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Saturday, April 14, 2007 |
GlobeandMail: "A highly regarded Iraqi epidemiologist who wants to tell Americans about an alarming rise in cancer levels among Iraqi children will come to Canada instead because he couldn't get a visa to the United States.
Unable to travel to the University of Washington, Riyadh Lafta - best known for a controversial study that estimated Iraq's body count in the U.S.-led war in Iraq at more than half a million - will arrive at Simon Fraser University in B.C. this month to give a lecture and meet with research associates."
10:59:24 AM 
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Independent: "The world's major drug companies have been accused of turning a blind eye to the multibillion-dollar trade in fake medicine that has resulted in an explosion of child malaria deaths in developing countries.
Governments have not tackled the problem and pharmaceutical companies are burying the issue, afraid that any publicity given to their medicines being faked will lead to a fall in the sale of the genuine product, according to a documentary.
The problem has been particularly acute with the treatment of malaria in Africa, with anti-malaria drugs faked on an industrial scale. Professor Nick White, of Oxford University, one of the world's leading experts on malaria, said: 'We estimate that there are more than one million deaths each year - which is the equivalent of seven jumbo jets going down every day. And 90 per cent of those deaths are in children.'"
Much more work is made of tracking pirated DVDs and CDs or designer goods and fake Nikes and other rubbish.
10:56:47 AM
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ArsTechnica: "Back in February, the European Parliament expressed its displeasure with the fact that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system was being regularly accessed by US authorities, including the CIA, as part of investigations into terrorist financing. Legislators wondered if SWIFT (a Belgium-based company) was obeying EU data protection laws, and proposals were floated that would ask SWIFT to stop mirroring its data to the US. According to Germany's Federal Data Protection Commissioner, Peter Schaar, the situation could get a lot messier: SWIFT might soon handle domestic as well as international fund transfers, and US authorities might then have access to every bank transfer in Europe.
Combine these worries with earlier fears about a worldwide ECHELON surveillance system run by the US, the UK, and Australia (worries great enough that the European Parliament issued a lengthy report outlining everything it could discover about ECHELON [PDF]), and you have an explosive cocktail of paranoia. The Europeans worry that, without adequate safeguards, the US and others with access to the systems might use them for more than just hunting down terrorists.
This is more than idle speculation; take a look at the chart beginning on page 103 of the ECHELON report linked above. It shows noted cases of industrial espionage, including some famous incidents in 1994 in which the NSA was apparently responsible for outing Airbus bribes in order to allow Boeing to compete on a level playing field."
Heise: "The German Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar has critically remarked that the creation of a Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) will mean that in future the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) financial network will also handle all domestic transfers. This would make it possible for secret services, including those of the United States, ostensibly out to combat the funding of terrorist organizations, to gain access to such transfer data. 'If these data, as is planned, are handled by SWIFT, it would mean that, unless the system is changed, these data too will be available to the Americans for their investigations,' Mr. Schaar, talking to the regional German public broadcaster SWR, said by way of summing up his misgivings about the developments. According to the data privacy advocate such a practice would 'scarcely be compatible with our notions of sovereignty'."
10:52:08 AM
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Guardian: "The Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has told the Guardian he is plotting the violent overthrow of President Putin from his base in Britain after forging close contacts with members of Russia's ruling elite.
In comments which appear calculated to enrage the Kremlin, and which will further inflame relations between London and Moscow, the multimillionaire claimed he was already bankrolling people close to the president who are conspiring to mount a palace coup."
Of course, Berezovsky has the full support of MI6 and CIA in this. You see, there are 'terrorists' and 'friendly terrists'. The Cold War is slowly turning into a Hot War, and the West is using criminals and nuclear traffickers like Berezovsky (and the late Litvinenko) to support terrorists acts against Russia and its interests in neighbouring countries.
The US is still the largest exporter of revolution and violence.
Yahoo: "A Swedish teenager who was imprisoned for weeks with alleged terror suspects in Ethiopia said in an interview published Thursday that Americans in military uniform directed the Kenyan soldiers who took her into custody on the Somali-Kenyan border.
U.S. officials, who agreed to discuss the detentions only if not quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the issue, have said Ethiopia had allowed access to U.S. agencies, including the CIA and FBI, but the agencies played no role in arrests, transport or deportation. Ethiopian and Somali officials acknowledge cooperating."
10:42:41 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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