Showing posts with label canada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label canada. Show all posts

Sunday, 27 May 2012

freedom of assembly: 300,000 protest in montreal

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Quebec's 'truncheon law' rebounds as student strike spreads

Quebec's 'truncheon law' rebounds as student strike spreads  A draconian law to quell demonstrations has only galvanised public support for young Quebecois protesting tuition fee hikes

 Martin Lukacs 
 24 May 2012

At a tiny church tucked away in a working-class neighbourhood in Montreal's east end, Quebec's new outlaws gathered on Sunday for a day of deliberations. Aged mostly between 18 and 22, their membership in a progressive student union has made them a target of government scorn and scrutiny. And they have been branded a menace to society because of their weapons: ideas of social justice and equal opportunity in education, alongside the ability to persuade hundreds of thousands to join them in the streets.
Under a draconian law passed by the Quebec government on Friday, their very meeting could be considered a criminal act. Law 78 – unprecedented in recent Canadian history – is the latest, most desperate manoeuvre of a provincial government that is afraid it has lost control over a conflict that began as a student strike against tuition hikes but has since spread into a protest movement with wide-ranging social and environmental demands.
Labelled a "truncheon law" by its critics, it imposes severe restrictions on the right to protest. Any group of 50 or more protesters must submit plans to police eight hours ahead of time; they can be denied the right to proceed. Picket lines at universities and colleges are forbidden, and illegal protests are punishable by fines from $5,000 to $125,000 for individuals and unions – as well as by the seizure of union dues and the dissolution of their associations.
In other words, the government has decided to smash the student movement by force.
The government quickly launched a public relations offensive to defend itself. Full-page ads in local newspapers ran with the headline: "For the sake of democracy and citizenship." Quebec's minister of public security, Robert Dutil, prattled about the many countries that have passed similar laws:
"Other societies with rights and freedoms to protect have found it reasonable to impose certain constraints – first of all to protect protesters, and also to protect the public."
Such language is designed to make violence sound benevolent and infamy honourable. But it did nothing to mask reality for those who have flooded the streets since the weekend and encountered police emboldened by the new legislation. Riot squads beat and tear-gassed people indiscriminately, targeted journalists, pepper-sprayed bystanders in restaurants, and mass-arrested hundreds, including more than 500 Wednesday night – bringing the tally from the last three months of protest to a record Canadian high of more than 2,500. The endless night-time drone of helicopters has become the serenade song of a police state.
In its contempt for students and citizens, the government has riled a population with strong, bitter memories of harsh measures against social unrest – whether the dark days of the iron-fisted Duplessis era, the martial law enforced by the Canadian army in 1970, or years of labour battles marred by the jailing of union leaders. These and other occasions have shown Québécois how the political elite has no qualms about trampling human rights to maintain a grip on power. 
Which is why those with experience of struggle fresh and old have answered Premier Jean Charest with unanimity and collective power. There are now legal challenges in the works, broad appeals for civil disobedience, and a brilliant website created by the progressive CLASSE student union, on which thousands have posted photos of themselves opposing the law. (The website's title is "Somebody arrest me" but also puns on a phrase to shake a person out of a crazed mental spell.)
And Wednesday, on the 100th day of the student strike, Québécois from every walk of life offered a rejoinder to the claim that "marginals" were directing and dominating the protests: an estimated 300,000-400,000 people marched in the streets, another Canadian record, and in full violation of the new law. They brandished the iconic red squares that have now transformed into a symbol not just of accessible education but the defence of basic freedoms of assembly and protest. Late into the night, a spirit of jubilant defiance spread through the city. On balconies along entire streets, and on intersections occupied by young and old, the sound of banging pots and pans rang out, a practice used under Latin American regimes. 
The clarity that has fired the students' protest has, until now, conspicuously eluded most of English-speaking Canada. This is because the image of the movement has been skewed and distorted by the establishment media. Sent into paroxysms of bafflement and contempt by the striking students, they have painted them as spoiled kids or crazed radicals out of touch with society, who should give up their supposed entitlements and accept the stark economic realities of the age.
All this is said with a straight face. But young people in Quebec, followed now by many others, have not been fooled. They know the global economic crisis of 2008 exposed as never before the abuses of corporate finance, and that those responsible were bailed out rather than held to account. They know that meetings of international leaders at the G20 end by dispatching ministers home to pay the bills on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable, with tuition hikes and a toxic combination of neoliberal economic policies. And with every baton blow and tear-gas blast, they perceive with ever greater lucidity that their government will turn ultimately to brute violence to impose such programs and frighten those who dissent.
To those who marched Wednesday, and the great numbers who cheered them on, the fault-lines of justice are evident. This is a government that has refused to sit down and negotiate with student leaders in good faith, but invites an organised crime boss to a fundraising breakfast; a government that has claimed free education is an idea not even worth dreaming about, when it would cost only 1% of Quebec's budget and could be paid for simply by reversing the regressive tax reforms, corporate give-aways, or capital tax phase-outs of the last decade; a government whose turn to authoritarian tactics has now triggered a sharp decline in support, and which has clumsily accelerated a social crisis that may now only begin to be resolved by meeting the students' demands. 
As the debate went on at the CLASSE meeting in the church last Sunday, the students' foresight proved wise beyond their years. "History doesn't get made in a day," one argued into the microphone. Not in a day, no doubt, but in Quebec, over this spring and the summer, history is indeed being made.



La Presse
22 mai 2012

Une manifestation monstre souligne 100 jours d'impasse


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La CLASSE estime que 250 000 personnes ont participé à l'événement. Des sources policières ont plutôt avancé le chiffre de 100 000 manifestants. Peu importe, la circulation routière a été perturbée dans le centre-ville de Montréal.


La plupart des regroupements avait fourni un itinéraire de la marche. «Il est essentiel de ne pas exposer inutilement nos militants et nos organisations aux mesures répressives [du] projet de loi. Les autorités municipales seront informées [de notre itinéraire] comme nous le faisons à chacune de nos manifestations. De plus, nous aurons notre service d'ordre », explique le Syndicat de la fonction publique (SCFP) sur son site web.


La CLASSE, instigatrice de ce rassemblement, avait pour sa part choisi de ne pas divulguer son trajet. On s'attendait à ce que ses membres empruntent le même chemin que les autres participants.

Avant le départ, le porte-parole Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois a déclaré que le rassemblement pacifique prouvait que désobéissance civile n'est pas synonyme de vandalisme. Il croit que le succès de la manifestation est un geste «collectif, massif de désobéissance civile».
«Ce sont des dizaines de milliers de personnes qui sont dans les rues, dit-il. Si le ministre de la Justice est conséquent avec sa loi, il devra mettre à l'amende des dizaines de milliers de personnes.»
Ian Lafrenière, le porte-parole du SPVM, croit que les casseurs auraient pu être mieux contrôlés si les trois groupes avaient dévoilé et respecté leur itinéraire. «Quand tu dis : «nous autre, on va faire une marche, mais on va défier les autorité», en partant, tu invites des pas gentils à venir avec toi. La preuve, c'est que les deux grandes marches du 22 mars et du 22 avril derniers, les itinéraires étaient connus et il n'y a eu zéro problème», a-t-il dit. 

Des militants tous azimuts
Une foule bigarrée, composée d'étudiants certes, mais aussi de militants tous azimuts, de sympathisants, de familles, de poussettes, et d'ainés, s'était réunie vers 14h pour le départ à la place des Festivals. Le thème de l'événement est: «100 jours de grève. 100 jours de mépris. 100 jours de résistance.»
Les associations étudiantes sont au rendez-vous, tout comme plusieurs grands syndicats et des politiciens, dont Amir Khadir, habitué des manifs étudiantes. Gilles Duceppe, venu assister à la manifestation avec un carré blanc épinglé à sa veste, croit que le gouvernement n'a plus qu'une porte de sortie: retourner aux négociations avec la FECQ et la FEUQ.
Plusieurs manifestants ont des mots durs pour le gouvernement. «Ce ne sont pas les étudiants qui sont violents, c'est le gouvernement qui est violent», rage Christine Coallier, professeure de philosophie au cégep. Elle en veut particulièrement au gouvernement de Jean Charest d'avoir fait la sourde oreille depuis 100 jours.
Lorraine Boutin et Marc Guénette, eux, manifestent avec leur fils gréviste Antoine, étudiant au Cégep Bois-de-Boulogne. «Cette loi spéciale est le constat d'échec d'un gouvernement qui n'a pas réussi à dialoguer avec des jeunes très intelligents. Notre jeunesse est très impressionnante», raconte Mme Boutin.
«L'éducation est le plus beau cadeau pour nos jeunes. La hausse des frais n'est pas le débat, il y en a de l'argent. Mais la loi spéciale a fait de moi un citoyen engagé. Je suis sur les réseaux sociaux comme Twitter et je suis ce qui se passe», raconte Marc Guénette.
«La loi spéciale m'a fâché. Ça va me rendre plus militant. Au mieux, cette loi ne changera rien. Au pire elle va empirer les choses», croit Antoine.
Maxime, un étudiant de 24 ans, demande que les parties retournent à la table des négociations. «En trois mois de grève, on a eu 22 heures de discussion. Ça dit quelque chose». 
...

Saturday, 24 April 2010

afghanistan: british accomplices of torture too

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updated april 25th

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/25/afghan-mi5-prisoners-tortured

Afghan spy chief: 'I told MI5 that prisoners were being tortured'

UK forces are accused of handing over Taliban detainees to Kandahar interrogators despite claims of ill-treatment

Mark Townsend, The Observer
Sunday 25 April 2010

Fresh claims have emerged that MI5 was aware of allegations that Afghan detainees were being mistreated by the country's security service during the period UK forces were handing prisoners over to the Afghan authorities.

Last week the high court heard details of torture allegedly suffered by prisoners handed over to the Afghan domestic security service. A memo, seen by the Observer, reveals that the head of Afghanistan's intelligence agency indicated to UK officials in March 2007 that he was aware of ill-treatment claims involving prisoners.

In the document, marked confidential, Amrullah Saleh, chief of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), admits he is "aware of allegations of mistreatment" relating to detainees in Kandahar province.

Human rights lawyers allege that no action appears to have been taken by UK forces as a result and that British troops handed over detainees to the NDS Kandahar facility in 2007.

The memo coincides with a judicial review in the high court, being brought by anti-war activist Maya Evans against Britain's policy of transferring suspected insurgents.

The court heard how six Afghan detainees – Taliban suspects – handed over by British troops to NDS prisons were allegedly deprived of sleep, whipped with rubber cables and subjected to electric shocks. Backed by law firm Public Interest Lawyers, Evans argues Britain has breached the Human Rights Act by handing over prisoners to a country known to participate in torture. The lawyers claim the NDS had a notorious reputation for mistreating prisoners and British officers should have known of the risks.

Saleh's admission is contained in a memo written a month before allegations surfaced in the Canadian press that the country's soldiers deliberately transferred prisoners to be tortured. The allegations provoked uproar in Canada with pressure still building on the government to launch a public inquiry into the claims.

The judicial review heard the government concede that British forces had maintained access into the NDS facility for UK interrogators, suggesting a close intelligence relationship with the Afghans. The judges also heard claims that government denials of such detainee abuse involving British forces were the result of a "head in the sand" attitude.

Lawyers for the Ministry of Defence deny that detainees routinely handed over by British soldiers suffer torture and insist safeguards against their mistreatment were in place.

In late 2008, military and Foreign Office officials were denied access to Afghan detention centres while UK forces were told not to transfer any more captured Afghans to the NDS.

Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, recently strenously denied complicity in torture, adding "nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf".

Evans said: "Only now has the government clearly admitted that it cannot hand over prisoners where there is a risk of torture by the NDS. The evidence is overwhelming. This practice must stop."

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/afghanistan/article7103264.ece

April 21, 2010

Britain ‘handed over Taleban suspects to torturers’ in Afghanistan


British Forces in Afghanistan handed over Taleban suspects to Afghan authorities who tortured them, it was alleged in the High Court yesterday.

The Ministry of Defence denies the claims by human rights groups and insists that British authorities maintained tight controls and monitoring to ensure the wellbeing of prisoners.

Public Interest Lawyers, which has previously worked on allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq, presented dossiers of testimony in London that it claims is part of a “dreadful and continuing story” of abuse.

The allegations cover claims from nine of 410 prisoners that they were tortured after being transferred to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS). Their testimony includes claims of beating, electric shocks, sexual abuse, stress positions and sleep deprivation.

Similar allegations have been levelled against the Canadian Government. A Canadian parliamentary inquiry into the claims is continuing after a diplomat, Richard Colvin, said that prisoners entrusted to the custody of the Afghan authorities were invariably tortured. He told the parliamentary commission in Ottawa that he warned officials in Afghanistan about the abuses. “The NDS tortures people,” he said. “That’s what they do. So if we don’t want detainees tortured we shouldn’t give them to the NDS.”

Amnesty International first made claims that Western forces were handing over prisoners to abuse in 2007. Britain rejected the claims and said that there was a detailed system of checks and balances.

In the case brought by Public Interest Lawyers on behalf of Maya Evans, a human rights activist, it is alleged that British authorities failed to maintain the regime of checks properly. The group is seeking a judicial review on the Government’s prisoner transfer policy in Afghanistan.

Nine prisoners allege that they were tortured at the main NDS facility in Kandahar, others at a facility called NDS Department 17. Their allegations cover a period between June 2006 and November 2007.

Prisoner D alleges that he was beaten and tortured with electric shocks. Another prisoner alleges that he was raped by a senior NDS officer. Others allege beatings with metal rods and rubber hoses. Prisoner G states that he “confessed” after six consecutive nights of beatings.

Michael Forham, QC, argued before the court that transfers to the NDS violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects against inhuman and degrading treatment.

The Ministry of Defence said: “Whenever we have received allegations of mistreatment, we ensure that the Afghan authorities, the International Red Cross and the independent Afghan Human Rights Commission are informed as long as individuals have given their consent for us to do so. Although, the UK does not have jurisdiction to investigate allegations made against Afghan security forces, we will offer advice where we can and we press the Afghan authorities to share their findings.”

related text:

afghanistan: canadian war crimes

obama's secret prisons endanger us all

canada: mensonges sur la torture en afghanistan

Thursday, 1 April 2010

nanofoods in you plate / monsanto kills mother earth


Regulated or Not, Nano-Foods Coming to a Store Near You

Updated: 7 days 9 hours ago

Andrew  Schneider

Andrew Schneider Senior Public Health Correspondent

Second in a Three-Part Series

(March 24) -- For centuries, it was the cook and the heat of the fire that cajoled taste, texture, flavor and aroma from the pot. Today, that culinary voodoo is being crafted by white-coated scientists toiling in pristine labs, rearranging atoms into chemical particles never before seen.

At last year's Institute of Food Technologists international conference, nanotechnology was the topic that generated the most buzz among the 14,000 food-scientists, chefs and manufacturers crammed into an Anaheim, Calif., hall. Though it's a word that has probably never been printed on any menu, and probably never will, there was so much interest in the potential uses of nanotechnology for food that a separate daylong session focused just on that subject was packed to overflowing.

In one corner of the convention center, a chemist, a flavorist and two food-marketing specialists clustered around a large chart of the Periodic Table of Elements (think back to high school science class). The food chemist, from China, ran her hands over the chart, pausing at different chemicals just long enough to say how a nano-ized version of each would improve existing flavors or create new ones.

One of the marketing guys questioned what would happen if the consumer found out.

The flavorist asked whether the Food and Drug Administration would even allow nanoingredients.

Posed a variation of the latter question, Dr. Jesse Goodman, the agency's chief scientist and deputy commissioner for science and public health, gave a revealing answer. He said he wasn't involved enough with how the FDA was handling nanomaterials in food to discuss that issue. And the agency wouldn't provide anyone else to talk about it.

This despite the fact that hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have shown that nanoparticles pose potential risks to human health -- and, more specifically, that when ingested can cause DNA damage that can prefigure cancer and heart and brain disease.

Despite Denials, Nano-Food Is Here

Officially, the FDA says there aren't any nano-containing food products currently sold in the U.S.

Not true, say some of the agency's own safety experts, pointing to scientific studies published in food science journals, reports from foreign safety agencies and discussions in gatherings like the Institute of Food Technologists conference.

In fact, the arrival of nanomaterial onto the food scene is already causing some big-chain safety managers to demand greater scrutiny of what they're being offered, especially with imported food and beverages. At a conference in Seattle last year hosted by leading food safety attorney Bill Marler, presenters raised the issue of how hard it is for large supermarket companies to know precisely what they are purchasing, especially with nanomaterials, because of the volume and variety they deal in.

Vegetables
Getty Images
According to a USDA scientist, some Latin American packers spray U.S.-bound produce with a wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. "We found no indication that the nanocoating ... has ever been tested for health effects," the researcher says.

Craig Wilson, assistant vice president for safety for Costco, says his chain does not test for nanomaterial in the food products it is offered by manufacturers. But, he adds, Costco is looking "far more carefully at everything we buy. ... We have to rely on the accuracy of the labels and the integrity of our vendors. Our buyers know that if they find nanomaterial or anything else they might consider unsafe, the vendors either remove it, or we don't buy it."

Another government scientist says nanoparticles can be found today in produce sections in some large grocery chains and vegetable wholesalers. This scientist, a researcher with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, was part of a group that examined Central and South American farms and packers that ship fruits and vegetables into the U.S. and Canada. According to the USDA researcher -- who asked that his name not be used because he's not authorized to speak for the agency -- apples, pears, peppers, cucumbers and other fruit and vegetables are being coated with a thin, wax-like nanocoating to extend shelf-life. The edible nanomaterial skin will also protect the color and flavor of the fruit longer.

"We found no indication that the nanocoating, which is manufactured in Asia, has ever been tested for health effects," said the researcher.

Ice cream, left, and salad dressing
Getty Images
A science committee of the British House of Lords has found that nanomaterials are already appearing in numerous products, among them salad dressings and sauces. Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, says that they're also being added to ice cream to make it "look richer and better textured."

Some foreign governments, apparently more worried about the influx of nano-related products to their grocery shelves, are gathering their own research. In January, a science committee of the British House of Lords issued a lengthy study on nanotechnology and food. Scores of scientific groups and consumer activists and even several international food manufactures told the committee investigators that engineered particles were already being sold in salad dressings; sauces; diet beverages; and boxed cake, muffin and pancakes mixes, to which they're added to ensure easy pouring.

Other researchers responding to the committee's request for information talked about hundreds more items that could be in stores by year's end.

For example, a team in Munich has used nano-nonstick coatings to end the worldwide frustration of having to endlessly shake an upturned mustard or ketchup bottle to get at the last bit clinging to the bottom. Another person told the investigators that Nestlé and Unilever have about completed developing a nano-emulsion-based ice cream that has a lower fat content but retains its texture and flavor.


The Ultimate Secret Ingredient


Nearly 20 of the world's largest food manufacturers -- among them Nestlé, as well as Hershey, Cargill, Campbell Soup, Sara Lee, and H.J. Heinz -- have their own in-house nano-labs, or have contracted with major universities to do nano-related food product development. But they are not eager to broadcast those efforts.

Ketchup bottle
Getty Images
A team in Munich, the House of Lords investigators also learned, is using nano-nonstick coatings to make it easier to get the last drops of ketchup out of the bottle.

Kraft was the first major food company to hoist the banner of nanotechnology. Spokesman Richard Buino, however, now says that while "we have sponsored nanotech research at various universities and research institutions in the past," Kraft has no labs focusing on it today.

The stance is in stark contrast to the one Kraft struck in late 2000, when it loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that it had formed the Nanotek Consortium with engineers, molecular chemists and physicists from 15 universities in the U.S. and abroad. The mission of the team was to show how nanotechnology would completely revolutionize the food manufacturing industry, or so said its then-director, Kraft research chemist Manuel Marquez.

But by the end of 2004, the much-touted operation seemed to vanish. All mentions of Nanotek Consortium disappeared from Kraft's news releases and corporate reports.

"We have not nor are we currently using nanotechnology in our products or packaging," Buino added in another e-mail.

Industry Tactics Thwart Risk Awareness

The British government investigation into nanofood strongly criticized the U.K.'s food industry for "failing to be transparent about its research into the uses of nanotechnologies and nanomaterials." On this side of the Atlantic, corporate secrecy isn't a problem, as some FDA officials tell it.

Investigators on Capitol Hill say the FDA's congressional liaisons have repeatedly assured them -- from George W. Bush's administration through President Barack Obama's first year -- that the big U.S. food companies have been upfront and open about their plans and progress in using nanomaterial in food.

But FDA and USDA food safety specialists interviewed over the past three months stressed that based on past performance, industry cannot be relied on to voluntarily advance safety efforts.

These government scientists, who are actively attempting to evaluate the risk of introducing nanotechnology to food, say that only a handful of corporations are candid about what they're doing and collaborating with the FDA and USDA to help develop regulations that will both protect the public and permit their products to reach market. Most companies, the government scientists add, submit little or no information unless forced. Even then, much of the information crucial to evaluating hazards -- such as the chemicals used and results of company health studies -- is withheld, with corporate lawyers claiming it constitutes confidential business information.

Both regulators and some industry consultants say the evasiveness from food manufacturers could blow up in their faces. As precedent, they point to what happened in the mid-'90s with genetically modified food, the last major scientific innovation that was, in many cases, force-fed to consumers. "There was a lack of transparency on what companies were doing. So promoting genetically modified foods was perceived by some of the public as being just profit-driven," says Professor Rickey Yada of the Department of Food Science at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

"In retrospect, food manufacturers should have highlighted the benefits that the technology could bring as well as discussing the potential concerns."

Eating Nanomaterials Could Increase Underlying Risks

The House of Lords' study identified "severe shortfalls" in research into the dangers of nanotechnology in food. Its authors called for funding studies that address the behavior of nanomaterials within the digestive system. Similar recommendations are being made in the U.S., where the majority of research on nanomaterial focuses on it entering the body via inhalation and absorption.

The food industry is very competitive, with thin profit margins. And safety evaluations are very expensive, notes Bernadene Magnuson, senior scientific and regulatory consultant with risk-assessment firm Cantox Health Sciences International. "You need to be pretty sure you've got something that's likely to benefit you and your product in some way before you're going to start launching into safety evaluations," she explains. Magnuson believes that additional studies must be done on chronic exposure to and ingestion of nanomaterials.

One of the few ingestion studies recently completed was a two-year-long examination of nano-titanium dioxide at UCLA, which showed that the compound caused DNA and chromosome damage after lab animals drank large quantities of the particles in their water.

Meat cooler at grocery store
Getty Images
Sono-Tek, a company based in Milton, N.Y., employs nanotechnology in its industrial sprayers. "One new application for us is spraying nanomaterial suspensions onto biodegradable plastic food wrapping materials to preserve the freshness of food products," says its chairman and CEO.

It is widely known that nano-titanium dioxide is used as filler in hundreds of medicines and cosmetics and as a blocking agent in sunscreens. But Jaydee Hanson, policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, worries that the danger is greater "when the nano-titanium dioxide is used in food."

Ice cream companies, Hanson says, are using nanomaterials to make their products "look richer and better textured." Bread makers are spraying nanomaterials on their loaves "to make them shinier and help them keep microbe-free longer."

While AOL News was unable to identify a company pursuing the latter practice, it did find Sono-Tek of Milton, N.Y., which uses nanotechnology in its industrial sprayers. "One new application for us is spraying nanomaterial suspensions onto biodegradable plastic food wrapping materials to preserve the freshness of food products," says Christopher Coccio, chairman and CEO. He said the development of this nano-wrap was partially funded by New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority.

"This is happening," Hanson says. He calls on the FDA to "immediately seek a ban on any products that contain these nanoparticles, especially those in products that are likely to be ingested by children."

"The UCLA study means we need to research the health effects of these products before people get sick, not after," Hanson says.

There is nothing to mandate that such safety research take place.


The FDA's Blind Spot

The FDA includes titanium dioxide among the food additives it classifies under the designation "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS. New additives with that label can bypass extensive and costly health testing that is otherwise required of items bound for grocery shelves.

A report issued last month by the Government Accountability Office denounced the enormous loophole that the FDA has permitted through the GRAS classification. And the GAO investigators also echoed the concerns of consumer and food safety activists who argue that giving nanomaterials the GRAS free pass is perilous.

Food safety agencies in Canada and the European Union require all ingredients that incorporate engineered nanomaterials to be submitted to regulators before they can be put on the market, the GAO noted. No so with the FDA.

"Because GRAS notification is voluntary and companies are not required to identify nanomaterials in their GRAS substances, FDA has no way of knowing the full extent to which engineered nanomaterials have entered the U.S. food supply," the GAO told Congress.

Amid that uncertainty, calls for safety analysis are growing.

"Testing must always be done," says food regulatory consultant George Burdock, a toxicologist and the head of the Burdock Group. "Because if it's nanosized, its chemical properties will most assuredly be different and so might the biological impact."


Will Consumers Swallow What Science Serves Up Next?


Interviews with more than a dozen food scientists revealed strikingly similar predictions on how the food industry will employ nanoscale technology. They say firms are creating nanostructures to enhance flavor, shelf life and appearance. They even foresee using encapsulated or engineered nanoscale particles to create foods from scratch.

Experts agreed that the first widespread use of nanotechnology to hit the U.S. food market would be nanoscale packing materials and nanosensors for food safety, bacteria detection and traceability.

While acknowledging that many more nano-related food products are on the way, Magnuson, the industry risk consultant, says the greatest degree of research right now is directed at food safety and quality. "Using nanotechnology to improve the sensitivity and speed of detection of food-borne pathogens in the food itself or in the supply chain or in the processing equipment could be lifesaving," she says.

For example, researchers at Clemson University, according to USDA, have used nanoparticles to identify campylobacter, a sometimes-lethal food-borne pathogen, in poultry intestinal tracts prior to processing.

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, food scientist Julian McClements and his colleagues have developed time-release nanolaminated coatings to add bioactive components to food to enhance delivery of ingredients to help prevent diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and hypertension.

But if the medical benefits of such an application are something to cheer, the prospect of eating them in the first place isn't viewed as enthusiastically.

Advertising and marketing consultants for food and beverage makers are still apprehensive about a study done two years ago by the German Federal Institute of Risk Assessment, which commissioned pollsters to measure public acceptance of nanomaterials in food. The study showed that only 20 percent of respondents would buy nanotechnology-enhanced food products.

To provide feedback on this series, please write to us at
nanotechreport@aolnews.com.

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http://www.alainet.org/active/36831

2010-03-18

Argentina

Interview with Rodolfo Edgardo Páramo, pediatrician and expert on farming chemicals

Glyphosate kills Mother Nature

Rodolfo Páramo, a retired pediatrician in the central Santa Fe province, is a vocal activist against the use of glyphosate. The toxic herbicide, produced by US seed and agrochemical giant Monsanto, is sprayed on fields of transgenic soy, which now cover 17 million hectares (42 million acres) in Argentina.
Páramo lectures throughout Argentina along with community groups that have suffered from the use of this chemical.

Latinamerica Press collaborator Juan Nicastro spoke with Páramo in the Cosquín National Folklore Festival, in the Córdoba province in January about his campaign on the potential health damage agrochemicals pose. In December, Santa Fe’s judiciary ruled against fumigations with glyphosate less than 800 meters from family homes.

How did you first realize the effects of agrochemicals?

After working seven years in the neonatal care unit in the José María Cullen Hospital in Santa Fe, I was transferred to the village of Mal Abrigo, in the north of the province, where I worked in pediatrics. It was there in 1994 and 1995 that we started to see births with deformities, mostly in the neural axis, from the brain to the vertebrae. [We found] anancephalia, or the lack of a brain. The vertebrae were not closed in some places, mainly in the cervical and lumbosacral area, leaving the medulla exposed.

Some 10,000 people live in Mal Abrigo and there are 15 to 20 births a month. In one year, we had 12 babies born with malformations, an extremely high rate. In Santa Fe we had the normal rate: one case of congenital malformation for every 8,500 to 10,000 live births. The figure in Mal Abrigo was terrifying. We started to investigate. I suggested that there was a substance in the environment that blocked folic acid, which protects against malformations in the nervous system. That led to me to find out what product was being used in the fields.

In January 1996, Felipe Solá, deputy agriculture secretary of the government of ex-President Carlos Menem [1989-99], formally authorized the use of transgenic RR Roundup Ready seeds, which are resistant to the herbicide Roundup, Monsanto's glyphosate.

But [Swiss transnational] Syngenta had been selling Monsanto soy and used Roundup before it was authorized nationally.

I continued to research. I spoke with agronomists during a time when the [mechanical crop sprayers called ] spiders – or mosquitoes as they are also called –– would finish spraying the fields and enter the village dripping the chemicals everywhere. It still happens in many places. In other villages, like in Mal Abrigo, the government prohibited the storage, entry or distribution of the mosquitoes or spiders within the town's urban perimeter. And like magic, the number of deformities in newborns went down.

But the number of cases of cancer, especially rapidly advancing cancer, shot up, above all in young people, who didn't respond to traditional anti-cancer treatment.

Are there precedents of such harmful effects in other parts of the world?

Many. Remember that in Bophal, India, more than 20 years ago, a chemical [US transnational] Union Carbide was producing spilled and there were 20,000 deaths in 10 minutes, and people there are still suffering from the effects.

At first, they thought I was crazy. That I had come to be a nuisance. Around 2000 we got a judge to rule, with scientific proof, to remove the grain silos from Mal Abrigo's center. Showing that in an urban area, they are disastrous for the community. While I was working in Santa Fe, I didn't see the number of children with respiratory problems that I saw in Mal Abrigo. There was environmental pollution there because the grains were left out to dry but also, at the same time, they left in the air the substances that covered those seeds, that herbicide.

The Universidad Nacional del Litoral [in Santa Fe] had been doing a study since 1997 and last year published a report that showed that there are concentrations of glyphosate in the green and mature soy grains. Also, when they studied the soy, they found residues of the insecticide endosulfan, which is highly toxic, so much so that the German transnational Bayer is going to take it off the Argentine market this year.

Does glyphosate kill everything except soy?

Almost everything. In the United States, some had to abandon their fields, some 5,000 hectares [12,350 acres], because what was thought to be a new weed. A damning for them, a blessing for us: amaranth, a grain that is a basic food of the native peoples of the Andes that kept them strong and healthy, and no herbicide can destroy it. Amaranth is Monsanto's new enemy.

What do you think is the most efficient way to confront this situation?

For people to become aware. There are many products made from soy, more and more. I studied in a public university and I have the obligation to give back to society what it gave me through that free education I received. The people paid for my education. If I, as a professional, see that something is being ignored but that it's killing people, I have to react, study and spread what I learn. And glyphosate doesn't just kill human life. It kills soil’s bacteria and fungus. It kills Mother Earth. —Latinamerica Press.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527444.000-engineered-maize-toxicity-claims-roundly-rebuffed.html

Engineered maize toxicity claims roundly rebuffed

22 January 2010
Andy Coghlan

MONSANTO, the giant of genetically modified crops, has for the first time been forced to release raw data from toxicology studies it carried out on three strains of its modified maize. An external analysis of the data claims it shows that eating the maize could result in damage to the liver and kidneys, but this has been dismissed as unsupportable by a government agency and independent toxicologists.

With legal help from Greenpeace and the Swedish Board of Agriculture, researchers at the Committee of Research and Information on Genetic Engineering, a French anti-GM lobby group, forced Monsanto to release the data from studies in which rats were fed with the three varieties of maize for three months.

Two of the maize varieties, MON 810 and MON 863, contain genes for the bacterial Bt protein, which protects against corn borer larvae. The third, NK 603, is resistant to the weedkiller glyphosate. All are widely grown in the US, while MON 810 is the only GM crop grown in Europe, mainly in Spain.

The re-analysis of the data, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini at the University of Caen in France, concludes that the rats showed statistically significant signs of liver and kidney toxicity (International Journal of Biological Sciences, vol 5, p 706).

With each of the three strains of maize, researchers say they found unusual concentrations of hormones and other compounds in the blood and urine of the tested rats, suggesting each strain impaired kidney and liver function. By the end of the trials, the female rats that were fed MON 863 had elevated blood-sugar levels and raised concentrations of fatty substances called triglycerides. Both are potential precursors of diabetes, according to Séralini. And there were further signs that the kidneys of rats fed NK 603 were impaired, he says.

"What we've shown is clearly not proof of toxicity, but signs of toxicity," says Séralini. "I'm sure there's no acute toxicity, but who's to say there are no chronic effects?" He wants longer studies on more species to check for such effects.

Unsurprisingly, Monsanto has refuted the findings, saying they do not demonstrate that there is any risk to the consumer. France's High Council of Biotechnology, too, has said that the study provides no new evidence of toxicity from the three maizes. Independent toxicologists contacted by New Scientist said Séralini's analysis overplays the importance of minor variations that most experienced toxicologists would consider to be random background noise.

The study did not address the environmental concerns associated with GM crops, which have led six European countries to ban MON 810.

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

canada: internet tops tv viewing

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http://www.ottawasun.com/news/canada/2010/03/22/13314206-qmi.html

Internet tops TV viewing in Canada: Ipsos poll

QMI Agency Last Updated:
March 22, 2010

For the first time ever, Canadians are spending more time surfing the web than they are watching television, a new poll shows.

Canadians are now spending more than 18 hours each week online, and 16.9 hours watching television, the Ipsos Reid study shows. That's up from last year, when we were spending 14.9 hours on the Internet and 15.8 hours watching TV.

Males are spending more time online than females - 20 hours for men, 16 hours for women - and those aged 18-34 are spending 20 hours each week online, while people 35 and up are spending about 18 hours online.

"Today, online Canadians are finding a myriad of entertainment options available to them within the walls of their homes. While some entertainment content has simply shifted from television to online, the Internet is also providing new content to Canadians," study author Mark Laver says in a press release.

"The Internet is poised to take the next step in our lives as it delivers more and more entertainment content to Canadians in their homes and on the go." When it comes to watching TV, those 55 and up are sitting in front of the tube for about 20 hours each week. But the hours drop as people get younger.

People between the ages of 35-54 spend about 15 hours watching their favourite shows while those 18-34 will watch TV for about 13 hours each week.

The online survey of 839 people was conducted via the Ipsos Online Panel last fall.

"The data indicates that not only are people of all ages spending more and more time online, but it also points to a shift in how online Canadians are consuming media and where they are spending their free time," Laver said.

Monday, 15 March 2010

big brother technology updates

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http://www.rense.com/general89/trust.htm

Dealing With The Truth And USING It

By Ted Twietmeyer
1-21-10

It's been said that there's a price to be paid for knowing the truth. (...)

Modern wars are won in a matter of days using advanced technology - when it's desirable to do so. (...)

An army colonel once told me, "The more advanced the technology the easier it is to defeat it." When you ponder a few things you quickly discover how true this is. A simple paintball gun can disable any video camera, no matter how expensive it is. A camera on a tall pole can be taken down with a oxy-acetylene torch or a hacksaw. In the UK they started filling the poles with concrete to prevent this, so people doused the camera box with a burnable fluid and lit it, destroying it right on the pole. There is no real way to prevent camera damage. A high power laser is also effective and could be used from inside a vehicle. A simple paper clip can disable the most powerful computer when dropped into a ventilation slot or CDROM drive. A paper clip can also jam or damage a printer when dropped into the mechanism. Microwave psychotronics making your life miserable? A simple corner reflector can be built using two metallic surfaces joined at a right angle, erected with the inside corner facing the microwave source. Two foil-covered four foot by eight foot foam insulation sheets from a home improvement center are ready-made into a reflector. Erected vertically, this reflector will send microwaves back at the operator of the psychotronic device, regardless of whatever horizontal angle it's aimed at you from. It's about time they suffer from their own weapons. Such a reflector can also work against area denial weapons which are truck mounted. This system irradiate a crowd of people with 42Ghz radiation boiling moisture on the skin instantly creating a burning feeling. Apparently the manufacturer thinks no man wants to be a father someday, and this will help insure that. The list is almost endless of how ordinary low tech objects can damage or disable high tech devices. We know enough about the wizard behind the curtain, how life really works and into what world the back-stage planners *think* they create. What they cannot possibly grasp is the amount of resistance they will meet. Not everyone will be going peacefully. Even soldiers have a conscious - consider the high suicide rate now prevalent in the military. Afghanistan is a great example of a wasted 9 years of war and thousands of lives, and it still isn't over. In Vietnam failure was blamed on the jungle and tunnels. So what's the excuse for the war dragging on in rocky, barren, cold Afghanistan? It's the same story as Vietnam ­ government doesn't want the war to end. (...)

The average person of the past usually did everything themselves. That was the normal way of life for many at that time. People today think they have too many problems and no free time to fight tyranny, or even time to just say NO. Today everyone has FAR MORE FREE TIME to deal with all the problems those in power want to dump upon us. If all that's important to someone is football, basketball, hockey, baseball etc.. then they deserve everything they have coming to them. And rest assured they will get it, too. I won't be shedding any tears for those who have been warned.

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http://commendatori.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/ex-ibm-employee-reveals-tv-abandoned-analog-band-to-make-room-for-rfid-chips/

Ex-IBM Employee reveals TV Abandoned Analog Band to Make Room for RFID Chips

Commendatori
October 27, 2009

This is old news… but interesting nonethless…

According to a former 31-year IBM employee, the highly-publicized, mandatory switch from analog to digital television is mainly being done to free up analog frequencies and make room for scanners used to read implantable RFID microchips and track people and products throughout the world.

So while the American people, especially those in Texas and other busy border states, have been inundated lately with news reports advising them to hurry and get their expensive passports, “enhanced driver’s licenses,” passport cards and other “chipped” or otherwise trackable identification devices that they are being forced to own, this digital television/RFID connection has been hidden, according to Patrick Redmond.

Redmond, a Canadian, held a variety of jobs at IBM before retiring, including working in the company’s Toronto lab from 1992 to 2007, then in sales support. He has given talks, written a book and produced a DVD on the aggressive, growing use of passive, semi-passive and active RFID chips (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) implanted in new clothing, in items such as Gillette Fusion blades, and in countless other products that become one’s personal belongings. These RFID chips, many of which are as small, or smaller, than the tip of a sharp pencil, also are embedded in all new U.S. passports, some medical cards, a growing number of credit and debit cards and so on. More than two billion of them were sold in 2007.

Whether active, semi-passive or passive, these “transponder chips,” as they’re sometimes called, can be accessed or activated with “readers” that can pick up the unique signal given off by each chip and glean information from it on the identity and whereabouts of the product or person, depending on design and circumstances, as Redmond explained in a little-publicized lecture in Canada last year. AFP just obtained a DVD of his talk.

Noted “Spychips” expert, author and radio host Katherine Albrecht told AMERICAN FREE PRESS that while she’s not totally sure whether there is a rock-solid RFID-DTV link, “The purpose of the switch [to digital] was to free up bandwidth. It’s a pretty wide band, so freeing that up creates a huge swath of frequencies.”

As is generally known, the active chips have an internal power source and antenna; these particular chips emit a constant signal. “This allows the tag to send signals back to the reader, so if I have a RFID chip on me and it has a battery, I can just send a signal to a reader wherever it is,” Redmond stated in the recent lecture,

(...)

“The reason they are doing this is that the [UHF-VHF] analog frequencies are being used for the chips. They do not want to overload the chips with television signals, so the chips’ signals are going to be taking those [analog] frequencies. They plan to sell the frequencies to private companies and other groups who will use them to monitor the chips.”

Albrecht responded to that quote only by saying that it sounds plausible, since she knows some chips will indeed operate in the UHF-VHF ranges.

“Well over a million pets have been chipped,” Redmond said, adding that all 31,000 police officers in London have in some manner been chipped as well, much to the consternation of some who want that morning donut without being tracked. London also can link a RFID chip in a public transportation pass with the customer’s name. “Where is John Smith? Oh, he is on subway car 32,” Redmond said.

He added that chips for following automobile drivers – while the concept is being fought by several states in the U.S. which do not want nationalized, trackable driver’s licenses (Real ID ) – is apparently a slam dunk in Canada, where license plates have quietly been chipped. Such identification tags can contain work history, education, religion, ethnicity, reproductive history and much more.

Farm animals are increasingly being chipped; furthermore, “Some 800 hospitals in the U.S. are now chipping their patients; you can turn it down, but it’s available,” he said, adding: “Four hospitals in Puerto Rico have put them in the arms of Alzheimer’s patients, and it only costs about $200 per person.”

VeriChip, a major chip maker (the devices sometimes also are called Spychips) describes its product on its website: “About twice the length of a grain of rice, the device is typically implanted above the triceps area of an individual’s right arm. Once scanned at the proper frequency, the VeriChip responds with a unique 16 digit number which could be then linked with information about the user held on a database for identity verification, medical records access and other uses. The insertion procedure is performed under local anesthetic in a physician’s office and once inserted, is invisible to the naked eye. As an implanted device used for identification by a third party, it has generated controversy and debate.”

The circles will keep widening, Redmond predicts. Chipping children “to be able to protect them,” Redmond said, “is being promoted in the media.” After that, he believes it will come to: chip the military, chip welfare cheats, chip criminals, chip workers who are goofing off, chip pensioners – and then chip everyone else under whatever rationale is cited by government and highly-protected corporations that stand to make billions of dollars from this technology.

(...)

“Nigel Gilbert of the Royal Academy of Engineering said that by 2011 you should be able to go on Google and find out where someone is at anytime from chips on clothing, in cars, in cellphones and inside many people themselves,” Redmond also said.

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http://www.michaeljournal.org/newtechno.htm

An introduction to New Technologies

Patrick Redmond



Patrick Redmond graduated with a Doctorate in History from the University of London, England in 1972. He taught at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad, then at Adhadu Bello University in Kano, Nigeria before joining IBM. He worked in IBM for 31 years before retiring. During his career at IBM he held a variety of jobs. These included; from 1992 until 2007 working at the IBM Toronto lab in technical, then in sales support. He has written two books and numerous articles.

Here is a presentation he gave in Toronto on April 13, 2008.



I want to thank Yvon for inviting me here to talk about new technologies. What I’m going to do is give you an introduction to three technologies that are becoming more and more important. The first is RFID chips, the second genetic engineering, and the third synthetic biology. This will give you an understanding of what is happening and where science is going. We will start with RFID chips: So what are they? They are Radio Frequency Identification Devices. An RFID is a microchip with an attached antenna. The microchip contains stored information which can be transmitted to a reader and then to a computer. RFID’s can be passive, semi-passive or active.

Active RFID’s have an internal power source such as a battery. This allows the tag to send signals back to the reader, so if I have a RFID on me and it has a battery, I can just send a signal to a reader wherever it is. They can receive and store data, and be read at a further distance than the passive RFID’s. The batteries can only last a short while. But the current batteries in the RFID’s can last for over a hundred years, because of their self-generating power. Ultrawideband (UWB) allows the small battery operated RFID tag to be sensed over fairly wide areas. For instance, GE Aircraft Engines in Ohio has installed five readers in the factory and it covers over 30,000 square feet so they can track everything within that area with only the five readers. That gives you an idea of the distance that can be covered by an RFID tag that might be on you or on equipment.

An RFID held by a pair of tweezers

The readers can transmit over telephone or by internet to computers and they use satellites as well. For example, Digital Angel has signed contracts with satellite providers to transmit their data for military personnel location beacons (PLBs). These beacons use the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system. This system has some 400,000 digital beacons around the world and it’s rising to some 900,000. By the year 2009 they plan to have a GL stationary satellite system that will enable them to find the location and details of any beacon. You may sometimes see these at night; the GO stationary systemscan track any beacon. Skiers sometimes use them so that they can be identified, and sailors as well, if they become lost at sea they will be able to be tracked. Anything that has an RFID tag can be tracked by a reader or a computer. An example of such transmission is a chip sold by Zarlink. This chip is implanted in a person; it tracks problems and if one is detected, it alerts the doctor who uses a two way RF link to interrogate and adjust the implanted device.

Semi-passive RFIDs have an internal power source that let them monitor environmental conditions, such as temperature and shock, but they still require RF energy from the reader to respond.

Passive RFID’s do not have a power source but use a signal sent by the scanner to power the microchip circuit to transmit back their stored information. Passive RFID’s are getting very small. Hitachi a few years ago produced a chip (called the mu chip) that was the size of a pencil point; if you take a pencil and put it on a piece of paper you get a little dot. That’s how small they’re getting. In 2007 Hitachi came out with a chip that was even smaller, they call it RFID powder. They are just like the talcum powder you would put on a baby. Somark Innovations in Jan 10, 2007 announced an invisible RFID ink. This can be applied to cattle, prime cuts of meat, military personnel and it can be read through hair. I brought along a couple of the larger size chips, and this particular chip I got from Gillette fusion blades. I bought one of the blades and you can see that on one side what looks like a bar code and if you open it up you can see parts of a RFID chip on the back. This one here is from the Gap. One of my daughters went to the Gap; they put the tag directly on the clothing and the instructions just say to remove before washing and wearing. If you put it up to the light you will see the RFID chip inside it. These chips are quite small and can be put on the back of labels. They would not be noticeable in badges or ID cards; they could even be put in the eye of a person, they are that small. In order for chips to be useful, they have to have a unique product number and because of this, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) started developing some standards. It’s called the AutoID Center. They then passed it on to the AutoID Group within the Uniform Clothes Council. It will assign codes and publish specifications, so if you have a company, government agency, or church you can contact these people and they will give you a set of numbers. So let’s say there are three or five people in this room wearing the same white hat and each one of them has a chip on it with a different number. We could differentiate everything even if you’re all wearing the same clothes, it doesn’t really matter because everything has a unique number. MIT has the architecture of participation called EPC Global so if you go on Google and type in EPC Global and you will come up with the website they will give you instructions on how to apply and get chips. So if you want to chip yourself, your family, relatives, company or anything like that; you can do it. It works with people who want to use this technology. One of many companies who sell the chip is called, Technic Imitations. If you have a company and you go to one of their presentations, they will give you books like this that tell you what the chips look like, how they work, the types that are sold, and what the readers look like. They will help you install chips in your company. It’s a very big business and it’s spreading very quickly.

When you use active or passive chips, active chips have advantages when you want to track items or people over longer distances. Soldiers can have active chips so they can be tracked via satellite wherever they might be in the battlefield. You can get one for your car, so you can be tracked if you are on the 407 or something.

Passive ones suffice if you are only interested in tracking over shorter distances. For example, in a sea container coming in from China, every box and every item within the box can have a chip on it. A reader can track all the items as a box passes through it. In a warehouse it is used to ensure the right shipments go to the right places. A man carrying a skid on a forklift can have the goods inside the box verified without even opening it. They are using the chips to track inventory in order to be able to monitor what items are going where, if the right items are in the truck, etc.

The passive chips are being put on devices to ensure they are valid. There’s a lot of counterfeit drugs being produced and sold over the internet. Viagra is one of the most commonly counterfeited ones although there are many others. To ensure that people get the correct drugs they sometimes put chips on the containers so when you’re buying them you know that you are buying the correct drug. Chipping farm animals is now required by the government RFID’s are a great economic help to a company because they reduce theft and loss. They also streamline inventory, reduce turnaround time and handling. They’ve allowed companies to adjust production in response to inventory levels and to respond on demand. That’s why companies are interested, because of these big economic benefits and efficiency. When you go to Wal-Mart, Best Buy, the U.S. Military and many other agencies around the world, you will see that they are all implementing RFID chips on items and increasingly on people. The recent growth of the RFID industry has been staggering:

From 1955 to 2005, cumulative sales of radio tags totaled 2.4 billion; in 2007 alone, 2.24 billion tags were sold worldwide and analysts project that by 2017 cumulative sales will top 1 trillion–generating more than $25 billion in annual revenues for the industry. We’re starting to see chips being implemented in credit cards, debit cards and passports, driver’s licenses, health cards, and many other things. Increasingly they are being used to monitor people as well as items. RFID tags embedded into clothes and personal belongings allow people to be tracked and monitored in shopping malls, libraries, museums, sports arenas, elevators, and restrooms. American Express has them on their blue cards. They are announcing plans to place people-tracking readers in stores to track customers movements and observe their behavior. If you bought something with your credit or debit card, they will know what items you bought and if the items were chipped, they will know what you were buying. In this way they will be able to track you. In 2006, IBM received a patent approval for an invention called, "Identification and tracking of persons using RFID-tagged items." One stated purpose was to collect information about people that could be "used to monitor the movement of the person through the store or other areas." When somebody enters a store a reader "scans all identifiable RFID tags carried on the person," and correlates the tag information with sales records to determine the individual’s "exact identity." A device known as a "person tracking unit" which then assigns a tracking number to the shopper "to monitor the movement of the person through the store." If I had three readers in this room, I could scan everybody in one second and I would know right away who’s here; so it would scan that quickly. The computers are getting quite sophisticated and capable of doing large numbers of scans at any given time. One company recently announced a computer that reads data transactions at 200 million/second, an incredible number. Here’s an example of how they are being used in companies; a few oil companies have given their employees smart cards so that they know where they are at any time of the day. This ensures that people do not go where they are not authorized to go. They will see how many times an individual might go to the washroom or outside to have a cigarette; things like that. It allows continuous tracking of people, and so more and more companies are thinking it’s a novel idea.

In early 2007, the American government complained to the Canadian government that they were tracking American contractors who were visiting Canada by placing loonies ($2.00 Canadian coins) with tiny RFID transmitters in their pockets. And a CIS officer when confronted with this said: "Ah, give us a break! You might want to know where the individual was going, what meetings he’s attending, who he’s talking with and everything like that." So if they wanted they could track people with chipped loonies. The University of Washington students, faculty and staff are being tracked as they move around the site so the details of where they’ve been, what they’re doing and with whom, will be stored in their database. One of the professors at the University was asked, "Will you check on this student?" so he checked on him and said, "Oh, he’s on the fourth floor just standing outside room 452 and now he’s moving into the classroom." In London you can buy a monthly pass to the transit cars that have an RFID on it and if you link the bus pass to a person’s name you can track where this person is on the bus and subway system throughout London, England. Last year the police were getting four requests a month and now they are getting close to 100. Just last week the London police announced that they were putting RFID chips on all of the 31,000 police in London. Now this may be on their ID card, they did not say if they were going to put them directly on their body, but they were getting chipped; it was published in the Daily Mail. Some of the police were complaining that they "are going to know where we are at any time, we won’t be able to go into a coffee shop and get a donut." All 31,000 police in London now have RFID’s so if they ever need to stop or control people they can direct 1,000 troops immediately to the scene.

In Southern China they’re implementing RFID readers in the city of Shenzhen to track the movement of citizens; all citizens have an ID card with a chip so they can identify who is in what part of the city at any point in time. RFID readers in a library The chips and National ID cards that they are trying to bring in now contain not only a number, but also a person’s work history, education, religion, ethnicity, police record and reproductive history. The United States has been trying to implement the National ID card for a few years now and there are strikes going on in different states as they try to resist this National ID that will identify everyone in the country. Canada is adding a Real ID to the license plates and we don’t hear anything about it, its being done a lot more secretly than it is in the States where there is a lot of public debate.

The increase of the use of RFID chips is going to require a increased rate of the UBF spectrum, as a result in the United States they’re going to stop using the UBF spectrum of the VHF frequency in 2009 and everything is going to go digital. You may have seen that on television in the United States. Canada is going to do the same thing, they’ll say it still works, and instead of the antenna on your roof you’ll use a black box. The reason they’re doing this is that the UBF and VHF analog frequency are being used for the chips, so they don’t want to overload the chips with television signals, because the chips signals will now be receiving those frequencies. A friend of mine from Quebec says his cows have a chip embedded under the skin. All farm animals have to be chipped and he says he’s no longer allowed to kill as many cows as he wants. He was given a limit of two cows that he could kill and use only for the farm. All the others had to be sold to particular companies who could control those cows and get food from them. So he could only kill two and the others he had to sell to a supermarket chain. People are being chipped now. There’s a trend that they’re promoting in the media in terms of chipping people; they’re saying why not chip children for safety, so we can protect them, especially if they’re in the hospital then nobody could steal the newborn babies. Why don’t we chip the sick, then if someone has a heart attack and falls on the floor, we can read the signal in the chip and send someone to help them. We should chip the military so we would be able to know where the soldiers are and if they’re alive. After we could chip people on welfare so we could make sure they’re not cheating the government. Then we can chip all the criminals so that we could control them, and we’ll chip workers because a lot of them goof off at work. Then we’ll chip all the pensioners because they’re just taking money from us; and after that we’ll chip everyone else. Some 800 hospitals in the United States are now chipping their patients. You can turn it down, but it’s available. Four hospitals in Puerto Rico have put them in the arms of the Alzheimer’s patients, and it only costs about $200 per person. The Baja Beach Club in Barcelona gets patrons chipped. A BBC reporter went the club and got himself chipped. He said it was like getting a needle in your arm; they just rubbed it with some antiseptic and put a chip in. Because it was fairly small, he said it didn’t hurt too much and he had it inside him so whenever he ordered he would just move his arm and pay for it. The reader on the bar would read the signal and since he had his bank account information on the chip on his arm it would deduct the money from his bank account. Nigel Gilbert of the Royal Academy of Engineering said that by 2011 you should be able to go on Google and find out where someone is at any time from chips on clothing, in cars, cell phones, and inside many people themselves.

Chips are becoming more and more sophisticated. Nature Magazine reported recently that a drug containing microchips has been developed that will release drugs at the right time and amount. They can put a chip in you and release drugs so you don’t have to take a pill every day. This particular one that they’re selling lasts for over 140 days, you just have to get chipped three times a year with this drug and it releases it every day automatically. We will probably start hearing more about things like this in the near future. In 2006, LifeScience.com said that European researchers have developed neuro-chips, they’ve coupled together living brain cells in silicone circuits and done a lot of experimentation on rats and snails. An electrical signal from a neuron is recorded in the chips transistors, while the chip’s capitulators stimulate the neurons. They can create neuro-stimulators and use them to alleviate pain and lessen the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s disease.

The mu chip is only .05 ml in length

There are gastric stimulators that can treat obesity, they would make you feel hungry so you wouldn’t want to eat anymore, it would just be necessary to put a chip in your brain that would connect and send signals. In another study, neuro-chip implants were developed and are being used on violent prisoners. They were implanted with the microchip (but they didn’t know they were implanted), and when the implant was set at 160 megahertz’s all the subjects became lethargic and slept about 22 hours a day. The implants ended all aggression in violent prisoners.

Another interesting application is a silicone chip implant that mimics the hippocampus, the area of the brain known for creating memories. If successful, the artificial brain prosthesis could replace its biological counterpart, enabling people who suffer from memory disorders to regain the ability to store new memories. It’s being developed by Professor Berger at the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California. They’re working on rats and monkeys, so if applied to humans what this could do is restore your short-term memory which people lose as they get older, or it could replace your existing short-term memory with artificial short-term memory. Applied Digital Solutions has a Verichip that is compatible with human tissue and can be used on implantable pacemakers or put defibrillators in artificial joints. It can be injected using a syringe and used as a sort of bar code in security applications. That’s seen as one of the easy ways to implement chips in people through injections. They could very easily inject it via a flu shot or a vaccine. Verichip is working on a glucose microchip that would determine glucose levels. You wouldn’t have to draw blood to monitor glucose level. All you need is to have the doctor read your chip and your information and tell what your blood levels have been for the past month or two. IBM has demonstrated a tiny device that measures heart rate and is able to sense when a person wearing it is in distress, after which it will call a cell phone for immediate help. The distress signal is sent wirelessly via Bluetooth. Zarlink has developed the first swallowable camera capsule which uses Zarlink’s RF transmitter to relay real-time images from the gastrointestinal tract. Our MICS (Medical Implant Communication Services) platform is designed with in-body communication systems that will improve patient care, lower healthcare costs, and support new monitoring, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Currently the chip uses 100 hair-thin electrodes that sense the electro-magnetic signature of neurons firing in specific areas of the brain in, for example, the area that controls arm movement. The activity is translated into electrically charged signals and are then sent and decoded using a program, which can move either a robotic arm or a computer cursor.

According to the Cyberkinetics’ website, three patients have been implanted with the BrainGate system. The company has confirmed that one patient (Matt Nagle) has a spinal cord injury, while another has advanced ALS. This shows that human thoughts can be converted into radio waves and used by paralyzed people to create movement. Matt Nagle sends the thoughts to a computer to decipher. He can turn his TV on or off, change channels, and alter the volume. (BBC 2005) He can also move his arms and pick up things. In addition to real-time analysis of neuron patterns to relay movement, the Braingate array is also capable of recording electrical data for later analysis. A potential use of this feature would be for a neurologist to study seizure patterns in a patient with epilepsy. Braingate is currently recruiting patients with a range of neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases, so if you want a computer chip in your brain you can just go on the website and volunteer.

What are the problems about these new technologies? Let me just give you a brief explanation. Chips are going to end privacy. There’s a website called Spychips.com operated by Katherine Albrecht; they research the use of RFID’s by different companies. They have been warning people about them because chips that have economic or health data could get that data stolen. The New York Times in October of 2006 said that any card that doesn’t require swiping (in other words that doesn’t have a chip in it), is vulnerable to un-authorized charges and put people at risk for identity theft. You can buy scanners in electronics stores for $60 or more that can read the information on the chip. They are finding that once implanted in people, chips can be damaging to our health. For example, the body of a rodent who was tested started rejecting some chips and started a development of cancer.

Also there is a danger of viruses; you are all familiar with software viruses on your computers, imagine if you got a virus in your chip that deletes your information in your chip. If chips can disseminate medicine then they can disseminate other things too; anything put inside a microchip can be activated by a signal. And finally, with this technology, subliminal mind control becomes possible. I went on to Google and did a search on mind control; you might find it interesting to check that yourself. I read one on patents; there are patents that exist for mind control. This is what one states: non-aural carriers, in the very low or very high audio frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplitude or frequency modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain. This is patent number 5,159,703 1992. Another explains a device that can be placed in the auditory cortex of the brain. This device allows the following process: someone speaks into a microphone, the microphone then has the sounds coded into microwaves which are sent to the receiver in the brain and the receiver device will transform the microwaves back so that the person’s mind hears the original sounds. In other words, a person with this device in their head will hear whatever the programmers send via microwave signals. (Phillip L. Stoklin took out patent number 4,858,612 on this.)

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see also:

Timeline: Electromagnetic Weapons by Judy Wall, Editor, Resonance Newsletter

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