Why Turkey should be admitted to the EU

Here is the link to the paper Güliz, Alex and I have been working throughout the semester: Blogpost about our EU paper.

Pronounciation Diary 3 / Feedback

After our pronunciation exercise I got that feedback that I pronounced the ð sound wrong in "their". 

In order to correct this I first used the BBC pronounciation page and then did some minimal pair exercises on the Mirriam Webster website. 

The second word I mispronounced was debt. I used howjsay.com to look up the correct pronunciation of the word. Same applies for stimulus

Last but there was the metal trap. I wasn't aware of the effect that there was a British and an American way of spelling the metal in question. Accordingly I pronounced the American spelt aluminum like the British aluminium.

Pronounciation Diary 2 / Resources

I tried some of the resources from our pronounciation page and here are the ones which I got the most out of.

I am in love with Amy Walker!!! She is just amazing! I watched all her videos and I think the essence of her teachings is that in order to an accent you have to get into the mindset of the culture to which it belongs to.

Another website I find very useful is the Merriam Webster pronounciation page. Especially when you don't realize what the difference between two words is, minimal pairs are immensly helpful to identify those.

I am also very fond of BBC's pronouciation page. It gives you a short and sweet overview of all sounds existing in the English language.

Apart from that I also found Frank's explanation of how you can tell wheter you are pronouncing a letter voiced or voiceless very helpful. If something in your throat vibrates it is voiced.

The Pecha Kucha Experience

I had never heard about Petschatschka before we were introduced to this method of presenting in class.
It was certainly a challange to create a presentation according to such a strict set of rules

The Making of...

The making of process was quite a lot of fun, I enjoyed working in a team. After doing a lot of research we ended up with quite a lot of text and kept condensing until it could be spoken in 20 seconds. In this respect I liked the restrictions as it makes it easier to pluck up to courage to trim a text to its very essentials. The recording process was also quite enjoyable as Dominik owns top-notch equipment. The time restriction also has the advantage that you have to concern yourself with your speaking pace. Often people don't realize how slow or fast they speak.

The Product...

I was quite satisfied with our Pecha Kucha. I think that alternating with a partner while speaking helps you to not only stay focused but also keeps your voice time to relax and your mouth doesn't go dry as quickly. The power point served well as a timer.

Next time...

I think next time I would be much more efficient in determining the amount of words that can be spoken in 20 seconds. Maybe I would aim for a "redder thread".

Overall...

While I am sure that the Pecha Kucha method is very useful if there are quite a lot of presenters I also think that some topics will "get killed" by all the restrictions.
What I did learn from the Pecha Kucha presentations is that it is very proficient to condense the information you want to deliver as much as possible. The more you get it to the point, the more likely people are to remember what you said.

Vocabulary Notebook

Having a wide vocabulary is essential for becoming a good translator or interpreter.

In high school it was sufficient to have a little notebook and write the German word in one column and it's English "equivalent" in the opposite column.

As university student it is no longer sufficient to think of learning vocabulary as reviewing easy one to one equations. We ought to internalize words so we can use them in appropriate contexts, juggle and play with them.

My vocabulary notebook consists of for parts.
1.) definition and explanation
2.) collocations
3.) don't confuse x with y
4.) spelling and pronounciation

I know, not very creative headings but I decided to go for a "nomen est omen" stragedy.

The definition and explanation section resembles the clasic high school vocabulary notebook. Just, instead of two columns there are seven columns. The first one, well, for the word. The second for a definition. The third for a good example sentence (vocabulary.com is a true blessing concerning that). The fourth for the German "equivalent(s)". The fifth for strong collocations. The sixth for other elements of the same word family. The last for synonymes.

The collocations section contains strong collocations of words that I already now.

for example: the discussions are still only in intermediate stages

The don't confuse x with y section is all about distinguishing between two words that have some kind of connection.

Last but not least, words that I have difficulty spelling or pronouncing with, or words that are somewaht extraordinary are collected in the spelling and pronounciation sheet. The middle column is left empty which enables me to use the print off as a work sheet.

Well, that is how I divided up my vocabulary notebook.

Cheers,
Anna

before/after: deflation grave

ORIGINAL

Summary of “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese‘ deflation grave”

In a Telegraph article from the 10/23/2013 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that the harmful policies applied by the EU in tackling the Eurozone crisis lead to deflation. The current strategy is to enforce harsh austerity measures on crisis-torn countries like Greece and Spain. With no monetary stimulus to boost their economies such countries are experiencing serious deflation. This is highly dangerous because deflation will cause unrepayable runaway debts for public and private actors. In order to deal with such debts states will be forced to cut down on their spending even further, which will result in lower wages and consequently decrease the purchasing power. Private actors will be forced to run down on their liquid assets. In short, economies are going to stagnate and Europe will end up in what the author refers to as deflation grave. Ironically, the initiators of these policy errors, with Germany leading the way, will also eventually face deflation. The currently proposed solution to this problem of religiously anticipating economic growth is harshly criticized by the author. Instead he argues that Spain, France, Italy and the Med Club ought to demand that the inflation rates are increased in their national economies.

CORRECTED

Summary of “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese‘ deflation grave”

In a Telegraph article from the 10/23/2013 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that the harmful policies applied by the EU in tackling the Eurozone crisis are leading to deflation. The current strategy is to enforce harsh austerity measures on crisis-torn countries like Greece and Spain. With no monetary stimulus to boost their economies such countries are experiencing serious deflation. This is highly dangerous because deflation will cause unrepayable runaway debts for public and private actors. In order to deal with such debts, states will be forced to cut down on their spending even further, which will result in lower wages and consequently decrease the purchasing power. Private actors will be forced to run down their liquid assets. In short, economies are going to stagnate and Europe will find itself in what the author refers to as a "deflation grave". The currently proposed solution to this problem of religiously anticipating economic growth is harshly criticized by the author. A real solution would be to raise inflation rates but countries like Germany strongly oppose such measures  because they fear it will erode their savings. Ironically, this reluctance will eventually also cause Germany  face detrimental deflation. The author urges the Club Med  to put Germany under pressure and  demand that the inflation rates are increased in their national economies.

Acedmic paper in progress

To be completely honest, my paper is not going to great so far. This task appears to be a lot more difficult than I expected. Additionally, although I love my topic – Bears in the EU – it is rather hard to find interesting sources. I still haven’t decided on my thesis statement or my scope yet. I am not sure whether I want to focus on the legal aspect, the trophy trade or do a kind of snapshot of the conditions bears live in. This topic would be so much more interesting if it didn’t have to tie in with the EU. As of now I am seriously contemplating changing my topic to something like the debate about the United States of Europe.

Pronounciation Diary - Day 1

!!! I actually decided to really get into English pronounciation and dedicate a whole seperate blog to this topic: http://ohenglishwhereartthou.blogspot.co.at/ I will try to organise it better when I have written more posts.!!!

Often it is not so much what you say, but how you say it.

For example, I have got this one friend, who always manages to drag me along to his weird events just because he manages to sound so convincing. He manages to provoke action with his way of speaking.

On a larger scale this also true with accents in a foreign language. When I was studying Physics in Vienna we had one lecture which was partly in English. Of course our professors all were geniouses BUT their thick German accent just made them sound so uneducated. It really crushed their credibility. We actually came up with a name for that - the aesthetic paradox!

Yet even though our professor sounded funny, after listening to him for a while it was clear that he was an expert on his field. And since our field of expertise is languages we really really ought to get down our pronouciation! For the sake of our credibilty!

So I came up with a structured plan to help me improve my pronounciation.

Block 1 - erasing every last bit of German in my English...

Because....unlucky for us, a German accent doesn't sound charming like the French one.

v/w sound
the/ three

Block 2 - different accents

identify
imitate
Australian
British
American
after Erasmus in Dublin - Irish

Criticism on deflation article

Summary of Ambrose Evans-P. Article

In his article in Telegraph from the 23^rd of October 2013, Ambrose Evans Pritchard analyzes the deflation within Europe.

In the beginning he illustrates the European deflation by using a comparison to the Japanese one. Deflation means no economic growth which can be positive if a country is not in debt, but due to European Debt Crisis, a deflation would cause a bigger problem than assumed for Europe. Not only national debts would be impossible to pay off but also private debts would be affected badly by this.

Ambrose Evans Pritchard suggests an increase of inflation within Europe, but Germany resist against such a policy as their economy is in a good condition, for now anyway. In the long run this unsolved problem will also affect Germany’s economy. To carry out this kind of an inflation policy Club Med partners should ally against Germany and force the country to accept inflation.

Another solution could be the attempt to cut spending, which is a highly unpopular process for the population.

In brief, Europe is hoping for a miracle to occur that will solve the European deflation and will save them from falling into a deeper crisis. 

Criticism

I very much like the topic sentence, it gives you a nice and easy start into the text. 

In the second sentence I would replace "using a comparison" by simply "comparing".

I think the second sentence is a bit unclear - deflation leads to no economic growth but I don't think it is the term to describe it. There seems to be a link missing there.

The problems that can be caused by deflation are explained in a very good and understandable way. I think the author did a really good job here in making a complicated topic tangible. This also goes for the proposed solutions - so all in all I think the author did really well in breaking down a complicated issue.

Revised Version of EU paragraph

Original Version

Revised Version

The Schengen Agreement

In 1985  five of the then ten member states of the European Economic Community, namely Belgium, France , the Netherlands, West Germany and Luxembourg conceived the Schengen Agreement to permit the free movement of persons within  a determined area referred to as the Schengen Area. Nowadays, the Schengen Agreement has 26 members with also non-European Union countries like Norway and Iceland having signed this treaty. Others, such as the United Kingdom and Ireland, are part of the European Union, but do not belong to the Schengen Area.
The UK prefers to remain independent as they perceive the natural frontiers of an island as already sufficient enough to prevent illegal immigration. Even though Ireland does not share this opinion, they prefer to uphold the Common Travel Agreement as joining the Schengen Area would result in the inconvenience of a closed border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In short, the Schengen Area achieved its aim of enhancing mobility of people and goods and was eventually incorporated into European law with only Ireland, the UK, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus remaining opt-outs.



PS: Sorry for the creative depiction of the first paragraph, but as unrealistic it sounds - the electronic version somehow got lost....

EU - individual paragraph

Original Brainstorming

answers from this week's short questions: What is the difference between the European Commission, the European Parliament, The Council of Europe, The Council of European Union and The European Council.
-European Commission: "government" - propose legislation
-European Parliament: pass new legislation together with The Council of European Union
-The European Council: sets out general goals
-Council of Europe: Europe's leading human rights organisation

make a CLEAR distinction

Original Paragraph

Although the European Union is subject to very complicated dynamics and structures, the purpose of its most important institutions can be outlined in a few sentences. First of all there is the European Commission which can be compared to a government. Its main task is to propose new legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. Those two institutions make up the legislative branch of the EU. Together they are empowered to pass new legislations and implement the budget.  The Council of the European Union is not to be mixed up with the European Council. The latter is in charge of setting out general goals and has no legislative power. The posts in this institution are filled by the heads of EU member governments.   Last but not least there is another institution with a similar name: the Council of Europe. This Council is Europe’s leading human rights organization with 47 member states, of which 28 are members of the EU. After this short overview the discussed institutions can now be examined in more detail.

Feedback and reflection from class last week

Find a better concluding sentence!
pass legislation not legislations
mixed up is not a good word

Feedback and reflection from class this week

Unfortunately I was ill.

New version of my paragraph

Although the European Union is subject to very complicated dynamics and structures, the purpose of its most important institutions can be outlined in a few sentences. First of all there is the European Commission which can be compared to a government since its main task is to propose new legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. Those two institutions constitute the legislative branch of the EU. As such they are empowered to pass new legislations and implement the budget. The Council of the European Union is not to be confused with the European Council as the latter is in charge of setting out general goals and has no legislative power. The seats in this institution are taken by the national head of EU member states.  To make it even more confusing there is another institution with a similar name: the Council of Europe. This Council is Europe’s leading human rights organization with 47 member states, of which 28 are members of the EU. By and large the main purposes of the major EU institutions are quite easy to grasp, although the partly closely related terminology may require some study effort.

EU Paper Topics

Here is the creme de la creme of my plentiful ideas ;)

1. National identity and EU citizenship 
What measures and programms has the EU initiated in order to make people identify themselves more with the European Union. I think this is of great importance because the EU would function even better if we would all have a strong feeling of belonging together.

2. EU scepticism
Juxtaposition of  German and Greek sceptist arguments.
This will illustrate two utterly different view points and by analyzing anti-EU-arguments they can maybe be taken appart.

3. Wildlife in the EU
What kind of effect has the EU had on wildlife and wildlife trade.
This is interesting because it will show how setting universal standards may produce positive outcomes in some and negative outcomes in other regions. I would take Croatia and the brown bear as an example because there the brown bear might ironically become more endangered after receiving the status of "being under protection".

4. Economy: Interdepence of Greek and German market
Due to its export policy Germany is dependent on countries like Greece as an output market. This fact is often neglected in the commercial media.

5. Subsidies
What does the EU support financially? This might be of interest if you are maybe planning to invest in alternative energy or are/will be eligable for some kind of subsidy.

BW/ Genetic Engineering and BW

The up’s and down’s of scientific advance

Whenever new findings are presented to the world, people come up with positive and negative usages of this new finding.

This is also the case for genetic engineering. One the one hand it can be used to “cure”some serious diseases  (see Steffi's blog form information ) on the other hand it also opens up new possibilities for the field of biological warfare. Below some of those possibilities are listed. It is however not confirmed that such biological weapons really exist. It really is a mere description of possibilities.

For one, it may possible to create a biological weapon which targets a specific person’s genome. This agent may spread through populations showing minimal or no symptoms, yet it would be fatal to the intended target.Just imagine how this could be used to intimidate people. I guess the furniture emerging from such a period of intimidation would make Biedermeier furniture look dull.

Also viruses which until now only used animals as their hosts could be genetically modified and developed to infect humans. The Ebola Virus would be a candidate for such a genetic modification.

As my heading also includes the up’s: genetic manipulation of viruses could also be used to create vaccines that provide immunity against multiple diseases with a single treatment. Although it needs to be added that "provoking" immunity be being infected with a "weak" modification of a disease is not universely perceived as being positive.

In this sence I can only recommend you to live fast and die young ;)
No I am just kidding: I wanna stress this again, these scientific findings aim to raise awareness and are not in progress!

BW/ Japan's dark chapters

Japan's dark chapters

Of course when war is waging, terrible things happen. But what happened in Japan between 1930 and the end WWII can, if at all, only be described as inhumane cruelty.

Ever heard of Unit 731, or of people being dissected alive?  In this blog post I want to talk about something which should carry the same slogan as the Holocaust : NEVER AGAIN!

The dark chapters of Japan start with a man called Shiro Ishii.

He grew up as a son of a privileged family and soon developed an arrogance which led him to the belief that people below him were worth less. His major goal in life was to become the father of biological warfare. After obtaining a high rank in the Japanese military he started his research at the Tokyo Medical School and later became head of Japan’s bioweapon programme during WWII. When Japanese forces occupied parts of China he saw his chance for creating an institution, in which he could conduct his experiments. This institution, which later become known as Unit 731, was built in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and carried the official name Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. He chose the area and name to keep the public attention away from his laboratory.

In his laboratory Shiro Ishii and a large team of medical researchers experimented with biological warfare agents. They experimented on humans. Prisoners, which were kept in the middle and most secret part of the building, were injected with viruses. Then the medical researchers opened them up alive to see how their body reacted. The researchers referred to their prisoners as maturas which could be loosely translated into log. This shows that those prisoners were no longer perceived as humans.

The aim of Shiro Ishii’s programme was to attack Japan's counterparts, especially the US, with weapons they had never seen before.

Along with experiments on biological warfare agents Shiro Ishii was also searching for an effective delivery system – and he found it in fleas. A large quantity of rats was kept at Unit 731 as a flee factory. Then nearby villages were infected and again Japanese researchers went to those villages and performed vivisections on the victims. They even distributed chocolate with plague-infected fleas to little children! Also wells were poisoned to study the effects of typhus and cholera outbreaks.

Epidemics persisted for years and continued to kill more than 30,000 people until 1947, long after the Japanese had surrendered.

But what happened to Shiro Ishii and his team after the surrender? Were they found guilty for their warfare crimes?

No. They cleverly managed to get the US to grant them immunity of prosecution in exchange of information about their research on humans. The US believed, especially with the prospect of the Cold War, that they could profit from this information. Shiro Ishii died, well above his sixties, due to natural causes. His successor, Masaji Kitano, even published some research articles where he simply exchanged the term humans with monkeys. Actually most of Ishii’s team went on to hold high academic and political positions after the WWII and were far from receiving punishment.

today Unit 731 is a museum

Until this day the Japanese government  refused to apologize for the events in Unit 731. The problem is  that unlike Nazi human experimentation ,which is extremely well documented, the activities of Unit 731 are known only from the testimonies which apparently can not be used to verify the happenings. However, in October 2003, the Prime Minister stated that, while the current Japanese government does not possess any records related to Unit 731, they recognize the gravity of the matter and will publicize any records that are located in the future.

If you want to get further information I recommend you watch this documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgtIyNRv3g8

here is the transcript: http://www.targeted-individuals-europe.com/?q=node/7

BW/ What is out there?

What is out there?

So far the biological warfare agents I talked about were all kind of ”there“. They were not created for the specific purpose to spread an epidemic. At the dawn of the 20^th century, as science was making huge leaps forward, also biological weapons became more dangerous.

The idea of actually creating microorganisms that can be weaponized first arose.

Agents are commonly selected because they:

• ·         are highly toxic
• ·         are easily obtainable
• ·         are inexpensive to produce
• ·         are easily transferable from person to person
• ·         can be dispersed in aerosol form
• ·         have no known vaccine

So here are two tables, which give you kind of an idea what we are dealing with.

	Microbe	Natural Environment	Target Host	Mode of Contraction	Diseases/Symptoms
	AnthraxBacillus anthracis	Soil	Humans, Domestic Animals	Open Wounds, Inhalation	Pulmonary Anthrax Septicemia, Flu-like symptoms
	Clostridium botulinum	Soil	Humans	Contaminated Food or Water,	Inhalation
	Clostridium perfringens	Intestines of humans and other animals, Soil	Humans, Domestic Animals	Open Wounds	Gas gangrene, Severe Abdominal Cramps, Diarrhea
	RICINProtein Toxin	Extracted from Castor Bean Plants	Humans	Contaminated Food or Water, Inhalation, Injection	Severe Abdominal Pain, Watery and Bloody Diarrhea, Vomiting, Weakness, Fever, Cough, and Pulmonary Edema
	Smallpox	Eradicated from Nature, Now Obtained from Laboratory Stockpiles	Humans	Direct Contact with Bodily Fluids or Contaminated Objects, Inhalation	Persistent Fever, Vomiting, Rash on Tongue and in Mouth, Rash and Bumps on Skin

source: http://biology.about.com/od/biotechnologycloning/a/biological-weapons.htm

Crucial biological agents (Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA)

Disease	Pathogen	Abused1
Category A (major public health hazards)
Anthrax	Bacillus antracis (B)	First World War
		Second World War
		Soviet Union, 1979
		Japan, 1995
		USA, 2001
Botulism	Clostridium botulinum (T)	–
Haemorrhagic fever	Marburg virus (V)	Soviet bioweapons programme
	Ebola virus (V)	–
	Arenaviruses (V)	–
Plague	Yersinia pestis (B)	Fourteenth-century Europe
		Second World War
Smallpox	Variola major (V)	Eighteenth-century N. America
Tularemia	Francisella tularensis (B)	Second World War
Category B (public health hazards)
Brucellosis	Brucella (B)	–
Cholera	Vibrio cholerae (B)	Second World War
Encephalitis	Alphaviruses (V)	Second World War
Food poisoning	Salmonella, Shigella (B)	Second World War
		USA, 1990s
Glanders	Burkholderia mallei (B)	First World War
		Second World War
Psittacosis	Chlamydia psittaci (B)	–
Q fever	Coxiella burnetti (B)	–
Typhus	Rickettsia prowazekii (B)	Second World War
Various toxic syndromes	Various bacteria	Second World War

source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326439/

The biological agent most prevalent in people's minds is Anthrax. Because of that I will go into a bit more detail about this particular agent.

Anthrax, which is caused by the Bacillus anthracis, is very lethal and can affect animals and humans. The disease is spread via spores. And these spores are actually what make it so dangerous. They are able to survive in harsh conditions for decades or even centuries. They can even be found on Antarctica! When those spores are inhaled, indigested or come into contact with our skin they can be reactivated and cause infections in our lungs, our bowles or our skin. It is most lethal when the infection occurs in the lung. Although it can be treated with antiobiotics most people die within 3 to 6 days. The disease is said to be more frequent in areas with poor hygiene. This doesn't reduce the occurence of this disease to countires which typically come to our mind when we think of poor hygiene: 7 people died of this disease in Germany in 2010. Having said that it must be added that those people got the disease via infected heroin.

BW/ Smallpox blankets for Native Americans

Smallpox blankets for Native Americans 

After the French and Indian War (1754-62), today Ohio became British territory which the local Native Americans were not happy about at all. Before that they were under French rule but while the French tried to make alliences with the Native Americans the British mostly conducted a repression policy. This is why several local tribes formed an alliance which rebelled against the British rule. The rebellion was lead by a man called Pontiac and therefore become known as Pontiac’s Rebellion.

The biological warfare assault is said to have occurred at Fort Pitt. After the rebellion had begun many of the settlers fled to the safety of Fort Pitt. The fort was attacked in July 1973 and although it was too strong to be taken the Native Americans held under siege for more than a month. The situation inside the crowded fort was getting worse by the day. So, unlike a famous Commander called Amherst had anticipated, the Native Americans started to pose a serious threat to the British rule. This is why he started to look for more drastic ways to fight the enemy party. In a well-documented correspondence with a Colonel called Bouquet he suggested distributing blankets infected with smallpox to the Native Americans in order to defeat them.

Amherst wrote on about June 29, 1763: "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."

Bouquet agreed, replying to Amherst on July 13: "I will try to inoculate the bastards with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself."

Amherst responded on July 16:"You will do well to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as wellas every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race."

Apparently officers at Fort Pitt, on their own initiatives, tried to give two blankets and a handkerchief infected with smallpox two Native American representatives.

It is know for a fact that during the Pontiac rebellion many Native Americans died from smallpox.

But even though there are two cases in which the British intentions of using biological warfare can be clearly deduced from, historians argue whether the attempt was carried out and whether it was carried out successfully. The reasoning behind this is that firstly many of the Native Americans were infected with smallpox before the Fort Pitt incident took place. Eyewitnesses reported that Native American soldiers were infected by the disease after having attacked white settlements. The effectiveness of the disease can also be traced back to the relative novelty of the smallpox virus for the Native population. While people in Europe had already developed some kind of immune defense the immune system of a Native American was more vulnerable in this respect.

Whether the British succeeded in carrying out their plan or not, the idea itself is cruel enough to not leave them with a clean slate.

BW/ The Beginnings

The beginnings

Cheeeeerss!!  

What could be more relaxing than having a beer with your friends? After the day is done you can finally lean back, clink glasses and enjoy your company.

However, if I stuck you into a time machine and catapulted you back to the Middle Ages you probably wouldn’t feel as relaxed. Back in the Dark Ages it was quite common to poison people you wanted to get rid of. It was an easy exercise to slip poison into your drinking buddy’s cup. This is where the habit of clinking glasses comes from. As people were anxious about getting poisoned they knocked there cups together as forcefully as possible so the beer would spill over into all the other cups as well. So much for a relaxing glass of beer.

The beginnings of biological warfare though date back even further! In ancient times the common practice of biological warfare included poisoning arrow tips, tainting water supplies with herbs, fungus and - well, let’s just say it – shit. This way entire cities suffered horrible diarrhea and hallucinations.

The first most big scale event in the history of biological warfare occurred in the 14^th and caused an epidemic which wiped out half of Europe. The epidemic I am talking about is the most severe, deadly and horrifying human history had to see: The  plague! Apparently the disease had its origin in North East Asia and entered Europe through the city of Caffa which lies on the Crimean peninsula. (today’s Ukraine) In the 13^th century Caffa was purchased by the Republic of Genoa and becoming a major trading point. The city was flourishing until it gave refuge to other Italians from the nearby city of Tana who had a dispute with Muslim Mongolians. Following this event the Mongolians, under Janibeg, besieged the city. The besiegers were already partly infected with the plague and so they resorted to catapulting infected bodies over the walls of Caffa.  The Genoese Gabriele de’ Mussi, a contemporary, describes the event as follows:

“The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults1 and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside.2 What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee the remains of the Tartar army. Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defense.”

Due to the enorme infectiousness of the disease many of the inhabitants of Caffa fell ill. As Caffa was a port city it is believed that some Genoese could flee back to Italy and brought the plague into Europa. This is possible. Still it is not the siege of Caffa which has to account for the epidemic in Europe. It is rather a time correlation than a cause and effect relationship. The plague would have spread anyway, as trade ships were frequently commuting between the Black Sea and Europe’s harbors. Aboard on those ships were rats, which are one of the most essential disease transmitters. This being said the siege of Caffa still accounts for biological warfare.

BW/ What is biological warfare?

What is biological warfare?

This post will explain the concept of biological warfare and look at some of its terminology.

Fear of the unknown. Of the uncontrollable. Of the silent creeping death. Upon all the other strains biological and chemical warfare also have tremendous physiological impact. Although equal in the horror they can cause, from a scientific point of view, the distinction between biological and chemical warfare is quite obvious.

A chemical weapon is any weapon that uses a manufactured chemical to kill people.

A biological weapon either contains a living microorganism like the plague bacteria, or a toxin, which are the naturally occurring poisons that microorganisms produce. Toxins can also be synthesized. The microorganism or toxin used in manufacturing a biological weapon is commonly referred to as agent. Biological agents are targeted at humans, animals or crop. Widespread illness and death, food shortages or an environmental catastrophe are realistic scenarios in the world of biological or germ warfare.

Biological weapons have been referred to as the poor man’s nuclear bomb. And apparently it is true; producing an effective agent can be quite cheap. However, a biological weapon generally consists of two parts – an agent and a delivery mechanism. The manufacture of the delivery mechanism poses a greater difficulty. 

BW/ Introduction

BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

Do we still have to worry about it? How likely is it that a deadly virus will endager the human species?

Well, I don't want to advertise personal bunkers here but I do feel a bit uneasy after having done some reserach on this topic.


I will start off bluntly and in all honesty. Upon trying to find a good and befitting introduction into the topic of biological warfare I discovered a site with quotes. First I was going to pick a quote about war to start off. Classic- I know. But how go from there? Why is there such a thing as war? Why do people fight people? Don’t worry I am not going to indulge in a philosophical discussion on humanity. Well, oddly enough I found that the topic page of the brainyquote site sums up those reasons quite nicely.

So, after accepting the fact that fighting and warfare is just something that has accompanied human development from its humble beginnings right up to the 21^st century, we can look at the how of warfare in greater detail.

There are basically two types of warfare: symmetric and asymmetric warfare. Symmetric warfare means that the involved opponents are close to equal in power, resources and weaponry. Every opponent knows, more or less, what he can expect from his counterparts. Your “Game of Thrones” swordfights are symmetric warfare.  The term asymmetric warfare is used when opponents have unequal military resources and the “weaker” opponent uses unconventional weapons and tactics to fight the enemy. The term is frequently used to describe guerilla warfare, terrorism and biological warfare.

Throughout this page I want to give you an insight into the topic of biological warfare. First of all the term itself will be explained in more detail. Then we will take a walk through the negative aspects of scientific inventiveness and look at the dirty beginnings of biological warfare up to the 20^th century. Following that we will look at common biological weapons like smallpox, anthrax and typhus and see how they affect their victims. After that we will –just for a few minutes- stand in the shoes of a terrorist, look at the wanted properties of biological weapons, and choose the most dangerous one. Next we will look at biological warfare incidents that have occurred between the 20^th century and now. Then we will try to find out how serious the threat of biological warfare is today and what protection measurements governments have undertaken. Last but not least there will be one entry discussing the theory that AIDS was initially invented as a biological weapon.

I hope it will be interesting and thrilling for you to learn about biological warfare on this site.

Other blogs that relate to my topic and might therefore be interesting to have a look at are:
Military technology by Flavius LeahuStem cells  by Stefanie Edlbauer

Cheers,

Anna

Audio Abstract

Abstract for the paper entitled 

Biological Weapons: A National Security Problem that Requires a Public Health Response

Link:   http://opr.princeton.edu/papers/opr0104.pdf

Audio Abstract