The case has been reported in Italy, but transcripts of wiretaps, in court documents obtained by ProPublica, offer a rare inside look at Iran’s aggressive global campaign to buy prohibited deadly goods. Using layers of front companies and smuggling pipelines run by Iran’s increasingly powerful security forces, Iranian buyers prowl black markets in search of suppliers ready to take a risk for a profit, according to investigators and Western intelligence officials interviewed for this article.

U.S.-led international sanctions haven’t stopped the illicit sales, experts say, because European countries have longtime commercial ties to Iran and aren’t inclined to crack down, particularly in the current economic slump. Italy alone did more than $9 billion worth of legitimate trade with Iran in 2008.

Most countries “do not devote significant resources to investigating or prosecuting export control violations,” wrote Michael Jacobson, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an article published by the think tank last year. A “public prosecutor has stated that his country has only uncovered ‘the tip of the iceberg’ of the black market activity involving Iran’s nuclear program.” Jacobson continued, ” the European Union is not in a position to oversee the shortcomings of its member states in this area.”

via Iran’s Efforts to Buy Embargoed Arms Revealed in Italian Case – ProPublica.

Read the rest, it’s quite an intriguing story that is much too long to quote fully here. Frankly, it’s not only Italian small arms that are moving through the black market, but our own as well. And Sibel Edmonds pointed out a long time ago that it’s not just small arms, but a nuclear black market with Turkish involvement. Arms trafficking world-wide goes hand-in-hand with drug and human trafficking.

Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion — $1 billion more than any of its competitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan — for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. Over the next 25 years, it plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper — an amount equal to one-third of all the known copper reserves in China.

While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.

via Uneasy Engagement – China, Willing to Spend, Wins a Trove of Afghan Copper – Series – NYTimes.com.

“There’s just one thing we haven’t quite dared to mention. It’s this, and you won’t believe it. It’s all happened already. Back there in the past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big brain, the small teeth. He lived in Africa. His brain was bigger than your brain. His face was straight and small, almost a child’s face.”

Boskops, then, were much talked and written about, by many of the most prominent figures in the fields of paleontology and anthropology.

Yet today, although Neanderthals and Homo erectus are widely known, Boskops are almost entirely forgotten. Some of our ancestors are clearly inferior to us, with smaller brains and apelike countenances. They’re easy to make fun of and easy to accept as our precursors. In contrast, the very fact of an ancient ancestor like Boskop, who appears un-apelike and in fact in most ways seems to have had characteristics superior to ours, was destined never to be popular.

via What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? | Human Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine.

The fight to end hunger is being hurt by environmentalists who insist that genetically modified crops cannot be used in Africa, Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of software giant Microsoft, said on Thursday.

Gates said GMO crops, fertilizer and chemicals are important tools — although not the only tools — to help small farms in Africa boost production.

via Bill Gates says ideology threatens hunger fix | Green Business | Reuters .

Gates is supporting GMO seed that hasn’t been thoroughly tested for its long-term effects on human beings. Unlike safety evaluations for drugs, there are no human clinical trials of GMO foods. The only published human feeding experiment verified that genetic material inserted into GMO soy transfers into the DNA of intestinal bacteria and continues to function. This means that long after we stop eating GMO foods, we may still have their GMO proteins continuously inside us. This means that if the antibiotic gene inserted into most GMO crops were to transfer, it could create super diseases resistant to antibiotics, and if the gene that creates Bt-toxin in GMO corn were to transfer, it might turn our intestinal flora into living pesticide factories – especially since animal studies have shown that DNA in food can travel into organs throughout the body, even into fetuses.

GMO crops will lead to even greater crop homogenization and threaten the stability of the global food supply. For example, there is no containment of GMO-tainted pollen which will decimate Certified Organic and non-GMO, heirloom seed purity.

When Monsanto originally began marketing its “Roundup Ready” GMO sugar beet seeds, it enticed farmers with promises that the crops could be doused with herbicide up to five times a year without killing the crop. What it failed to disclose was the potential for entire crop fields to be cross-contaminated with genetically modified seeds, devastating the availability of untainted conventional and organic crops. The environmental impact of using GMO seeds is tremendous and could wipe out the non-GMO crops entirely.

Another issue not addressed is the fact that continual applications of glyphosate, the herbicide marketed by Monsanto as Roundup, has led to the growth of Roundup-resistant weeds commonly referred to as “superweeds”. Similar to antibiotic “superbugs” that become resistant to antibiotics, these superweeds require ever-increasing amounts of not only Roundup but other more potent, toxic herbicides just to keep them under control.

If GMO foods on the market are causing common diseases and allergies, or if their effects appear only after long-term exposure, we may not be able to identify the source of the problem for decades, if at all. There is no monitoring of GMO-related problems and no long-term human or animal studies. The bottom line is that these heavily invested biotech corporations are gambling away the health of our world for profit. And Bill Gates is helping them do it.

The problem of World Hunger is not a lack of agricultural productivity — productivity is at record levels — there is more than enough food in the world to feed every hungry mouth. The main problem is two-fold: a) corrupt governments and organizations that divert food and other types of aid from their intended recipients, and b) distributing the food (and other aid) to the people who need it (often in places where there aren’t any roads or airports or seaports). Far better results can be had by teaching farmers about water catchment, permaculture, sustainability practices, seed saving, providing education and health programs, access to credit and markets, providing clear title to land and creating safety nets for vulnerable people who cannot support themselves. Global hunger is a complex problem that calls for a complex array of solutions.