WASHINGTON — A German graduate student in oceanography at M.I.T. applied to the Transportation Security Administration for a new ID card allowing him to work around ships and docks.

What the student, Wilken-Jon von Appen, received in return was a letter that not only turned him down but added an ominous warning from John M. Busch, a security administration official: “I have determined that you pose a security threat.”

Similar letters have gone to 5,000 applicants across the country who have at least initially been turned down for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential, an ID card meant to guard against acts of terrorism, agency officials said Monday.

The officials also said they were sorry about the language, which they may change in the future, but had no intention of withdrawing letters already sent.

“It’s an unfortunate choice of words in a bureaucratic letter,” said Ellen Howe, a security agency spokeswoman.

Ms. Howe and Maurine Fanguy, who oversees the new ID card program, said that most foreign students did not qualify for the identity cards, but that the letters were not intended to label the recipients as potential terrorists. (Some applicants are also turned down because of criminal records.)

Mr. von Appen, 23, one of at least four oceanography students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who received identical letters, said he was stunned by its language.

“I was pretty much speechless and quite intimidated,” said Mr. von Appen, whose research is supported by a $65,000-a-year grant from the National Science Foundation.

A British student at M.I.T. who was rejected, Sophie Clayton, 28, said that at first she was amused at what appeared to be a bureaucratic absurdity. But as she pondered the designation, Ms. Clayton said she grew worried. “The two words ‘security threat’ are now in the files next to my name, my photograph and my fingerprints,” she said.

My emphasis.

You will get no sympathy here.

You have no business being in the USA, where they fingerprint you like a criminal just to enter. It is people like you, who blithely behave like there is nothing wrong with USVISIT that have made it so deeply entrenched.

Now that you are tasting what it REALLY Means, you are ‘worried’. You should have been worried BEFORE you submitted to the humiliation and violation of being fingerprinted. Now you are in their system, marked as a ‘security threat’ for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, and as we can see below, there is nothing you can do about it, the government is unrepentant, and refuses to correct your records.

Institute officials were also disturbed. The agency controls airport security, and “our students travel in and out of the country a lot,” said Danielle Guichard-Ashbrook, associate dean and director of the international student office at M.I.T.

And the agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration matters, including student visas.

Ms. Guichard-Ashbrook said the security agency should remove the misleading language from all files and issue new letters formally withdrawing the “threat” label.

But Ms. Howe, the agency spokeswoman, said that the letters were legal, if flawed, and that there were no plans to send replacements.

She said she did not believe the denial letters would cause students any problems with visa renewal or airport security checks. They will even be able to enter secure ports and ships for their work as long as they are accompanied by someone with the new ID, Ms. Howe said.

The Transportation Worker Identification Credential requirement is being phased in starting Oct. 15. The cards cost the applicant $132.50 and have been issued to 275,000 people so far of 1.2 million people expected to receive the credential, officials said.

My epmhasis once again.

What the last bold words mean, is that this very stupid girl could have saved herself the besmirching of her records and simply gone with someone who had the ID. Not only that, but if anyone can go into these ‘secure’ areas simply by being vouched by someone who has the right ID, the whole system is worthless as a means to secure an area.

This is a perfect example of Security Theatre.

It is beyond stupid, beyond absurd, and everyone that goes along with it, like ‘Sophie Clayton‘ helps solidify the insanity.

Do you remember our first taste of Barak Obama? The speech that thrilled everyone in July of 2004?

There was a BLOGDIAL back then, and of course, we wrote about that speech, and this strange man who appeared out of nowhere with smooth and empty words, who now threatens to further dismantle The United States of America:

Now let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.

Now. This sort of totally absurd talk does not inspire one with confidence in the incoming US regime. Amercia has no enemies in the world. That is a fact. The American Government has bitter enemies, and it is that entitiy that is dragging the innocent American population into harms way, the way it did during Kerry’s youth.

There is no one out there that needs to be “pursued and defeated”; everyone in the entire world (including you, as in “But you know this”) except American politicians knows this. Perhaps this man should spend some time outside of America to re-acquaint himself with the real world. Spain will do; they are now off of the shit list because they, the Spanish population, have the common sense to elect people who will mind Spain’s business.

You know the song by Bread, the one with the lyric “Dreams are for those who sleep”; well, the American dream sounds like a dream of sleepers when it is spoken about in this way. They had better wake up to the real danger caused by the reckless, racist and insane foreign and internal policy that their government has put into high gear, and elect a government that will put the breaks on and do a u-turn before there is nothing left to save.

It would be much more comforting to have a candidate who had refused to go to Viet Nam rather than one that reveled in that pointless and illegal “war” … beggars cant be choosers.

Whatever happens, the entire world will still be faced with an unexposed and untraveled loose cannon congress, a society gripped by xenophobia and extreme paranoia rubber stamping their every misguided vote for aggression, and no real way out in sight.

Warm and fuzzy feel good speeches simply will not cut it. The world wants to know the answer to a very simple question; are you going to knock it off?!
posted by Irdial , 5:24 PM Þ

um, hey akin: the ‘world’ isn’t electing the new american president.

Perhaps if the whole world elected the american president, you might be given one that is reasonable. Certainly if a country is to be the policeman of the world, the very same world should have direct control over that country and its election process.

and this bullshit about ‘national security’ is what the american populous is currently most interested in.

Hence my point about the hysterical false concerns over security. The answer to this “problem” is clear, and has been demonstrated by Spain. Let me put it in terms anyone can understand; if you poke around in a hornets nest, you are going to get stung. There. Leave the hornets to do what the hornets do, and live life that you deserve, free, peacful, without fear and hopefully long.

i agree with what you have to say — honestly — but trust me, electability is just as important as being truthful right now.

So, the whole world should sit by and say nothing while one bunch of idiots replaces the last bunch? I think not. No one in the world would care if the americans voted Luke Skywalker of 2 Live Crew as their president (at least he has a passport uunlike half of the congressmen) if their government minded their own business, but it seems that they refuse to, and even intelligent people appear to be saying that we all have to put up with this hysteria and the interference that stems from it (and which caused it) “until we are done with it”. Not good enough.

after your whole tirade against nader, one would think ‘you would know this.’

I was responding to that template-made feelgood claptrap speech which did not impress or move me in the slightest bit. Bush has to go, at the very least, to cut off his freinds businesses from world access; we all know he will never face a war crimes tribunal, in the end, that wont matter, because its far more important that he will no longer be there pushing the world towards the precipice . We all want Bush to be replaced. Nader is insane for threatening this; thats just logic. Now, imagining that Kerry is going to win, we casually take a close look at him and find him utterly wanting, even on the surface. Still we would prefer him, just to see Bush and the Neocon armageddonite puppeteers thrown into the garbage where they belong.

kerry won’t get elected if he says our new foreign policy won’t include kicking ass. (and yes, i think thats despicable)

So, Kerry, to be elected, must promise to break international law, ignore treaties and pledge to continue america’s suicidal pre-emptive foreign policy just to be elected, and we must all put up with it in silence, because “its just like that”.

This is not reasonable.

And you know this.

At the very least, apologise for this dreadful state that the world has been deliberately thrown into, and beg forgiveness and forbearance from the civilized world while you clean your house out. It would be only words, but if that is all you have, we will gladly take them. Telling the world to “MYOB” about this election is just too outrageous for words!
posted by Irdial , 9:00 PM Þ

[…]
And I can tell you this; everyone everywhere is more tired of your warmongering government than you are of hearing how much we hate it.
[…]
posted by Irdial , 11:27 AM Þ

That was the way we did it.

Americans are now in the position of having a real choice in the presidential election; Ron Paul or anyone else (since all the other candidates represent the same faction).

They have the benefit of hindsight, a population that is more awake than it was in 2004 and an identical crisis on the horizon, in the form of an insanely murderous attack on Iran.

John McCain is promising more war “My Friends”; Hillary Clinton is using phrases like ‘obliterate Iran’ on television. Obama has an invasion of Pakistan on the cards. These people are INSANE.

Hillary is particularly offensive, because even in her own upside down reality of misremembered and misspoken events, she is a total idiot; this is the same monster who only a short time ago said that Obomba was “naïve” on foreign policy for his declaration on a hypothetical scenario involving Pakistan, yet this harpie uses phrases like ‘obliterate Iran’, when the whole world is watching.

All three of these people are so manifestly inappropriate for the job, how could anyone possibly get it wrong this time?

The answers are, in case you are too thick to understand:

• If you are going to vote, vote for Ron Paul and NOT Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama or John McCain.
• Do not under any circumstances permit Iran to be attacked.
• Do not march in the streets to try and prevent an attack on Iran.

Obomba has americans so deeply hypnotized that it might be hard to derail him.

As for preventing an attack on Iran, we now know definitively that marching in the streets and vigils and every other 20th century tactic is useless; that is how the illegal, immoral, insane Iraq invasion and mass murder was given license to happen. You now know this to be true. If you march again, or hold a candle lit vigil, or do ANYTHING that was done before and shown to be useless, you are a COMPLETE IDIOT.

Ron Paul received more donations from active military than all the other candidates combined. All of these military personnel swear an oath:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God“

How is it that they can sit around watching America being dismantled and do absolutely nothing at all? Surely they must understand, up to the highest levels that ‘enemies domestic’ are in full operation, and that it is their sworn duty to excise them? Why has not a single shot been fired, why has there not been a breaking of ranks?

It is BIZARRE.

They are on the edge of engaging in another war crime, in historical terms, a page turn after Iraq, and not one of them is acting? No one is that stupid.

I would love to read an explanation for this inexplicable silence, this immoral inaction, this nauseating inertia; there must be an explanation – even the act of a lone maverick would exonerate them, but there is not one soldier amongst them (it seems) that actually understands what America really was.

Even the Nazis had high ranking soldiers willing to kill their despot. In their failure, they achieved the greatest honor for being on the right side of history.

In fact, we see that the army is doing exactly the opposite of what their oaths demand; they are preparing to take over the country and put decent people into concentration camps.

If only it were all a bad dream…

House Approves New Property Seizure Law

The criminals in the federal government are now trying to legalize the seizure of computers and other property under the guise of strengthening intellectual property laws. HR 4279 or the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will give the government draconian powers to do just this. This legislation gives the government the power to seize property that facilitates the violation of intellectual property laws. The legislation also mandates the formation of a formal Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the office of the Deputy Attorney General to enforce this madness. In addition, a new office called the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative is created within the Executive Office of the President. If you boil it down to brass tax, this legislation allows the U.S. government to lawfully seize your computer if it has one unauthorized mp3 file on its hard drive. It also provides the authorization for the creation of offices within the executive branch to enforce a law that is impossible to enforce.

Below is taken from section 202 of HR 4279 that gives the federal government the authorization to seize property that may have been used to facilitate an intellectual property violation. The language in this section indicates that a violation would include downloading a single unauthorized mp3 file on to a computer.

d) Unauthorized Recording of Motion Pictures- Section 2319B(b) of title 18, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:

`(b) Forfeiture and Destruction; Restitution-

`(1) CIVIL FORFEITURE PROCEEDINGS- (A) The following property is subject to forfeiture to the United States:

`(i) Any copies of a motion picture or other audiovisual work protected under title 17 that are made without the authorization of the copyright owner.

`(ii) Any property constituting or derived from any proceeds obtained directly or indirectly as a result of a violation of subsection (a).

`(iii) Any property used, or intended to be used, to commit or facilitate the commission of a violation of subsection (a) that is owned or predominantly controlled by the violator or by a person conspiring with or aiding and abetting the violator in committing the violation, except that property is subject to forfeiture under this clause only if the Government establishes that there was a substantial connection between the property and the violation of subsection (a).

This is the 1980s equivalent of the government being given the legal authority to seize cassette recorders if they were used in recording a song off of the radio. Under this legislation, downloading even a single mp3 file unauthorized by the copyright owner will give the federal government the power to take your computer. There is no way that the federal government can enforce this. In fact, it is insane that the U.S. House of Representatives is more concerned about keeping the record and movie industry happy by passing this legislation than they are with real issues. Incredibly, this bill was passed by a vote of 410-11. Two of the dissenting voters included Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

John Conyers a fascist and anti-Constitutionalist member of the U.S. House of Representatives who originally introduced this bill made the following statements describing the purpose of the legislation. His statements were republished in a Billboard Magazine report.

(1) prioritize intellectual property protection to the highest level of our government;

(2) make changes to IP law to enhance the ability of IP owners to effectively enforce their rights;

(3) make it easier to criminally prosecute repeat offenders;

(4) increase penalties for IP violations that endanger public health and safety.

Basically speaking, Conyers believes that downloading illegal mp3 and movie files endanger public health and safety. Conyers is either an insane individual that belongs in a mental institution for making such a ridiculous statement or he and everybody else who voted for this bill is in the back pockets of the RIAA, the MPAA and the rest of the music and movie industry. Common sense would dictate that such a law is unenforceable and should have not been seriously entertained. This is just another sign that this country is run by a bunch of fascists who are trying to find as many ways to undermine civil liberties under the guise of enforcing the law. What is really ridiculous about this, is the fact that the Constitution which is the supreme law of the land is violated by these fascist tyrants in Congress every single day of the week. If they were actually serious about enforcing the law, why are they not following the Constitution? Why do they reject it?

Maybe if the movie and music industry stopped putting out horrible content, their sales would be a little better. It seems as if they are trying to blame people who download unauthorized mp3 and movie files for their shortcomings in business. Perhaps they should do what smaller independent music and film production companies have done and embrace the technological revolution instead of stifling it by trying to push this anti-American legislation down our throats.

It is understandable to go after people who are illegally profiting off of selling material that isn’t their own but there really isn’t a need for government involvement. The record industry should sue those people if they believe that there are groups or individuals who are unfairly profiting off of their work. A court can decide if the claims they present are valid. However, to give powers to an already corrupt government to seize private property from people who are violating copyright laws by merely having downloaded mp3 files or movie files on their computer is unenforceable and beyond the scope of government. Section 301 of the bill establishes the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative and section 501 of the bill establishes the Intellectual Property Enforcement Division within the Department of Justice under the office of the Deputy Attorney General. These particular offices will be established to serve as the enforcement arm for this legislation.

How many more powers is this corrupt legislature going to give to a renegade executive branch that is already engaging in perpetual war, setting up a police state, authorizing torture, destroying national sovereignty and other horrors? The federal government is full of petty bureaucrats and tyrants that can’t do anything right to begin with, and the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to expand government again through this legislation. With 410 of these tyrants voting for this legislation, it is doubtful that we will be successful in defeating this bill in the U.S Senate or if it goes to the dictator in chief.

[…]

Lee Rogers at Rogue Government

Pure unadulterated evil.

Let the ‘War on Piracy‘ begin!

This is a comment attached to this post, that I had to ‘promote’ to an entire post:

——-

The new wave of anti-organic propaganda: organic food is bad for the environment!

First, biased tripe masquerading as a magazine piece on BBQ. Previously they had this slightly more balanced piece.

And last week, the “7 Myths Of Organic Food” debunked by Robert Johnston, who claims to be an ‘environmental expert’ but I can’t find his credentials anywhere. “these foods are an indugence the world can’t afford, argues environmental expert Rob Johnston”.

“Robert Johnston is a doctor and freelance journalist. He was an executive producer for Lifetime Television in New York and medical adviser for the Millennium Dome Body Zone.”

His ‘article first appeared online before the Indescribablybad picked it up.

If these studies and articles have not been funded and placed by BigAgro then I’m a monkey’s uncle. The thrust of these articles is that only by intensive, chemical-driven farming can we save the world. And we’ll be healthier too.

Smacks of desperation, with a whiff of fear.

——-

It in fact, stinks.

When someone who has the brain of a researcher and who is honest turns the fire-hose of their logic onto these subjects, the shiny surface gets washed away to reveal the pure dirty evil underneath.

Note how it is the usual suspects who eagerly regurgitate the PR lies.

It’s the milk spill that crossed state lines.

Brooklyn raw milk enthusiasts are crying over the loss of their supplier – a horse and buggy-driving Amish farmer from Pennsylvania.

Mark Nolt of New Line, Pa., was arrested and shut down last Friday for selling the contraband.

“Oh God. My heart is pounding. I can’t believe what a God—- police state this is,” said one Brooklyn customer who made monthly pickups of raw dairy products from Nolt that the farmer had dropped off in Manhattan by workers.

“I gave him $100 last week for a huge delivery of stuff, including raw cream that I planned on using to make cream puffs,” she said.

The Brooklyn outcry came after six Pennsylvania state troopers raided Nolt’s farm and confiscated his illegal dairy.

“They swooped in on Friday morning like a bunch of Vikings, handcuffed me and stole $30,000 worth of my milk, cheese and butter,” Nolt told the Daily News.

Nolt is a devout Mennonite who sells raw dairy products at his farm and has them transported by truck to customers in Delaware and across New York City, where the raw goods are illegal.

It is a violation of federal law to transport raw milk across state lines with the intent to sell it for consumption. Nolt was arrested for not having a permit to sell the goods in Pennsylvania, where they are allowed.

He said he was working on the farm with his wife and 10 children when the agents cuffed him on charges of selling the contraband to an undercover officer.

“The government doesn’t have the right to dictate what I eat, and never will,” said an unrepentant Nolt.

Around the city, more and more parents are signing up to find out where dropoff points are to pick up raw milk they have bought online.

To get around the law, no money changes hands. Milk pickup spots are posted in Williamsburg, Queens and neighborhoods in Manhattan – where a milk truck waits.

The seizure on Nolt’s farm has slowed Brooklyn’s raw milk flow to a trickle, which is great news, at least as far as the FDA is concerned.

[…]

http://www.nydailynews.com/

Have you ever drunk raw milk? They sell it in Marylebone Market.

Once again, the all powerful, all immoral STATE says you cannot ingest what you like, and this time, it is the powerful and deadly substance known as…..MILK.

That’s what you get when you OBEY.

Which brings us nicely to…

The Christian’s attitude toward the state, its leaders, its military, its wars, its imperialism, and its interventionism should be a no-brainer: contempt, disdain, disgust, revulsion, abhorrence, repugnance, loathing – take your pick. Yet, among Christians one continues to find some of the greatest apologists for the state, its leaders, its institutions, and its evil doings.

Biblical Christianity is becoming eclipsed by state worship. The “obey the powers that be” mantra is still recited incessantly. The state is revered by too many Protestants as a force for good or social justice instead of the criminal gang that it is. The state’s latest pronouncements about this country or that country being a threat to American interests are too often accepted by evangelicals at face value. The need for the invasion of, the bombing of, the imposing of sanctions against, or the need to take some other belligerent action toward other countries is swallowed by some Catholics like a communion wafer.

Biblical Christianity is also being eclipsed by leader worship. Instead of being viewed as a war criminal, President Bush is seen as the messiah in chief by many evangelicals, with Huckabee as his heir apparent. Any president will do, however, as long as he is a Republican, claims to be a Christian, and wants to continue killing Muslims lest they kill us first because they hate our freedoms. In spite of Bush’s horrendous violations of civil liberties, his doubling of the national debt, his debacle in Iraq, and his tremendous expansion of the power of the presidency, he is still revered by way too many Christians both in and out of the evangelical community.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance141.html

Owen Bowcott

The Guardian, Tuesday May 6 2008

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:

· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.

· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.

· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined

[…]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1

So, even though it does not work, as we have been saying for almost a decade, they are STILL drinking the Kool-Aid, and building this useless database that will compile the useless images from these useless cameras.

This behavior is at the very heart of the problem; people keep doing things and taking measures that do not work, simply because a vendor has convinced them to spend money.

What if these people did not have the money to do it? THAT is the question!

It is clear that they are irresponsible and immoral when it comes to this, so why should they be given billions of pounds to keep getting it wrong…and in this case, ‘getting it wrong’ means putting the entire United Kingdom into a giant cage.

UPDATE

The billions of pounds spent covering Britain with CCTV cameras has been an “utter fiasco” and failed to slash crime, Scotland Yard’s surveillance chief has said.

Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said a Metropolitan Police pilot project found just three per cent of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images.

He claimed the vast swathes of money spent on cameras had been wasted because criminals don’t fear the cameras.

But Mr Neville also castigated the police and claimed officers can’t be bothered to seek out CCTV images because it’s “hard work”.

The comments from Mr Neville, who is the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at Scotland Yard, will further cast doubt on the spread of surveillance in Britain.

Britain has one per cent of the world’s population but, incredibly, 20 per cent of its CCTV cameras – the equivalent of one for every 14 people.

Last year it emerged the £200m spent on 10,000 crime-fighting cameras in London had had little effect on reducing offending.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police were no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

Speaking at a security conference in London, Mr Neville claimed the use of CCTV images for court evidence had been very poor so far.

He said: “CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure.

“Billions of pounds have been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court.

“It’s been an utter fiasco: only three per cent of crimes were solved by CCTV.

“Why don’t people fear it? They think the cameras are not working.”

At the conference the Metropolitan Police unveiled a number of initiatives to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence.

One, which will start from next month, involves putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases on the internet.

In another Viido will examine whether it can use software developed to track advertising during televised football games to follow distinctive brands on suspects’ clothing.

Even with such schemes, doubts remain over whether or not the expansion of ‘Big Brother’ Britain can cut crime.

The annual report into the government’s DNA database earlier this year revealed the huge expansion of the scheme has brought fewer than a thousand criminals to justice.

For every 800 DNA samples being added by the police – including those taken from innocent people – only one crime is being solved.

Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has in the past warned the UK is in danger of “sleepwalking in a surveillance society”.

Last night he said CCTV could play in important role in preventing and detecting crime.

However he added: “We would expect adequate safeguards to be put in place to ensure the images are only used for crime detection purposes, stored securely and that access to images is restricted to authorised individuals.

“We would have concerns if CCTV images of individuals going about their daily lives were retained.”

The charity Victims Voice, which supports relatives of those who have been murdered, called for more effective use of CCTV.

Trustee Ed Usher said: “If handled properly it can be a superb preventative tool.”

[…]

Daily Mail

City councillor Gavin Webb could be thrown off a school’s board of governors after making controversial calls to legalise heroin and prostitution.Liberal Democrat (Libertarian) councillor Gavin Webb’s position is being reviewed after publicly expressing controversial views.

Thistley Hough High School, in Penkhull, could now decide to sack him from its board of governors.

The chair of governors, Gill Miller, said she is seeking advice on Mr Webb’s position in light of complaints about comments he hasmade.

She said: “I have alerted the governing support unit at the city council and the governing body is currently considering Mr Webb’s position.”

Talking about drugs, Mr Webb said: “I believe we should legalise the lot, including the most harmful substance heroin.”

He has also described the police’s drug-busting Operation Nemesis as a “waste of money”.

He has also said: “The only person one can trust in protecting one’s own life, is oneself. That is why I also advocate that individuals should have the right to carry a handgun.”

Other controversial views expressed by Mr Webb include that drink-driving is not a crime, that brothels should be legal and that Britain’s borders should be opened up to anyone who wants to enter the country.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s Liberal Democrat group leader, Councillor Jean Bowers, said she was concerned about some of the comments Mr Webb has made in recent weeks. She said a member of the public had contacted her to complain about some of his views.

Mr Webb, pictured, said he is aware that some of his views were unpopular, and could even jeopardise his position as a governor.

He said: “I am getting flak from various people, but part of the role of politicians is to tell people to take responsibility for their own lives, instead of blaming other people.”

“At the end of the day, it’s up the board of school governors whether they support me or sack me.”

Many of Mr Webb’s controversial statements were made on The Sentinel’s website.

Mr Webb is also being investigated by the Standards Board of England after an alleged four-letter outburst at a fellow councillor.

What do you think of Gavin Webb’s views?

[…]

http://www.thisisthesentinel.co.uk/

What do I think?

I think this man is 100% correct!

Is this the beginning of a sea change in the UK? A return to sanity? An awakening from the nightmare of Bliar, Brown, Murder Inc. and all the horrors we have been putting up with?

Lets hope so!

There has been outrage in Italy after the outgoing government published every Italian’s declared earnings and tax contributions on the internet.

The tax authority’s website was inundated by people curious to know how much their neighbours, celebrities or sports stars were making.

The Italian treasury suspended the website after a formal complaint from the country’s privacy watchdog.

The information was put on the site with no warning for nearly 24 hours.

Sour grapes?

The release of the information was one of the last acts of the outgoing centre-left government and has shocked many tax-shy Italians, says the BBC’s Mark Duff in Milan.

But it was also hugely popular, and within hours the site was overwhelmed and impossible to access.

The finance ministry described the move as a bid to improve transparency.

Critics condemned it as an outrageous breach of privacy.

The timing of the move, just days before the current administration hands over to incoming Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, was intriguing too, says our correspondent.

The outgoing government came to power promising to tackle Italians’ notoriously lax approach to paying tax.

Some sceptics have seen the move as just end of term sour grapes, our correspondent adds.

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7376608.stm

Of course, in Finland, the tax records of every ‘citizen’ are released every year, by law:

Finland Abolishes All Tax Record Privacy

Computer Hacker #1: “Hey look, this vice president makes twice as much as that vice president. I bet they don’t know that!”

Computer Hacker #2: “They do now — I just emailed the entire company!”

–An old IBM commercial

Certain noisy socialists love to remind us that the Scandinavian nations supposedly have a “higher standard of living” than the U.S.

Of course, such calculations do not include factors like this:

Care to find out what your neighbor earned last year, or how much your partner really has stashed in the bank? In Finland you can — and a lot of people did Wednesday.

Every November when the Nordic nation’s tax records of the previous year become public, Finns indulge on a massive scale in satisfying their curiosity about each other’s finances.

Newspapers were crammed with lists of the wealthiest and highest-earning men and women in 2004.

Veroporssi, a private firm which offers income details on everyone in Finland via mobile text message, said it was its busiest day of the year and had no time to comment.

Words escape me.

Of course, the next logical question, to the extent logic plays any role here, is why should tax records be public information but not library records, or medical records, or report cards, or credit card statements, or grocery lists, or Netflix queues, etc.

If this is what a nation with a “higher standard of living” considers an appropriate privacy policy, then I’d prefer poverty.

Words, on this occasion do not escape me.

It is completely wrong, immoral, indefensible and outrageous that this violation of privacy has been perpetrated on the good Italian people.

Think about it this way.

If the medical records of every Italian were posted on the internetz, would that be any different? Why do people (like the people in Finland) feel that only some things should be private and not others? It is the choice of the owner of the data what he or she decides to do with it, and it is absolutely evil for a third party to compel you to divulge private details to them, and for them to subsequently release that data for free.

Do I have to enumerate the reasons why people would want to keep facts about them private? If you read BLOGDIAL, then the answer is ‘no’ if not, then you have no sense, or you do not read BLOGDIAL, in which case, you have no sense.

It seems that we are in the middle of an epidemic of information release; deliberate and immoral disclosure of personal data by corrupt officials, who through malice, are committing acts of violation on a scale that has never been seen in the history of the world.

Nothing good can come of it, except the setting in stone of cast iron privacy laws that will make the collection of data a very dangerous act.

When such laws are passed, companies will find ways of dealing with the public that will remove the need to collect any personal data of any kind, thus removing the risk of internal database leaks, crack attacks and anything that could mean that they were prosecuted for a privacy violation.

The public would win because they would have their privacy back. Business would win because they will have clean, feature rich systems that respect their customers, and the world would be a…nicer place

… the greed of a few bankers costs you your house

… people scuffle over bags of rice in Walmart stores

… and it gets mapped on GoogleEarth

… BP announce 48% increases in profits, as petrol hits £1.10 a litre

… anyone is surprised that the rich get richer

… billions are found for destruction, at the sufferance of creation and discovery

I could go on. I’m sure you could too.

My cynicism today is dragging me down. It is a good excuse to return to Ivor Cutler, to whom I referred recently. Here are his words, a small poem perhaps, with which I empathise closely at the moment, entitled ‘A Real Man’.

When I was 12 I wanted to be a real man — an old man with a beard, sitting at a table with a huge book full of wisdom. And what did society hold up to me for my admiration? A golfer, a boxer, a man who ran quickly; a soldier, a lawyer, a tycoon; a motorist, a pop star; a footballer. Into what kind of madhouse had I been born?

And what have I become? A child, witlessly pouring out whatever enters my head. I am a madman and people gather to listen to me make a fool of myself. I am not a role model. This is my protection and security. I still long for the table and the book, the smell of an old man and an old book; the afternoon light fading.

A lurker writes:

You may know all this, but here are some details which may be of interest otherwise:

THE INTELLIGENT AIRPORT (TINA) PROJECT

Researchers from the universities of Leeds, Cambridge and University College London have teamed up with 10 companies on The INtelligent Airport (TINA) project, funded by The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), led by Professor Jaafar Elmirghani of Leeds University.

‘It will link a number of separate systems including wireless biometrics and RFID … We are going to put a demonstrator system into the new Heathrow terminal five to see how the system works.’ – Professor Jaafar Elmirghani
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/303000/Travel+tracker.htm

This project aims to develop a next generation advanced wired and wireless network to meet the potential requirements for future “intelligent airports”.
TINA website: http://intelligentairport.org.uk/

Travel Tracker 12 November 2007, The Engineer online:

Such a system is set to be installed and trialled at Heathrow’s terminal five, where an ‘intelligent gate’ will demonstrate, among other things, accurate passenger position estimation through active and passive RFID and radio over fibre (RoF) where the RFID is part of the boarding pass and/or passport.

Predictions suggest a terminal-wide network would have to support 10 million sources of information, from individual tracking units for passengers and staff to technology such as biometric gates. It is believed the system will have to deal with a peak data rate of 100Gbit/s as it tracks people, luggage, aircraft and all the information generated by those sources. …

Elmirghani : ‘It will link a number of separate systems including wireless biometrics and RFID, which could be put into boarding passes and will soon be put in passports. Passengers can be processed a lot faster and tags could be used to track luggage so it can be handled in a more efficient way — tracked from arrival to being put on a plane.’ …

‘The system will use a radio-over-fibre distribution network with a distributed antenna system creating a unified structure. We are looking at passive kinds of radio frequency distribution. This will allow the basic systems of the infrastructure to be easily upgraded and updated. We are going to put a demonstrator system into the new Heathrow terminal five to see how the system works.’ …

‘People will probably have issues with the technology but you have to weigh the benefits with any down sides,’ added Elmirghani. ‘This kind of information is already available if you have a mobile phone. Your position can be triangulated but that information hasn’t been available to airports. Overall there can be more benefits than some of the losses.’

full article here: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/303000/Travel+tracker.htm

Next Generation of Airports are on the Horizon , Leeds university website

A remote biometric scan that removes passport queues, airport lounge chairs that “nudge” passengers to remind them that their flight is due to board and boarding passes that locate passengers and provide automated access could be among the next generation of airport technologies that will transform airports and air travel in the future. Other new technologies developed in the project include radio frequency tags attached to baggage to help stop luggage from being lost. The same radio frequency tags will be given to passengers and coupled with wireless biometric devices, these will enable security staff to know where everyone is and who they are, helping make airport security more stringent and efficient, and also ensuring that passengers make it to the departure gate on time. Wireless technology could also allow passengers to use a portable inflight entertainment terminal which could be used in the departure lounge as well as on the plane. …

“We are hoping to achieve this within the next six years” – Professor Jaafar Elmirghani

full article : Faculty of Engineering, University of Leeds http://www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/news/index.shtml (scroll down)

TINA Project system technology

RF-ID Tag Location Using RF-over-fibre Techniques , UCL paper

from the conclusion :

…The detection mechanism could be a small capacitively-coupled current across the sealed wrist-band which is interrupted if it is either cut or removed. […] However, public acceptance of the use of wristbands for this purpose may well be an issue, so exactly how the tags are deployed remains open at this stage. … The system may also find application in a range of other arenas, including hospitals (e.g., maternity units), theme parks, exhibition halls and concert venues.”

PAPER:

RF-ID Tag Location Using RF-over-fibre Techniques
P. V. Brennan, A. J. Seeds, and Y. Huang
University College London, UK

Abstract:
Security and efficiency at airports has, in recent years, become a critical issue in the eyes of the general public, security services and politicians alike.. This paper presents a high-resolution, indoor location technique, based on RF-over-fibre, that is ideally suited to the monitoring of a high density of people and/or objects in such a situation.

extracts

[…]

The basic concept is for airports to be fitted with a network of combined RF-ID tag readers and high-resolution panoramic cameras, spaced at around 15–20m intervals, which are used to monitor the movements of people around the terminal building or buildings. Each passenger carries or wears an RF-ID tag, which can allow location to an accuracy of around 1m, and the video and tag data merged to give a very powerful surveillance capability with a wide range of potential benefits. The tags developed at UCL are transmit-only devices that do not store any data but emit a beacon with a unique ID at frequent, randomised intervals, at least once per second, and this is cross-referenced to passenger information already stored on the system — such as name, flight number and perhaps even biometric data. This gives the effect of intelligence in the tags — passenger information can appear to be ‘read’ from them though it actually resides on the computer system. The tags and reader infrastructure allow convenient monitoring of passenger flows and identification of late-running passengers.

The system can offer a number of benefits; it can be used to control entry to secure areas, allow the precise automated-tracking of certain individuals, help to evacuate the building in the event of an emergency, provide rapid location and imaging of lost children and help to ensure that large aircraft are boarded efficiently by detecting and locating stray passengers. The Optag/ TINA consortium have calculated that cost of flight delays due to late-running passengers amounts to some 150M Euros per year in Europe alone, so considerable savings are possible with a system of this nature. A high degree of functionality can be built in to the system, dependent largely on the ingenuity of the user interface.

PROTOTYPE SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
The prototype Optag / TINA camera comprises a cluster of eight 1600 ×1200 pixel CMOS sensors, producing a 9600 ×1200 panoramic image. A portion of this image, or a lower-resolution panorama, is streamed to the central monitoring station using gigabit ethernet with the UDP protocol. The camera resolution allows recognition of a human face to 6m and detection to around 30m.

The tag system is rather challenging in that it is required to operate at relatively long range (10–20m), perform location estimates and simultaneously identify large numbers ( >1000) of tagged people or items in any given cell. To meet these challenges, the Optag/ TINA team have designed a unique tag protocol that sends short bursts of data, at randomly-varying intervals, with a mean update rate of twice per second. Each tag reader uses direction finding to establish the bearing of the tag and then two or more bearings are used to establish the location. The prototype tag board, operating at 5.8GHz, is shown in Figure 2. The peak tag output power is 10mW, but the mean output power is very much lower — around 20µW, many orders of magnitude below the threshold of emissions that would constitute any conceivable health risk. The prototype tag is a little larger than a credit card, but with miniaturization, could be very compact and easily incorporated in a small card or unobtrusive wristband.

The tag readers, shown in Figure 3, are based on four antennas and receivers mounted at 90-degree spacings, which perform amplitude-comparison direction finding [3] on each tag burst. This straightforward approach provides a reasonable accuracy of around 1m within a 10m radius. However, the effects of reflections, signal blockage in crowded environments and other propagation artifacts are likely to be significant and will most likely diminish the achievable accuracy.

[…]

The prototype system is designed with a 0.5s repetition interval equating to a mean update interval of 0.9s —indicating that the position of all tags can be determined and updated on a second-by-second basis. Thus the system can easily accommodate 1000 tags in any given cell, which is probably close to the limit of the number of people who can possibly be squeezed into a 10m radius area! …

[…]

A range of trials have been conducted in the departure lounge at Debrecen airport , Hungary. Both the camera and tag systems have been evaluated based on three cells each containing a camera and RF-ID tag reader unit. As far as the tag system is concerned, the location accuracy was assessed with the tag readers mounted both centrally and in the corners of the rooms and with a ‘passenger’ wearing the tag in a variety of locations and facing in several directions. Measurements were repeated in crowd situations in which the tag-wearing person was surrounded by other people.

The general conclusions of this trial were that the best positioning of the tag readers is in the corners of the room, location errors are indeed dependent on tag orientation and obstructions due to other individuals, and operating range exceeds expectations — 25m being easily accomplished even under the most adverse conditions.

CONCLUSION
The Optag / TINA projects have demonstrated the feasibility of a combined RF-ID tag and panoramic video monitoring approach in an airport environment, including a proof-of-concept trial in a Hungarian airport building. All indications are that the concept is sound, though any future adoption will require further development and commercialisation, in particular the network infrastructure and associated software to both operate the Optag/ TINA system and interface with existing airport computer systems and databases. The mode of deployment of the tag element of the system is controversial and somewhat critical to certain areas of operation. For instance, in a security context, it would be crucial to ensure that each person carries his/her own tag and does not lose or swap them. One way in which this can be achieved is to incorporate the tag in a wristband that sends an alert code should it be removed. The detection mechanism could be a small capacitively-coupled current across the sealed wrist-band which is interrupted if it is either cut or removed. With suitable circuit miniaturisation, the wristband could be small and unobtrusive, perhaps made of thin card. However, public acceptance of the use of wristbands for this purpose may well be an issue, so exactly how the tags are deployed remains open at this stage.

Current work is focusing on an alterative tag and reader implementation involving TDOA location exploiting RF-over-fibre transmission, which offers the prospect of significantly improved location accuracy and multipath mitigation Another area that has huge potential for future development is the user interface, where a whole host of features could be incorporated including, for instance, an additional, simple interface at departure gates to alert staff to late-running passengers; an automated monitoring and announcement system to contact such late-running passengers as and when required; extensive archiving facilities to store tag and at least a subset of video data; seamless linking of tag ID, personal data and biometric data and market research analysis of data, to aid the design of airport layouts for instance to optimise passenger flows or to feed into charging models for the various retail outlets. It is clear that, once such an infrastructure is in place, there is huge potential to make use of the capabilities in a variety of different manners, many of which have probably not yet been foreseen. The system may also find application in a range of other arenas, including hospitals (e.g., maternity units), theme parks, exhibition halls and concert venues.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank EPSRC and the European Commission, particularly Jean-Pierre Lentz, for their encouragement and support during this work

PDF : http://piers.mit.edu/piersproceedings/download.php?file=cGllcnMyMDA3cHJhZ3VlfDJQM18wMjU1LnBkZnwwNzAzMDkwODUyNTk=
HTML : MIT

TINA Project summary
from the EPSRC website (page for Cambridge University grant 2006-2009 )

Abstract:
Diverse applications are expected to appear in the future with complex and often varying service requirements, traffic profiles and user expectations. These will require extremely advanced adaptive computing and communication systems to provide users with mobile, secure and automatic means of conducting business. A prime application area is in international travel which continues to grow supported by a significant investment in infrastructure, such as Heathrow Terminal 5. An intelligent, adaptive, self-organising wired/wireless infrastructure is essential in this environment. It is anticipated that the considerable growth in the complexity of this infrastructure will not just be due to the proliferation of established fixed equipment such as wireless base stations, surveillance cameras, security detection equipment, display and terminal equipment. The requirements will also be for a much wider deployment of more compact portable equipment, for example, location and control equipment on a wide range of transportation equipment. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags supported by a transparent optical-RF network can be used to sense, locate and track an array of objects including luggage, mobile assets and commercial goods and can provide additional features such as boarding pass auto-tags and access control tags. These active RFID tags will operate at low data rates, typically 64 kbit/s, but an airport environment can be expected to contain a few million of them. Mobile biometric sensors will be widely deployed in this environment providing advanced features. A range of fixed and mobile terminals will provide additional security measures such as chemical detection and analysis, while other terminals, fixed and mobile, will support passenger information and entertainment services on transit. The infrastructure will support an array of personal passenger and staff wireless media rich devices. The wired/wireless network envisaged will thus be huge and complex, supporting perhaps 10 million information sources, with an anticipated peak aggregate data rate of order 100 Gbit/s in a relatively local access environment. This is beyond the capability of any current network and research is needed to understand the principles upon which an effective system could be constructed. As this is such an ambitious and multidisciplinary project, a collaborative programme is proposed. The project has strong industrial involvement and support from Laing O’Rourke who will provide the application context, share design experience, user requirements and architectural constraints and Marconi who will contribute expertise in complex communication system design. At the outline proposal stage, we received feedback from EPSRC that they would welcome additional collaborations with those involved in airport operations. We are delighted that, in response, BAA and Boeing have agreed to become involved in the project, and within UCL links have been made to Dr Paul Brennan, who will contribute substantial knowledge of RfID, being involved in a major European project in the area. Finally we have additionally sought to involve the equipment company Motorola and the installation planning company Red-M to ensure that we can receive expert advice across all areas within the project.

SOURCE http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/ViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/D076803/1

[…]

Thank you to the lurker who emailed this.

Right off the bat, this leaps from the screen:

‘People will probably have issues with the technology but you have to weigh the benefits with any down sides,’ added Elmirghani. ‘This kind of information is already available if you have a mobile phone. Your position can be triangulated but that information hasn’t been available to airports. Overall there can be more benefits than some of the losses.’

This is the same old argument, proffered by imbeciles, anti intellectuals, ostrich posturers and dumbasses. “They are already half way up your ass, so why not push it all the way in“. These people cannot distinguish between the tracking your position as a consequence of delivery of a service you subscribe to (cellular telephones) and one that is compulsory, imposed by a government or its proxy. You can always turn off your cellular telephone at any time to hide your location. Compulsory tracking is an entirely different matter. Triangulation data from cellphones is not available to airports because they do not need it, cellphones have nothing to do with the operation of airports and there is no cross over whatsoever between the two services.

There are no benefits to giving up your liberty for security, especially when the security you are getting is not really security at all but Security Theatre, which is a lie and way to rob people of their human dignity.

I find it to be disgusting that there are people out there who think that they have the right to say what rights are worth losing for the general public, and then to blithley impliment systems that take away those rights, in the belief that they are doing what is good for everyone. Imagine that Jaafar Elmirghani believes, “..that overall there can be more benefits to society than some of the losses if we compulsorily circumcise all females in Britain.” There is no difference between that belief and the belief that tracking everyone everywhere at all times is worth the losses of personal liberty because ‘society’ benefits overall.

That is the true face of the thinking of these monsters.

As for ‘probably’ have issues, why, yes indeed professor, we do have a BIG problem with your snake-oil Security Theatre, and as we have seen, Terminal 5 has had to climb down on its absurd fascist fingerprinting plan.

I am convinced that all of this snake-oil is going to go the way of the dinosaurs. When the number of people being hurt by these systems reaches a critical mass, they will be abandoned, in the manner that I have previously described.

Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.

This means they can eventually fire all the immigration staff, who have blithely gone along with all this nonsense. They should have watched, The Man in the White Suit before they went gung ho for the biometric net….

From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers’ faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.

Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

What they are saying that is for the decades that humans have been comparing faces to passports, it has not been working well.

What utter nonsense.

Computer programmers have been working for years to make software that can match the human brain’s ability to recognize faces, and they still have not got it right. The best tool for recognizing a face is a human brain in a living person. What this is actually about is automating the checking of innocent people against criminal databases. This system does not simply check that the person carrying the passport is the person in front of the machine; it checks wether or not the police want you, which is nothing to do with plain immigration. Immigration controls work well without biometric passports. The first control should be getting out of Shengen and the other damaging EU treaties that allow anyone to enter your country from almost anywhere.

But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of “false negatives” – innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

And this is what we have been saying for years; the computer will say wether or not you are guilty or wanted. When a false positive comes up, what sort of extra checks will they make? Will they DNA swab you, harshly interrogate you (both of which means detaining you) all on the say of a COMPUTER.

This, my friends, is total insanity.

They may be redirected into conventional passport queues, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks.

Why take the risk of being embarrassed in that way? Why not just queue normally and not have your details checked against the criminal computer?

Ministers are eager to set up trials in time for the summer holiday rush, but have yet to decide how many airports will take part. If successful, the technology will be extended to all UK airports.

Ministers are retarded. Period.

The automated clearance gates introduce the new technology to the UK mass market for the first time and may transform the public’s experience of airports.

Ahhh, a Guardian fluff line!

Existing biometric, fast-track travel schemes – iris and miSense – operate at several UK airports, but are aimed at business travellers who enroll in advance.

And?!! GET TO THE POINT YOU SIMPLETON.

The rejection rate in trials of iris recognition, by means of the unique images of each traveller’s eye, is 3% to 5%, although some were passengers who were not enrolled but jumped into the queue.

SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON SIMPLETON!

The trials emerged at a conference in London this week of the international biometrics industry, top civil servants in border control, and police technology experts. Gary Murphy, head of operational design and development for the UK Border Agency, told one session: “We think a machine can do a better job [than manned passport inspections]. What will the public reaction be? Will they use it? We need to test and see how people react and how they deal with rejection. We hope to get the trial up and running by the summer.

I want to see how Neu Labour deal with rejection….ha!

Some conference participants feared passengers would only be fast-tracked to the next bottleneck in overcrowded airports. Automated gates are intended to help the government’s progress to establishing a comprehensive advance passenger information (API) security system that will eventually enable flight details and identities of all passengers to be checked against a security watch list.

My emphasis.

The Guardian is one of the guilty parties for using this sort of language unchallenged. What on earth do they mean by ‘security watch list’? Who says who goes on it, who maintains it, etc etc. The americans are having a hell of a time with their own misguided ‘security watch lists’ that have nothing whatsoever to do with security, but which have everything to do with what sort of books you read.

Phil Booth of the No2Id Campaign said: “Someone is extremely optimistic. The technology is just not there. The last time I spoke to anyone in the facial recognition field they said the best systems were only operating at about a 40% success rate in a real time situation. I am flabbergasted they consider doing this at a time when there are so many measures making it difficult for passengers.”

And even if it worked 100% of the time, is it moral? This is the question we will never see asked outside of the internets.

Gus Hosein, a specialist at the London School of Economics in the interplay between technology and society, said: “It’s a laughable technology. US police at the SuperBowl had to turn it off within three days because it was throwing up so many false positives. The computer couldn’t even recognise gender. It’s not that it could wrongly match someone as a terrorist, but that it won’t match them with their image. A human can make assumptions, a computer can’t.”

And they are not using this to find ‘terrorists’ because those people are not on the system as criminals. They only get onto the system AFTER they have done a martyrdom operation. These systems are snake oil, and once again, they are not for ‘terrorists’ they are for YOU the ordinary person, so that they can control and monitor YOU, to force you to comply with the smallest of laws.

Eventually, the ‘security watch list’ that this journalist glosses over will be accessible to every council worker who will be able to put your name on the list so they can apprehend you and your children for, say, not attending school, or putting the paper garbage in the glass bin.

If you do not think this will happen, then you are insane. Just as RIPA is being used to spy on parents trying to get their children into good schools, these biometric gates, ‘the biometric net’ and ‘security watch lists’ will be used in every conceivable…and inconceivable…way.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?

Project Semaphore, the first stage in the government’s e-borders programme, monitors 30m passenger movements a year through the UK. By December 2009, API will track 60% of all passengers and crew movements. The Home Office aim is that by December 2010 the system will be monitoring 95%. Total coverage is not expected to be achieved until 2014 after similar checks have been introduced for travel on “small yachts and private flights”.

The best laid plans….here is another scenario.

After massive public rejection of the surveillance state, and country wide vandalism of the millions of CCTV cameras in the UK, it was decided to remove all traces of the monitoring apparatus that cast a debilitating fog over life in the UK. Like the fall of East Germany and the STASI, the changes came overnight as the revulsion over the mutated form of British life became universal and ‘went nuclear’.

“We are not going to live like this anymore. Britain has been turned into a prison, and we have had enough”

Parliament has drawn up a list of all ‘database state’ laws going back to the early days of the now discredited Blair government, all of which are to be struck off the books in one fell swoop.

“This has been a long time in coming, but the writing has been on the wall for years; the silent grumbling of the British public has turned into an earthquake of non-violent dissent. Just like the Berlin Wall, the database state has been dismantled one camera at a time in a single day, without any opposition from the police.”

So far around 8m to 10m UK biometric passports, containing a computer chip holding the carrier’s facial details, have been issued since they were introduced in 2006. The last non-biometric passports will cease to be valid after 2016.

Can you hear the sound?

Home Office minister Liam Byrne said: “Britain’s border security is now among the toughest in the world and tougher checks do take time, but we don’t want long waits. So the UK Border Agency will soon be testing new automatic gates for British and European Economic Area [EEA] citizens. We will test them this year and if they work put them at all key ports [and airports].”

And if they DONT work?

That is an interesting question!!!!!

Wednesdays 23 of April

legalize the drug consumption in Argentina the International – (10:00 hrs.)

A court of Buenos Aires annuls thousands of cases in proceedings of defendant to have marijuana

They consider that consuming they are the factor of a chain that finishes in the narcotics trafficker The Financier in line Buenos Aires, 23 of April.

A federal court of Buenos Aires legalizeed the individual drug consumption in the Argentine capital, with which they would be annulled thousand of cases in proceedings of people accused to have small amounts of marijuana, according to the failure that publishes the press of Buenos Aires today.

The failure indicates that Room 1 of Federal Camera of Appeals declared the article unconstitutionality of the law that punishes the drug users, promulgated in 1989.

The questioned norm punishes the consumers to consider that they are the base of a chain that finishes in the narcotics trafficker. But the court considered that such single presumption generated “an avalanche of files destined to consumers without managing to ascend in the links of the chain of the drug traffic”.

The failure was applied to the case of two young people stopped by the Police by cigarette possession of marijuana and tablets of éxtasis when they went to a celebration of electronic music in Buenos Aires, in May of 2007.

Although the question must be dissolved in the Supreme Court of Justice, the failure of the court of Buenos Aires is in line with the policy of the Government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in reforming the laws to legalize the drug consumption.

During the 51 Extraordinary Session of the Economic and Social Council of the UN, celebrated the month last in Vienna, Argentine minister of Justice and Seguridad, Aníbal Fernandez, noted the “absolute failure” of the policy to punish the drug users.

Of this form, and for the first time in 30 years, Argentina the consumer left his adhesion to the American position to persecute so much to the drug dealer like a. (With EFE/MVC information)

[…]

http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/

At last, the prohibition era is starting to disintegrate.

How long will it be before other countries realize the emperor has no clothes, and abandon this absurd edict from the evil empire?

The americans have more people in prison (2006) than China (2008).

That culture, where breasts cannot be shown on television, has exported its neanderthal ideas of justice and how to deal with medical and social ills to countries that to their eternal shame, simply obeyed like sheep. The fact of the matter is, Marijuana should never have been made illegal, just as alcohol should never have been made illegal, and the same goes for all other ‘drugs’. The countries with sensible approaches to ‘drug’ taking were the most peaceful, most civilized countries, with very small prison populations and low crime rates. This evidence was ignored throughout the twentieth century and the result, in america’s case, is an exploding prison population, one of the most violent countries on earth, and a culture of criminality that stretches from the drug dealer in the street right up to the CIA

Once again, this demonstrates how important an independent judiciary is to the workings of a free country. Intelligent judges with a free hand can interpret the law correctly. In a country where the judiciary is broken or corrupt or puritanical or insane, like the the USA, the country can be destroyed.

U.S. to Insist That Travel Industry Get Fingerprints

By Spencer S. Hsu and Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; Page A08

The U.S. government today will order commercial airlines and cruise lines to prepare to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the country under a security initiative that the industry has condemned as costly and burdensome.

The proposal does not say where airlines must collect fingerprints — at airport check-in counters, departure gates or kiosks somewhere in between. But the government estimates the undertaking will cost airlines $2.3 billion over 10 years, a U.S. homeland security official said.

The overall economic impact on companies, passengers and the government is expected to exceed $3.5 billion, industry lobbyists said, at a time when carriers are struggling with safety concerns, high fuel costs and passenger complaints.

Formal announcement of the plan to track the departure of foreign visitors, as part of the Homeland Security Department’s US-VISIT program, comes after an extended battle between the security agency and airlines.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff linked the effort to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws recently, saying airlines were obstructing the measure for commercial reasons.

“If we don’t have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it,” Chertoff said recently. “We have to decide who is going to win this fight. Is it going to be the airline industry, or is it going to be the people who believe we should know who leaves the country by air?”

Doug Lavin, regional vice president for the International Air Transport Association, which represents major U.S. and international carriers, said the government, not airlines, should collect fingerprints. “This is ludicrous,” Lavin said. “We can’t afford anything in the billions to support a program that should be a government program.”

Fingerprinting an estimated 33 million departing foreign passengers a year will result in “delayed departures, missed connections here and around the world,” Lavin said.

Launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, US-VISIT is intended to automate the processing of visitors entering and exiting the country, using fingerprints and digital photographs to help find criminals, potential terrorists and people who overstay visas and join the nation’s illegal immigrant population.

While the program has succeeded in recording nearly 100 million people entering the country since 2004, the DHS has struggled to implement the exit portion. Frustrated at the department’s slow pace, Congress last year set a June 2009 deadline for DHS to collect fingerprints from departing air passengers in a law to implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Otherwise, Congress said, the government cannot expand the Visa Waiver Program, under which residents of 27 friendly countries can visit the United States without a visa. Inclusion is a priority for nations including South Korea and Greece, and the tourism industry has also targeted South America for expansion.

The proposal will be open for a 60-day comment period. DHS could decide after that time where fingerprinting must be conducted, or it could leave the decision up to airlines, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the proposal has not been formally announced.

[…]

Washington Post

We all know that US-VISIT is a completely useless and bogus waste of time that violates millions of people.

We also know that the USVISIT ‘exit system’ is not in place.

USVISIT is a costly boondoggle. The penny has dropped about this, and Uncle Sham does not want to spend any more money on it.

Instead of building the infrastructure of the exit systems themselves, they are going to shift the burden on making it work to the airlines.

Like it says in this post, the exit system is currently VOLUNTARY. That is clearly insane, almost as insane as the USVISIT itself.

Pocket Satan Chertoff now says that, “If we don’t have US-VISIT air exit by this time next year, it will only be because the airline industry killed it,”. Once again, we have a government putting ‘border security’ (which this clearly is not, it is Security Theatre not real security) in the hands of private companies, and, quite absurdly, claiming that if the system is not in place, it is the fault of those companies, not the government. This is exactly what the UK government has done with fingerprinting at Heathrow Terminal 5.

If USVISIT is so very important, a key part of the US ‘security strategy’, and if the ‘terrorist threat’ was real, then to leave its complete implementation to the will of private companies is insane, and blatantly negligent.

The fact is that the living bag of bones Chertoff knows very well that USVISIT is a failure, that it has cost over $1.3 billion, apprehended only “1,200 criminals and immigration violators” and that any further money spend on this immoral, useless, wasteful, disgraceful, awful, satanic, abominable, monstrous, insane and stupid project would be indefensible, even to the expert and frictionless lie machine of ‘Homeland Security’.

Our only hope is that the airlines grow a backbone and stand up for the rights of their customers. Certainly, BA will be very reluctant to go along with this, after having been stung by their Terminal 5 fingerprinting fiasco, which is set to cost them some money, never mind the embarrassment.

The biometric fad, the most recent in a long line of snake oil solutions to non existent problems, is going to be consigned to the dustbin of technology history, along with 8 track tapes and other obsolete contraptions that seem absurd today. This fad is going to dies faster as more people wake up to what these tools really mean, and how corrosive they are to human society.

The East Germans know all about this.

And so do you.

One can only hope that the economic collapse of the USA will make it impossible for them to maintain this foolishness as their empire implodes and there is no money to run these insane programs. File under the spinoffs and benefits of Imperial collapse.

You KNOW what it says, in every way, since you read BLOGDIAL.
The original.
The post I snarfed it from.
Linked from Lew Rockwell.
One Real American’s take.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for “Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood)”, is the motto of the French Republic, and is a typical example of a tripartite motto. Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among others and was not really institutionnalized until the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century. Debates concerning the compatibility and order of the three terms began as soon as the French Revolution.

We can now strike off the first word for sure:

PARIS (Reuters) – French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was “destroying our country and imposing its acts”.

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

She has been fined four times for inciting racial hatred since 1997, at first 1,500 euros and most recently 5,000.

Prosecutor Anne de Fontette told the court she was seeking a tougher sentence than usual, adding: “I am a little tired of prosecuting Mrs Bardot.”

Bardot did not attend the trial because she said she was physically unable to. The verdict is expected in several weeks.

French anti-racist groups complained last year about comments Bardot made about the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy that was later published by her foundation.

Muslims traditionally mark Eid al-Adha by slaughtering a sheep or another animal to commemorate the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s orders.

France is home to 5 million Muslims, Europe’s largest Muslim community, making up 8 percent of France’s population.

“I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country and imposing its acts,” the star of ‘And God created woman’ and ‘Contempt’ said.

Bardot has previously said France is being invaded by sheep-slaughtering Muslims and published a book attacking gays, immigrants and the unemployed, in which she also lamented the “Islamisation of France”.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1584799120080415

There is no liberty in a country where you cannot think, say and publish what you want.

This is the country that gave us Voltaire, (insert list of great French writers and philosophers), but which now prosecutes people for uttering opinions.

And I can guarantee you that many French people will be cheering in the privacy of their own minds, these words of Brigitte Bardot; but wether or not her words are popular is not the point. All human beings have the right to free speech in countries that claim they are free countries. If a country does not allow free speech, then that country is not a free country. Full stop.

Listen to Ezra Lavant explanining to an ignorant pig exactly what free speech means. You should watch all the parts of this.

The lie of ‘hate speech’ is a disease that is spreading all over the civilized world. There is no such thing as ‘hate speech‘; there is only speech, and you have the right to it. This is non negotiable, and Ezra Levant sums it up perfectly. Brigitte Bardot has the right to hate, she has the right to express that hate, and in a free country, no one should be able to muzzle her or stifle her or question her.

Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest Zakaria Botros — named Islam’s “Public Enemy #1” by the Arabic newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid — has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries — mostly Muslim converts — he appears frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., “Life TV“). There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance — free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons of Mohammed. Botros’s excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic leaders throughout the Middle East.

Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy reach. Egypt’s Copts — members of one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East — have in many respects come to personify the demeaning Islamic institution of “dhimmitude” (which demands submissiveness from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam “ten demands,” whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam’s own radical demands on non-Muslims.

The result? Mass conversions to Christianity — if clandestine ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi Allam — who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday — is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, many of them persuaded by Botros’s public ministry. More recently, al-Jazeera noted Life TV’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.

First, the new media — particularly satellite TV and the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) — have made it possible for questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world — even from Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned — call into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to accept Christ.

Secondly, Botros’s broadcasts are in Arabic — the language of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros’s mastery of classical Arabic not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature — much of it untapped by Western writers who rely on translations — and so report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within this vast corpus.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Guardian, once again, has a pro-corporate, pro-pharmaceutical propaganda piece in its toilet paper.

It goes like this:

Organic food ‘no benefit to health’
Eating fruit and veg is more important than whether produce is ‘green’, says expert

Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
Sunday March 30, 2008
The Observer

Parents who want their children to eat healthily should focus more on serving them extra fruit and vegetables and less on giving them expensive organic produce, according to one of the country’s leading nutrition experts.

Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said families were becoming ‘deeply confused’ by conflicting messages about healthy eating.

The market for organic food reached more than £2bn last year, with most consumers from households with children under the age of 15. An average of £37m is spent each week on organic produce, mostly in south-east England.

[…]

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2269340,00.html

Without going into wether or not Lord Krebs is corrupt or not, or is a paid liar or not, or wether or not Monsanto, GSK or any other corporation is really behind this proclamation or not, we can say one thing for sure.

Organic food is better for you than non organic food.

And I can prove it.

Lets say you are someone with an infant child.

You have two glass ten litre beakers, marked ‘A’ and ‘B’, of distilled water in front of you and your baby.

I take a container of commercially available liquid pesticide, open the lid, and dip the tip of a thin sewing needle into the surface of the pesticide. I then dip that needle into the beaker marked ‘B’ and then stir the water vigorously.

I pour some water from beaker ‘A’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘A’, and some water from beaker ‘B’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘B’. I pour out 90% of the water in bottle ‘B’ and then replace the missing volume with water from beaker ‘A’.

Now.

Which bottle do you give your baby to drink?

Any sane person will give their baby bottle ‘A’. No parent with a single working brain cell will knowingly give their child the water in bottle ‘B’ which has been tainted by a miniscule amount of pesticide.

This is what Organic food is about, at the most basic level. Deliberately feeding people pesticide, at any concentration IS INSANE. It is better to eat food that has not come into contact with pesticides than it is to eat food that has come into contact with pesticides.

Organic food has not been sprayed with pesticides, and so therefore, it is better for you.

And that is THAT.

Then of course, there are all of the other ramifications of spraying crops, the pesticide entering into and remaining in the soil and rivers, the animals poisoned by it, etc etc. But I digress. Anyone who tells you that pesticide in small concentrations is safe to eat either works for one of the manufacturers of these poisons, is a paid liar for them, or they are stupid or ignorant.

Exactly the same demonstration can be made about organic meat.

Organic meat has not been injected with growth hormones, steroids and all manner of unnecessary and monstrous interventions. Would you feed your child a piece of meat that has trace amounts of animal growth hormone in it, or one that has no trace of such a thing?

The choice is obvious, and anyone who says that these trace amounts of drugs is harmless is is one of the above, a liar, a paid liar, ignorant or just plain stupid.

I would love to know how much money these journalists and newspaper editors are paid to regurgitate this nonsense unchallenged. Obviously they have no morals or human decency.

Thankfully, the majority of people are now waking up to why they should be eating organic food, and no, they are not so stupid as to conflate having a balanced diet with what organic food is all about. These imbeciles can publish all the papers they like, make all the proclamations they like in whatever newspaper or media they choose; we are ignoring them. Every time they publish a new paper or make another absurd proclamation, they become further discredited, and every time a trashpaper like the Guardian uncritically reprints their lies, they too become more discredited an look more foolish.

The same, tired religious dogma is trundled out:

However, according to Krebs, an eminent scientist and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this ‘green’ produce.

And we do not care. We do not care about the eminence of Krebs, Jesus College, Oxford, reliable peer reviewed evidence, his proclamations or anything else these suspicious characters, charlatans and religious fanatics come up with. Their credentials are meaningless. We are not eating poison because you say it is safe to do so. We are not going to give our children pesticide to drink because there is ‘reliable, peer-reviewed evidence’ saying it is safe. We are not going to sit around and wait to be told what is or is not beneficial or what is or is not safe to eat. You have lost all credibility, all authority, and no matter how you are announced in the newspapers the slavering ‘journalists’ intoning from your sacred scroll of hierarchical science power, we do not, and will not believe what you say.

Note how when the writer of this nonsense tries to balance out her article by quoting The Soil Association, she only quotes ‘A Sopkewoman’. No list of credentials, letters, academic associations…just ‘A Spokeswoman’ not even ‘an eminent Spokeswoman’. These sorts of cheap tricks no longer work; in fact, they can never work when the initial premise is so absurd, counterintuitive and blatantly false. What is in fact happening is that the more you are associated with these discredited bodies, the LESS you are believed, thanks to the decades of lying for money, bullshit and PR.

But you know this!

Organic food is better for you, better for the environment and better for the animals that are used as food.
Organic food is bad for evil scientists, bad for pharmaceutical companies and bad for fear-mongering journalists.

And that, my friends, is a proclamation you can trust!