statism watch

Such a technology, when perfected, would not only herald an age of ‘personalized medicine’ (the insurance companies will love this) – but the ultimate way of instantly identifying and tracking individuals – courtesy of IBM, the same company that brought you the Hollerith machine and the Genographic Project. What will they think of next?

Flashback: UK: Pilot project for DNA, isotope analysis of immigrants ‘deeply flawed’ | Study finds genetic discrimination by insurance firms | US: Ruling allowing Taser use to get DNA may be nation’s first | UK: Police ‘arrest innocent youths for their DNA’, officer claims | UK: Fury as Commons denied vote on DNA database | Australians refused insurance because of poor genes

Priya Ganapati, Wired.com
October 6, 2009

Researchers at IBM have found a way to meld biology and computing to create a new chip that could become the basis for a fast, inexpensive, personal genetic analyzer. The DNA sequencer involves drilling tiny nanometer-size holes through computer-like silicon chips, then passing DNA strands through them to read the information contained in their genetic code.

“We are merging computational biology and nanotechnology skills to produce something that will be very useful to the future of medicine,” Gustavo Stolovitzky, an IBM researcher, told Wired.com.

The “DNA transistor” could make it faster and cheaper to sequence individuals’ complete genomes. In so doing, it could help facilitate advances in bio-medical research and personalized medicine. For instance, having access to a person’s genetic code could help doctors create customized medicine and determine an individual’s predisposition to certain diseases or medical conditions.

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Flashback: Another War in the Works | US military could strike Iran, but at what cost? | Iran to allow nuclear site inspection | Iran plays into Obama’s hands with disclosure of nuclear facility | UN approves nuclear ‘disarmament’ resolution | Obama scales back missile defence shield in Europe | Israel ‘will attack Iran this year’ if West does not cripple Tehran with sanctions | Brookings Publication mentions possibility of ‘Horrific Provocation’ to Trigger Iran Invasion | Netanyahu: We may be forced to attack Iran | Proposed Missile Shield seen as Provocation by Russia | Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack | Russia threatens to ’strike’ Poland in wake of U.S. missile plan | Cheney Considered False Flag Operation to Justify War with Iran | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Israelis ‘rehearse Iran attack’ | Israeli official says attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’ | Bush ‘plans Iran air strike by August’ | U.S. Navy starts exercises in Gulf waters | U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 | Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran | U.S. sending third aircraft carrier to the Middle East | US aircraft carriers in Persian Gulf | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran | Former CIA Officer – US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran

Stephen C Webster, RawStory.com
October 6, 2009

Pew Research poll shows majority of Americans would back attack on Iran

A divide has emerged within the International Atomic Energy Agency over the authenticity of intelligence produced by the Bush administration with regards to Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

According to excerpts from an internal IAEA report, published online by the Institute for Science and International Security, here (PDF link), allegations that Iran is in fact developing nuclear weapons are based almost entirely on U.S. intelligence given to the agency in 2002-03.

“Whether those documents are genuine or were fabricated has been the subject of a fierce struggle behind the scenes for many months between two departments of the IAEA,” noted Gareth Porter writing for IPS News.

While Olli Heinonen, who heads the IAEA’s Safeguards Department, has been pressing for the agency to release the report in-full, two of the agency’s other divisions have raised fierce objections. Some within the IAEA have even called for the agency to state plainly that the authenticity of the documents could not be confirmed.

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It’s another manufactured crisis!!! Give the UN more power, quickly!

Flashback: Cyber Attacks Traced to the U.S., Britain | Lazy Hacker and Little Worm Set Off Korean Cyberwar Media Frenzy | Psiphon braintrust: Ottawa needs a strategy for cyberwar | US ‘concerned’ over cyber threat | UK to found new ‘cyber-security’ units attached to national eavesdropping centre | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | UK chases Obama on cybersecurity | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | Put NSA in Charge of Cyber Security, Or the Power Grid Gets It | Electricity Grid in U.S. Penetrated By Spies | Pentagon spending millions to fix cyberattacks | Should Obama Control the Internet? | Cybersecurity law would give feds unprecedented net control | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Do We Need a New Internet? | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck

Hui Min Neo, AFP
October 6, 2009

GENEVA — The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for action to stamp out cyber attacks.

“The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower,” Hamadoun Toure said.

“Loss of vital networks would quickly cripple any nation, and none is immune to cyberattack,” added the secretary-general of the International Telecommunications Union during the ITU’s Telecom World 2009 fair in Geneva.

Toure said countries have become “critically dependent” on technology for commerce, finance, health care, emergency services and food distribution.

“The best way to win a war is to avoid it in the first place,” he stressed.

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It used to be that political theory considered individual rights to be inviolable and inherent in the person of the individual. At some point, that conception was jettisoned for an older, legalistic reading of the sort championed by Machiavelli (and, seemingly, Judge Mosley – a framer of Canada’s much maligned anti-terror laws, which were enacted by command of the UN Security Council) that rights are permissions granted by the state, and that we live at her majesty’s pleasure. This latest move, which implicitly claims that a citizen’s rights are forfeit once they step outside of a nation’s borders, are consistent with the regrettable stance the current regime has taken with it’s citizens – sending them to foreign jurisdictions to be tortured, as in the case of Maher Arar, denying them passage back home on trumped-up charges (Abdelrazik), displaying a callous disregard for the wellbeing of Suaad Hagi Mohamud trapped in Kenya, and leaving childhood combatants to rot in foreign, extrajudicial gulags in the face of available evidence indicating innocence (Omar Khadr) rather than extraditing them for trial at home. Well, guess what? It isn’t just brown people that they’ll be using the state’s powers against now. So watch in the coming months as the definition of terrorism and terrorism ‘links’ continues to expand to include protesters and dissidents of various kinds. CSIS is already tracking those who dare speak out against the Olympics. And that’s how it always happens as countries slide into tyranny. The rationale given below, by the way, is merely a convenient pretext – the CSE was given leave to expand its facilities last May. Which means that they’ve intended to use these expanded facilities for some time, in precisely the same way that Bush authorized the NSA to do. Colin Freeze, the Globe’s resident advocate for police state activity, not only anticipates and dismisses this argument but paints an old protection firewalling CSIS from the CSE as a ‘loophole’. One wonders if he’ll have the same attitude when the next logical step – wholesale international integration – is implemented.

Flashback: Planned Internet, wireless surveillance laws worry watchdogs | UK ISPs condemn Internet surveillance plans | UK to found new ‘cyber-security’ units attached to national eavesdropping centre | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | NSA Surveillance Exploding, Americans Wiretapped Beyond Congressional Limits | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | ‘Einstein’ replaces ‘Big Brother’ in Internet surveillance | Vision 2015: Consolidation of U.S. Intelligence Into Global Intel Network | Secretive Canadian spy agency to get $62-million HQ | Listening in on the enemy: Canada’s master eavesdroppers

Colin Freeze, The Globe and Mail
October 6, 2009

Federal Court decision paves way for the international surveillance of Canadian citizens suspected of terrorism links

William McCormack is the scion of a prominent police family in Toronto that has been tainted by corruption and scandal. In 2004, he was charged (and later aquitted) under the Police Act of money laundering in collusion with a disgraced used car dealer. His brother currently faces charges of shaking down bars in the city’s entertainment district. Have we the makings of a dynasty here?

Flashback: Three Toronto cops to stand trial on corruption charges | Police corruption preliminary probe ends

Matthew Coutts, National Post
October 6, 2009

Michael McCormack, the controversial son of a former police chief, has been elected president of the Toronto Police Association.

Constable McCormack narrowly beat two other candidates vying to lead the labour group, which represents more than 8,300 uniformed and civilian members of Toronto’s police service, the largest in the country.

Const. McCormack received 1,306 votes, with Const. George Tucker receiving 1,200 votes and Rondi Craig receiving 1,039. Const. Tucker, behind by only 106 votes, has requested a recount.

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Flashback: McGuinty had hand in hiring disgraced eHealth CEO | More untendered eHealth spending, Liberal connections emerge | Head of eHealth Ontario is fired amid contracts scandal, gets big package | Personal ties exposed in eHealth’s untendered contracts | Ontario eHealth approved 4.8 million in no-bid contracts | Electronic immunization records needed: Toronto health official

CBC News
October 6, 2009

Ontario’s health minister has resigned one day before the release of a report into spending scandals at an agency tasked with creating electronic health records in the province.

A Health Ministry representative told CBC News that David Caplan intends to officially step down on Wednesday. Officials in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office said they could not confirm the report until then.

Caplan quit because of what will be in the provincial auditor general’s report, which is expected to detail the $1 billion Ontario has spent over 10 years trying to create electronic health records, sources told The Canadian Press.

“I think it tells you a lot about Dalton McGuinty — after six years in office — that he dodged, delayed, and stonewalled until backed into a corner,” said Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, speaking about Caplan’s resignation.

Auditor General Jim McCarter will release a 50-page special report, which was commissioned last June as the Liberal government tried to defend itself against revelations of millions of dollars in sole-sourced contracts and high-paid consultants’ expense claims at eHealth.

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The Olympics are a scam, a parasitic display of corruption and police coercion. They are a threat to the liberty and the purse of any jurisdiction that hosts them, and should be boycotted. The athletes? They’ve become pawns in a big money game. The only people that really stand to gain from the Olympics are the IOC and its unprincipled corporate partners. They stand to benefit from massive state subsidies, surveillance and security contracts, and, perhaps worst of all, the displacement of the less well to do citizens as developers consolidate and gentrify real estate holdings in affected areas. Think Beijing was bad? Just watch what goes down in Rio. Such has always been the case with these monumental state projects. It’s a form of low intensity warfare against the people that are in the way. They may as well just go ahead and build a couple of pyramids while they’re at it – the scam as per usual is to keep the public fascinated, busy, and entertained while they’re being milked.

Flashback: UK: Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games | Pre-Olympic transit ads encourage citizen surveillance | Military and police practice integration during Olympic security exercises | Olympic security boss puts protesters on notice | Activists seen as potential threat to Vancouver Games | CSIS Spying on Natives, Olympic Dissidents

CBC News
October 6, 2009

A Langara College student says she was shocked to be approached outside class by Olympic security officers and questioned about her friendship with a high-profile opponent of the 2010 Winter Games.

Danika Surm says she has nothing to do with the Olympic resistance movement, and her only connection is a friendship with protester and UBC professor Chris Shaw.

Surm said she was on her way to class at the south Vancouver campus last week when she was approached by two plainclothes police officers with the Integrated Security Unit, the force in charge of Olympic security.

She told them she had to write a biology quiz, so the officers said they would wait until she was done, she said.

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Flashback: Planned Internet, wireless surveillance laws worry watchdogs | Facebook to make privacy changes, keep user data indefinitely if not deleted | Privacy commissioner OKs Barwatch software | Facebook violates privacy law: watchdog | Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information | UK Security services want personal data from sites like Facebook | MI6 seeks recruits on Facebook | Behavioral Targeting: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Creepier’ | Facebook ‘violates privacy laws’ | With friends like these …

Toronto Star
October 6, 2009

Flashback: Reduce fetal exposure to BPA and phthalates, experts say | Bisphenol A traces found in baby food: Health Canada | Elevated BPA levels in people drinking out of plastic bottles, study finds | Tests find Bisphenol A in majority of soft drinks | Chemical ban targets toys, rubber duckies | As in Canada, gender-bending chemicals in UK rivers grow more potent | Chemicals feminizing males, study suggests | Major report to reveal male gender under threat from pollutants | CBC broadcasts “The Disappearing Male”, an expose of hormone-disrupting plastics | Plastics ingredient linked to feminization in children | Health Canada adds bisphenol A to list of toxic substances | Scientists Note Hormones in Water, Feminization of Fish Downstream of Montreal | New study raises concerns Bisphenol-A could be related to heart disease | Air freshener chemicals could impact fertility: study | Bisphenol tied to lower brain function | Chemical Industry Source of Hyped FDA Study ‘Exonerating’ Plastic Bottles

CBC News
October 6, 2009

Pregnant women exposed to a common chemical found in plastics are more likely to have daughters with aggressive and hyperactive behaviours, a new study that tested two-year-olds suggests.

Last year, Canada banned bisphenol A in plastic baby bottles. BPA, which makes plastic hard and shatterproof, is also used to make resins that line metal food and beverage cans, and is found in water bottles as well as consumer products such as CDs.

Bruce Lanphear, a Simon Fraser University professor of children’s environmental health, and his colleagues measured BPA levels in urine samples taken from 249 women in Cincinnati at 16 and 26 weeks into pregnancy and at birth to gauge how much of the chemical their fetuses had been exposed to.

Then, two years later, they assessed the children’s behaviour, and noticed a pattern when it came to the young girls.

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Flashback: IMF chief wants global bank tax | G20 nations meet as protests flare on issue of international banking regulation | IMF approves $13bn gold sale to boost lending fund | China Set to Buy $50 Billion in IMF Notes | China calls anew for super-sovereign currency | No one talking about dumping dollar: China minister | China explores buying $50bn in IMF bonds | Chinese economists deem huge holding of US bonds “risky” as Geithner visits | A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF | UK PM reveals G20 plan to boost IMF by $1 trillion, hails new world order (again) | UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship | IMF poised to print billions of dollars in ‘global quantitative easing’ | Gordon Brown seeks sweeping reforms to give IMF global ’surveillance role’ | IMF may need to “print money”, act as “world’s central bank” as crisis spreads | Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency | World needs new Bretton Woods, says Brown | IMF prescribes state regulation of ‘global financial order’ | Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda | Banks face “new world order,” consolidation: report

Hurriyet Daily News
October 6, 2009

Police used pepper gas and pressurized water against protesters in Taksim who protested IMF and World Bank meetings in Istanbul. Protesters who want to walk towards the Congress Valley where the meetings held broke the windows of some banks and shops in Taksim and clashes with police. There are 50 people under custody

Around 6,000 people marching in central Istanbul in protest of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings were confronted by police with pepper spray and pressurized water on Tuesday.

Trade unions and professional chambers organized a gathering to protest the meetings of the two financial organizations. Members of many political groups and organizations including the Freedom and Solidarity Party, or ÖDP, Labor Party, or EMEP, the Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions, or KESK and the Confederation of Revolutionary Workers’ Unions, or DİSK gathered in Taksim Square.

“This country and these people are not for sale,” “Go to hell IMF and the collaborateur AKP [Justice and Development Party],” “IMF go to hell,” were among slogans the group chanted. After a speech by Sami Evren, the head of KESK, the crowd attempted to walk from Taksim Square to Congress Valley, where the IMF and WB meetings are ongoing.

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