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Jon Snow

Michel Serres - Les nouvelles technologies : révolution culturelle et cognitive - 1 views

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    Les nouvelles technologies nous pousseraient à devenir plus intelligents, créatifs selon ce philosophe français. En opposition avec la croyance que c'est le contraire qu'il se passe: à savoir un abêtissement des utilisateurs de ces technologies. A creuser.
Jon Snow

Euro, banques... Les leçons du président islandais | Rue89 - 0 views

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    Morale de l'histoire, si vous voulez que votre économie soit compétitive sur le secteur des technologies innovantes, le fait d'avoir un gros secteur bancaire est une mauvaise nouvelle... lol great!
Jon Snow

Logiciel Libre : la Guerre Mondiale aura bien lieu - Framablog - 0 views

  • Suite à des recherches, Guadamuz a découvert qu’un lobby influent demande, en substance, au gouvernement des États-Unis de considérer l’open source comme l’équivalent de la piraterie — voire pire.
Jon Snow

Nanotechnologies : tous cobayes de la nano-bouffe ? - Apprentis sorciers - Basta ! - 0 views

  • Certains voient les nano-aliments comme une « aubaine » pour les paysans du Sud. Leur credo ? Des nanos qui augmenteraient la productivité agricole et permettraient de lutter contre la faim. Une promesse qui rappelle celles des lobbys biotechnologiques et leurs OGM. La comparaison ne s’arrête pas là : risques sanitaires et environnementaux, privatisation du vivant ou de combinaisons d’atomes par des brevets industriels, mise sur le marché de produits dont l’innocuité n’est pas prouvée... Des nanocides (pesticides utilisant les nano-technologies) intelligents qui nécessiteraient un dosage moins important que les pesticides actuels, et ne causeraient aucun mal aux insectes ? Le fait que ce soit des firmes comme Monsanto, Bayer ou Syngenta qui les développent ne peut qu’inviter à rester très prudent sur le sujet...
  • « Dans le cas des OGM, nous avons obligé Monsanto à rendre publiques des études partielles de toxicité dissimulées au public. Des études semblables n’existent pas sur la nocivité des nanoparticules, souligne la Fondation Sciences citoyennes. Et les lanceurs d’alerte sont actuellement dissuadés par tous les moyens (poursuites en justice...) de briser la propagande officielle ». Pour Rose Frayssinet, nous sommes face à un risque encore plus grand que les OGM. « Les OGM, c’est un secteur, alors que les nanotechnologies concernent tous les secteurs. Les risques sont d’autant plus difficiles à analyser. On ne peut pas avoir une vision globale des implications ».
  • « Les données disponibles indiquent que certaines nanoparticules insolubles peuvent franchir les différentes barrières de protection, se distribuer dans le corps et s’accumuler dans plusieurs organes, essentiellement à partir d’une exposition respiratoire ou digestive », prévient une étude de l’Afsset, en 2006. Les nano-particules se diffusent dans les alvéoles pulmonaires, le sang, la barrière hémato-encéphalique qui protège le cerveau, ou le placenta.
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  • Quant à l’Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments (Afssa), après avoir rappelé que des études extérieures montrent de possibles altérations de l’ADN par les nano-particules [2], elle confesse « l’impossibilité d’évaluer l’exposition du consommateur et les risques sanitaires liés à l’ingestion de nanoparticules. » Très rassurant...
  • Les instruments règlementaires sont inadaptés. Ministères et agences sanitaires sont complètement dépassés (les documents les plus récents publiés sur le site du ministère de la Santé datent de 2007). L’évaluation des risques doit être totalement repensée. Les systèmes d’autorisation de mise sur le marché reposent sur la composition chimique des produits. Pour les nanoparticules, cela ne suffit pas, car les effets dépendent aussi de l’organisation spatiale des éléments atomiques et de leur taille. Un élément non toxique peut le devenir à l’échelon nanométrique. « Le dioxyde de titane et les dioxydes d’argent n’ont pas les mêmes propriétés au niveau nanométrique et au niveau macroscopique, explique Rose Frayssinet. Ils n’ont pas les mêmes propriétés selon qu’ils mesurent 20 nano ou 60 nano. Pour étudier les risques, il faudrait donc mener des études pour toutes les échelles ».
  • Le gouvernement français a lancé en 2009 le plan Nano-Innov, qui vise à placer la France parmi les pays les plus en pointe sur les nanosciences, en encourageant la recherche fondamentale à travailler « avec les entreprises pour mettre au point des technologies, déposer des brevets, créer des produits  ». 70 millions d’euros ont été consacrés l’an dernier à ce projet. En parallèle, aucun fonds n’est dédié aux études toxicologiques et aux impacts sanitaires et environnementaux.
Jon Snow

American Rhetoric: Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Farewell Address - 1 views

  • Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only.
  • Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
  • Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
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  • Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
  • The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations -- past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament -- of the battlefield. Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
  • As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
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    Je n'avais jamais lu son discours en entier, juste la citation concernant l'industrie militaire US. Sa mise en garde ne tient pas en deux phrases , c'est vraiment le coeur de son discours. Qu'ont bien pu penser les adultes de cette époque en l'écoutant? Lui meme n'a-til pris conscience de cela qu'à la fin de son mandat? Aujourd'hui on voit le résultat de l'inaction et de l'indifférence. Sauf que...
Jon Snow

Hydrofracked? One Man's Mystery Leads to a Backlash Against Natural Gas Drilling - ProP... - 0 views

  • Meeks used to have abundant water on his small alfalfa ranch, a 40-acre plot speckled with apple and plum trees northeast of the Wind River Mountains and about five miles outside the town of Pavillion. For 35 years he drew it clear and sweet from a well just steps from the front door of the plain, eight-room ranch house that he owns with his wife, Donna. Neighbors would stop off the rural dirt road on their way to or from work in the gas fields to fill plastic jugs; the water was better than at their own homes. But in the spring of 2005, Meeks’ water had turned fetid. His tap ran cloudy, and the water shimmered with rainbow swirls across a filmy top. The scent was sharp, like gasoline. And after 20 minutes — scarcely longer than you’d need to fill a bathtub — the pipes shuttered and popped and ran dry.
  • As a result, drilling was about to happen in states not typically known for oil and gas exploration, including Michigan, New York and even Maryland. It would go from rural, sparsely populated outposts like Pavillion to urban areas outside Dallas, Denver and Pittsburgh. Along the way, a string of calamitous accidents and suspicious environmental problems would eventually make hydraulic fracturing so controversial that it would monopolize congressional hearings, draw hundreds in protests and inspire an Academy-Award-nominated documentary produced for Hollywood.
  • At 540 feet the new well still wasn’t drawing water suitable for the cattle trough, and Meeks’ contractor, Louis Dickinson, shut down the engines and brought the drill bit to a rest. But before Dickinson could finish the job, a distant rumbling began echoing from below. It grew steadily louder, like some paranormal force winding its way through the earth. “Then, holy mackerel,” says Meeks, “it just came on us.” An explosion of white foam and water, chased by a powerful stream of natural gas, shot out of the ground where Meeks had drilled his well. It sprayed 200 feet through the air, nearly blowing the 70-foot-tall drilling derrick off its foundation, crystallizing in the frigid winter air and precipitating into a giant tower of ice. A Suspicious Correlation The blowout, roaring like a jet engine, continued for 72 hours, until a judge ordered EnCana engineers to use their equipment to control it. In that time, according to one estimate a gasfield worker gave Meeks, 6 million cubic feet of natural gas shot out of his 540-foot-deep water well, more than many gas wells in that part of Wyoming produced in an entire month.
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  • As Meeks continued his quest, hydraulic fracturing was transforming the energy industry and unfurling a wave of drilling that rippled quickly across the country. The fracturing technology that was first used commercially by Halliburton in 1949 had been reworked until a sweet spot combination of chemicals and pressure was derived that made it possible to reach gas far deeper in the earth than energy companies had previously been able to. In 1995 hydraulic fracturing was used in only a small fraction of gas wells, and the nation’s gas reserves were around 165 trillion cubic feet. The United States was so desperate for energy that energy companies were scrambling to secure foreign oil and building $300-million ports to import liquefied natural gas from Russia, Qatar and elsewhere.
  • By late 2008, however, fracturing was being used in nine out of 10 of the roughly 33,000 wells drilled in the United States each year, and estimates of the nation’s gas reserves had jumped by two thirds. Drilling was taking place in 31 states, and geologists claimed the United States contained enough natural gas to supply the country for a century. Russia’s president (and former chairman of its state gas company, Gazprom), Dmitri Medvedev, said he would curtail his own nation’s gas drilling efforts because he thought the United States might have so much gas that it wouldn’t buy more from Russia.
  • As more wells were drilled, however, more reports began to emerge from people who had similar experiences to that of Louis Meeks.
  • Much of the land in Sublette County is owned by the federal government, which meant that the Environmental Protection Agency — not just state regulators — was charged with conducting an environmental review before drilling is allowed. As part of that review, in 2007 EPA hydrologists sampled a pristine drinking water aquifer that underlay the region. What they found was a show-stopper: frighteningly high levels of benzene, a known carcinogen, in 88 separate samples stretching across 28 miles. “It was like, holy shit, this is huge,” said Greg Oberley, a groundwater specialist at the EPA’s Region 8 headquarters in Denver. “You’ve got benzene in a usable aquifer and nobody is able to verbalize well, using factual information, how the benzene got there. Nobody understood what caused this.” One thing was clear: There was little industrial activity in the Pinedale area other than drilling, and few other potential causes for the pollution.
  • It wasn’t at all clear that the EPA had the budget, the political fortitude or the impetus to pursue the thorough study that Oberley and other scientists thought was needed. The agency had looked, briefly, at hydraulic fracturing before. In 2004 it published a report examining how it affected water supplies in a type of geologic formation, called coalbed methane, which is different from the rocks being drilled in most of the nation’s new gas fields. The report detailed numerous concerns about the potential for dangerous fluids to migrate underground. But then, in an abrupt turn, it concluded that hydraulic fracturing “poses little or no threat” and “does not justify additional study.” The one exception, it found, was when diesel fuel was used in fracturing fluids. But the industry insisted that it was discontinuing that practice. The EPA’s findings were criticized in some scientific circles at the time, and by an EPA whistleblower, Wes Wilson, for bending to Bush administration dictates and ignoring scientific methods for analyzing contamination complaints.
  • In March 2009, six weeks after President Obama’s inauguration and four years after Meeks first had trouble with his water, a team from the EPA’s Superfund program began collecting 39 water samples from properties around the Pavillion area. It was the first formal investigation into complaints of water pollution in Pavillion after many years of letter writing and phone calls and visits to the governor’s office and even a couple of lawsuits. Across the mountains in Pinedale, Oberley had also continued to collect water samples from the aquifer underneath the Anticline drilling fields — where he’d found the benzene the year before — and was carefully assembling a broader body of data. The EPA scientists preferred to keep a low profile and dodge the political canon fire that was bound to be returned from any perceived assault on the oil and gas industry. But, in effect, the EPA had begun its first robust scientific examination of the environmental effects of natural gas drilling on the nation’s water supply. By this time, complaints about water contamination in drilling areas had become a national issue.
  • In the face of this tornado of worry, the drilling industry remained steadfast in its insistence that fracturing and all the drilling processes related to it were completely safe. They continued to spend tens of millions of dollars lobbying against regulation and peppered websites and publications with pro-gas advertisements. Industry trade groups pointed out that drilling development brings jobs and economic bounty to ailing communities and painted critics as unpatriotic heretics working against U.S. energy independence. They drew support from local businesses and residents whose communities needed the money and needed the jobs.
  • Late that summer Meeks was told that the EPA was ready to reveal its first findings. On August 11, 2009, eager to finally hear what was in his water, Meeks got in his red 1994 Nissan pickup and drove the five miles to Pavillion’s community center, a corrugated steel building with bare walls and poured-concrete floors at the end of one of the two roads that cut through town. He had been anticipating the meeting for six months. Along with 80-some other residents, some who had driven from as far as Riverton, 26 miles away, Meeks took a seat on one of the wooden benches that were lined up facing a folding table and a projection screen, eager to hear the preliminary findings from the EPA’s first round of water testing. With the room quiet and tense, Luke Chavez, the EPA Superfund investigator, started off tentatively. He was shy and non-committal. But he proceeded to make headlines. Of the 39 water samples his team had taken from a smattering of properties around Pavillion, Chavez said 11 were contaminated with chemicals, including some with strong ties to hydraulic fracturing. The EPA found arsenic, methane gas, diesel-fuel-like compounds and metals including copper and vanadium. Of particular concern were compounds called adamantanes — a natural hydrocarbon found in gas — and an obscure chemical called 2-butoxyethanol phosphate. 2-BEp is a compound closely related to 2-BE, a substance known to be used in hydraulic fracturing solutions, and that is known to cause reproductive problems in animals. It was a chief suspect when Colorado regulators investigated the well explosion in Silt. Meeks’ well contained traces of petroleum hydrocarbons, bisphenol A, the adamantanes, and methane. John Fenton’s water, which tasted good and hadn’t even been suspected to have been contaminated, had methane and bisphenols. And Jeff Locker’s water, even after filtering with a reverse osmosis system, contained arsenic, methane and metals.
  • In the fall of 2009, Meeks got a call to meet Randy Teeuwen, the EnCana representative, at the Holiday Inn in Riverton. The company had warned him months earlier that it would stop paying for his water supply and had given him the option to continue the service and pay for it himself. Meeks declined. There was no way he could afford the payments. He was still hoping that a broader settlement might be reached and EnCana would buy him out. If his property was worthless, Meeks wanted them to pay for his entire loss.
  • On September 14, HB Rentals, the global oilfield services supplier EnCana had hired to supply Meeks with water, sent Scott Farrell with a truck to remove the tanker of water from Meeks’ home. Farrell found himself facing a cluster of television crews and reporters. But Meeks, for all his blustery anger, was uncharacteristically quiet. After all these years the wind seemed to have been sucked out of his lungs, and he had nothing to say. He fought tears, and his voice quivered as he told his story to the TV cameras. Taking the water was like issuing a life sentence. Once it was gone, there was no way he would be able to replace it. “I can’t believe someone would do something like that,” he told the reporters. Farrell was visibly affected. “We decided that we were not going to leave Mr. Meeks without any water,” he said, when the cameras turned to him. “We’re going to leave the tank and everything here at no charge.”
  • But a few hours later, HB returned, loaded the tanker, and finally took Louis Meeks’ water away.
  • It’s really easy to say you should just get out of this situation,” says Deb Thomas, Meeks’ friend and the environmental organizer from Clark. “But they are not young. Everything that they have is wrapped up in that place — not just in their home. They’ve got animals and a life here. It’s pretty hard to leave that.” Meeks didn’t drink the water but used it to bathe and clean his dishes. By January he was complaining of ill effects on his health. He suffered of shortness of breath and described lesions and sores on his arms and legs. At the veterans hospital, he was told he had a respiratory infection and prescribed prednisone and moxifloxacin — but the doctors couldn’t say whether it was the water, the stress, or his persistent medical problems that were to blame. While he suffered, EPA took its biggest step on the fracturing issue in more than six years. In March 2010, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the EPA would undertake a major national study of risks to water supplies from hydraulic fracturing far bigger than the Pavillion study. This time, scientists would broaden their definition of fracturing beyond the energy industry’s version, and examine every aspect of the process, from the transportation and disposal of the chemicals to the water supplies needed to make the process happen. In New York, Gov. Paterson issued an executive order banning one type of hydraulic fracturing until July 1, 2011, by which time he hoped environmental officials would have thoroughly examined its safety. And in several states — including Wyoming — laws were passed to require drilling companies to disclose the chemicals they pump into the ground. A group of Democratic members of Congress ratcheted up the debate by revealing that fracking companies had continued to inject tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel and diesel mixtures into the ground as part of the fracturing process long after they promised not to in 2005.
  • Whatever the EPA does, its environmental research is guaranteed to go slower than the pace of drilling development. In 2010, another 14,324 new gas wells were drilled in the United States, including in Wyoming. “If things don’t change now it’s going to be just a big polluted dump,” said Meeks Jr.
  • “I think a lot of people look at me and think what did I end up with after five years,” Meeks says. “I’m stupid for going up against a billion-dollar company.” “There is no end in sight,” he adds. “But at least they are listening now.”
Jon Snow

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance | | Alt... - 0 views

  • How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?  1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force.
    • Jon Snow
       
      Endettés à hauteur de dizaines de millers de $ à 20 ans ça calme n'importe qui. En tout cas ça t'occupe car il faut rembourser. Sont tombés dans une belle saloperie.
  • Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt.
    • Jon Snow
       
      Wow... chapeau les politics. Ou comment tuer en deux générations sa jeunesse.
  • Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.” Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.”
    • Jon Snow
       
      Le refus de soumission à l'autorité = trouble psy = maladie. Les antidepresseurs sont pas loin, ou plutôt les submissives pills.
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  • A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.
  • Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to theJournal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients). 
  • Television. In 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that TV viewing in the United States is at an all-time high if one includes the following “three screens”: a television set, a laptop/personal computer, and a cell phone. American children average eight hours a day on TV, video games, movies, the Internet, cell phones, iPods, and other technologies (not including school-related use).
  • The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class.
  • Parents routinely check Web sites for their kid’s latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, are monitoring their children’s computers and Facebook pages.
  • . “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” The corporatocracy has figured out a way to make our already authoritarian schools even more authoritarian. Democrat-Republican bipartisanship has resulted in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, the Wall Street bailout, and educational policies such as “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” These policies are essentially standardized-testing tyranny that creates fear, which is antithetical to education for a democratic society. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by corporatocracy-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities. 
  • Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see.
Jon Snow

Ondes électromagnétiques : vers un nouveau scandale sanitaire ? - Technologie... - 0 views

  • En fait, pour limiter les émissions à 0,6V/m sur l’ensemble du territoire, sans diminuer l’utilisation du téléphone portable, il faut ajouter de nouvelles antennes. Mais toute nouvelle installation fait peur. « Or, il vaut mieux avoir plus d’antennes avec des puissances plus faibles, précise Catherine Gouhier. Pas facile de le faire comprendre. » Pour les opérateurs, installer de nouvelles antennes entraîne de nouveaux coûts. Ce qu’ils veulent à tout prix éviter. « On mène actuellement la plus grande expérience biophysique jamais réalisée, estime le professeur Franz Adlkofer. Et ce, sur l’humanité entière, expérience dont l’issue est plus qu’incertaine. »
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