By Julianna Goldman
May 13 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama has reversed his stance and is seeking to block release of photographs that show the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. personnel, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
The president “did not feel comfortable with release of the photos” which military officials said might endanger troops, Gibbs said.
A federal appeals court ordered the release in connection with a suit.
Tip from George Ure at Urban Survival, this disease matches the predictive linguistics that come up from the Time Monks project. - Ed.
Between 1917 and 1928 a puzzling illness swept around the world. Young people, especially women, seemed to be the most vulnerable, although it affected thousands of people of all ages.
Doctors named it encephalitis lethargica, which simply means 'inflammation of the brain that makes you tired'.
Although an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica hasn't recurred, occasional cases are still seen. Some experts suggest it may be more common than we realise, but that many minor cases go undiagnosed.
Similar to Israel investigating its own war crimes... - Ed.
May 13 (Bloomberg) -- The World Health Organization is investigating a claim by an Australian researcher that the swine flu virus circling the globe may have been created as a result of human error.
Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu drug, said in an interview that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus’s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint.
TORONTO — The World Health Organization and leading influenza research groups are investigating unpublished claims that the new H1N1 swine flu virus may have evolved in a laboratory, not in nature.
The Geneva-based agency was informed of the pending publication over the weekend by the author, a retired Australian virologist named Adrian Gibbs.
Both the “mark to market” valuations for businesses set by FAS157 and the same effectivley for banks through Basel 11 which built on the original Basel accord, have set in place mechanisms which are prone to, and I believe designed to, the cascading effect. Looking at the effects of this or that regulation is a bit like trying to piece together what happened after a nuclear explosion by focusing on the cascading atomic reaction rather than on who designed and built this bloody bomb and who triggered it. In our case it is the bankers and their various regulatory bodies such as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Here we have the industry looking at the cascading effect:-
Read more @ James' Blog, Winter Patriot
A recent poll by the Boston Review proves that at least one third of the American People know that the Jews are to blame for the financial crisis:
State of the Nation: Anti-Semitism and the economic crisis
The financial crisis the Jews have caused is destroying our nation and has already cost the average American dearly. Home values have plummeted. Americans, that is money stolen straight out of your pocket and you know who is to blame, so why are you vile cowards too afraid to ever publicly point your finger at the guilty Jews and demand justice?
Are you shameful, spineless, gutless, murderous fools just going to ignore the fact that the Jews are stealing millions of dollars from your family and are ruining your country? Are you such wretched stinking cowards that you would never put a sign in your yard warning against the Jews, or tack a bumpersticker on your car with a website that told the truth about the Jews?
The pope delivered an emotional address at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial Monday, saying the cry of those killed by the regime under which he grew up "still echoes in our hearts." But only moments after he spoke, Yad Vashem's top two officials criticized him for failing to use the words "Nazis" or "murder" in his speech.
Israeli newspapers Tuesday were filled with criticism.
Read more @ APIt makes the Pentagon’s secret operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside, “roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan,” Sweetman adds. All in all, about seven and a half percent of the Defense Department’s total spending is now classified.
Mainland China has confirmed its first case of the new H1N1 flu strain and quarantined 130 passengers who had travelled with the man who tested positive.
The patient, surnamed Bao, is a 30-year-old student and is in a stable condition, China's centre for disease control said on Monday.
He is being treated at a specialist hospital in Chengdu, the capital of China's southwestern Sichuan province, after testing positive for Type A H1N1 influenza.
MOSCOW, May 8 (RIA Novosti) - Samples of the A/H1N1 swine flu virus have been delivered from the United States to Russia where scientists will conduct tests and develop a vaccine.
"Yes, the strain sample was sent yesterday from Atlanta...The plane must have arrived," a source in a medical institute involved in the research said.
A spokesman for the Epidemiology Central Research Institute said on Thursday that Russian scientists had developed tests to detect the A/H1N1 virus.
The head of Russia's Flu Research Institute, Oleg Kiselyov, said last week the scientists could create a vaccine to combat swine flu in three months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that there had been 2,371 confirmed A/H1N1 cases in 24 countries, with a death toll of 44.
In Mexico, the number of swine flu cases has been put at 1,112, with 42 dead. Two people have died in the United States, where officials confirmed 952 cases.
No swine flu cases have been reported in Russia.
A study published today in the journal Science concludes:
While substantial uncertainty remains, clinical severity [of the current swine flu] appears less than that seen in 1918 but comparable with that seen in 1957.
The 1957 flu killed about 2 million people, which is between four and eight times more deadly than a typical seasonal flu epidemic which cause between 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization.
The 1918 flu killed between 50 to 100 million people.
This time Elsevier Australia went the whole hog, giving Merck an entire publication which resembled an academic journal, although in fact it only contained reprinted articles, or summaries, of other articles. In issue 2, for example, nine of the 29 articles concerned Vioxx, and a dozen of the remainder were about another Merck drug, Fosamax. All of these articles presented positive conclusions. Some were bizarre: such as a review article containing just two references.
In a statement to The Scientist magazine, Elsevier at first said the company "does not today consider a compilation of reprinted articles a 'journal'". I would like to expand on this statement: It was a collection of academic journal articles, published by the academic journal publisher Elsevier, in an academic journal-shaped package. Perhaps if it wasn't an academic journal they could have made this clearer in the title which, I should have mentioned, was named: The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.
The Somali pirates attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean are directed to their targets by a "consultant" team in London, according to a European military intelligence document obtained by a Spanish radio station.
The document, obtained by Cadena SER radio, says the team and the pirates remain in contact by satellite telephone.
It says that pirate groups have "well-placed informers" in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made. These London-based "consultants" help the pirates select targets, providing information on the ships' cargoes and courses.
The White House should intervene to block the impending release of certain photographs showing detainees abused by U.S. military personnel, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham wrote in a letter to President Obama yesterday. Release of the photos is expected by May 28 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
“The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country’s image, and endanger our men and women in uniform,” the Senators wrote.
Dear reader,
A few months ago I shared with you my analysis about the present political situation in an article headlined “The Icarus Sect“. In this article I named the interests who for decades have been robbing our planet and are willing to sacrifice the health and the lives of billions of people in the interest of the chemical/pharmaceutical and oil Cartel.
The name “Icarus“ is taken from a figure in Greek mythology: The arrogant Icarus – armed with artificial wings made out of wax – tried to fly higher and higher. He succeeded until he got too close to the sun and its heat melted the wax of his fake wings. Inevitably, he fell from the sky to his death.
Precisely this is the fate of today’s “Icarus Sect”, those interest groups who have been ruthlessly seeking to monopolize health, food and energy supplies for the people of our planet. In order to continue their unscrupulous investment business, they were willing to bring wars, epidemics, hunger and economic crisis to our planet.
The “Icarus Sect” is doomed because – driven by their insatiable greed – they were flying too close to the sun. Now the sun – the truth – is brightly shining on the fake wings of the “Icarus Sect” (i.e. the multi-trillion dollar oil and drug business) and exposing them as fakes. The tyranny of oil and the dependency of mankind on the false promises of the drug industry is ending – and with it the century-long terror regime of the “Icarus Sect.”
This article reveals the plans of the “Icarus Sect” for 2009 – particularly as they relate to its plan to turn Europe into a corporate dictatorship under the stranglehold of the chemical/drug and oil Cartel. In short, the “Brussels EU” is being strategically developed as the “politburo” of the “Icarus Sect” and as a bridgehead for the global expansion plans of the Cartel.
Before we expose the plans of the “Icarus Sect” for 2009 it is necessary to have a look back at the origin of this Sect and its current political players. Following is a short summary of the facts covered in my previous article http://www.dr-rath-gesundheitsallianz.org/infothek/ri/pdfs/2008_02_de.pdf (in German):
Read more @ The Dr. Rath Health Foundation
The crop circle (glyph) which appeared in Clatford on May 9th has been provided a label of 'sigil' in an article at EarthFiles.Com.
Personally, I doubt that this latest crop glyph is a sigil as it is not asymetric, as are all, meaningful, sigils. As is explained in the annotated diagrams of the crop circle(glyph) below, this latest orb-created glyph is bi-laterally symetrical, as no sigil *can* be an still retain value as a code. Also let us note now that sigils are an attempt to disquise information through coding, not communicate it. Sooooo....it does not make sense to me that these orb-dudes would go to all the trouble to create these glyphs only to then use forms that 'obscure' information, as do sigils.....my conclusion therefore is that this glyph is NOT a sigil, and, assuming that it is intended to create effective communications, a different interpretation *could* be extracted.
First, a diagram of the glyph in question:
America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Arabs, according to Jordan’s King Abdullah, who is helping to bring the parties together.
The Obama Administration is pushing for a comprehensive peace agreement that would include settling Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its territorial disputes with Syria and Lebanon, King Abdullah II told The Times. Failure to reach agreement at this critical juncture would draw the world into a new Middle East war next year. “If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months,” the King said.
"Currently, the major U.S. banking institutions have capital in excess of the amounts required to be considered well capitalized. This program is designed to ensure that these major banking institutions have sufficient capital to perform their critical role in our financial system on an ongoing basis and can support economic recovery, even under an economic environment that is more challenging than is currently anticipated. The customers and the providers of capital and funding can be assured that as a result of this program participating banks will be able to move forward to provide the credit necessary for the stabilization and recovery of the U.S. economy. Because our economy functions better when financial institutions are well managed in the private sector, the strong presumption of the Capital Assistance Program is that banks should remain in private hands."
The Obama administration is considering an unprecedented fall vaccination campaign that could entail giving Americans three flu shots -- one to combat annual seasonal influenza and two targeted at the new swine flu virus spreading across the globe.
If enacted, the multibillion-dollar effort would represent the first time that top federal health officials have asked Americans to get more than one flu vaccine in a year, raising serious challenges concerning production, distribution and the ability to track potentially severe side effects.
Read more @ The Washington Post"I do not doubt that Israel will do what it thinks it needs to do, regardless of whether the U.S. approves," said Mark Fitzpatrick, non-proliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
"Israel would seek forgiveness, not permission."
A retired Israeli general who advises the government on strategic issues suggested there was a tacit synchronicity in recent messages about Iran from Israel and the United States:
"The Israeli threat adds urgency to Obama's calls for diplomatic engagement, and should Israel take things into its hands, the Americans retain wriggle room, some deniability."
Well, the market's only raged higher since then and insider selling is only getting more intsense.
The Pragmatic Capitalist has aggregated recent insider transactions. As you can see from his data collected (unfortunately the tables won't fit here, do click over), insider sales dwarf insider buys both in frequency and in volume. Insiders are selling their stocks in multi-million dollar blocks, while the few buys are much smaller.
If nothing else, it means that a lot of executives probably saw the abyss (a violent drop from the ranks of the wealthy to poor) and want to de-risk to ensure that no matter what happens to their stock, they've taken some skin out of the game.
Klaus vetoes Czech approval of Lisbon Treaty
The Czech President Vaclav Klaus said he would not ratify the Lisbon Treaty after it was approved by the senate yesterday, raising a new obstacle to plans to reform the EU.
Mr Klaus explained that he would not sign the treaty because of its rejection by Irish voters last year and an expected court challenge in the Czech Republic.
"The Lisbon Treaty is dead for this moment," said President Klaus. "It is dead because it was rejected in a referendum in one member state. Therefore, a decision on ratification of this treaty is not on the agenda at this point."
Ireland plans to hold a new vote later this year on the EU's charter for reform. Yesterday the Czech senate voted 54-20 to ratify the treaty which is meant to simplify decision-making in a union that has grown from 15 to 27 members over the past five years. Mr Klaus and lawmakers among the ruling right-wing Civic Democrats claim that the treaty takes away sovereignty and is a step towards a European superstate.
From Mondoweiss:
Two pro-Israel speakers at the AIPAC policy conference said yesterday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the bete noir of the lobby, is also a boon to the lobby; for if the Iranian President is not reelected next month, AIPAC's case against Iranian nukes will be damaged.
At a breakout session on the Iranian elections, Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, said of the Iranian government:
Later a questioner raised the issue again. What if Ahmadinejad is defeated in June's election and replaced by “someone less inflammatory”-- what would that do to efforts to publicize Iran’s threat?
Ken Pollack of the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution acknowledged the concern. Throughout the panel, Pollack had struck a hawkish stance in line with the AIPAC position of stiff sanctions to hurt the Iranian economy if Iran goes ahead with nukes. He said:
Encompassing roughly the same time frame as the Six Day War that began with Israel’s sneak attack on her Arab neighbors in 1967 (and responsible for all the current mayhem in the Middle East today) the American people suffered a similar event the last week of April with long-term effects just as devastating to their national health as Israel’s occupation of those same lands she stole some 4 decades ago.
The difference between the two however is that with Israel’s recent sneak attack against America, the outcome was not simply the capturing of a few small pieces of heavily-populated pieces of real estate as occurred in 1967. Rather, it was the capture of the entire military/intelligence apparatus of the United States that–absent some substantive and successful counter-attack–will inevitably result in all life on the planet being threatened in a manner never before seen in history.
Algeria is one of the Middle Eastern North African nations that has the scientific and technological capacity to develop nuclear weapons if legal, political and other barriers to nuclear weapons proliferation decline and lose their efficacy. “Algeria has the expertise and the means to produce nuclear weapons” should it decide to do so, said independent researcher Mark Gorwitz, and he added that it might be able to accomplish the task in just a couple of years.
Mr. Gorwitz prepared an updated open source bibliography of Algerian nuclear science and engineering publications, which is posted here (pdf).
h/t malcontent
I guess you could say that makes him an "expert." He works for the DOD, in theory.
The $328,835 snapshots of an Air Force One backup plane buzzing lower Manhattan last week will not be shown to the public, the White House said yesterday.
"We have no plans to release them," an aide to President Obama told The Post, refusing to comment further.
“The bombardments appeared to have targeted the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish separatist group which has launched attacks on Iran from rear-supply bases in the mountains of northern Iraq,” AFP reports. Iran has attacked the Kurdish group before, with artillery. But this is the first time the Iranians followed up, with assaults from the air.
“The incident comes a week after reports of a clash between Iranian police officers and suspected PJAK fighters in the country’s western province of Kermanshah,” Al-Jazeera reports. “At least 10 policemen and 10 fighters were killed in the gun battle.”
Details on the airstrikes remain sketchy. [oh i bet] Voice of America says the attacks were carried out by helicopters, which remained in Iranian airspace. Al-Arabiyah television, on the other hand, says it was “Iranian planes [that] raided those villages.”
It is a serious development because the Iraqi airspace is under the control of the US Air Force and under US protection. So the raids are either approved by the United States, as was the case when a US nod was previously given to the Turkish Army, or such operation was a surprise by the Iranians. According to eyewitnesses, the planes were flying at very low altitudes, which may indicate that they were trying to escape detection by radars. So these planes were able to attack many locations. Eyewitnesses and official Kurdish sources said that the raids were carried out by fighter jets and not helicopters.
In February, American fighter jets shot down an Iranian drone flying over Iraq. Such an incursion would’ve likely provoked an angry response from the previous administration. But the reaction to the drone incident was muted — perhaps in the interest of keeping the dialogue with Tehran going. [The dialog that's not going so well (see above)? The dialog that has to fail so that Israel can get it's war with Iran on? - ed.]
WASHINGTON -- A Washington state biosurveillance firm raised the first warning about a possible outbreak of swine flu in Mexico more than two weeks before the World Health Organization offered its initial alert about a public health emergency of international concern.
Both federal and international health officials had access to the warning from Veratect Corp. Later e-mails calling attention to the company's subsequent report that the disease was possibly spreading in Mexico were sent to 10 officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Robert Hart, the company's chief executive.
Hart said he wasn't sure why health officials didn't act sooner.
"They have a lot of other responsibilities," Hart said on Thursday. "But every day makes a difference." [Hey, it's a full time job mind-fucking you people to death. Come on. - ed.]
MADRID/GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization is likely to raise its flu alert to the top of its six-point scale and declare a pandemic, its director-general indicated in an interview published on Monday.
In remarks setting the scene for another alert increase, but without saying when, WHO chief Margaret Chan warned against over-confidence following a stabilization in the number of new cases of the H1N1 strain that has proved deadly in Mexico.
"Level 6 does not mean, in any way, that we are facing the end of the world. It is important to make this clear because (otherwise) when we announce level 6 it will cause an unnecessary panic," she told Spanish newspaper El Pais.
"Flu viruses are very unpredictable, very deceptive ... We should not be over-confident. One must not give H1N1 the opportunity to mix with other viruses. That is why we are on alert." [mmm hmm]
As has been stated before, all medical and non-medical authorities on vaccination agree that vaccines are designed to cause a mild case of the diseases they are supposed to prevent. But they also know and admit that there is no way whatsoever to predict whether the case will be mild or severe - even deadly. With this much uncertainty in dealing with the very lives of people, it is very unscientific and extremely dangerous to use such a questionable procedure as vaccination.
Many vaccines also cause other diseases besides the one for which they are given. For instance, smallpox vaccine often causes syphilis, paralysis, leprosy, and cancer. (See the chapters on smallpox and plagues.) Polio shots, diphtheria toxin-antitoxin, typhoid vaccine, as well as measles, tetanus and all other shots often cause various other stages of disease such as post-vaccinal encephalitis (inflammation of the brain,) paralysis, spinal meningitis, blindness, cancer (sometimes within two years,) tuberculosis, (two to twenty years after the shot,) arthritis, kidney disease, heart disease (heart failure sometimes within minutes after the shot and sometimes several hours later.) Nerve damage and many other serious conditions also follow the injections.
Even though health officials are calling this new virus H1N1, that's also the type of virus that's in wide circulation today. And it has an interesting history. It was the dominant flu virus through the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Oxford says it disappeared in 1957, when it was displaced by another flu virus. But then a strain of H1N1 suddenly reappeared in 1977.
"Now where could it have come from?" he asks. "We reckon now, in retrospect, it was probably released accidentally from a laboratory, probably in northern China or just across the border in Russia, because everyone was experimenting with those viruses at the time in the lab."
It was nothing malicious, Oxford believes, just some flu vaccine research that broke out of containment. The descendents of this virus are still circulating. He notes that most people who have encountered the newly emerged H1N1 virus seem to have developed only mild disease, and he speculates that's because we have all been exposed to a distant cousin, the H1N1 virus that emerged in the 1970s.
That’s right folks - the federal government is training its enforcers that people who don’t believe everything they see on Fox News, CNN or read in the New York Times are to be treated as a “threat” and a potential violent domestic terrorist.
Among reporters and observers, two parallel ways of approaching the story -- what we might call the "face-value" track, and the "meta" track -- have quickly emerged.
Read more @ TPM MuckrackerOk, I’ll write it to save you from having to post it as a comment:
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Via: Guardian:
Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists.
May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu’s potential to reconfigure its genetic material and become more deadly is a “major concern,” said Anne Schuchat, a scientist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The prospect of what is called reassortment is keeping Schuchat and health officials worldwide on the alert even as the newest outbreak has proved itself to be relatively mild outside Mexico, where 19 of the 20 confirmed deaths were reported. Human cases of the disease have been confirmed in 30 U.S. states and 19 countries, according to the CDC and the World Health Organization, a global agency that may declare a pandemic.
But in my more lucid moments, I managed to do some research on the subject (as we all know, Google is the poor man’s health insurance). Just how serious IS swine flu? I know that I am feeling like heck-warmed-over right now, but let’s put this thing into perspective. According to my friend Joe Thompson who loves sending me statistics, within one year in America over 61,000 people will die of pneumonia. One out of every 20 who contract pneumonia will die. And since January of this year alone, over 1,300 people have died from ordinary flu. But only one person has died from swine flu.
It may, or it may not. I guess they don't know yet. But hey, what could possibly go wrong? - Ed.
Drinking water which contains the element lithium may reduce the risk of suicide, a Japanese study suggests.
Researchers examined levels of lithium in drinking water and suicide rates in the prefecture of Oita, which has a population of more than one million.
The suicide rate was significantly lower in those areas with the highest levels of the element, they wrote in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
High doses of lithium are already used to treat serious mood disorders.
But the team from the universities of Oita and Hiroshima found that even relatively low levels appeared to have a positive impact of suicide rates.
Levels ranged from 0.7 to 59 micrograms per litre. The researchers speculated that while these levels were low, there may be a cumulative protective effect on the brain from years of drinking this tap water.
Attorneys for American businessman Bassam Nabulsi, who smuggled the video out of the country, alleged in a letter to the country’s highest justice that they possess over two hours of video showing Issa tortured at least 25.
Mark Levy, a Clinton-era aide, was reported on Thursday 30th April to have ‘committed suicide’ at his Washington Law Office, a branch of Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, based in Atlanta.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — Regional governments can invoke "draconian" powers if [when] the swine flu virus reaches a worst-case scenario, from monitoring people in their own homes to seizing control of entire economies.
The SARS and bird flu scares of recent years have led many countries to develop pandemic action plans which involve sweeping powers aimed at containing the spread of disease among their populations.
Some have already been introduced as the World Health Organisation (WHO) steps up warnings of an imminent A(H1N1) flu virus pandemic. [helpfully working on 'when']
In Hong Kong the first confirmed case of swine flu in Asia was recorded Friday after a Mexican man who arrived via Shanghai tested positive.
Authorities moved quickly to quarantine for seven days more than 300 guests and staff at the Metropark Hotel, where the patient had briefly stayed.
"Since this is the first case in Hong Kong we must be very careful as the chance of controlling and containing this infection is limited, we will try to be more draconian in our policy," said Health Secretary York Chow.
China has made similar moves in tracking down passengers who were on the same flight to Shanghai as the Mexican national, drawing criticism from Mexico that it has taken "unjustified" precautions.
Before discovering the first case, Hong Kong had signalled its preparedness to close down all schools and converted a holiday camp into a quarantine centre where possible sufferers will be sent in a bid to contain any mass outbreak.
Meanwhile Australia has also approved the isolation of suspected sufferers against their will.
The new powers have not yet been used and Health Minister Nicola Roxon stressed that they were only precautionary, but they still remain an option if needed.
"We want to make sure that all the powers are there, that we are ready to act if [when] this takes a dramatic turn for the worse," she said this week.
Australia's pandemic action plan, a draft of which is publicly available on the Internet, reveals the government potentially has recourse to even more extreme measures should the threat escalate.
The plan, which was updated in April, allows for "extraordinary measures" including the power to manage the supply of goods and services, giving it effective control over the economy.
Roxon was unable to detail what punitive measures could be taken against people who disobey government directives but the plan talks of maintaining public trust "through visible and effective security and law enforcement".
In Singapore, changes made to the Infectious Diseases Act during the 2003 SARS outbreak allow officials to order suspected sufferers to stay at home or face a potential jail term.
Health authorities can install an electronic camera in the home of someone under quarantine and order them at random intervals to show their presence.
Failure to comply can attract a six month prison sentence for a first offence, rising to 12 months for a second.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said Singapore did not see the flu crisis as a police enforcement issue.
"No, we will not put out our police forces just to go and deal with the issue ... we have plans for the scenarios that we face but at the same time, we must also deal with issues calmly, (there's) no point panicking," she said.
Two common goals of the powers available to governments are isolating those believed to have the virus and preventing the congregation of large crowds which could help it to spread.
Japan has ordered hospitals to set up "fever rooms" and said it will ask schools to close, groups to cancel non-essential gatherings, and companies to cut back operations, reserving the right to make the measures compulsory if a major outbreak occurs.
The Australian government's term for such preventative action is "social distancing" and the pandemic action plan concedes it would have a major impact how people go about their lives.
"(It) could include considered closure of places where people gather, such as child care facilities, schools, community centres, cinemas and nightclubs; cancellation of major sporting events such as football matches; and changing public transport arrangements," the plans said.
However, Roxon conceded that preventing the swine flu virus reaching Australia may prove impossible, no matter what powers the government invoked.
"Developments overseas indicate that this flu is indeed moving fast and we are conscious that, whatever steps we take, it may not be possible to stop this disease coming into Australia," Roxon told reporters.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.