Archiv der Kategorie: Blog (Eng)

Blog (Eng), Heigos, Lateinamerika, Manipulation, Medizin, Politik

Brazil and the dance on the edge of the volcano

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Mario H. Jorge Jr, Markus Pohlmann

External crises, such as the Corona crisis, are often an opportunity in politics for political actors to reshuffle the cards. While in Germany this goes hand in hand with harmless profiling attempts, in Brazil the political intrigue is in full swing. The popular health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta, has been dismissed and his successor has also promptly resigned. Even the notorious Minister of Justice, Sergio Moro, has jumped ship, although for other reasons. He left behind a dossier as well as a court statement on the conduct of Jair Bolsonaro, perhaps in order to prepare the impeachment proceedings against another incumbent president in Brazil. Meanwhile, the president himself is surfing on the waves of public agitation in the media, and the governors and courts are doing their utmost to minimize the consequences of the president’s media somersaults. In the background, the generals now seem to be turning impatient again. Politics gone wild in Brazil.

Source: Jair e Michelle Bolsonaro com a filha Laura em 7 de setembro de 2019 https://www.flickr.com/photos/palaciodoplanalto/48693204476/in/album-72157710736216587/

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Asien, Blog (Eng), Medizin, Politik

Corona in China: Beginning and end of a pandemic

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by Markus Pohlmann

It currently has us all firmly in its grip, the “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” (SARS-CoV2). Serious infection control measures are being taken almost everywhere in the world. On 16.4.2020, 2.076.015 cases of infection were confirmed worldwide, 138.008 deaths and 522.881 considered to be recovered. But this is only the beginning. The peak of the pandemic is far from being reached. We are all waiting for the restrictions on physical proximity between people that have been put in place in many countries to take effect, together with other infection control measures, and for a drug and vaccine to be developed as soon as possible.

Quelle: Pixabay

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Blog (Eng), Justiz, Lateinamerika, Organisierte Kriminalität

A system of torture? The case of the Mexican police and investigation authorities

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by Sebastian Starystach

43 students disappeared without trace in Mexico in 2014. The case made headlines internationally and nationally. The students had demonstrated against the discriminatory hiring practices of the government and administration, and in the process hijacked buses, all unarmed. The police opened fire and six students were shot, 25 of them seriously injured. One student is still in a coma today. After this incident, students, among them Jorge Antonio Legideño, were arrested, 43 disappeared without a trace. What happened is still unknown today. The official version: 43 of the arrested students were handed over by the police to the criminal drug syndicate “Guerreros Unidos” and murdered by their hitman, their bodies burned and disposed of at a garbage dump. The newspaper Milenio reported on 24 January 2015, citing interrogation transcripts, that the contract killer known as “El Cepillo” from the criminal cartel “Guerreros Unidos” had confessed to the murder of at least 15 students. Whether this is true or not, the 43 who have disappeared have become a symbol for about 40,000 missing people in the Mexican drug war, whose fate remains unknown to this day.

Source: University of British Colombia

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Billets, Blog (Eng), Lateinamerika, Lebensmittelindustrie, Wirtschaft

Stevia and the sweet life of “biopirates“

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by Maria Eugenia Trombini and Markus Pohlmann

Whether chocolate, candy or drinks and sweeteners – products with Stevia are part of our everyday life. Coca-Cola Life and Lipton Ice Tea Green also use molecularly replicated stevia additives. The Belgian chocolate manufacturer Cavalier and the Swiss candy manufacturer Ricola have also launched products sweetened with Stevia. Sugar-free or calorie-free are the additives on the labels, which many of us are fascinated by. It is the promise of a brave new world – eating sweet food without calories, without getting dental caries or having a heart attack. Scientific progress and the big agribusiness and food companies make it possible. The medical studies are almost all positive: the plant-based stevia prevents diabetes and can be taken by diabetic patients. It’s also good in cases of tooth decay or cardiovascular disease. And the list of positive effects is much longer. So is it possible to snack without a bad conscience?

Source: Pixabay

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Betrug, Blog (Eng)

Publish and Perish? The Business of Predatory Publishers and Output Orientation in Science

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by Markus Pohlmann

Scientists might know it from their everyday lives: The number of e-mails in which they are invited to submit an article to journals, to act as an editor or to give a keynote in Barbados has increased significantly. Most of them come from predatory publishers, journals and conferences that have systematically infiltrated the field of science in recent years. Those who fall for it can lose of a lot of money with dubious benefits. It’s a kind of con game targeting scientists. Now, the first court rulings are available: In 2019, a court in the US state of Nevada sentenced one of the industry giants, the Indian OMICS group, to a fine of a good 50 million US dollars and largely prohibited it from operating in the USA. The number of “scientific” predatory journals has risen sharply in recent years, a parasitic side effect of Open Access Publishing. According to research by an investigative network of German and European Media, more than 5,000 German scientists have published in such pseudo-scientific predatory journals in recent years. In addition, in the USA, Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa constantly rising publication numbers in predatory journals are proven. In Brazil, Perlin et al. (2018) viewed over 2 million publications by experienced authors (more than 5 publications), with the result that the number of articles in pseudoscientific journals tripled between 2010 and 2015. The penetration rate in this large Brazilian publication market is still low at two to three percent, but authors are registering exponential growth.

Source: Andreas Schwarzkopf via Wikipedia Commons

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Billets, Blog (Eng), Korruption, Politik, Wirtschaft

Organizational Deviance and endemic corruption – Siemens and the love for Russia

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by Alexander Fürstenberg and Sebastian Starystach

Cliché or system? Whoever wants to do business in the Russian Federation has to expect to be asked eventually to provide irregular payments. Corruption remains endemic in Russia and large parts of the post-Soviet region. For decades, Transparency International has shown Russia in deep red in the lowest quarter of the world ranking of the Corruption Perception Index, currently ranked 138th out of 180. Despite extensive anti-corruption efforts, there is no improvement in sight. And yet: foreign corporations are not afraid to further do business in the Russian market.

Grand Kremlin Palace, source: Pixabay


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Asien, Blog (Eng), Politik

Learning from Xi (Jingping) – The new “Dictator-App” in China and the digital dictatorship

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by Markus Pohlmann

Learning from socialism means learning to win. Learning Xi Jingping means winning as well. That is why many people in China now have to serve hours of detention. At first only the party members, the civil servants and the press. However, in the near future this will probably affect almost everyone. They do not have to go to school or to party offices to do this, but, as long as they are connected to the internet, anywhere and anytime. Those who regard the smartphone as both a blessing and a curse because they simply cannot put it down, now have a legitimate ground: they are no longer allowed by the state to keep their hands off it. At least not for a long time. Chinese socialism in particular does not leave its citizens alone. Ongoing re-education and total social control of the citizens also characterize other socialist dictatorships, but Chinese socialism takes it to the extreme. The “playful” app is indeed a modern form of putting someone to “The Question”, a means of everyday torture.

A workshop for state enterprises on the use of the app Xue Xi Qiang Guo. Source: http://sxgz.shaanxi.gov.cn/newstyle/pub_newsshow.asp?id=2465924&chid=100055

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Betrug, Blog (Eng), Justiz, Korruption, Lateinamerika, Politik

A challenge to democracy? Illegal Party and Campaign Financing in an international Comparison

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by Markus Pohlmann

Only recently, the German party AfD has been asked to pay a fine totaling 402,900 euros for accepting illegal party donations, which is three times the amount inadmissibly received. This was decided by the Bundestag administration, as announced in April 2019. The party announced that it would bring an action before the Administrative Court against the decisions but had already decided to save one million euros for imminent fines. Nicolas Sarkozy is also likely to have to go to court for illegal election campaign donations in 2012. It is about 20 million euros more than the upper limit allowed, disguised with the help of a communications agency. The French Constitutional Council decided in May 2019 that the trial against the 64-year-old is justified because he may have violated the integrity expected of a candidate or an elected official. However, the sums in many European countries are peanuts measured by the dimensions of illegal campaign funding in various non-European states.

Nicolas Sarkozy, source: א (Aleph) via Wikimedia Commons

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Blog (Eng), Lateinamerika, Wirtschaft

The Brazilian Dam Collapse and the German TÜV – Approved to Fail?

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by Maria Eugenia Trombini, Mario Jorge Junior and Markus Pohlmann

 It is not a new story. Yet it is still shocking. Dam breaks in the mining business happen from time to time, burying many people alive in a mudslide. In November 2015, a dam burst in the city of Mariana in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil and the following mudslide caused the deaths of 19 people and massive environmental damage to the region. Three years later, in January 25th, 2019, around 130km from the first disaster, in the city of Brumadinho, tailings dam No. 1 at the Córrego do Feijão mine burst and a second disaster took place. Vale S.A, the world’s largest iron ore producer, owned both mines. But neither the billion-dollar penalty nor the safety regulation that became stricter deterred misconduct or guaranteed non-repetition. In 2019, the consequences were even deadlier. 246 people died with still 24 reported missing. However, this time, four months before the accident, the certification company TÜV Süd’s audit report mentioned a factor of safety of 1.09 and its engineers signed a stability declaration to Brazil’s National Mining Agency. Although best practices require a safety factor of at least 1.3 and, preferably, above 1.5, Vale was by that allowed to keep on mining. Their report already noted several draining deficiencies in the dam and according to the Prosecutor’s claims, both Vale and TÜV had long been aware of the risks and did not prevent the collapse from happening.

Flooding after the dam collaps in Mariana, Brazil, Source: Rogério Alves/TV Senado via flickr

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Betrug, Blog (Eng), Medizin, Wirtschaft

Off-Label Marketing and its Dangerous Side Effects: How Pharmaceutical Companies Sell Drugs for Unauthorized Purposes

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by Laura Sophia Hauck

Probably none of us can avoid swallowing one or two pills in our lives and we rely on the prescription and recommendation of our treating physicians. However, that these physicians are courted and influenced by large pharmaceutical companies to prescribe certain medication that falls out of the official permission for the ailment and for which there is neither authorization nor empirical evidence of efficacy, is largely unknown to the public in this country. Such prescribing practices, under certain circumstances, may end fatally.

source: Martin Vorel

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