Russia has criticised the US for using naval ships to deliver aid to Georgia
A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea.
Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said.
Any attempt by countries in the West to isolate Russia would “definitely harm the economic interests of those states”, he said.
For Canadian diplomat Brian McAdam, it wasn’t that he had uncovered the lucrative sale of Canadian visas during his posting at Canada’s Hong Kong consulate.
Both Canadian and Chinese consular staff, he says, were selling visas to members of the Chinese mafia and Communist China’s intelligence service. The price, he heard, ranged from $10,000 to $100,000 per visa.
It wasn’t that reports he sent to his bosses in Canada — details on murderers, money launderers, smugglers and spies trying to enter Canada — were met with silence or mostly destroyed.
It wasn’t dozens of threatening calls — “Stop what you’re doing or you’re going to find yourself dead” — from Triad members during his 1989-1993 stint in Hong Kong.
What finally broke him down, he says, was “the incredible feeling of betrayal from my colleagues. I’d worked with these people for years.”
(NaturalNews) I recently received great news from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) that after a long fourteen year battle between OCA, public interest and family farmer groups against Monsanto’s Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), Monsanto has announced on August 6th that they will sell off their controversial rBGH. This is very good news since rBGH has been fed to cattle since the early 1990’s and has been implicated in a wide array of health issues, some very serious ones for both the animals themselves and anyone who consumes anything from the animals who are fed rBGH.
rBGH is said to be responsible for a number of health issues ranging from premature puberty in children to colon, prostate and breast cancer to increased antibiotic residues and elevated levels of a potent cancer tumor promoter called IGF-1.
rBGH is a genetically engineered variant of the natural growth hormone produced by cows. It is manufactured by Monsanto and sold to dairy farmers under the trade name Posilac. This hormone forces cows to increase milk production by about 10%, but it also increases the incidences of mastitis, lameness as well as reproductive issues.
NEW YORK, July 7 (Reuters Life! ) – Americans are the least satisfied with their health care system – and their President –, while the Dutch system is rated the best, according to new research.
Polls about health care in 10 developed countries by Harris Interactive revealed a range of opinions about what works and what doesn’t.
In the United States a third of Americans believe their system needs to be completely overhauled, while a further 50 percent feel that fundamental changes need to be made.
Video from CNN’s American Morning, broadcast July 7, 2008.
As CNN reports (see video), Congress is forking over $100 million for “security expenses” in Denver and St. Paul this summer. CNN’s Ed Lavendera says the types of weapons being purchased are “top secret” and this does not sit well with the ACLU, who is suing both cities to find out how the money is being spent. “In Minnesota where republicans are holding their convention, the ACLU says it’s trying to find out how security money is being spent but law enforcement agencies insist these weapons should be kept secret so they have the upper hand in keeping the convention safe,” explains Lavendera.
In other words, members of both factions of the globalist political party will be safe from agents provocateurs who are routinely dispatched to break a few windows and burn trash in the street in order to give the cops an excuse to attack peaceful demonstrators.
CNN and the corporate media are notorious for ignoring this fact, going back at least to late 1999 during the WTO demonstrations in Seattle. Neil deMause wrote for FAIR in early 2000, “most news outlets ignored the police assaults that preceded the looting, preferring to believe that it was the acts of a few out-of-control protesters that led to the violence, and downplaying police use of force…. numerous eyewitness reports would describe police ignoring vandals while busily assaulting demonstrators who were blockading the entrance to the WTO. The Seattle Times, in its timeline of the WTO protests (12/5/99), noted the first use of pepper spray and rubber bullets on demonstrators at 10 a.m. on November 30, nearly two hours before the first windows were broken.” Peter Cassidy, a police tactics researcher, said at the time that the lack of concern over Seattle police behavior “will lend credibility for other police departments to do the same thing.” In short, “opening your mouth becomes something that exposes you to danger. It exposes you to militarized forms of law enforcement.”
A clip from Alex Jones’ Police State II: The Takeover, Delta Force
As Alex Jones documents in Police State II: The Takeover, Delta Force sponsored and aided so-called “Black Bloc anarchists” in Seattle (see video).
Militarized “law enforcement” continued during the FTAA demonstrations in Miami in November, 2003. Miami Activists Defense (MAD) reported “thousands of militarized police, in full riot gear, including electrified shields, tanks, automatic and semi-automatic weapons, tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags, violently arresting peaceful demonstrators,” absent any provocation or “direct action” on the part of activists. Kris Hermes, MAD spokesperson, noted that Miami mayor Diaz declared police violence against peaceful demonstrators would be the “model for homeland security,” according to Jennifer Van Bergen.
Woman injured by wooden dowel projectile in Oakland, California, April, 2003.
In April, 2003, in Oakland, California, cops used wooden dowel projectiles and rubber bullets against peaceful antiwar activists (see photo). Oakland cops told the San Jose Mercury News that although the demonstration was peaceful, there were a “few agitators in the crowd,” a claim disputed by witnesses. “I was there from 5 a.m. on, and the only violence that I saw was from the police,” Joel Tena, the constituent liaison for Oakland’s vice mayor, told the newspaper. “What happened today was very surprising. It seemed the police were operating under the assumption that they were not going to let any kind of protest happen.”
If sincere “agitators” are not present, the cops are often obliged to produce them, as they did during an anti-globalist demonstration in Montebello, Quebec, last year. “Police officials tried to justify the extraordinary measures deployed at Montebello by claiming they were needed to control ‘extremist’ demonstrators and prevent them from ‘overwhelming’ conference security forces,” writes François Tremblay. “In fact, video images reveal a long-established police practice, that is, the use of agent provocateurs to provide a pretext for a brutal intervention by riot police against anti-government demonstrators and still further restrictions on the right to protest and other basic democratic rights.”
In fact, “restrictions on the right to protest and other basic democratic rights” is the point, as the globalists are sincerely worried about citizens resisting the plan to turn the world into a “free trade” labor gulag based on the China model.
Concerns grow that Canada’s plan will wipeout alt news sites and spread to U.S.
A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global.
Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.
“It’s beyond censorship, it is killing the biggest ecosystem of free expression and freedom of speech that has ever existed,” I Power spokesperson Reese Leysen said. I Power was the first group to report on the possible changes.
Roadside tests to detect drug use. Demanding bodily fluids is an intrusive, unreliable form of testing, critics warn
Drivers who get behind the wheel while high on drugs will face roadside testing and they could be ordered to surrender urine, blood or saliva samples at the police station under a controversial new law that takes effect one week from today.
Drivers who refuse to comply will be subject to a minimum $1,000 fine – the same penalty for refusing the breathalyzer.
(NaturalNews) The fate of the nation’s water supply is under debate as hearings in the House and Senate begin on the Water Restoration Act of 2007. Opponents claim this Act threatens to greatly expand the Federal Government’s roll in water management. This Act would define waters of the U.S. as “all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams) mudflats, sand flats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing”. In other words, this bill will give the federal government total control of the most basic of all commodities necessary to life on this earth.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers currently have authority over all waters considered navigable in the U.S. The Code of Federal Regulations 33 CFR 329.4 defines navigable waters as “those waters that are subject to the ebb and flow of the tide and/or presently used, or have been used in the past, or may be susceptible for use to transport interstate or foreign commerce.”
The Water Restoration Act, a bipartisan bill lead/sponsored by Congressman Oberstar, is an amendment to the Federal Water Pollution Act, commonly known as the Clean Water Act. Since major amendments were enacted in 1977, the Clean Water Act protected all of the nation’s waters as Congress intended, until 2003, when the Bush administration gave in to pressure form corporate polluters and redefined the meaning of water. This happened through a bureaucratic device called a ‘guidance’, whereby the EPA instructed federal environmental law enforcers to back off from holding many polluters accountable.
Proponents of the Clean Water Restoration Act see it as restoring what was Congress’s original intent, that the Clean Water Act protect all of the nation’s waters. They see water quality and quantity issues as needing examination this spring, and believe now is the time for getting legislation to protect the water supply in order with the passage of this Act. They see the Act as offering needed protection from water pollution, from terrorists, and being in the interests of national security.
Under the Public Trust doctrine, the government is prohibited from converting something such as water to the status of a commodity. Water is considered a basic human right that must remain in the public trust, meaning that it is so important to our survival that it should never be reclassified as a commodity. Many believe that the Water Restoration Act lays the foundation for removing water from the Public Trust and facilitating it to fall under the ownership and control of corporations as a commodity. This is similar to how seeds have fallen into corporate control when they were once viewed as part of the Public Trust under the assumption that all people have a right to seeds with which to grow food for themselves.
Commodity owning corporations can now sue the government if it acts in any way to prevent them from making profits they believe they are entitled to. This ability to sue for impaired profit making can be the result of environmental regulations, of Federal laws which may prevent the corporations from hiring illegal workers, or issues of eminent domain in which an individual’s land stands in the way of corporate earnings, and the courts have not acted to protect the interests of the corporation.
All the corporation has to do to supersede federal law is claim ‘trade illegal’ provisions of NAFTA and CAFTA. Federal laws and regulations are then put aside, along with property rights. CAFTA goes a long way in establishing the privatization of water supplies, including in-land navigated waters and the right to use and access the water supplies.
Federal control over all water may lead to its privatization
If the federal government is unable to gain total control of all water from whatever source, it is highly unlikely that water can be taken from the status of Public Trust and changed to that of commodity. If in fact the Water Restoration Act allows for the complete control of the federal government over all water in the country, as it opponents claim, water can loose its status as part of the Public Trust, and become a commodity available for corporate ownership.
The Water Restoration Act federalizes all inland and coastal waters from any source. This Act is needed to set the stage for the corporate privatization guaranteed under CAFTA, and would effectively convert the entire water supply from any source into the status of a commodity.
Health Minister won’t lump in natural medicines with pharmaceutical drugs
OTTAWA – In a surprising about-face, Health Minister Tony Clement has agreed to key demands of the natural health products industry after the sector launched a grassroots campaign against restrictions on homeopathic medicines and herbal remedies in new legislation.
When Clement proposed amendments to the Food and Drugs Act in April, natural medicines were lumped in with pharmaceutical drugs, raising concerns they would be subject to the same type of oversight. He now admits it was a mistake not to create a separate category under the law.
“My attitude is a bill is a work in progress. Let’s see whether we are clearly getting out the things that we want to do in a particular bill. In this case, obviously protecting the health and safety of Canadians was and remains the motive for the bill,” Clement said in an interview Friday.
Natural health products like these were under threat as part of Conservative legislation.
Ward Perrin / VANCOUVER SUN
But he added it “became clear that some things that we thought were implicit in the bill” needed to be spelled out.
“So, I listened to that, I listened to my own caucus who were getting the feedback from people as well, and to me it was a no-brainer. We can make the bill a better bill. We can make it explicitly, as well as implicitly, more balanced, and we still achieve our goals, which is protecting the health and safety of Canadians,” said Clement.
The government is now proposing to insert a definition of natural health products into the Food and Drugs Act to “clearly recognize” that they’re distinct from foods and drugs under the law.
“Canadians have clearly expressed the desire to recognize natural health products as a unique category of products,” a ministry backgrounder states about changes tabled in the House of Commons.
Cindy King, owner of Natural Sequence, displays a capsule of Valerian, a natural relaxant and sleep remedy. Valerian is one of many products sold by natural food stores that face regulations under a proposed bill by the federal government.
Natural food vendors in Canada may have to turn to their own shelves in search of a stress remedy as bill C-51 awaits its second reading in Parliament.
The federal government says the bill is designed to prevent problems from the use of vitamins and natural remedies. However, the natural foods industry says the bill’s intentions are purely for profit.
“The health food industry is growing constantly and I think we are taking a piece of the pie from big pharma,” said Cindy King, who owns Natural Sequence, a natural food store located in Trenton. “Big pharma and government go hand-in-hand.”
If the bill is made into law, manufacturers will be required to report incidents of their products causing harm within one week. The government will increase surveillance of products already on the market and will have the ability to rapidly recall consumer products. Fines for putting consumers at risk will increase from a $5,000 maximum to $5 million.
“The bill is worded in ways that will allow them to have more control then they are letting on,” King said. “They are being sneaky.”
While King agrees regulations should be in place for consumer safety, she says the bill takes away constitutional rights to freely choose how a person treats a disease.
“They would rather see us sick and use the system to create more dollars for big pharma,” King said.
Many of the people who are against the bill believevitamins will be put into a prescription category resulting in 40 to 60 per cent of health food products being pulled from shelves.
Parliament on Tuesday voted to allow US resisters of the Iraq war who fled to Canada to stay in this country, thus avoiding military court-martial in the United States.
The non-binding motion passed 137 to 110, with support from all three opposition parties, which hold a majority of seats in the House.
It urged the government to allow conscientious objectors “who have refused or left military service related to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations” to stay in Canada.
“Canada has always been a place which has welcomed those who seek peace and who seek freedom,” opposition Liberal MP Bob Rae told reporters.
“This country should continue to recognize conscientious objectors, particularly to a war which international law has held to be illegal and which this country chose by an act of deliberate policy, chose not to join,” he said.
“And if they want to choose to become Canadian, Canadian landed immigrants, they should be allowed to do so.”
Canada previously welcomed tens of thousands of American draft dodgers during the Vietnam War era.
In Quebec, St. Lawrence water levels were so low this fall in places like Haut Gorge park that water had to be pumped in from Lake Ontario. Photograph by : Allen McInnis, Canwest News Service
Experts expect climate change to present serious water challenges, many of which already exist
In Quebec, St. Lawrence water levels were so low this fall in places like Haut Gorge park that water had to be pumped in from Lake Ontario.
In Quebec, St. Lawrence water levels were so low this fall in places like Haut Gorge park that water had to be pumped in from Lake Ontario.
Canada is crisscrossed by innumerable rivers, some of which flow into three oceans.
Yet Canada’s fresh water isn’t as abundant as you may think. And it’s facing serious challenges and the looming menace of climate change, which is expected to exacerbate Canada’s water problems and leave more of the world thirsting after our precious liquid resource.
“They say you need a crisis before people get jerked into taking responsible action,” says Chandra Madramootoo, a water researcher and founding director of McGill University’s Brace Centre for Water Resources Management.
“When are we going to finally say, ‘Jeez, we’re not as water rich as we thought we were and maybe we better start doing something?’ Is it going to be the day when we [must] ration water?”
Some think the crisis is already here. They say it’s time to take action — by, for example, conserving water, cracking down on polluters, preparing for the effects of climate change and coming to the aid of waterless poor in the developing world.
(Important article! Please continue to read. – The Infinite Unknown)
Fears raised changes could lead to policing of legal activities like buying DVDs online
The way Canadians use the Internet and technology – from downloading music to buying new cellphones – could face unprecedented restrictions under new federal policies that critics say are being decided behind closed doors.
The Conservative government has been involved in international talks in recent months to develop an international anti-counterfeiting strategy to reduce Internet piracy and the flow of counterfeit goods. But critics say that instead of cracking down on rogue Internet users heavily involved in illegal file sharing, the agreement seems poised to dramatically increase the government’s ability to police the activities of Canadians, even when they legally purchase music files, DVDs and electronic equipment such as cellphones and personal video recorders.
“This is an attempt here to create a very broad umbrella that strikes at the very heart of every day activities for millions of Canadians,” said Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair of Internet and e-commerce law.
The issue is gaining significant momentum after a discussion paper on the anti-counterfeiting strategy that purportedly originated with the U.S. government was leaked on the Internet a few days ago. One of the most contentious proposals is to “encourage” Internet service providers to monitor the online activities of their customers and report activity that may infringe copyright law – a move that amounts to spying and could undermine the privacy of Canadians, Prof. Geist said.
The changes may also give border guards the authority to search laptops and personal music recorders to look for any illegally obtained material.
On April 8, a bill was introduced into the Canadian House of Commons that has highly worrisome implications for natural health products and those who consume and use them. The same implications might be in store for Americans as well.
A newly proposed law in Canada, Bill C-51, just may outlaw up to 60 percent of natural health products currently sold in Canada — and criminalize people who use them. Bill C-51 which makes significant changes to Canada’s Food and Drugs Act, was introduced into the House of Commons by the Canadian Minister of Health. The first reading on April 8 was followed by it’s second reading on April 28, barely time for consumers, trade groups, and elected representatives to examine, debate, or compose official positions.
(NaturalNews) Our children’s brains and reproductive organs may be having their development harmed by an estrogen-like chemical that is present in plastic according to a federal health agency report. BPA is an ingredient in polycarbonate plastic. BPA is also one of the most widely used synthetic chemicals today. It has been shown to seep from hard plastic beverage containers (such as baby bottles) and even from liners in cans that contain food and infant formula.
The National Toxicology Program (part of the National Institutes of Health) has concluded that there is some concern that fetuses, babies and children are being harmed because bisphenol A (BPA) has been shown to harm animals at levels that are surprisingly low and found in nearly all humans.
The draft report followed an 18-month review that involved allegations of bias, disputes among scientists, and even the firing of a consulting company that had financial ties to the chemical industry.
Some scientists fear that BPA exposure early in life disrupts hormones and alters genes. This may program a fetus or child for breast or prostate cancer, may set them up for premature female puberty, and may lead to attention deficit disorders and other reproductive or neurological disorders.
“What it means is that U.S. drug companies contract with cheap, low-end Chinese chemical factories to manufacture their drugs at something like two cents a pill (which they can mark up to $20 a pill or more…), and then they import these Chinese-made pills and don’t even test them before selling them to U.S. consumers!”
(NaturalNews) Remember a couple of years ago how the FDA warned Americans not to buy prescription drugs from Canada because they might be “contaminated by terrorists?” I’m not making that up: That was the official announcement of an FDA spokesperson, and it was part of their fear strategy for enforcing a monopoly on U.S. consumers so that Big Pharma could continue engaging in rampant price fixing.
The implication in that warning is that drugs purchased in the United States are therefore safer, correct? What the FDA didn’t tell anyone, however, is that most pharmaceuticals purchased in the United States are manufactured outside the U.S.; many from China or Puerto Rico. So they’re not even made in the U.S. anyway, and drug companies are simply importing them from other countries just like a consumer might do if she drove across the border and bought her medications in Canada or Mexico.
But hold on: The FDA actually used to run full-page magazine ads warning consumers about the dangers of drugs being contaminated if they were bought from Mexico, Canada or — God forbid — the Internet! Those drugs were dangerous, the FDA warned us, because they were not subjected to rigorous quality control requirements. The implication in that warning, of course, is that brand-name pharmaceuticals sold in the U.S. at U.S. pharmacies must therefore NOT be contaminated.
For decades, wheat was king on the Great Plains and prices were low everywhere. Those days are over.
At Stephen Fleishman’s busy Bethesda shop, the era of the 95-cent bagel is coming to an end.
Breaking the dollar barrier “scares me,” said the Bronx-born owner of Bethesda Bagels. But with 100-pound bags of North Dakota flour now above $50 — more than double what they were a few months ago — he sees no alternative to a hefty increase in the price of his signature product, a bagel made by hand in the back of the store.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in 20 years,” he said. “It’s a nightmare.”
Fleishman and his customers are hardly alone. Across America, turmoil in the world wheat markets has sent prices of bread, pasta, noodles, pizza, pastry and bagels skittering upward, bringing protests from consumers.
But underlying this food inflation are changes that are transforming U.S. agriculture and making a return to the long era of cheap wheat products doubtful at best.
Half a continent away, in the North Dakota country that grows the high-quality wheats used in Fleishman’s bagels, many farmers are cutting back on growing wheat in favor of more profitable, less disease-prone corn and soybeans for ethanol refineries and Asian consumers.
“Wheat was king once,” said David Braaten, whose Norwegian immigrant grandparents built their Kindred, N.D., farm around wheat a century ago. “Now I just don’t want to grow it. It’s not a consistent crop.”
In the 1980s, more than half the farm’s acres were wheat. This year only one in 10 will be, and 40 percent will go to soybeans. Braaten and other farmers are considering investing in a $180 million plant to turn the beans into animal feed and cooking oil, both now in strong demand in China. And to stress his hopes for ethanol, his business card shows a sketch of a fuel pump.
Trilateral Commission members want suffering U.S. taxpayers to shell out even more money
The Trilateral Commission-one of the three most powerful globalist groups in the world-held closed-door meetings right here in Washington, D.C. from April 25 to 28. True to form, those members of the media who knew about the meeting-or were themselves participants in the proceedings-refused to discuss what went on inside or report on the attendees. Luckily, AFP’s own editor, Jim Tucker, was on the scene to bust this clandestine confabulation wide open.By James P. Tucker Jr.
Luminaries at the Trilateral Commission meeting in Washington expressed confidence that they own all three major presidential candidates, who, despite political posturing, will support sovereignty-surrendering measures such as NAFTA and the “North American Union.”
“John has always supported free trade, even while campaigning before union leaders,” said one. “Hil and Barack are pretending to be unhappy about some things, but that’s merely political posturing. They’re solidly in support.”
He was referring to Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
Mrs. Clinton, they noted, held strategy sessions as first lady on how to get Congress to approve NAFTA “without changes.” As president, they agreed, she would do no more than “dot an i or cross a t.”
Candidate Obama has not denied news reports in Canada that his top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, assured Canadian diplomats that the senator would keep NAFTA intact and his anti-trade talk is just “campaign rhetoric.”
PETRIFIED ABOUT PAUL
While they are confident they can deal with any “potential president,” the Trilateralists paid huge tribute to Ron Paul in an equally large twist of irony, by expressing alarm that he is causing “significant future damage.”
They expressed concern that Paul’s rallies have attracted multitudes of young people who are getting “their political education.” They want Republicans to pressure Paul to drop out now and stop his education rallies. This assignment was given to Thomas Foley, former U.S. House speaker.
The reasons Paul’s “education campaign” strikes fear into Trilateral hearts are obvious. Paul would refuse to surrender an ounce of U.S. sovereignty to an international organization and TC wants world government.
Paul would immediately bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan and from 130 UN “peacekeeping” missions around the globe. TC wants to enjoy war profiteering and global power. Paul would abolish the federal income tax while the TC wants to pile on a global tax payable to the UN.
The formal agenda was loaded with everything Paul and American patriots detest: higher taxes, more foreign giveaways, more immigration, both legal and illegal, into the United States and “engaging Iran,” among others.
Big New Shock at the Pump Forecast by Two Analysts
Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.
That’s the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.
Gasoline nationally is in an accelerated upswing, having jumped to $3.58 a gallon from $3.50 in just the past week. In some parts of the country, including New York City and the West Coast, gas is already sporting a price tag above $4 a gallon. There was a pray-in at a Chevron station in San Francisco on Friday led by a minister asking God for cheaper gas, and an Arco gas station in San Mateo, Calif., has already raised its price to a sky-high $4.62.
A farmer harvests soy beans on the outskirts of Gualeguaychu, north of Buenos Aires.(Andres Stapff/Reuters)
Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.
In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.
“We cannot afford it,” said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.
In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.
(Genetically modified crops have been studied long enough to know that GM food weakens the immune system within days, increases the cancer risk dramatically etc. – The Infinite Unknown)
Leading players in talks to forge a pact for tackling climate change took the lash on Thursday to President George W. Bush’s new blueprint for global warming, with Germany mocking it as “Neanderthal.”
At a ministerial-level meeting of major carbon emitters, South Africa blasted the Bush proposal as a disastrous retreat by the planet’s number-one polluter and a slap to poor countries.
The European Union — which had challenged the United States to follow its lead on slashing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 — also voiced disappointment.
His proposals “will not contribute to the fight against climate change,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told AFP, adding he hoped the US would “reconsider its options and policies.”
“Time is running out and we have the duty to reach an agreement in Copenhagen in 2009,” said Dimas.
Germany accused Bush of turning back the clock to before last December’s UN climate talks in Bali and even to before last July’s G8 summit.
In a statement entitled “Bush’s Neanderthal speech,” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said: “His speech showed not leadership but losership. We are glad that there are also other voices in the United States.”
Our guest blogger, Peter Swire, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and served as the Clinton Administration’s Chief Counselor for Privacy.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has badly stumbled in discussing the Bush administration’s push to create stricter identity systems. Chertoff was recently in Canada discussing, among other topics, the so-called “Server in the Sky” program to share fingerprint databases among the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
In a recent briefing with Canadian press (which has yet to be picked up in the U.S.), Chertoff made the startling statement that fingerprints are “not particularly private”:
QUESTION: Some are raising that the privacy aspects of this thing, you know, sharing of that kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is quite a scary thing.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private.
Many of us should rightfully be surprised that our fingerprints aren’t considered “personal data” by the head of DHS. Even more importantly, DHS itself disagrees. In its definition of “personally identifiable information” — the information that triggers a Privacy Impact Assessment when used by government — the Department specifically lists: “biometric identifiers (e.g., fingerprints).”
Chertoff’s comments have drawn sharp criticism from Jennifer Stoddart, the Canadian official in charge of privacy issues. “Fingerprints constitute extremely personal information for which there is clearly a high expectation of privacy,” Stoddart said.
There are compelling reasons to treat fingerprints as “extremely personal information.” The strongest reason is that fingerprints, if not used carefully, will become the biggest source of identity theft. Fingerprints shared in databases all over the world won’t stay secret for long, and identity thieves will take advantage.
A quick web search on “fake fingerprints” turns up cheap and easy methods for do-it-at-home fake fingerprints. As discussed by noted security expert Bruce Schneier, one technique is available for under $10. It was tried “against eleven commercially available fingerprint biometric systems, and was able to reliably fool all of them.” Secretary Chertoff either doesn’t know about these clear results or chooses to ignore them. He said in Canada: “It’s very difficult to fake a fingerprint.”
Chertoff’s argument about leaving fingerprints lying around on “glasses and silverware” is also beside the point. Today, we leave our Social Security numbers lying around with every employer and numerous others. Yet the fact that SSNs (or fingerprints) are widely known exposes us to risk.
There have been numerous questions raised about how this Administration is treating our personal information. Secretary Chertoff’s comments show a new reason to worry — they don’t think it’s “personal” at all.
Russian Military Analysts are reporting in the Kremlin today that the United States has, for the first time in its history, granted rights to a Foreign Army to have ‘full power’ over the life and death of American Citizens in their own country. their own country.
AP probe found traces of meds in water supplies of 41 million Americans
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
From California to New Jersey
In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky.
Canada, U.S. and Mexico are planning a massive joint military exercise in April 2009 “to focus on terrorist events that could affect [the] 2010 Olympics,” according to Public Safety Canada documents released to 2010 Watch via access to information.
The rehearsal, led by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is code-named TOPOFF 5. Canadian troops were among the 15,000 participants involved in last October’s TOPOFF 4 in Portland, Ore., Phoenix, Ariz. and Guam.
“Exercises provide unique training opportunities to strengthen our ability to deal with potential emergencies,” said Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day in an e-mail statement responding to 24 hours’ interview request. “They are important tools to strengthen Canada’s ability to deal with real incidents.”
An undated Public Safety Canada report said up to $22.8 million was needed to fund emergency management, counter-terrorism, cyber security and critical infrastructure protection exercises, “leading to a trilateral full-scale exercise prior to the Vancouver Olympic Games in 2010, as outlined under the Security and Prosperity Partnership.”
SPP was founded in 2005 to promote economic growth and enhanced security in North America.
“Does it mean that if the American forces are training with Canadian forces that they are going to be positioned here in Canada during the period of the Olympic Games?” said 2010 Watch’s Chris Shaw. “And, if so, under whose command?”
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