Category Archives: Viva!

For Sale: A POW Journal Documenting World War II’s ‘Great Escape’

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The 75th anniversary of World War II’s most iconic prisoner-of-war escape is less than two weeks away, on March 24, 2019. Just in time, Hansons Auctioneers in England is offering a rare relic of the daring feat: a diary that takes us inside the mind of one of the prisoners who planned it.

In its “Medals & Militaria” auction on March 22, 2019, Hansons will sell the journal that belonged to the late Royal Air Force Flight Lieutenant Vivian Phillips while he was held in the Nazis’ Stalag Luft III camp, in present-day Poland. According to the auction house, it is the only such diary believed to have survived not only the camp, “but also a forced march of hundreds of miles across Germany” later in the war. It is expected to sell, alongside Phillips’s medals, for around $20,000 (or, £15,000 to £18,000).

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Phillips was captured by the Nazis in May 1943, when his plane was shot down over Amsterdam during a bombing raid on a power station. He joined prisoners from a variety of countries including the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Norway, Latvia, and Belgium in Stalag Luft III, which the Nazis considered one of their more secure POW camps. That’s why Roger Bushell—a Royal Air Force pilot who had been shot down during the rescue at Dunkirk, and who had subsequently escaped from two German POW camps—was being held there when Phillips arrived. Undeterred, Bushell was planning another escape, despite the microphones that the Nazis had placed nine feet beneath the ground, and the sandy terrain that did not lend itself to tunnel construction.

As History details, the prisoners dug their tunnels—codenamed Tom, Dick, and Harry—via a trapdoor underneath a stove, which was kept lit in order to deter guards from approaching it. Slowly, they were able to dig beneath the range of the microphones, taking off their clothing so the guards wouldn’t notice any telltale sandy stains.

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“All this was done under the very noses of the guards,” wrote Phillips in his journal, one of those distributed to POWs by the Canadian Red Cross. He himself was one of the diggers, which Hansons says would have suited him as he was “rather short of stature and from Welsh coal-mining stock.” Phillips wrote that, eventually, he “graduated to a kind of foreman” in “charge of a gang of eight fellows…” A model of classic British stoicism, Phillips nonchalantly noted that “the whole thing was most efficiently run…” The operation inspired the 1963 Hollywood classic, The Great Escape.

When the time came for the prisoners to put their tunnels to use, they had to draw names at random so as not to overwhelm the makeshift passageways. Phillips’s name was not drawn, but he was actually lucky: Only three of the 76 escapees ultimately eluded the Nazis. The rest were caught within two weeks, and 50 of the prisoners—including Bushell—were then (illegally) executed on Hitler’s personal orders. (A postwar military tribunal found 18 Nazis guilty of war crimes for the executions; 13 of them were executed in turn.)

And so, even with all of the writings and drawings depicting daily life in the POW camp, and describing plans for the escape plot, the most striking section of Phillips’s journal may be the “In Memoriam” list, which names the executed captured prisoners and their countries of origin. It cements the journal as more than a record of brilliant enterprise in the face of fierce adversity, but as a testament to enduring humanity in times of brutality.

Venezuela: Ocean Of Lies

Gang of press is sometimes hard to get truth to… Good job!

In Saner Thought

Venezuela is still brewing and the MSM wants you to believe the lies spread by the Neocons and the Neo-liberal twats….

Venezuela Lies : The Venezuelan People Have No Food and the Shelves Are Bare

In these videos (here and here) on the ground in Caracas, Max Blumenthal exposed one of the lies about Venezuela that is constantly repeated, i.e. that the people have no food and the supermarket shelves are bare.

(read on….the lies snowball from here)

https://www.globalresearch.ca/8-venezuela-lies/5670534

The summit between our Beloved Leader and the Beloved Leader in North Korea has sucked all the energy out of the situation in Venezuela…..the US is still pretending to care about the people of the country and trying to sell the idea that Maduro (Tell me…does Trump’s buddy Calamari look like Maduro?) is driving the country to ruin.

The US Neocon-led strategy is increasingly clear: establish a ‘beach-head’ on…

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Woman Sets Up A Photo Booth For Birds And The Results Portray How Beautiful They Are (50 Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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50 Extraordinary Bird Portraits Made By A Hidden Bird Photo Booth

50 Extraordinary Bird Portraits Made By A Hidden Bird Photo Booth

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

Woman Feeds Birds And Captures Stunning Close-Up Photos While Eating (New Pics)

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Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is ‘not a state of all its citizens’

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PM has been accused of demonising Israeli Arabs in lead-up to April election

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “not a state of all its citizens”, in a reference to the country’s Arab population.

In comments on Instagram, the prime minister went on to say all citizens, including Arabs, had equal rights, but he referred to a deeply controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation state of the Jewish people.

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Julian Castro on Reparations: ‘Why Wouldn’t You Compensate People Who Actually Were Property?’ | 3CHICSPOLITICO

“To my mind, that may or may not be the best way to address it,” Castro said. “However, it’s interesting to me that when it comes to Medicare for all, health care, you know, the response there has been we need to write a big check, that when it comes to tuition-free or debt-free college, the answer has been we need to write a big check.” “So if the issue is compensating descendants of slaves, I don’t think the argument about writing a big check ought to be the argument you make if you’re making the argument that a big check needs to be written for a whole bunch of other stuff,” Castro continued. “If, under the Constitution, we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property.”

Source: Julian Castro on Reparations: ‘Why Wouldn’t You Compensate People Who Actually Were Property?’ | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Home. It’s where the viruses spread.

A mild illness, or perhaps even no obvious illness at all, after infection by Ebola virus, could be seen by some as heretical. But new evidence adds to that which already exists, suggesting it really does happen.

An aerial view of Guéckédou, Guinea,
Source: United Nations, Flickr

Hints that Ebola virus can cause mild or even unnoticeable illness, or that it may circulate unreported, can be found in the scientific literature.[6,7,8]

What do we know about mild infection and Ebola virus?

A big new study has emerged, looking for asymptomatic or “paucisymptomatic” Ebola virus-infected people. To be clearer, the authors are talking those who may have been infected but showed no symptoms or just mild illness. They used the detection of antibodies specific to a Zaire ebolavirus as a marker that they had been infected.

Big new study

Scientists from France and Guinea enrolled people who had had physical contact with a confirmed case of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in Guinea. None of 1,390 contacts followed, were vaccinated against EVD and none had officially developed EVD during the period between 12th May 2016 and 8th September 2017. Based on their recollection, none had developed symptoms that suggested to them that they had a viral haemorrhagic fever virus infection.

Ebola Prevention and Treatment in Conakry, Guinea.
Source: United Nations, Flickr

Antibodies in the contacts

The laboratory tests detected antibodies made against three different pieces (antigens) of the Zaire ebolavirus (glycoprotein or nucleoprotein or 40-kDa viral protein), in response to virus infection.[3] The tools had been well evaluated beforehand so the results produced are reliable, an issue with earlier studies of this sort. The scientists considered samples that reacted with at least two of the three antigens as positive for past infection.

The genetic regions encoding the proteins used as antigens in the Zaire ebolavirus lab testing are marked in red. More detail on the method which also seems capable of discriminating between the EBOV, SUDV, BDBV, RESTV species of ebolaviruses.[3]
Click on image to enlarge.

In a very handy approach, the scientists dried blood onto special filter paper. This avoided the need to send away whole blood which doesn’t store for long without separation and freezing. These dried blood spots (DBS) store well and can be shipped easily. Apparently, they can also be used to detect antibodies once the DBS is reconstituted and heat inactivated.[3]

More of those with some symptom of illness (18 of 216 or 8%) developed antibodies to Ebola virus. Only 39 of 1,174 (3%) among those who reported no symptoms, developed antibodies.

There were signs of previous infection, but no severe disease

Most (1,174 or 84%) contacts did not report any symptoms of illness and about a sixth (216 or 16%) noticed mild illness of some sort; most often a headache (81% of those with a symptom), fatigue (74%) and fever (73%).

30 of the 216 (14%) had a fever plus three other symptoms; more than enough for them to have been classified as suspected EVD cases according to the World Health Organization case definition. But it seems they were not classified as such. Because of that, they were not tested at the time. Interestingly, this study already defines these people as contacts, so a sudden fever alone should have resulted in most of them being reported to a surveillance team.

World Health Organization case definition of a suspected case during an ongoing outbreak of Ebola or Marburg virus diseases.
Source: WHO [5]

It mattered what sort of exposure people had

Safe and Dignified Burials in Guinea.
Source: United Nations on Flickr

More of those with symptoms of illness had contact with a fatal EVD case (45 of 99 or 45%) than did those with no symptoms 67/280 or 24%). Those with contact with blood or vomit from a case or who took part in a burial ritual were also more likely to have become symptomatic.

Among those who were asymptomatic but had been infected, there was a greater likelihood that they had taken part in a burial ritual or had contact with infectious fluids than asymptomatic contacts with no developmentt of antibiodies.

Why do some get exposed and feel nothing while others die from the experience?

Another interesting question to come out of this study is whether there is a role for exposure outside of contact with a known case of EVD.

Did some number of these contacts already have antibodies to a Zaire ebolavirus strain or to another ebolavirus that we already know about, or a strain or virus we’ve yet to find? Could those infections have provided some protection (cross-protection) against illness during this new ebolavirus contact? Of course, that also generates the question of why don’t they notice those infections if this is all possible?

We do know that Zaire ebolavirus was in Guinea before the multi-country outbreak that started there, took over lives in 2013-2016.[6]

Where does that leave us?

This study showed us that contacts of a EVD case sometimes became infected even if they didn’t notice anything, or only had a short-term illness after that contact. Those in contact with infectious materials (fluids or a body) were more likely to have symptoms. Even in the absence of symptoms though, evidence that infection occurs is solid. This will surprise some. But not others.

We should keep this in mind about previous studies, but also, it may be that these latest findings mean earlier findings might have been correct after all.

identifying true Ebola virus infections by ELISA is not yet an exact science

The genesis of the Ebola virus outbreak in west Africa
Eugene T Richardson, Mosoka P Fallah [4]

Having said that, this latest finding using this excellent and target-specific lab tool reinforces the need for even more study and better understanding of what is happening in less deadly Ebola virus infections. Some questions that need answering include:

  • how often is mild illness occurring? This will impact on the fatality rate normally ascribed to Ebola virus.
  • given these findings, how sure are we that Reston virus is as tame as we have labelled it to be? What if we simply haven’t experienced enough human outbreaks to see its dark side yet?
  • can mildly ill, Ebola virus-infected people transmit and infect others? In this study, it was apparent that suspected cases were not being flagged for testing. This could have been an issue at the time and even in current and future outbreaks if follow-up is stretched thin.
  • does an Ebola virus infection present at presumably low levels in a mildly ill or asymptomatic person, still spread and persist in tissues (reproductive tract, eye) as it does in more serious illnesses?

This study is a very nice reminder that we need to keep our minds open to new – and sometimes ‘out there’ concepts. We can talk about ideas on the edge of what existing data support as much as we like. Actual science being funded and done is what resolves these thoughts into hypotheses that lead to data and new hypotheses and more data. And so on.

References.

  1. Yes, there were signs that Ebola was in west Africa, perhaps as far back as 1973
    http://virologydownunder.com/yes-there-were-signs-that-ebola-was-in-west-africa-perhaps-as-far-back-as-1973/
  2. Prevalence of infection among asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic contact persons exposed to Ebola virus in Guinea: a retrospective, cross-sectional observational study
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30649-2/fulltext
  3. Development of a Sensitive and Specific Serological Assay Based on Luminex Technology for Detection of Antibodies to Zaire Ebola Virus
    https://jcm.asm.org/content/55/1/165.long
  4. The genesis of the Ebola virus outbreak in west Africa.
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(19)30055-6/fulltext
  5. Case definition recommendations for Ebola or Marburg Virus Diseases As of 09 August 2014 https://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/ebola/ebola-case-definition-contact-en.pdf
  6. Serological Evidence of Ebola Virus Infection in Rural Guinea before the 2014 West African Epidemic Outbreak
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29869602
  7. Hemorrhagic fever virus infections in an isolated rainforest area of central Liberia. Limitations of the indirect immunofluorescence slide test for antibody screening in Africa.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3092415
  8. Serological Evidence of Ebola Virus Infection in Rural Guinea before the 2014 West African Epidemic Outbreak
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29869602

The post Home. It’s where the viruses spread. appeared first on Virology Down Under.

Rescuing Begum’s baby would have been too dangerous, says Hunt

What a fool!

Foreign secretary reacts to death as two more British women’s citizenship ‘revoked’

The foreign secretary has said it was too dangerous to send British officials to rescue Shamima Begum’s baby son from Syria, and she knew she would not be able to rely on British consular assistance when she went to Isis-held territory.

Jeremy Hunt, in referring to the 19-year-old who was stripped of her citizenship on the orders of the home secretary, Sajid Javid, gave the first reaction by a senior government figure since it emerged that Begum’s son had died in a Syrian camp.

Related: Shamima Begum: Sajid Javid labelled ‘moral coward’ over baby death

Related: Playing politics with a child’s life shames us all, Mr Javid | Jess Phillips

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