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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (103338)	10/19/2013 11:59:49 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 217689

$2 billion in Zimbabwe diamond mining revenue goes missing HARARE, Zimbabwe _ Despite living in an impoverished country under sanctions, some in Zimbabwe seem awash in money, judging by the Mercedes-Benzes parked at a country club and the private woodland estate with artificial lake and mansion built by the nation's police chief. The wealth enjoyed by just a few comes, at least in part, from the vast Marange diamond field that was exposed by an earth tremor in 2006. The deposit in eastern Zimbabwe is the biggest diamond field found in Africa for a century, worth billions of dollars. Now, as most Zimbabweans remain mired in poverty, with government coffers short on funds to build and maintain the nation's roads, clinics, utility services and schools, questions are being asked as to where all the money went and who benefited. A recent bipartisan parliamentary investigation concluded that tens of millions of dollars in diamond earnings are missing from 2012 alone. The lawmakers who wrote the unprecedented and unusually candid report said their ``worst fears were confirmed'' by evidence of ``underhand dealings'' and diamond smuggling since 2009. In a speech opening parliament on Sept. 17, President Robert Mugabe took the rare step of accusing one top mining official and ruling party loyalist of accepting a $6 million bribe from Ghanaian investors to obtain diamond mining rights in Marange. Mugabe said Godwills Masimirembwa took the bribe when he was head of the state Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation which is in charge of mining concessions. Masimirembwa quit that post to contest the July 31 national election as a candidate for Mugabe's ZANU-PF party but failed to win a parliament seat. Masimirembwa denies any wrongdoing. The parliamentary report and a human rights group say diamond mining has led to serious human rights abuses and that diamond concessions were awarded by government officials to enrich top members of the ZANU-PF party, of the security forces and Chinese allies. In declaring his innocence, Masimirembwa said the purported deal with the Ghanaian investors was discussed with national Police Chief Augustine Chihuri and then Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, a longtime business associate of Masimirembwa who is also one of the nation's wealthiest businessmen. Chihuri and Mpofu have frequently insisted in the state media that their wealth comes from legitimate business empires to make up for poor salaries paid for full-time government duties. Expected revenues from the Marange diamond fields have scarcely materialized. Former Zimbabwe Finance Minister Tendai Biti says he was promised $600 million for economic and development projects from diamond revenues last year but only received $41 million. Nothing was paid into the national treasury up to the disputed July elections that the ZANU-PF won, a vote result that caused the end of a coalition government with the MDC party that Biti belonged to, and the loss of his Cabinet seat. Some $2 billion in Zimbabwe's diamond revenues have been unaccounted for since 2008, according to Global Witness, which campaigns against natural resource-related conflict and corruption and associated environmental and human rights abuses. Zimbabwe is the world's fourth-largest diamond miner, producing an estimated 17 million carats this year, according to the Kimberley Process which is charged with ensuring that gems reaching world markets don't bear the taint of being ``blood diamonds.'' Marange diamonds have been declared conflict free. But controversy and secrecy have swirled around Marange since the earth opened up and exposed its riches. The discovery lured thousands of impoverished Zimbabweans to dig in the alluvial deposit. In 2008, the Zimbabwean army sealed off the 60,000 hectare (130,000 acre) area to take control of the mining. At least 200 people died in a mass expulsion of people living in the closed area, Global Witness and other rights groups have alleged. Chinese construction contractors built an airfield at the Marange diamond fields. Executive planes arrive there and at a bonded warehouse alongside the runway at Harare's main airport, without traceable flight plans or having to go through customs and immigration formalities, say commercial pilots who say they have complained of the irregularities to aviation authorities. They insisted on anonymity because of fears for their safety. Some are living high from diamond deals. As children begged in the street a block away, Zimbabwean diamond company executives accompanied by elegant young women arrived at a popular Harare nightclub last year, ordered drinks for about 120 patrons and picked up the $ 4,000 tab, said a person who witnessed the scene and who demanded anonymity to prevent reprisals. The identities of owners, directors and shareholders in diamond enterprises have never been officially disclosed, though the Zimbabwe Republic Police Trust, a business enterprise of the police force, is publicly listed as holding a 20 per cent stake in the Ghanaian diamond investment project. The parliamentary panel's report said powerful officials, politicians and police and army commanders repeatedly tried to thwart the probe into diamond dealings. The chairman of the 22-member panel, Edward Chindori-Chininga, a former Mugabe mines minister, died in a car crash just days after he signed the report in June. Police said Chindori-Chininga's death was accidental and that his car had veered off the highway and slammed into trees. Car wrecks or mysterious accidents have taken the lives of 12 senior politicians, all of whom were believed to have bucked official policy, in the past two decades, according to local press reports. The parliamentary committee's report said several officials lied while giving evidence under subpoena and that diamond earnings are not only shielded from scrutiny but are not channeled into the state coffers. It said the Marange fields in particular are a no-go area, shrouded in secrecy and deception. The mining companies don't even buy food or services from surrounding communities, the report said. Mugabe's government and ZANU-PF have repeatedly denied diamond revenues have been siphoned off. But Global Witness says otherwise. ``Our research has exposed links between Zimbabwe's two largest diamond mining companies and the Zimbabwean military and other ZANU-PF insiders,'' said Emily Armistead, senior campaigner for Global Witness. ``It is not clear where the money is going,'' she added. ``It appears there is a mixture of corruption enriching specific individuals and some funds going to security operations. Our concern is that it could be used to fund repression and human rights abuses.'' The difficulty with monitoring diamond earnings lies in the ``opaque'' way the mining enterprises were formed and financed, said Zimbabwean economist John Robertson. Information on their expenditure, profits and staff levels have not been divulged, he said. ``You are not allowed to know what is going on and if you need to know that amounts to attempted espionage,'' Robertson said. So far, no legal action has been taken against Masimirembwa, the man accused by Mugabe. And despite widespread reports since September in the Zimbabwean press that other top political and military figures would likely be exposed, so far none has.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (103338)	10/19/2013 5:57:29 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217689

per nsa, besides america not allowed to buy huawei equipment until huawei buys ericsson, nokia, cisco, etc etc, america shall soon have to make its own light bulbs, even as most light bulbs are and shall be made in-china britain shall have no difficulty, as it has decided to buy china nuke, continuing to buy china bulb merely assures end-to-end integration bbc.co.uk LED light bulb 'li-fi' closer, say Chinese scientists 18 October 2013 Last updated at 11:56 GMT If "li-fi" technology takes off, all LED lights could potentially provide internet connectivity Wi-fi connectivity from a light bulb - or "li-fi" - has come a step closer, according to Chinese scientists. A microchipped bulb can produce data speeds of up to 150 megabits per second (Mbps), Chi Nan, IT professor at Shanghai's Fudan University told Xinhua News. A one-watt LED light bulb would be enough to provide net connectivity to four computers, researchers say. But experts told the BBC more evidence was needed to back up the claims. There are no supporting video or photos showing the technology in action. Li-fi, also known as visible light communications (VLC), at these speeds would be faster - and cheaper - than the average Chinese broadband connection. In 2011, Prof Harald Haas, an expert in optical wireless communications at the University of Edinburgh, demonstrated how an LED bulb equipped with signal processing technology could stream a high-definition video to a computer. He coined the term "light fidelity" or li-fi and set up a private company, PureVLC, to exploit the technology. Edinburgh University's Prof Harald Haas coined the term "li-fi" "We're just as surprised as everyone else by this announcement," PureVLC spokesman Nikola Serafimovski told the BBC. "But how valid this is we don't know without seeing more evidence. We remain sceptical." This year, the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute claimed that data rates of up to 1Gbit/s per LED light frequency were possible in laboratory conditions, making one bulb with three colours potentially capable of transmitting data at up to 3Gbit/s. Unlimited capacityLi-fi promises to be cheaper and more energy-efficient than existing wireless radio systems given the ubiquity of LED bulbs and the fact that lighting infrastructure is already in place. Visible light is part of the electromagnetic spectrum and 10,000 times bigger than the radio spectrum, affording potentially unlimited capacity. But there are drawbacks: block the light and you block the signal. However, this is also a potential advantage from a security point of view. Light cannot penetrate walls as radio signals can, so drive-by hacking of wireless internet signals would be far more difficult, if not impossible. Prof Chi's research team includes scientists from the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the report says. She admitted that the technology was still in its infancy and needed further developments in microchip design and optical communication controls before it could go mass market. Her team is hoping to show off sample li-fi kits at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai on 5 November, the report said.

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (103338)	10/19/2013 11:43:22 PM
From: TobagoJack	1 Recommendation Recommended By marcher Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217689

hello mq, news flash, if all goes w/ intention, the google / microsoft immunity cards shall be rendered less than useless (as in becoming a liability) as and whenever soonest the global lawsuits surge forth and threaten to engulf, devoir and otherwise make mince meat of team-usa internet wastrel lots for they are screaming out to be neutered "... Under the proposed new rules, the commission is calling for fines of up to 2% of a company's annual global turnover if it is found to be in breach, while the parliament calls for up to 5% ..." theguardian.com New EU rules to curb transfer of data to US after Edward Snowden revelations Big US companies operating in Europe will be subject to EU law rather than American court orders under the new rules. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters New European rules aimed at curbing questionable transfers of data from EU countries to the US are being finalised in Brussels in the first concrete reaction to the Edward Snowden disclosures on US and British mass surveillance of digital communications. Regulations on European data protection standards are expected to pass the European parliament committee stage on Monday after the various political groupings agreed on a new compromise draft following two years of gridlock on the issue. The draft would make it harder for the big US internet servers and social media providers to transfer European data to third countries, subject them to EU law rather than secret American court orders, and authorise swingeing fines possibly running into the billions for the first time for not complying with the new rules. "As parliamentarians, as politicians, as governments we have lost control over our intelligence services. We have to get it back again," said Jan Philipp Albrecht, the German Greens MEP who is steering the data protection regulation through the parliament. Data privacy in the EU is currently under the authority of national governments with standards varying enormously across the 28 countries, complicating efforts to arrive at satisfactory data transfer agreements with the US. The current rules are easily sidestepped by the big Silicon Valley companies, Brussels argues. The new rules, if agreed, would ban the transfer of data unless based on EU law or under a new transatlantic pact with the Americans complying with EU law. "Without any concrete agreement there would be no data processing by telecommunications and internet companies allowed," says a summary of the proposed new regime. Such bans were foreseen in initial wording two years ago but were dropped under the pressure of intense lobbying from Washington. The proposed ban has been revived directly as a result of the uproar over operations by the US's National Security Agency ( NSA). Viviane Reding, the EU's commissioner for justice and the leading advocate in Brussels of a new system securing individuals' rights to privacy and data protection, argues that the new rulebook will rebalance the power relationship between the US and Europe on the issue, supplying leverage to force the American authorities and tech firms to reform. "The recent data scandals prove that sensitivity has been growing on the US side of how important data protection really is for Europeans," she told a German foreign policy journal. "All those US companies that do dominate the tech market and the internet want to have access to our goldmine, the internal market with over 500 million potential customers. If they want to access it, they will have to apply our rules. The leverage that we will have in the near future is thus the EU's data protection regulation. It will make crystal clear that non-European companies, when offering goods and services to European consumers, will have to apply the EU data protection law in full. There will be no legal loopholes any more." But the proposed rules remain riddled with loopholes for intelligence services to exploit, MEPs admit. The EU has no powers over national or European security, for example, nor its own proper intelligence or security services, which are jealously guarded national prerogatives. National security can be and is invoked to ignore and bypass EU rules. "This regulation does not regulate the work of intelligence services," said Albrecht. "Of course, national security is a huge loophole and we need to close it. But we can't close it with this regulation." Direct deals between the Americans and individual European governments might also allow the rules to be bypassed. Parallel to the proposed data privacy rules, there are various other transatlantic arrangements in place regulating European supply to the Americans of air passenger data, financial transactions and banking information aimed at suppressing terrorism funding and the so-called Safe Harbour accord allowing companies in Europe to send data to companies in the US where, as a result of Snowden, it is clear that that data can then be tapped by the NSA. "The Safe Harbour may not be so safe after all. It could be a loophole because it allows data transfers from EU to US companies, although US data protection standards are lower than our European ones," said Reding. "Safe Harbour is based on self-regulation and codes of conduct. In the light of the recent revelations, I am not convinced that relying on codes of conduct and self-regulation that are not policed in a strict manner offer the best way of protecting our citizens." The European commission is warning that it could suspend all these agreements unless the US commits to a new regime, but the commission's threats would also run into trouble with national governments, not least the British. Brussels and Washington have also been negotiating a deal on police data exchanges for two years, but the talks are deadlocked because there is no legal redress for an EU citizen in the US courts if the system is abused. Under the proposed new rules, the commission is calling for fines of up to 2% of a company's annual global turnover if it is found to be in breach, while the parliament calls for up to 5%. Senior officials in Brussels describe the current penalties as a joke for mega-companies such as Google or Yahoo. The US-based companies, even when breaking European law, officials say, simply argue that they are not subject to it despite operating in Europe, while they are subject to the secret court orders of the US Fisa system facilitating the work of the NSA. "On the basis of the US Patriot Act, US authorities are asking US companies based in Europe to hand over the data of EU citizens. This is however – according to EU law – illegal," said Reding. "The problem is that when these companies are faced with a request whether to comply with EU or US law, they will usually opt for the American law. Because in the end this is a question of power." If the new rules are agreed next week by the parliament, they still need to be negotiated with the commission, which broadly supports them, and the 28 governments.