BERLIN, Germany – August 21, 2010 – The production of the RFID chips, an integral element of the new generation of German identity cards, has started after the government gave a 10 year contract to the chipmaker NXP in the Netherlands. Citizens will receive the mandatory new ID cards from the first of November.

Various German authorities will be able to identify persons fast and reliable by scanning the RFID citizen card. These will be the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities.

The new ID card will contain all personal data on the security chip that can be accessed over a wireless connection.

The new card allows German authorities to identify people with speed and accuracy, the government said. These authorities include the police, customs and tax authorities and of course the local registration and passport granting authorities.

German companies like Infineon and the Dutch NXP, which operates a large-scale development and manufacturing base in Hamburg, Germany are global leaders in making RFID security chips. The new electronic ID card, which will gradually replace the old mandatory German ID cards, is one of the largest scale rollouts of RFID cards with extended official and identification functionality.

The card will also have extended functionality, including the ability to enable citizens to identify themselves in the Internet by using the ID card with a reading device at home. After registering an online account bonded to the ID card, are able to do secure online shopping, downloading music and most importantly interact with government authorities online, for example.

Biometric passports in a number of countries are equipped with RFID chips, containing a digital picture and fingerprints, and have been around for nearly 5 years after the United States required such passports for any person entering the country.

There are some concerns that the use of RFID chips will pose a security or privacy risk, however.

Early versions of the electronic passports, using RFID chips with a protocol called “basic access control” (BAC), where successfully hacked by university researchers and security experts.

Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/44536/20100821/identity-cards-with-rfid-chip-on-track-in-germany.htm

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August 4, 2010 – There is probably no more horrific and frightening incurable disease than Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Also known as the human form of mad cow disease, this degenerative, always fatal brain disorder strikes about one person in every million worldwide each year, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). CJD results in the brain literally being turned into sponge-like, hole-filled tissue (the reason the disease is also known as spongiform encephalopathy). It usually runs a rapid course, causing failing memory, hallucinations, lack of coordination and visual disturbances followed by total mental deterioration, involuntary movements, blindness and coma.

Although some cases are known to be caused by eating meat containing mad cow disease-causing infectious prions, by far the most common form of the illness is known as sporadic CJD. The NINDS says sporadic CJD accounts for at least 85% of the cases. Supposedly, sporadic CJD just strikes out of the blue for no particular reason. But Spanish scientists say they’ve found compelling and disturbing evidence that people are infected with the disease during operations.

“Based on the monitoring records of spongiform encephalopathy in two Nordic countries, we studied the possibility of transmission of the sporadic form of CJD through general surgery,” Jesus de Pedro, main author of the study and head of prion monitoring in patients at the National Epidemiology Center of the Carlos III Health Institute in Madrid, said in a statement to the press.

The research team’s study, just published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, came to this startling conclusion: the sporadic form of CJD strikes after a person has surgery – usually at least 20 years after an operation. The data suggests, Dr. DePedro stated, the disease enters and spreads much more quickly within the central or peripheral nervous system due to surgical procedures.

So what makes this evidence so strong – and why hasn’t anyone noticed a clear surgery/CJD association before now? According to the authors of the new study, the key to finding the surgery and CJD connection was computerized surgery records kept in hospitals in Sweden and Denmark since the early l970s. These records allowed the researchers to see if people who had developed CJD had been surgery patients in past decades. With virtually no exceptions, they had been.

The new findings point to an external and preventable cause for so-called sporadic CJD. It also raises the question about the true causes of other mind robbing maladies. “It may signify a shift in our understanding of the nature of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s,” the research team stated. “We might, therefore, ask ourselves if other types of motor neuron diseases can be transmitted through surgery and be latent for decades, such as those where risk factors, particularly physical professions and activities or certain sporting activities, for example, which are more likely to lead to surgery, have already been indicated.”

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LONDON, England – July 25, 2010 – Software that can predict when and where future violent crimes will be committed is being used in Britain for the first time.

Two police forces have begun trialing the sophisticated program, which has echoes of the Tom Cruise film Minority Report, where psychics are used to stop criminals before they commit a crime.

The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) evaluates crime records, intelligence briefings, offender profiles and even weather reports, to identify potential flashpoints where a crime is most likely to occur.

The “predictive analytics” technology has been credited as a key factor behind a 31 per cent fall in crime and 15 per cent drop in violent crime in Memphis, Tennessee, according to The Observer.

John Williams, of the Memphis Crime Analysis Unit, said, “This is more of a proactive tool than reacting after crimes have occurred. This pretty much puts officers in the area at the time that the crimes are being committed.”

The software has been developed by IBM, which has invested $11 billion in analytics over the past four years.

Mark Cleverley, the company’s head of government strategy, said, “What the technology does is what police officers have always done, sometimes purely on instinct – looking for patterns to work out what is likely to happen next. What is different is the scale on which the systems operates and the speed at which the analysis takes place.”

Ed. Note: Until someone commits a crime he is an innocent person. Therefore, in order to prevent crime it is necessary to restrict the liberty of someone who has not committed a crime, in other words, an innocent person. That is the cost of this technology. To a freedom lover it is far too much to pay for crime prevention.

Source:  telegraph.co.uk

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – July 19, 2010 – In an attempt to backdoor GMO seeds into a new market, Monsanto has taken the opportunity to donate hundreds of tons of GMO seeds to Haiti and is calling it an effort to help the people in Haiti with earthquake relief. However, Monsanto’s “generosity” is being met with skepticism and outright rejection.

Recently, a large group of small farmers burned a symbolic quantity of Monsanto’s donated hybrid corn seed in the central square of the agricultural town of Hinche. A 200,000-member national coalition is encouraging Haiti farmers to burn all Monsanto seeds that have already been distributed, and has called on the government to reject additional shipments.

Peasant leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste told IPS News: Farmers want to preserve their traditional “organic agriculture that respects the environment and fights against its degradation. We defend native seeds and the rights of peasants on their land.” Jean-Batiste also said “Fighting hybrid and GMO seeds is critical to save our diversity and our agriculture” and maintained that a “county has a right to define it own agricultural policies, to grow first for the family and then for local market, to grow healthy food in a way which respects the environment and Mother Earth.”

Another peasant farmer stated, “We have a problem today with Monsanto and all the multinationals who sell seeds. Seeds and water are the common patrimony of humanity.”

Monsanto has already donated the first round of what Global Research has referred to as a “new earthquake” and “deadly gift”: 475 tons of genetically modified seeds, along with the accompanying fertilizer and pesticides, whose demand usually increases in proportion to the use of GMO seeds.

The multinational seed giant is known around the world for its aggressive GMO policies. It is also known for intimidating and suing farmers and small agricultural companies it claims have violated its contracts and patents, including farmers whose fields have been contaminated by pollen from someone else’s genetically engineered crop or who have had voluntary seed sprout from a previous year’s crop. By 2007 Monsanto had already collected over $21.5 million in judgments in the U.S. alone.

In addition, Monsanto is infamously known for the deaths and health problems that have resulted from its highly toxic herbicide products, most notable of which is Agent Orange. A large number of U.S. Veterans got cancer as a result of exposure to the company’s Agent Orange. The Vietnamese government claims that 400,000 of their citizens died or were disabled and 500,000 children were born with birth defects as a result of Agent Orange.

The corn seed product Monsanto donated to Haiti has been treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, while the calypso tomato seeds were treated with thiram. Thiram is a highly toxic chemical which the EPA examined and deemed to be so dangerous that agricultural workers are now mandated to wear protective clothing when handling them.

While Monsanto is calling the seeds a donation, it isn’t hard to see how the company will benefit by getting farmers hooked on a need that only it can supply, as it has done elsewhere around the world – most notably in the U.S. and Canada.

Seed company giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer control more than half of the world’s seed patents. Monsanto has almost 650 seed patents, most of which are for cotton, corn, and soy. The company also owns almost 30 percent of the share of all the world’s biotechnology research and development.

The world’s largest confederation of farmers, Via Campesina, has called Monsanto one of the “principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples.”

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PENSACOLA BEACH, Florida – June 27, 2010 – The sugar-sand beach here appeared cleaner Thursday, after workers picked up tar balls overnight with shovels and nets. By noon they had collected 44,955 pounds of tar balls and oil material, according to the Escambia County Emergency Operations Center.

But a University of South Florida geologist made a grim discovery Thursday morning, 24 hours after the worst oil onslaught in Florida so far.

Ping Wang, 43, who has studied beaches for 20 years, dug a narrow trench perpendicular to the shoreline, about a foot deep and 5 feet long. A dark, contiguous vein of oil ran horizontally along the walls of the trench, about 6 inches beneath the surface of the sand.

The sheet of oil that was deposited on the beach at high tide Wednesday and stretched some 8 miles was covered by as much as a foot of sand at high tide Thursday, Wang explained.

“Beaches change very often,” he said. Depending on tides and wave action, they constantly lose or accumulate sand.

While picking up tar balls and oil patties from the surface is helpful, Wang’s discovery suggests that type of cleaning will be inadequate.

“This is going to be hard to clean up,” he said. “It’s going to need to be a much larger scale effort than what we’re seeing.”

Wang, working with a team of geologists from USF, dug trenches at various spots along the beach on the Gulf Islands National Seashore and found the buried, unbroken vein each time.

“It’s a continuous layer until it pinches off right up here,” he said, pointing to a trench near the maximum wave run-up, the point at which high-tide waves begin their retreat. “The problem is they’re only cleaning up the top of the beach.”

The geologists worry that any violent water activity – like heavy waves created by a storm or frontal passage – will lift the buried oil sheet and cast it further up shore, onto clean sand.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Unified Command in Mobile, said Wang’s finding was not surprising. She said cleanup crews will go after subsurface oil later with machines that can scoop and separate deep oil and sand.

“Overall, in the short-term plan, we’re cleaning up what’s exposed,” she said.

Wang said he wasn’t surprised by the discovery. During a study for the National Science Foundation of oil-affected beaches in Alabama and northwest Florida, he found buried tar balls after cleanup crews had left.

USF Coastal Research Lab geologist Rip Kirby raised another issue with the cleanup on a trip to the shore late Thursday night, when he shined an ultraviolet light on the sand. Flecks of orange – which Kirby identified as oil, or volatile organic compounds – were scattered across the beach. Some dime-sized flecks were spotted on the footpath leading over the dunes, 100 yards from the water – an indication that unregulated foot traffic was contaminating clean sand. Closer to the water, tiny specks of oil covered the sand.

“It’s the way they’re cleaning it,” he said. “They’re scooping it up with nets and shaking it. Yes, they’re removing the tar balls, but they’re also coating clean sand with oil.”

Those tiny flecks can’t be seen with the naked eye.

“People need to know,” Wang said. “The beach is not going to be the same for a long time.”

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LONDON, England – June 5, 2010 – Genetically modified crops were last night given enthusiastic backing by the Environment Secretary.

Caroline Spelman shocked colleagues by suggesting that the coalition government will take a more pro-GM stance than its Labour predecessor.

The Tories have traditionally taken a sceptical approach to so- called ‘Frankenstein foods’, and at present no GM varieties are cultivated commercially in the UK.

Labour ministers shied away from promoting GM foods in recent years over concerns about a public backlash.

But Mrs Spelman insisted last night they could bring ‘benefits to food in the marketplace’.

Her intervention drew fierce criticism from anti-GM campaigners, who accused her of getting her facts wrong and highlighted her background as a lobbyist for biotechnology.

Mrs Spelman set up a food and biotechnology lobbying company Spelman, Cormack and Associates with her husband, Mark Spelman, in 1989. Although she resigned as a company director last year, the firm remains in the hands of her husband.

Yesterday Mrs Spelman said she was in favour of GM foods ‘in the right circumstances’, though she insisted they should not be promoted using public money and expressed concerns-about some aspects of the technology. ‘GM can bring benefits in food to the marketplace. The sale should not be promoted by the taxpayer,’ she said.

‘Lord Henley [the new environment minister] has approved a trial of a potato blight-resistant variety. That’s the kind of modification that can reduce the amount of agro-chemicals which need to be applied.’

She added: ‘There are benefits to developing countries, like drought resistance or resistance to high salt content in water. The principle of GM technology is [ok] if used well. The technology can be beneficial.’

However, she criticised Labour’s £500,000 official public consultation into genetically modified food, which is in turmoil following protests that it has been rigged. This week, two academics on a Food Standards Agency committee resigned in protest saying they could not support a spin exercise to promote GM food.

‘The Food Standards Agency should not be spending taxpayers’ money promoting GM foods,’ Mrs Spelman said. Aides insisted last night that the minister had been speaking before any firm policy on GM crops has been established.

Pete Riley, director of GM Freeze, welcomed her remarks about the GM consultation. But he added: ‘The Secretary of State needs to check very carefully before making claims about

‘There are no salt tolerant or drought resistant crops on the market and none seem likely in the foreseeable future.

‘Non-GM blight resistant potatoes are already on the market, whilst the GM ones are still being developed despite a £1.7million investment of public money to date.

‘Mrs Spelman needs to be very careful in how she deals with GM issues given her background as a lobbyist in the area and should take advice from a far wider spectrum before making policy.’

Mrs Spelman also said she would block the practice of building on green belt and create new green belt areas.

She confirmed that badgers would be culled in England and that there would be a free vote on repealing Labour’s hunting ban.

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June 2, 2010 – Multinational seed corporations are following a consequent strategy to gain control over basic resources for food production. As recent research shows not only genetically engineered plants, but more and more the conventional breeding of plants gets into the focus of patent monopolies: International patent applications in this sector are skyrocketing, having doubled since 2007 till end of 2009. Further on the multinationals expand their claims over the whole chain of food production from feed to animals and food products such as meat.

In a pending patent application from Monsanto even bacon and steaks are claimed: Patent application WO2009097403 is claiming meat stemming from pigs being fed with the patented genetically engineered plants of Monsanto. A similar patent is applied for fish from aquaculture in March 2010 (WO201027788). Far-reaching patents on food are even already granted: Monsanto received a European patent (EP 1356033) in 2009, which the chain of food production from seeds of genetically engineered plants up to food products such as meal and oil are covered.

There is a process going on, multinationals are trying to gain increasing control of the whole chain of food production. Consumers, farmers and food producers are all caught by the same trap. This has to be regarded as an immoral attempt to abuse patent law. The company is heading for maximizing its profits by filing patents on food while at the same time one billion people is suffering from hunger,” says François Meienberg from the Berne Declaration.

As experience from the U.S. shows, patents on seeds and increasing market concentration are leading to drastic increase in seed prices, reduced choice in seeds and soaring dependencies for farmers. Meanwhile the Department of Justice and state attorneys general in several U.S. states are investigating whether Monsanto Company has abused its market power to lock out competitors and raise prices in seeds. The coalition of No Patents on Seeds is warning that market concentration will even increase if the abuse of patent law is not stopped.

The coalition is supported globally by more than 200 organizations. The organizations are demanding a clear change in policy and practice of patent offices. Governments are urged to revise the patent laws in order to exclude patents on seeds, animals and parts thereof.

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The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.

As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”

Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:

Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.

The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”

Of course, Darpa’s up against some vexing, fundamental laws of nature — not to mention bioethics — as they embark on the lab beast program. First, they might want to rethink the idea of evolution as a random series of events, says NYU biology professor David Fitch. “Evolution by selection is nota random process at all, and is actually a hugely efficient design algorithm used extensively in computation and engineering,” he e-mails Danger Room.

Even if Darpa manages to overcome the inherent intelligence of evolutionary processes, overcoming inevitable death can be tricky. Just ask all the other research teams who’ve made stabs at it, trying everything from cell starvation to hormone treatments. Gene therapy, where artificial genes are inserted into an organism to boost cell life, are the latest and greatest in life-extension science, but they’ve only been proven to extend lifespan by 20 percent in rats.

But suppose gene therapy makes major strides, and Darpa does manage to get the evolutionary science right. They’ll also have a major ethical hurdle to jump. Synthetic biology researchers are already facing the same questions, as a 2009 summary from the Synthetic Biology Project reports:

The concern that humans might be overreaching when we create organisms that never before existed can be a safety concern, but it also returns us to disagreements about what is our proper role in the natural world (a debate largely about non-physical harms or harms to well-being).

Even expert molecular geneticists don’t know what to make of the project. Either that, or they’re scared Darpa might sic a bio-bot on them. “I would love to comment, but unfortunately Darpa has installed a kill switch in me,” one unnamed expert tells Danger Room.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/pentagon-looks-to-breed-immortal-synthetic-organisms-molecular-kill-switch-included/

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