power is about 75 W or one tenth of the “horse power.” The human muscular power bursts may be a hundred times greater than the basal metabolic or sustained power. In comparison, the World’s population is about 6.5 billion with total energy consumption about 2.2 kW/c (per capita), compared to 0.3 billion population and 11.3 kW/c in the U.S. (the total energy rate in kW needs to be scaled by usual 33% efficiency to be qualitatively compared with electrical energy rate in kW). The corresponding per capita electricity consumption rate is about 0.3 kW/c and 1.5 kW/c in the World and the U.S., respectively.
All energy coming to the Earth surface is 99.98 % solar, 0.018% geothermal and 0.002% tidal-gravitational. About 14 TW (Tera-Watt, or 2.2 kW/capita, i.e. per person) the world energy consumption rate now, represents only 0.008%, a tiny fraction of the solar energy striking Earth, and is about 6 times smaller than global photosynthesis (all life), the latter is only 0.05% of total solar, and global atmospheric water and wind are about 1% of solar energy. As an ultimate energy source for virtually all natural processes, the solar energy is available for direct ‘harvest’ if needed, and is absorbed by vegetation and water surfaces on Earth, thus being the driving force for natural photosynthesis, and in turn for biosynthesis processes, as well as natural water cycle and all atmospheric processes. The solar radiation power density incident to the Earth atmosphere, known as the Solar Constant, is 2 cal/min/cm2 or 1.4 kW/m2, which after taking into account average day/night time (50%), varying incident angle (50%) and atmospheric/cloud scatter and absorption (53%), reduces to only 0.5·0.5·0.47=11.7% of the Solar Constant, or about 165 W/m2 at the Earth surface, as all-time average.
If all energy is literally expelled from a confined space, then nothing, empty space will be left. As long as any matter is left, it will contain the energy - even at zero absolute temperature the electrons will be orbiting around very energetic nucleus. Matter is and must be energetic, E=mc^2, thus literally, “energy is everything,” no energy, nothing in the space. Energy is the fundamental property of a physical system and refers to its potential to maintain a material system identity or structure (forced field in space) and to influence changes (via forced-displacement interactions, i.e. systems' re-structuring) with other systems in space and time by imparting work (forced directional displacement) or heat (forced chaotic displacement/motion of a system molecular or related structures). Energy exists in many forms: electromagnetic (including light), electrical, magnetic, nuclear, chemical, thermal, and mechanical (including kinetic, elastic, gravitational, and sound). Energy is the ‘building block’ and fundamental property of matter and space, and thus, the fundamental property of existence. Energy exchanges or transfers are associated with all processes (or changes), and thus are indivisible from time.
Let us not be fooled by low oil prices now due to unforeseen economic recession! The two things are certain in not distant future: (1) the world population and their living-standard expectations will substantially increase, and (2) the fossil fuels’ economical reserves, particularly oil and natural gas, will substantially decrease. The difficulties that will face every nation and the world in meeting energy needs over the next several decades will be more challenging than what we anticipate now. The traditional solutions and approaches will not solve the global energy problem. New knowledge, new technology, and new living habits and expectations must be developed to address both, the quantity of energy needed to increase the standard of living world-wide and to preserve and enhance the quality of our environment.
However, regardless of imminent shortages of fossil fuels, the outlook for future energy needs is encouraging. Energy conservation “with existing technology” (insulation, regeneration, cogeneration and optimization with energy storage) has real immediate potential to substantially reduce energy dependence on fossil fuels and enable use of alternative and renewable energy sources. There are many diverse and abundant energy sources with promising future potentials, so that mankind should be able to enhance its activities, standard and quality of living, by diversifying energy sources, and by improving energy conversion and utilization efficiencies, while at the same time increasing safety and reducing environmental pollution.
After all, in the wake of a short history of fossil fuels’ abundance and use (a blip on a human history radar screen), the life may be happier after the fossil fuel era! More at: www.kostic.niu.edu/energy


Brief Biography of the Speaker (more at: www.kostic.niu.edu):
Professor Kostic's teaching and research interests are in Thermodynamics (a science of energy, the Mother of All Sciences), Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer and related fluid-thermal-energy sciences; with emphases on physical comprehension and creative design, experimental methods with computerized data acquisition, and CFD simulation; including nanotechnology and development of new-hybrid, POLY-nanofluids with enhanced properties, as well as design, analysis and optimization of fluids-thermal-energy components and systems in power-conversion, utilizations, manufacturing and material processing. Dr. Kostic came to Northern Illinois University from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he supervised and conducted a two-year research program in heat transfer and viscoelastic fluid flows, after working for some time in industry.
Kostic received his B.S. degree with the University of Belgrade Award as the best graduated student in 1975. Then he worked as a researcher in thermal engineering and combustion at The Vinca Institute for Nuclear Sciences, which then hosted the headquarters of the International Center for Heat and Mass Transfer, and later taught at the University of Belgrade in ex-Yugoslavia, Serbia now (MFB). He came to the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1981 as a Fulbright grantee, where he received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1984. Subsequently, Dr. Kostic worked several years in industry. In addition, he spent three summers as an exchange visitor in England, West Germany, and the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Kostic has received recognized professional fellowships and awards, including multiple citations in Marquis' "Who's Who in the World" and "Who's Who in Science and Engineering."; the Fulbright Grant; NASA Faculty Fellowship; Sabbatical Semester at Fermilab as a Guest Scientist; and the summer Faculty Research Participation Program at Argonne National Laboratory. He is a frequent reviewer of professional works and books in Thermodynamics and Experimental Methods. Dr. Kostic is a licensed professional engineer (PE) in Illinois and a member of the ASME, ASEE, and AIP's Society of Rheology. He has a number of publications in refereed journals, including invited state-of-the-art chapters in the Academic Press series Advances in Heat Transfer, Volume 19, and "Viscosity" in CRC Press' Measurement, Instrumentation and Sensors Handbook; as well as invited reference articles: Work, Power, and Energy in Academic Press/Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Energy; Extrusion Die Design in Dekker's Encyclopedia of Chemical Processing; and Energy: Global and Historical Background, and Physics of Energy, both in Taylor & Francis/CRC Press Encyclopedia of Energy Engineering and Technology. Professor Kostic is a member of the Graduate Faculty at Northern Illinois University.

Saturday, 30 May 2009

Their organization www.anti-plagiarism.org has just found a new post

We receives this by email and we want to share the information with you
******************************************************************************
Our organization www.anti-plagiarism.org has just found a new post

http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2009/05/dear-president-of-ieee.html

seems to be correct.

Please take careful note of the information below
about this IEEE Computational Complexity conference that was a fraudulent conference

It is one more IEEE conference that accepted 2 bogus papers

The organizers are academic criminals. Do NOT send these criminals any money.Please send this warning on to your networks.

Many young people have been defrauded lately - and we must work together to defeat such efforts.

Use extreme caution when applying for conferences advertised by organizations unknown to you.What a Shame for the IEEE Computational Complexity Conference! two new bogus papers have been accepted in the http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/jrogers/complexity/accepted.html
BOGUS PAPER 1: Extractors for varieties ??????????by Zeev Dvir !!!and
BOGUS PAPER 2: Extractors for Low-Weight Affine Sources ??????? byAnup Rao

The papers are absolutely fake papers and the organizers built a fraudulent conference!
What a Shame for the fraudulent IEEE Computational Complexity Conference!




JUST add this to the long list of false - fake papers of IEEE conferences:

Recently, many fake papers appeared in several IEEE conferences, because the IEEE grants its name and its logo to many local organizers who supposedly do not conduct a thorough review process. It is being argued that such conferences only exist to make money out of researchers that are looking for a simple way to publish their work, in particular publishers like IARIA, http://www.iaria.org, HIGHSCI http://www.highsci.org and SRP http://www.scirp.org appear questionable. As seen from their web sites, IARIA, HIGHSCI and SRP use the name of IEEE and the IEEE publishing services, thus attracting numerous papers. Some people to test some conference go further and sent the paper "A Statistical Method For Women That Can Help Our Sexual Education" in the IEEE Conference organized by IARIA. This paper received automatic acceptance within a few hours with simultaneous "command" of direct payment. Unfortunately this paper was not published because the authors did not pay the registration fee. However the letter of acceptance is published on the web and anybody can check it: http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/, http://scamieee.blogspot.com/

Sunday, 24 May 2009

Dating women all over the world.

WHITE AMERICAN WOMEN:
First date:You get to kiss her goodnight..
Second date:You get to grope all over and make out a bit.
Third date:You get to have sex but only in the missionary position.

IRISH WOMEN:
First Date:You both get blind drunk and have sex.
Second Date:You both get blind drunk and have sex.
20th Anniversary:You both get blind drunk and have sex.

ITALIAN WOMEN:
First Date:You take her to a play and an expensive restaurant.
Second Date:You meet her parents and her Mom makes spaghetti & meatballs.
Third Date:You have sex, she wants to marry you & insists on a 3-carat ring.
5th Anniversary:You already have 5 kids together & hate the thought of having sex.
6th Anniversary:You find yourself a Mistress.

CHINESE WOMEN:
First date:You get to buy her an expensive dinner but nothing happens.
Second date:You buy her an even more expensive dinner. Nothing happens again.
Third date:You don't even get to the third date and you've already realized nothingis ever going to happen.

INDIAN WOMEN:
First date:Meet her parents.
Second date:Set the date of the wedding.
Third date:Wedding night!

BLACK WOMEN:
First Date:You get to buy her a real expensive dinner.
Second Date:You get to buy her and her girlfriends a real expensive dinner.
Third Date:You get to pay her rent.
Tenth Date:She's pregnant by someone other than you.

MEXICAN WOMEN:
First Date:You buy her an expensive dinner, get drunk on Tequila,
and have sex in the back of her car.
Second Date:She's pregnant.
Third Date:She moves in. One week later, her mother, father, his girlfriend, hertwo sisters, her brother, all of their kids, her grandma, her father'sgirlfriend's mother, her two cousins, her sister's boyfriend and histhree kids move in and you live on rice and beans for the rest of yourlife in your home that used to be nice, but now looks like a home alongthe Tijuana strip.

ARAB WOMEN:
First Date:Mother, Father, Brothers, Sisters, Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Friends andentireArab community finds out.
Second Date:Guy is shot dead.
No third date!!!

37 million poor hidden in the land of plentyAmericans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their b

37 million poor hidden in the land of plentyAmericans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening


The television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.

The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs.

Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill.

It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help.

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.

For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Oklahoma is in America's heartland. Tulsa looks like picture-book Middle America. Yet there is hunger here. When it comes to the most malnourished poor in America, Oklahoma is ahead of any other state. It should be impossible to go hungry here. But it is not. Just ask those gathered at a food handout last week.

They are a cross section of society: black, white, young couples, pensioners and the middle-aged. A few are out of work or retired, everyone else has jobs.

They are people like Freda Lee, 33, who has two jobs, as a marketer and a cashier. She has come to the nondescript Loaves and Fishes building - flanked ironically by a Burger King and a McDonald's - to collect food for herself and three sons. 'America is meant to be free. What's free?' she laughs. 'All we can do is pay off the basics.'

Or they are people like Tammy Reinbold, 37. She works part-time and her husband works full-time. They have two children yet rely on the food handouts. 'The church is all we have to fall back on,' she says. She is right. When government help is being cut and wages are insufficient, churches often fill the gap. The needy gather to receive food boxes. They listen to a preacher for half an hour on the literal truth of the Bible. Then he asks them if they want to be born again. Three women put up their hands.

But why are some Tulsans hungry?

Many believe it is the changing face of the US economy. Tulsa has been devastated by job losses. Big-name firms like WorldCom, Williams Energy and CitGo have closed or moved, costing the city about 24,000 jobs. Now Wal-Mart embodies the new American job market: low wages, few benefits.

Well-paid work only goes to the university-educated. Many others who just complete high school face a bleak future. In Texas more than a third of students entering public high schools now drop out. These people are entering the fragile world of the working poor, where each day is a mere step away from tragedy. Some of those tragedies in Tulsa end up in the care of Steve Whitaker, a pastor who runs a homeless mission in the shadow of a freeway overpass.

Each day the homeless and the drug addicted gather here, looking for a bed for the night. Some also want a fresh chance. They are men like Mark Schloss whose disaster was being left by his first wife. The former Wal-Mart manager entered a world of drug addiction and alcoholism until he wound up with Whitaker. Now he is back on track, sporting a silver ring that says Faith, Hope, Love. 'Without this place I would be in prison or dead,' he says. But Whitaker equates saving lives with saving souls.

Those entering the mission's rehabilitation programme are drilled in Bible studies and Christianity. At 6ft 5in and with a black belt in karate, Whitaker's Christianity is muscular both literally and figuratively. 'People need God in their lives,' he says.

These are mean streets. Tulsa is a city divided like the country. Inside a building run by Whitaker's staff in northern Tulsa a group of 'latch-key kids' are taking Bible classes after school while they wait for parents to pick them up. One of them is Taylor Finley, aged nine. Wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on the front, she dreams of travel.

'I want to have fun in a new place, a new country,' she says. Taylor wants to see the world outside Oklahoma. But at the moment she cannot even see her own neighbourhood. The centre in which she waits for mom was built without windows on its ground floor. It was the only way to keep out bullets from the gangs outside.

During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty directly was John Edwards, whose campaign theme was 'Two Americas'. He was derided by Republicans for doing down the country and - after John Kerry picked him as his Democratic running mate - the rhetoric softened in the heat of the campaign.

But, in fact, Edwards was right. While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent. Whitaker put the figures into simple English. 'The poor have got poorer and the rich have got richer,' he said.

Dealing with poverty is not a viable political issue in America. It jars with a cultural sense that the poor bring things upon themselves and that every American is born with the same chances in life. It also runs counter to the strong anti-government current in modern American politics. Yet the problem will not disappear. 'There is a real sense of impending crisis, but political leaders have little motivation to address this growing divide,' Cynthia Duncan says.

There is little doubt which side of America's divide the hills of east Kentucky fall on. Driving through the wooded Appalachian valleys is a lesson in poverty. The mountains have never been rich. Times now are as tough as they have ever been. Trailer homes are the norm. Every so often a lofty mansion looms into view, a sign of prosperity linked to the coal mines or the logging firms that are the only industries in the region. Everyone else lives on the margins, grabbing work where they can. The biggest cash crop is illicitly grown marijuana.

Save The Children works here. Though the charity is usually associated with earthquakes in Pakistan or famine in Africa, it runs an extensive programme in east Kentucky. It includes a novel scheme enlisting teams of 'foster grandparents' to tackle the shocking child illiteracy rates and thus eventually hit poverty itself.

The problem is acute. At Jone's Fork school, a team of indomitable grannies arrive each day to read with the children. The scheme has two benefits: it helps the children struggle out of poverty and pays the pensioners a small wage.

'This has been a lifesaver for me and I feel as if the children would just fall through the cracks without us,' says Erma Owens. It has offered dramatic help to some. One group of children are doing so well in the scheme that their teacher, Loretta Shepherd, has postponed retirement in order to stand by them. 'It renewed me to have these kids,' she said.

Certainly Renae Sturgill sees the changes in her children. She too lives in deep poverty. Though she attends college and her husband has a job, the Sturgill trailer sits amid a clutter of abandoned cars. Money is scarce. But now her kids are in the reading scheme and she has seen how they have changed. Especially eight-year-old Zach. He's hard to control at times, but he has come to love school. 'Zach likes reading now. I know it's going to be real important for him,' Renae says. Zach is shy and won't speak much about his achievements. But Genny Waddell, who co-ordinates family welfare at Jone's Fork, is immensely proud. 'Now Zach reads because he wants to. He really fought to get where he is,' she says.

In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves.

It is an impression backed up by many of those mired in poverty in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Few asked for handouts. Many asked for decent wages. 'It is unfair. I am working all the time and so what have I done wrong?' says Freda Lee. But the economy does not seem to be allowing people to make a decent living. It condemns the poor to stay put, fighting against seemingly impossible odds or to pull up sticks and try somewhere else.

In Tulsa, Tammy Reinbold and her family are moving to Texas as soon as they save the money for enough petrol. It could take several months. 'I've been in Tulsa 12 years and I just gotta try somewhere else,' she says.

Nearly 13 million American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level,

Nearly 13 million American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is $20,000 a year for a family of four. The number of children living in poverty increased by more than 13 percent between 2000 and 2009. There are 1.8 million more children living in poverty today than in 2000, despite indications of economic recovery and growth.
Not only are these numbers dispiriting, the official poverty measure tells only part of the story—it is increasingly viewed as a flawed metric of economic hardship (see box). Research consistently shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty level to make ends meet. Children living in families with incomes below this level—for 2006, $40,000 for a family of four—are referred to as low income. Thirty-nine percent of the nation’s children—more than 32 million in 2008—live in low-income families.


Nonetheless, official poverty statistics continue to be used by researchers, policymakers, and the media to define economic disadvantage. In addition, eligibility for many public benefits is based on the official poverty measure. This fact sheet details some of the characteristics of American children who are considered poor by these official standards.

Saturday, 23 May 2009

What about ISI Index: COOKING the IMPACT FACTOR of 6 (fake) JOURNALS!!! COOKING fake Elsevier Journals and Create a World of Fake IEEE Conferences

Many researchers and academicians say that ISI Index is the most reliable.
But read this story of the fake Journals of ELSEVIER.

So, after the hundreds of fake IEEE Conferences that we found in the last years
we have now the fake, junk journals of ELSEVIER)
(Actually, all the conferences that are not organized by the IEEE itself, but from some other
entity (Franchising IEEE System, more than 97% IEEE conferences are not organized
by IEEE, but from its sub-contractors, Franchisees are bogus conferences, fake conferences)

So, 6 Journals with Impact Factor in ISI have been proved that were absolutely cooked
from Elsevier

How can we have reliability in ISI any longer and in the so-called Impact Factor?
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55679/


We must start the story from the beginning

Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them.

Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist. What's wrong with this is so obvious it doesn't have to be argued for. What's sad is that I'm sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, "As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications...." Said doctor, or even the average researcher wouldn't know that the journal is bogus. In fact, knowing that the journal is published by Elsevier gives it credibility! Update: It wasn't one fake journal. It was six fake journals. And as David reminds us, Elsevier is quite willing to play silly buggers with self-citing crackpots as long as they improve impact factors.
Now tell me again: Why do we submit papers to, referee papers for, and buy journals from these people? Some sort of misplaced sense of loyalty? Or some sad combination of apathy and inertia? What will it take for the research community to cut Elsevier loose?
Better alternatives, perhaps?

Full disclosure: I'm a coauthor of a paper that is about to appear in the SOCG 2008 special issue of CGTA, an Elsevier journal. If I'd been the sole author, I would have refused the invitation, but I don't have the right to unilaterally overrule my coauthors, especially the younger ones, who need the gold star in their CVs far more than I do. In retrospect, especially after reading this story, I wish we had refused the invitation. Or perhaps I should have just removed my name from the paper.

REFERENCES:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/09/1514235

http://www.scientificblogging.com/run_and_tumble/blog/elsevier_published_six_fake_journals

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55679/

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/09/elsevier-has-an-enti.html

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090510/2157144822.shtml

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/05/elsevier-confirms-6-fake-journals-more.html

http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/5973

RELEVANT REFERENCES FOR IEEE FAKE CONFERENCES
In 2008 and 2009, several computer generated (gibberish) conference articles, with fictitious authors, appeared in IEEE Xplore Data Base coming from many IEEE Sponsored events. Other poor quality conference articles have also, occasionally, appeared in IEEE Confererences and consequently in IEEE Xplore. The IEEE itself accepted (see http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/corporate/board/ad_hoc_committees/qualityofconferencepapers.html )that such articles hurted the reputation of IEEE and destroyed confidence in the quality of IEEE publications. IEEE tried to find solutions against this vulnerability but in vain, because much more bougus papers appeared in the next months (see http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com and http://blog.marcelotoledo.org/2008/12/26/how-can-someone-trust-ieee )


^ Stribling, Jeremy; Aguayo, Daniel; Krohn, Maxwell. "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" (PDF). http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/rooter.pdf.
^ Rob Thomas. "The Dangers of Spamferences" (HTML). http://thepeerreview.ca/view.php?aid=221.
^ "SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator". MIT. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/.
^ "Mathias Uslar's paper.". http://www.mwise.de/blog/index.php/2005/12/29/scigen-for-scientific-research-a-case-study/.
^ "About Genco Gulan's paper.". http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/blog/index.php?entry=entry060414-130910.
^ Rohollah Mosallahnezhad. "Cooperative, Compact Algorithms for Randomized Algorithms" (PDF). http://ce.sharif.edu/~ghodsi/soft-group/misc/AMC-paper.pdf.
^ John L. Casti. "REMOVED: Cooperative, compact algorithms for randomized algorithms". http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amc.2007.03.011.
^ "Conferences of Wessex Institute of Technology without review". http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~wp/videa.html.
^ "Paper on the IEEE Database". http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/freesrchabstract.jsp?arnumber=4723109&k2dockey=4723109@ieeecnfs.
^ "CSSE Conference Program". https://sites.google.com/site/herbertschlangemann/Home/csse2008_program.pdf?attredirects=0.
^ "Schlangemann's blog". http://diehimmelistschoen.blogspot.com/.
^ [http://www.ieee-ecommerce.com/ "IEEE International Conference on e-Business and Information System Security"]. http://www.ieee-ecommerce.com/.
^ "Some other conferences of IEEE". http://anti-ieee.blogspot.com/2008/02/iti-2008.html.
^ "Bogus Conferences". http://bogus-conferences.blogspot.com/.
^ "Conferences that you must avoid". http://netdriver.blogspot.com/2009/01/from-site-httpwwwanti-plagiarismorg.html.
^ "Another Letter of acceptance in an IEEE Conference". http://iaria-highsci.blogspot.com/2008/12/we-have-letter-of-acceptance-fantastic.html.
^ "Other IEEE Conferences". http://netdriver.blogspot.com/2009/01/this-is-shame-for-ieee.html.
^ "How can someone trust IEEE". http://blog.marcelotoledo.org/2008/12/26/how-can-someone-trust-ieee.
^ "Open Letter". http://dominore.blogspot.com/2009/05/i-am-freelance-journalist-who.html.

Thursday, 21 May 2009

Preparing to Peer into a Black Hole

Black holes seem to me to be the scariest thing, even more so than those “gamma rays” resulting from anti matter annihilation [of matter?]. [See below.] Not anything can be really eternal in this universe, if the whole thing is going to shrink up or expand. And if the sun is going to explode what then, for all of us here billions of years hence. I need some faith here and don’t expect to find any. The Roman Catholic Church forbade any studies that might cause doubts to people who need a child’s faith, says most of us, quoting Christ. The deeper we look the scarier it gets, and this has not a single tiny particle of essence of the faithful’s all out attack on Charles Darwin. This is far scarier than Darwin. The main question here is how does one study a black hole and expect to see anything. Does it emit some light? Does a black hole ever get full enough to quit eating matter and light?
Preparing to Peer into a Black Hole
from New Scientist
Like a giant pale blue eye, the Earth stares at the centre of our galaxy. Through the glare and the fog it is trying to catch a glimpse of an indistinct something 30,000 light years away. Over there, within the sparkling starscape of the galaxy's core... no, not those giant suns or those colliding gas clouds; not the gamma-ray glow of annihilating antimatter. No, right there in the very centre, inside that swirling nebula of doomed matter, could that be just a hint of a shadow?
The shadow we're straining to see is that of a monstrous black hole, a place where gravity rules supreme, swallowing light and stretching the fabric of space to breaking point. Black holes are perhaps the most outrageous prediction of science, and even though we can paint fine theoretical pictures of them and point to evidence for many objects that seem to be black hole-ish, nobody has ever actually seen one.
All that could change in the next few months. Astronomers are working to tie together a network of microwave telescopes across the planet to make a single instrument with the most acute vision yet. They will turn this giant eye towards what they believe is a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, code name Sagittarius A.