Friday, 15 October 2010
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Tanks, flags and the opposition. Support WikiLeaks.
Manuel Piñeiro
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up a copy of
the Guardian after thousands of US military documents
were leaked and exposed
The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government. Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist. The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army's biggest leaks of information. Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region, comme nted: ".... following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship." Assange said: "This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically." Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision.
David Leigh & Rob Evans, The Guardian
Related Links:
Information Release, WikiLeaks
US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff
Information Release, WikiLeaks
Marjorie Cohn, Truthout News Analysis
Dylan Ratigan Interviews Daniel Ellsberg
The expenses scandal returned to haunt Westminster last night, as a former Labour minister was reported to the police – and a childhood friend of David Cameron was ordered to repay £4,000 in wrongful claims. On a day of shame for Westminster, a series of events threatened to drag the reputation of Parliament back into the mire. The developments [including former Europe minister Denis MacShane, Government whip Bill Wiggin, plus six former Labour MPs who have still not repaid their excessive expenses] recalled the worst days of the expenses scandal last year. The Commons standards and privileges committee stunned Westminster yesterday by calling in the Metropolitan Police to investigate Mr MacShane’s ‘conduct’. The committee, which has frequently been criticised for its supine efforts to police MPs in the past, made the first use of powers to refer serious cases to the police.
Jason Groves, Daily Mail
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Rosa Prince, Daily Telegraph
Jason Beattie, Daily Mirror
Macer Hall, Daily Express
Big Pond
Nine out of ten U.S. parents want research on vaccine safety. Nine out of 10 U.S. parents rank vaccine safety and the safety of medicines as the most important topics in children's health research, a survey indicates. The C.S. Mott Children's National Poll on Children's Health asked 1,621 U.S. parents to rate the importance of different types of medical research for children's health. The survey indicates: -- 89 percent say vaccine safety is their top research priority. -- 88 chose medication safety and effectiveness. -- 72 percent say research should be done on things in the environment that could lead to health issues.
UPI
The Democratic Governors Association on Tuesday released a new ad portraying Republican Gov. Rick Perry as a man who tried to force a controversial vaccine on young girls at the behest of pharmaceutical companies. The commercial, running in the Dallas area, opens with a view of what the narrator identifies as "the arm of an 11 year old girl" being injected with a drug. The ad then displays an image of Perry as the narrator adds, "Now, imagine a governor who wanted to take a needle, fill it with a controversial drug for sexually-transmitted diseases, and inject it in every 11 and 12-year-old girl in Texas." The narrator continues, "That's what Gov. Rick Perry wanted to do. That's what Gov. Perry and his drug company friends wanted him to do." The issue was controversial for a number of reasons. Critics viewed the mandate as infringing on parental rights, while others claimed it was meant to serve the financial interests of Merck, the pharmaceutical company producing the vaccine. The company donated $5,000 to Perry's campaign fund in 2006, the Dallas Morning News reported, and paid Perry's former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, for his work as a lobbyist.
CBS News
Scientists have determined the genetic structures of 13 strains of the bacteria that cause Lyme disease, an achievement that could speed efforts to diagnose, prevent and treat the disease. The occurrence of Lyme disease -- which can harm the nervous system, heart, skin and joints -- has grown dramatically over the past 10 years in the United States and Europe. The disease is transmitted through the bite of an infected tick. "A driving force for doing this project was the observation that certain forms of the bacteria can be more invasive than others. We wanted to find out why and how to identify this properly," Dr. Steven E. Schutzer, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School (UMDNJ), said in a UMDNJ news release. The study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, appears online ahead of print in the Journal of Bacteriology.
Robert Preidt, Bloomberg Businessweek
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Port Macquarie News
Kate Benson, Brisbane Times
A Massachusetts woman has filed a lawsuit against Merck and another company, Digital Angel, which make implantable radio tracking chips for pets, and claims her cat developed cancer after an implant was inserted, The Boston Globe writes. In a lawsuit filed in Cambridge District Court, Andrea Rutherford claims the companies violated an implied warranty that Merck’s HomeAgain chip was safe, and seeks "reasonable compensatory damages and interest." The devices contain chips that transmit an ID code and can be scanned so lost pets are returned to their owners. Animal rights lawyer Steven Wise, who is Rutherford’s attorney, tells the Globe that she filed suit to explore whether tracking chips are a major cause of health problems in pets. “We’re about to find out whether this is a big problem or a small problem,’’ he says. Rutherford had a HomeAgain chip implanted in her pet cat, called Bulkin, in F ebruary 2005, but in October 2007, a vet removed a malignant tumor from the cat - and the chip was found in the middle of the tumor, according to the lawsuit.
Ed Silverman, Pharmalot
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