Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Cute Kittens!




( with Ebola. )










http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ebola-treatment-how-big-tobacco-military-came-together-n173311

NBC NEWS


EBOLA VIRUS OUTBREAK 89 STORIES [ Retrieved 2:25 PM Pacific Time USA 05 August 2014 ]

STORYLINE

Continuing coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa

Ebola Treatment: How Big Tobacco and the Military Came Together

By Bill Briggs

A tobacco titan seeking an image makeover and the U.S. military are unlikely partners in a possible Ebola breakthrough — tobacco plants purposely infected with Ebola-related proteins that, in turn, produced the antibodies used to treat two Americans who contracted the virus in Africa.

The second of those two Americans, Nancy Writebol, arrived Tuesday at Emory University Hospital following an emergency airlift. She and Dr. Kent Brantly each contracted Ebola while treating patients at a missionary clinic in Liberia. Brantly was admitted earlier to the same Atlanta hospital.

Both are said to be improving since receiving the experimental anti-Ebola drug ZMapp, developed through a unique alliance between Reynolds American Inc., the U.S. military and private scientists.

ZMapp is composed of three “humanized” mouse monoclonal antibodies — one of which was developed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases USAMRIID)— manufactured in tobacco plants.

The antibody-packed plants were grown by Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP) — a subsidiary of Reynolds American. The tobacco giant aquired KBP in January, said Reynolds spokesman David Howard. Never tested on humans, the drug was shown in a recent study to be effective when given to Ebola-infected primates.

Though the two missionaries remain in treatment and in isolation, the possible early success of ZMapp could mark a step forward in Reynolds American’s goal of “transforming the tobacco industry” — both in terms of remolding its image and meeting emerging market demands, Howard said.

“Really, the big picture is tobacco consumption in one form, and then you have other utilizations of the tobacco plant — certainly, looking at it from a scientific perspective,” Howard said.

Tobacco plants used to create the experimental treatment given to the two U.S. patients infected with Ebola at the KBP facilities in Kentucky.

“Though this is all relatively new and there’s still a long ways to go and a lot of things are going to happen as we go into drug-approval protocols with ZMapp … I think certainly it shows great promise that the tobacco plant can be utilized for such things. We’ll see where that goes. We’re certainly optimistic,” Howard said.

Various labs have been working for decades to come up with drugs and vaccines to fight Ebola and its close cousin Marburg virus. They are both considered potential bioterrorism agents, which is what drives most of the U.S. government’s interest.

Defense Department spokeswoman Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost said Tuesday that it had a $10 million contract over three years for Mapp Biopharmaceuticals to develop ZMapp.

The ZMapp treatment is a combination of two agents, according to Mapp President Larry Zeitlin. One of them, MB-003, provided 100 percent protection to monkeys when given right after exposure to Ebola virus, and even helped after symptoms developed.

The other is ZMAb, a combination drug that its developer says provided 100 percent survival in primates a day after exposure and 50 percent survival after two days.

Derrick-Frost said one of the three humanized mouse monoclonal antibodies was developed at U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Tobacco is optimal for the development of disease-fighting antibodies because the plant has “natural rapid-growth properties” that offer “a faster, more-efficient and less-expensive way” to deliver pharmaceutical protein products versus man-made bioreactors, which often use stainless-steel containers to grow cells, Howard said.

At KBP, based in Owensboro, Kentucky, the tobacco plant’s growth and production cycle takes about two months, Howard said.

“But once you infect the plant, it was about a week’s time to begin extracting proteins to create the (ZMapp) compound,” Howard said. He added that Mapp Biopharmaceutical, based in San Diego, provided KBP with "the structure for these proteins related to the Ebola virus."

"KBP then was able to essentially infect tobacco plants with these proteins,” Howard said. “The tobacco plants served as a photocopier for these proteins and produced proteins in very short order and in larger quantities than you would see in regular processes. KBP was able to target the proteins, extract them, purify them and create the compound, ZMapp.”

Since 1969, USAMRIID has been used as the Defense Department’s “lead laboratory for medical biological defense research,” according to is website. Its core mission is to protect American troops from biological threats. But USAMRIID also investigates disease outbreaks and threats to public health.

The military agency’s research and testing work there has “resulted in the development of vaccines, currently in various stages of clinical trials, to protect against the following biological threats,” its website says. Those include: Anthrax, Botulism, Plague, Ebola, Hantavirus, and Ricin toxin.










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 34

THE GAMES CONTINUE


Yes, he had to help. It would be a good bargaining chip to acquire for later requests to be made of the Americans. Moreover, Clark had dealt honorably with him, Sergey reminded himself, and it was distantly troubling to him that a former KGB officer had helped attack the man's family-attacks on non-combatants were forbidden in the intelligence business. Oh, occasionally the wife of a CIA officer might have been slightly roughed up in the old days of the East-West Cold War, but serious harm? Never. In addition to being nekulturny, it would only have started vendettas that would only have interfered with the conduct of real business, the gathering of information. From the 1950s on, the business of intelligence had become a civilized, predictable one. Predictability was always the one thing the Russians had wanted from the West, and that had to go both ways. Clark was predictable.

With that decision made, Golovko printed up the information on his screen.

"So?" Clark asked Bill Tawney.

"The Swiss were a little slow. It turns out that the account number Grady gave us was real enough-"

"Was?" John said, thinking that he could hear the bad news "but" coming.

"Well, actually it's still an active account. It began with about six million U.S.dollars deposited, then several hundred thousand withdrawn-and then, the very day of the attack at the hospital, all but a hundred thousand was withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, another account in yet another bank."

"Where?"

"They say they cannot tell us."

"Oh, well, you tell their fucking Justice Minister that the next time he needs our help, we'll fuckin' let the terrorists kill off their citizens!" Clark snarled.

"They do have laws, John," Tawney pointed out. "What if this chap had an attorney do the transfer? The attorney-client privilege applies, and no country can break that barrier. The Swiss do have laws that govern funds thought to have been generated by criminal means, but we have no proof of that, do we? I suppose we could gin something up to get around the law, but that will take time, old man."

"Shit," Clark observed. Then he thought for a second. "The Russian?"

Tawney nodded sagely. "Yes, that makes sense, doesn't it? He set them up a numbered account, and when they were taken out, he still had the necessary numbers, didn't he?"

"Fuck, so he sets them up and rips them off."

"Quite," Tawney observed. "Grady said six million dollars in the hospital, and the Swiss confirm that number. He needs a few hundred thousand to purchase the trucks and other vehicles they used-we have records on that from the police investigation-and left the rest in place, and then this Russian chap decided they have no further use of the funds. Well, why not?" the intelligence officer asked. "Russians are notoriously greedy people, you know."

"The Russian giveth, and the Russian taketh away. He gave them the intel on us, too."

"I would not wager against that, John," Tawney agreed.

"Okay, let's back up some," John proposed, putting his temper back in its box. "This Russian appears, gives them intelligence information on us, funds the operation from somewhere-sure as hell not Russia, because, A, they have no reason to undertake such an operation and, B, they don't have that much money to toss around. First question: where did the money-"

"And the drugs, John. Don't forget that."

"Okay, and the drugs-come from?"

"Easier to track the drugs, perhaps. The Garda say that the cocaine was medical quality, which means that it came from a drug company. Cocaine is closely controlled in every nation in the world. Ten pounds is a large quantity, enough to fill a fairly large suitcase-cocaine is about as dense as tobacco.










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 24

CUSTOMS


Brightling looked at the electronic key and smiled. This was the last major hurdle for the Project. This would be the home of nearly all of his people. A similar but much smaller structure in Brazil had been finished two months earlier, but that one barely accommodated a hundred people. This one could house three thousand-somewhat crowded, but comfortably even so-for some months, and that was about right. After the first couple of months, he could sustain his medical research efforts here with his best people-most of them not briefed in on the Project, but worthy of life even so because that work was heading in some unexpectedly promising directions. So promising that he wondered how long he himself might live here. Fifty years? A hundred? A thousand, perhaps? Who could say now?

Olympus, he'd call it, Brightling decided on the spot. The home of the gods, for that was exactly what he expected it to be. From here they could watch the world, study it, enjoy it, appreciate it. He would use the call-sign OLYMPUS-1 on his portable radio. From here he'd be able to fly all over the world with picked companions, to observe and learn how the ecology was supposed to work. For twenty years or so, they'd be able to use communications satellites no telling how long they'd last, and after that they'd be stuck with long-wire radio systems. That was an inconvenience for the future, but launching his own replacement satellites was just too difficult in terms of manpower and resources, and besides, satellite launchers polluted like nothing else humankind had ever invented.

Brightling wondered how long his people would choose to live here. Some would scatter quickly, probably drive all over America, setting up their own enclaves, reporting back by satellite at first. Others would go to Africa-that seemed likely to be the most popular destination. Still others to Brazil and the rain forest study area. Perhaps some of the primitive tribes down there would be spared the Shiva exposure, and his people would study them as well and how Primitive Man lived in a pristine physical environment, living in full harmony with Nature. They'd study them as they were, a unique species worthy of protection and too backward to be a danger to the environment. Might some African tribes survive as well? His people didn't think so. The African countries allowed their primitives to interface too readily with city folk, and the cities would be the focal centers of death for every nation on earth-especially when Vaccine-A was distributed. Thousands of liters of it would be produced, flown all over the world, and then distributed, ostensibly to preserve life, but really to take it… slowly, of course.

Progress was going well. Back at his corporate headquarters the fictional documentation for -A was already fully formulated. It had been supposedly tested on over a thousand monkeys who were then exposed to Shiva, and only two of them had become symptomatic, and only one of those had died over the nineteen month trial that existed only on paper and computer memories. They hadn't yet approached the FDA for human trials, because that wasn't necessary-but when Shiva started appearing all over the world, Horizon Corporation would announce that it had been working quietly on hemorrhagic fever vaccines ever since the Iranian attack on America, and faced with a global emergency and a fully documented treatment modality, the FDA would have no choice but to approve human use, and so officially bless the Project's goal of global human extermination. Not so much the elimination, John Brightling thought more precisely, as the culling back of the most dangerous species on the planet, which would allow Nature to restore Herself, with just enough human stewards to watch and study and appreciate the process. In a thousand or so years, there might be a million or so humans, but that was a small number in the great scheme of things, and the people would be properly educated to understand and respect nature instead of destroying her. The goal of the Project wasn't to end the world. It was to build a new one, a new world in the shape that Nature Herself intended. On that he would put his own name for all eternity. John Brightling, the man who saved the planet.

Brightling looked at the key in his hand, then got back into his car. The driver took him to the main entrance, and there he used the key, surprised and miffed to see that the door was unlocked. Well, there were still people going in and out. He took the elevator to his office-apartment atop the main building. That door, he saw, was locked as it was supposed to be, and he opened it with a kind of one-person ceremony, and walked into the seat of Olympus's chief,o d. No, that wasn't right. Insofar as there was a god, it was Nature. From his office windows, he could see out over the plains of Kansas, the swaying young wheat… it was so beautiful. Almost enough to bring tears to his eyes. Nature. She could be cruel to individuals, but individuals didn't matter. Despite all the warnings, humankind hadn't learned that.










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 31

MOVEMENT


Then Horizon Corporation would announce that it had an experimental "A" vaccine that had worked in animals and primates-and was safe for human usage-ready for mass production, and so it would be mass-produced and distributed worldwide, and four to six weeks after injection, those people, too, would develop the Shiva symptoms, and with luck the world would be depopulated down to a fractional percentage of the current population. Disorders would break out, killing many of the people blessed by Nature with highly effective immune systems, and in six months or so, there would be just a few left, well organized and well equipped, safe in Kansas and Brazil










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 10

DIGGERS


Popov had himself a fine dinner in an Italian restaurant half a block from his apartment building, enjoyed the crisp weather in the city, and puffed on a Montecristo cigar after he got back to his flat. There was still work to do. He'd obtained videotapes of the news coverage of both of the terrorist incidents he'd instigated and wanted to study them. In both cases, the reporters spoke German-the Swiss kind, then Austrian-which he spoke like a native (of Germany). He sat in an easy chair with the remote control in his hand, occasionally rewinding to catch something odd of passing interest, studying the tapes closely, his trained mind memorizing every detail. The most interesting parts, of course, were those showing the assault teams who'd finally resolved both incidents with decisive action. The quality of the pictures was poor. Television simply didn't make for high-quality imagery, especially in had lighting conditions and from two hundred meters away. With the first tape, that of the Bern case, there was no more than ninety seconds of pre-action pictures of the assault team-this part had not been broadcast during t lie attack, only afterward. The men moved professionally, in a way that somehow reminded the Russian of the ballet, so strangely delicate and stylized were the movements of the men in the black clothing, as they crept in from left and right… and then came the blindingly swift action punctuated by jerky camera movements when the explosives went off-that always made the cameramen jump. No sound of gunfire. So their firearms were silenced. It was done so that the victims could not learn from the sound where the shots had come from-but it had not really been a matter of importance in this case, since the terrorist/criminals had been dead before the information could have done them any good. But that was how it was done. This business was as programmed as any professional sport, with the rules of play enforced by deadly might. The mission over in seconds, the assault team came out, and the Bern city police went in to sort out the mess. The people in black acted unremarkably, he saw, like disciplined soldiers on a battlefield. No congratulatory handshakes or other demonstrations. No, they were too well-trained for that. No one even did so much as light a cigarette… ah, one did seem to light a pipe. What followed was the usual brainless commentary from the local news commentators, talking about this elite police unit and how it had saved all the lives of those inside, und soweiter, Popov thought










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 38

NATURE RESORT

It was just too much for Wil Gearing. Nobody had told him what to do in a case like this. It had never occurred to him that security would be broken on the Project. His life was forfeit now-how could that have happened'.' He could cooperate or not. The contents of the canister would be examined anyway, probably at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and it would require only a few seconds for the medical experts there to see what he'd carried into the Olympic stadium, and there was no explaining that away, was there?










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 34

THE GAMES CONTINUE

As happens in all aspects of life, things settled into a routine. Chavez and his people spent most of their time with Colonel Wilkerson's people, mainly sitting in the reaction force center and watching the games on television, but also wandering to the various venues, supposedly to eyeball security matters up close, but in reality to see the various competitive events even closer. Sometimes they even wandered onto the event field by virtue of their go anywhere passes. The Aussies, Ding learned, were ferociously dedicated sports fans, and wonderfully hospitable. In his off-duty time, he picked a neighborhood pub to hang out in, where the beer was good and the atmosphere friendly. On learning that he was an American, his "mates" would often as not buy a beer for him and ask questions while watching. sports events on the wall-hung televisions. About the only thing he didn't like was the cigarette smoke, for the Australian culture had not yet totally condemned the vice, but no place was perfect.

Each morning he and his people worked out with Colonel Wilkerson and his men, and they found that in this Olympic competition there was little difference between Australian and American special-operations troopers. One morning they went off to the Olympic pistol range, borrowing Olympic-style handguns.22 automatics that seemed like toys compared to the:45s the Rainbow soldiers ordinarily packed-then saw that the target and scoring systems were very difficult indeed, if not especially related to combat shooting in the real world. For all his practice and expertise, Chavez decided that with luck he could have made the team from Mali. Certainly not the American or Russian teams, whose shooters were utterly inhuman in their ability to punch holes in the skinny silhouette targets that flipped full-face and sideways on computer-controlled hangers. But these paper targets didn't shoot back, he told himself, and that did make something of a difference. Besides, success in his form of shooting was to make a real person dead, not to hit a quarter-sized target on a black paper target card. That made a difference, too, Ding and Mike Pierce thought aloud with their Aussie counterparts. What they did could never be an Olympic sport, unless somebody brought back the gladiatorial games of Rome, and that wouldn't be happening. Besides, what they did for their living wasn't a sport at all, was it? Neither was it a form of mass entertainment in the kinder and gentler modern world. Part of Chavez admitted that he wondered what the games in classical Rome's Flavian Amphitheater had been like to watch, but it wasn't something he could say aloud, lest people take him for an utter barbarian. Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you! It wasn't exactly the Super Bowl, was it? And so, "Major" Domingo Chavez, along with sergeants Mike Pierce, Homer Johnston, and George Tomlinson, and Special Agent Tim Noonan, got to watch the games for free, sometimes with "official" jackets to give them the cover of anonymity.

The same was true, rather more distantly, of Dmitriy Popov, who stayed in his room to watch the Olympics on TV. He found the games a distraction from the questions that were running their own laps inside his brain. The Russian national team, naturally enough his favorite, was doing well, though the Australians were making a fine showing as hosts, especially in swimming, which seemed to be their national passion. The problem was in the vastly different time zones. When Popov was watching events live, it was necessarily an ungodly hour in Kansas, which made him somewhat bleary-eyed for his morning horseback rides with Maclean and Killgore - those had become a very pleasant morning diversion.

This morning was like the previous ten, with a cool westerly breeze, the rising orange sun casting strange but lovely light on the waving fields of grass and wheat. Buttermilk now recognized him, and awarded the Russian with oddly endearing signs of affection, which he in turn rewarded with sugar cubes or, as today, an apple taken from the morning breakfast buffet, which the mare crunched down rapidly from his hand. He had learned to saddle his own horse, which he now did quickly, leading Buttermilk outside to join the others and mounting up in the corral.

"Morning, Dmitriy," Maclean said.

"Good morning, Kirk," Popov replied pleasantly. In another few minutes, they were riding off, to the south this time, toward one of the wheat fields, at a rather more rapid pace than his first such ride.

"So, what's it like to be an intelligence agent?" Killgore asked, half a mile from the barn.

"We are called intelligence officers, actually," Popov said to correct the first Hollywood-generated misimpression. "Truthfully, it is mainly boring work. You spend much of your time waiting for a meeting, or filling out forms for submission to your headquarters, or the rezidentura. There is some danger-but only of being arrested, not shot. It has become a civilized business. Captured intelligence officers are exchanged, usually after a brief period of imprisonment. That never happened to me, of course. I was well trained." And lucky, he didn't add.

"So, no James Bond stuff, you never killed anybody, nothing like that?" Kirk Maclean asked.

"Good heavens, no," Popov replied, with a laugh. "You have others do that sort of thing for you, surrogates, when you need it done. And that is quite rare."

"How rare?"

"Today? Almost never I should think. At KGB, our job was to get information and pass it upwards to our government-more like reporters, like your Associated Press, than anything else. And much of the information we gathered was from open sources, newspapers, magazines, television. Your CNN is perhaps the best, most used source of information in the world."

"But what sort of information did you gather?"

"Mainly diplomatic or political intelligence, trying to discern intentions. Others went after technical intelligence-how fast an airplane flies or how far a cannon shoots-but that was never my specialty area, you see. I was what you call here a people person. I met with various people and delivered messages and such, then brought the answers back to my station."

"What kind of people?"

Popov wondered about how he should answer, and decided on the truth: "Terrorists, that was what you would call them."

"Oh? Like which ones?"

"Mainly European, but some in the Middle East as well. I have language skills, and I can speak easily with people from various lands."

"Was it hard?" Dr. Killgore asked.

"Not really. We had similar political beliefs, and my country provided them with weapons, training, access to some facilities in the Eastern Bloc. I was as much a travel agent as anything else, and occasionally I would suggest targets for them to attack-as payment for our assistance. you see."

"Did you give them money?" Maclean this time.

"Yes, but not much money. The Soviet Union had only limited hard-currency reserves, and we never paid our agents very much. At least I did not," Popov said.

"So, you sent terrorists out on missions to kill people?" This was from Killgore.

Popov nodded. "Yes. That was often my job. That was," he added. "why Dr. Brightling hired me."

"Oh?" Maclean asked.

Dmitriy wondered how far he could take this one. "Yes. he asked me to do similar things for Horizon Corporation."










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 37

DYING FLAME


"Why are we leaving the lights on?" Noonan asked.

"Good question." Chavez walked over and flipped the switch. The room went almost totally dark, with just a crack of light coming in from under the steel fire door Chavez felt his way to the opposite wall, managed to get there without bumping his head, and leaned against the concrete wall, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Gearing was dressed in shorts and low-cut hiking boots, with short socks as well. It seemed the form of dress the locals had adopted for dealing with the heat, and it was comfortable enough, as was his backpack and floppy hat. The stadium concourses were crowded with fans coming in early for the closing ceremonies, and he saw that many of them were standing in the fog to relieve themselves from the oppressive heat of the day. The local weather forecasters had explained ad nauseam about how this version of the El Nino phenomenon had affected the global climate and inflicted unseasonably hot weather on their country, for which they all felt the need to apologize. He found it all rather amusing. Apologize for a natural phenomenon? How ridiculous. With that thought he headed to his objective. In doing so, he walked right past Homer Johnston, who was standing, sipping his Coke.

"Any other places the guy might use?" Chavez worried suddenly in the darkness.

"No," Noonan replied. "I checked the panel on the way in. The whole stadium fogging system comes from this one room. If it's going to happen, it will happen here."

"If it's gonna happen," Chavez said back, actually hoping that it would not. If that happened, they'd go back to Lieutenant Colonel Wilkerson and find out where this Gearing guy was staying, and then pay a call on him and have a friendly little chat.

Gearing spotted the blue door and looked around for security people. The Aussie SAS troops were easily spotted, once you knew how they dressed. But though he saw two Sydney policemen walking down the concourse, there were no army personnel. Gearing paused fifty feet or so from the door. The usual mission jitters, he told himself. He was about to do something from which there was no turning back. He asked himself for the thousandth time if he really wanted to do this. There were fellow human beings all around him, people seemingly just like himself with hopes and dreams and aspirations but, no, those things they held in their minds weren't like the things he held in his own, were they? They didn't get it, didn't understand what was important and what was not. They didn't see Nature for what She was, and as a result they lived lives that were aimed only at hurting or even destroying Her, driving cars that injected hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, using chemicals that found their way into the water, pesticides that killed birds or kept them from reproducing, aiming spray cans at their hair whose propellants destroyed the ozone layer. They were killing Nature with nearly every act they took. They didn't care. They didn't even try to understand the consequences of what they were doing, and so, no, they didn't have a right to live. It was his job to protect Nature, to remove the blight upon the planet, to restore and save, and that was a job he must do. With that decided, Wil Gearing resumed his walk to the blue door, fished in his pocket for the key and inserted it into the knob.

"Command, this is Johnston, you got company coming in! White guy, khaki shorts, red polo shirt, and backpack," Homer announced loudly into everyone's ear. Beside him, Sergeant Tomlinson started walking in that direction, too.

"Heads up," Chavez said in the darkness. There were two shadows in the crack of light under the door, and then the sound of a key in the lock, and then there was another crack of light, a vertical one as the door opened, and a silhouette, a human shape and just that fast, Chavez knew that it was all real after all. Would the lights reveal an inhuman monster, something from another planet, or.… just a man, he saw, as the lights flipped on. About fifty, with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. A man who knew what he was about. He reached for the wrench hanging on the wall mounted pegboard, then shrugged out of his backpack, and loosened the two straps that held the flap in place. It seemed to Chavez that he was watching a movie, something separated from reality, as the man flipped off the motor switch, ending the whirring. Then he closed the valve and lifted the wrench to-

"Hold it right there, pal," Chavez said, emerging from the shadows.

"Who are you?" the man asked in surprise. Then his face told the tale. He was doing something he shouldn't. He knew it, and suddenly someone else did, too.

"I could ask you the same thing










From 3/13/1986 ( RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 - the Bill Gates-Microsoft IPO ) To 9/20/2011 is 9322 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 5/12/1991 ( I was the winning race driver at the Monaco Grand Prix ) is 9322 days



From 8/3/1998 ( Tom Clancy "Rainbow Six" ) To 9/20/2011 is 4796 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/20/1978 ( premiere US film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" ) is 4796 days



From 7/29/2005 ( premiere US film "Stealth" ) To 9/20/2011 is 2244 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 12/25/1971 ( George Walker Bush the purveyor of illegal drugs strictly for his personal profit including the trafficking of massive amounts of cocaine into the United States confined to federal prison in Mexico for illegally smuggling narcotics in Mexico ) is 2244 days



From 12/25/1971 ( George Walker Bush the purveyor of illegal drugs strictly for his personal profit including the trafficking of massive amounts of cocaine into the United States confined to federal prison in Mexico for illegally smuggling narcotics in Mexico ) To 9/20/2011 is 14514 days

14514 = 7257 + 7257

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official Deputy United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 9/15/1985 ( premiere US TV movie "Death of a Salesman" ) is 7257 days



[ See also: To Be Continued? ]



http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=96773

The American Presidency Project

Barack Obama

XLIV President of the United States: 2009 - present

653 - Statement on the Repeal of the Department of Defense's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Policy

September 20, 2011

Today the discriminatory law known as "don't ask, don't tell" is finally and formally repealed. As of today, patriotic Americans in uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve the country they love. As of today, our Armed Forces will no longer lose the extraordinary skills and combat experience of so many gay and lesbian servicemembers. And today, as Commander in Chief, I want those who were discharged under this law to know that your country deeply values your service.










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/79701/Clancy_-_Red_Storm_Rising.txt


Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising


13. – The Strangers Arrive and Depart


"Doesn't look Jewish."

"Be careful saying things like that," the lieutenant cautioned.

"My wife is Jewish. His blood pressure is dropping rapidly." The ambulanceman debated starting an IV, but decided against it. Better to let the surgeons make that decision.

"Hans, have you radioed in?"

"Ja, they know what to expect," the driver replied. "Isn't Ziegler on duty today?"

"I hope so."

The driver horsed the ambulance into a hard left turn, and all the while the two-tone siren cleared traffic ahead of them. One minute later he halted the Mercedes and backed it into the emergency receiving area. A doctor and two orderlies were already waiting.

German hospitals are nothing if not efficient. Within ten minutes the victim, now a patient, had been intubated to protect his airway, punctured for a unit of O-positive blood and a bottle of IV fluids, and wheeled up to neurosurgery for immediate surgery at the hands of Professor Anton Ziegler. The lieutenant had to stay in the emergency room with the registrar.

"So who was he?" the young doctor asked. The policeman gave the information over.

"A German?"

"Does that seem strange?" the lieutenant asked.

"Well, when the radio call came in, and said you were coming also, I assumed that this was, well, sensitive, as though a foreigner were injured."

"The auto was driven by a Frenchwoman."

"Ach, that explains it. I thought he was the foreigner."

"Why so?"

"His dental work. I noticed when I intubated him. He has a number of cavities, and they've been repaired with stainless steel-sloppy work."

"Perhaps he originally comes from the East Zone," the lieutenant observed. The registrar snorted.

No German ever did that work! A carpenter could do better." The doctor filled out the admission form rapidly.

"What are you telling me?"

"He has poor dental work. Strange. He is very fit. Dressed well. Jewish. But he has miserable dental work." The doctor sat down. "We see many strange things, of course."





http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/79701/Clancy_-_Red_Storm_Rising.txt


Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising


13. – The Strangers Arrive and Depart


BONN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

"It's all a sham," Weber reported to the Chancellor four hours later. The helicopter he'd flown to Bonn hadn't even left the ground yet. "The whole bomb-plot business is all a cruel and deliberate sham."

"We know that, Colonel," the Chancellor replied testily. He'd been awake for two days straight now, trying to come to grips with the sudden German-Russian crisis.

"Herr Kanzler, the man we now have in the hospital is Major Andre Ilych Chernyavin. He entered the country over the Czech border two weeks ago with a separate set of false papers. He is an officer in the Soviet Spetznaz forces, their elite Sturmtruppen. He was badly injured in an auto accident-the fool stepped right in front of an automobile without looking-and was carrying a complete diagram for the NATO communications base at Lammersdorf. The station's security posts were just relocated a month ago. This document is only two weeks old. He also has the watch schedule and a roster of watch officers-and that is only three days old! He and a team of ten men came over the Czech border, and only just got their operational orders. His current orders are to attack the base exactly at midnight, the day after receipt of his alert signal. There is also a cancellation signal should plans change. We have them both."

"He came into Germany long before-" The Chancellor was surprised in spite of himself. The entire affair was so unreal.

"Exactly. It all fits, Herr Kanzler. For whatever reason, Ivan is coming to attack Germany. Everything to this point was a sham, all designed to put us to sleep. Here is a full transcript of our interview with Chernyavin. He has knowledge of four other Spetznaz operations, all of them consistent with a full-scale assault across our borders. He is now at our military hospital in Koblenz under heavy guard. We also have a videotape of his admission."

"Red Storm Rising"

"What of the chance that this is all some sort of Russian provocation? Why weren't these documents brought over when they crossed the border?"

"The reconstruction of the Lammersdorf installation meant that they needed correct information. As you know, we've been upgrading the security measures at our NATO communications stations since last summer, and our Russian friends must have been updating their assault plans as well. The fact that they have these documents at all-just days old, some of them-is most frightening. As for how we happened to get hold of this man-" Weber explained the circumstances of the accident. "We have every reason to believe that it was a genuine accident, not a provocation. The driver, a Madame Anne-Marie LeCourte, is a fashion agent -she sells dresses for some Paris designer or other; not a likely cover for a Soviet spy. And why do such a thing? Do they expect us to launch an attack into the DDR based on this? First they accuse us of bombing the Kremlin, then try to provoke us? It's not logical. What we have here is a man whose mission is to prepare the way for a Soviet invasion of Germany by paralyzing NATO communication links immediately before hostilities commence."

"But to do such a thing-even if such an attack is planned.

"The Soviets are intoxicated with 'special operations' groups, a lesson from Afghanistan. These men are highly trained, very dangerous. And it's a cunning plan. The Jewish identification, for example. The bastards play on our sensitivity with the Jews, no? If he is stopped by a police officer, he can make a casual remark about how Germans treat Jews, and what would a young policeman do, eh? Probably apologize and send him on his way." Weber smiled grimly. That had been a carefully thought-out touch. He had to admire it.










1978 film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" DVD video:

00:27:31


Elizabeth: Look out!

Matthew: Oh, my God! Lock the door! Lock the door!

Dr. Miles J. Bennell: They're coming! They're coming!

Elizabeth: Maybe we should help him.

Dr. Miles J. Bennell: Help! Help! They're coming! They're coming! Listen to me! Listen!

Matthew: He's smashed out of his skull.

Elizabeth: He's terrified.

Dr. Miles J. Bennell: You're next! Please! Please! You're next! We're in danger! Please, listen to me! Something terrible! Please! You're next! Here they are! They're here already! Help! You're next! They're coming! They're coming!

Matthew: He must have done something. [gasps] The policeman will help.










http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/71211/Clancy_-_Rainbow_Six.html


Tom Clancy

Rainbow Six


CHAPTER 36

FLIGHTS OF NECESSITY


Clark awoke with a start. It was three in the morning at Hereford, and he'd had a dream whose substance retreated away from his consciousness like a cloud of smoke, shapeless and impossible to grab. He knew it had been an unpleasant dream, and he could only estimate the degree of unpleasantness by the fact that it had awakened him, a rareoccurrence even when on a dangerous field assignment. He realized that his hands were shaking-and he didn't know why. He dismissed it, rolled back over, and closed his eyes for more sleep. He had a budgeting meeting today, the bane of his existence as commander of Rainbow group, playing goddamned accountant. Maybe that had been the substance of his dream, he thought with his head on the pillow. Trapped forever with accountants in discussions of where the money came from and how it would be spent…

The landing at Kansas City was a smooth one, and the Saab airliner pulled up to the terminal, where, presently, the propellers stopped. A ground-crewman came up and attached a: ape to the propeller tip to keep it from turning while the passengers debarked. Popov checked his watch. They were a few minutes early as he walked out the door into the clean air, then into the terminal. There, three gates away from his flight at A-34-he checked to make sure it was the correct flight-he found a bar again. They even allowed smoking in here, which was unusual for an American airport, and he sniffed in the secondhand fumes, remembering the youthin which he'd smoked Trud cigarettes, and almost asked one of these Americans for a smoke. But he stopped short of it and merely drank his next double vodka in a corner booth, facing the wall, wanting no one to have a reason to remember him here. After thirty minutes, his flight was called. He left ten dollars on the table and walked off, carrying the empty saddlebags, then asked himself why he was bothering. But it would appear unusual for a person to board a flight carrying nothing, and so he retained them, and tucked them into the overhead bin. The best news of this flight was that 2-D was not occupied, and he took that, facing the window to make it harder for the stewardess to see his face. Then the Boeing 737 backed away from the gate and took off into the darkness. Popov declined the drink offered to him. He'd had enough for the moment, and though some alcohol helped him to organize his thoughts, too much of it muddled them. He had enough in his system to relax, and that was all he wanted.

What exactly had he learned this day? How did it fit in with all the other things he'd learned at the building complex in western Kansas? The answer to the second question was easier than the first: whatever hard datahe'd learned today contradicted nothing about the project's nature, location, or even its decor. It hadn't contradicted the magazines by his bedside, nor the videotapes next to the TV, nor the conversations he'd overheard in the corridors or in the building's cafeteria. Those maniacs were planning to end the world in the name of their pagan beliefs-but how the hell could he persuade anyone that this was so? And exactly what hard data did he have to give to someone elseand to which someone else? It had to be someone who would both believe him and be able to take action. But who? There was the additional problem that he'd murdered Foster Hunnicutt-he'd had no choice in the matter; he'd had to get away from the Project, and that had been his only chance to do so covertly. But now they could accuse him rightfully of murder, which meant that some police force might try to arrest him, and then how could he get the word out to stop those fucking druids from doing what they said they'd do? No policeman in the known world would believe his tale. It was far too grotesque to be absorbed by a normal mind-and surely those people in the Project had a cover story or legend which had been carefully constructed to shunt aside any sort of official inquiry. That was the mostrudimentary security concern, and that Henriksen fellow would have worked on that himself.

Carol Brightling stood in her office. She'd just printed up a letter to the chief of staff saying that she'd be taking a leave of absence to work on a special scientific project. She'd discussed this matter with Arnie van Damm earlier in the day and gotten no serious objection to her departure. She would not be missed, his body language had told her quite clearly. Well, she thought with a cold look at the computer screen, neither would he, when it came to that.

Dr. Brightling tucked the letter in an envelope, sealed it, and left it on her assistant's desk for transfer into the White House proper the next day. She'd done her job for the Project and for the planet, and it was now time for her to leave. It had been so long, so very long, since she'd felt

John's arms around her. The divorce had been well publicized. It had had to be: She would never have gotten the White House job if she'd been married to one of the country'srichest men. And so, she'd forsworn him, and he'd publicly forsworn the movement, the beliefs they'd both held ten years before when they'd formulated the idea for the Project, but he'd never stopped believing, any more than she had. And so she'd gotten all the way inside the government, and gotten a security clearance that gave her access to literally everything, even operational intelligence, which she then forwarded to John when he needed it. Most especially, she'd gotten access to biological-warfare information, so that they knew what USAMRIID and others had done to protect America, and so knew how to engineer Shiva in such a way as to defeat any proposed vaccine except those which Horizon Corporation had formulated.



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 2:56 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Tuesday 05 August 2014