An NHS primary care trust has warned of a new risk to the confidentiality of medical records stored under the National Programme for IT [NPfIT] after a celebrity was admitted into hospital and more than 50 staff viewed the patient’s records.The warning by North Tees Primary Care Trust raises questions about whether hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who would be able to view electronic records under the NPfIT would have their accesses to information policed robustly.

Systems that support electronic patient records – a central part of the NPfIT – produce audit trails of who has accessed what information. But it’s unclear whether busy NHS employees would have adequate time to police audit trails

And Computer Weekly has published evidence of a culture in the NHS that is incompatible with tight lax security. Smartcards have been shared so that busy doctors can share PCs without having to log on and off each time. This means it can prove difficult to establish who has accessed confidential patient information.

North Tees Primary Care Trust says that the unauthorised access by staff of patient records presents a “new security risk” under the Department of Health’s Care Record Guarantee – which gives an undertaking to patients that their confidential data will be protected from unauthorised access.

The trust says in a paper to the Board:

“A new security risk … has been identified as part of the Care Records Guarantee. This risk is around staff inappropriately accessing [a] patient’s records who are not part of their care load. It was noted in an audit that a recent admission of a celebrity to a hospital had revealed over 50 staff viewing the patient record… Staff should only access records of patients with whom they have a legitimate relationship.”

The document paper adds that trusts have to demonstrate that regular audits are undertaken and that they have “disciplinary procedures in place to deal with breaches”.

If staff wanted to access the medical records of a well-known individual or anyone else they were interested in, the risk with paper-based medical records would be smaller because the files would ordinarily be held in one location, and may not be accessible remotely. It’s unlikely that dozens of staff could view a paper record without drawing attention to themselves.

Evidence on the security risks of electronic records was submitted to the House of Commons’ Health Committee by the UK Computing Research Committee, which is an expert panel of the British Computer Society, the Institution of of Engineering and Technology and IT-related scientists.

It said: “As a general principle, a single system accessible by all NHS employees from all trusts maximises rather than minimises the risk of a security breach. It increases … the opportunity for access to any one patient’s data from some point on the extended system… it is important that a formal analysis is carried out to identify risks and show that they have been reduced as low as reasonably practicable.”

A spokesman for North Tees Primary Care Trust said the accessing of a celebrity’s records took place elsewhere, not within the trust. The spokesman was unable to give any details of the incident or where it took place.

Links:

Smartcard sharing by an NHS trust – a breach of IT security or a practical way around slow access to the NHS Care Records Service?

Care Record Guarantee [for example on the confidentiality of patient data]

Loss of 1.3 million sensitive medical files in the US – possible implications for the NHS’s National Programme for IT

Department of Health and Connecting for Health security flaws

Major reports on NHS and NPfIT

Evidence submitted by UK Computing Research Committee to the Health Committee on the Electronic Patient Record

Report raises further NPfIT concerns – British Computer Society [Security]

Computer Weekly

My emphasis.

And of course, if the spine is implemented as they desire, you can multiply the 50 Hippocratic violators, nosey parkers, scumbags by 1000 as every terminal connected to the spine will be able to see everyone’s records without restriction.

The same goes for ContactPoint, the child violating database, and of course, the nearly aborted NIR/Identity Card.

All of these systems will be abused from the day they go online.

One can only hope that some brave person leaks the personal details of every member of parliament and the house of Lords and their many offspring, so that we can see whose daughter had an abortion, which of their children is on anti-psychotics, who has been beating their wife, which MP is infertile, which MP(s) have Gonorrhea / Syphilis / HIV etc etc.

THEN we will start to hear loud howls of disdain for the system, with rapid moves to dismantle it and then blame the previous administration(s) for the failure.

In the meantime, you really must have your records physically deleted from your GPs computer, so that the data does not get snarfled into the NHS Spine. If you do not even bother to ask, then you only have yourself to blame, when all of a sudden you are surprised when your new employer says, “I hope that we wont have any more skiing accidents while you are working with us; we need your commitment to us to be 100%”.

Yes.

Your employer got a hold of your medical records and saw that you broke your leg whilst on holiday in the Alps two years ago.

How did he do it?

YOU LET HIM you JACKASS!!!

UPDATE

Of course, this is not a ‘new security risk’ as the report fallaciously states; this security risk is inherent to these poorly designed systems

Anti-terrorist programs depend on technology — remotely controlled cameras, automatic license plate readers, interception of cell-phone signals and high-tech explosives detectors.

It might pay to ask: Is this high-tech surveillance security or security theater? Does it provide enough additional safety to justify the added intrusiveness? Or do the bad guys just find a way around it?

For example, if terrorists don’t know that the National Security Agency can intercept their phone calls in remote parts of the world, the intercepts will be useful. Once they know, they stop using cell phones.

This is doubtless a nuisance to them, but hardly a show-stopper. If they know about automated monitoring of e-mail, again, they stop using it or, depending on what they are doing, use an anonymous, disposable Hotmail account.

The inability thus far to capture Osama bin Laden demonstrates the ease of circumventing surveillance techniques.

For a while people talked about combating steganography — the hiding of messages in, say, Web pages by various coding schemes. At least some security folk wanted specialized software to examine pages for messages exchanged among terrorists. Useful sometimes, perhaps — unless the bad guys know about it.

Then they communicate by prearranged codes. For example, a post on a classic-car site looking for a blue 1957 Chevy six-cylinder means one thing, whereas looking for a red 1958 Ford means another.

If a suicide bomber (which seems to be the threat we face) thinks he can’t get his bomb past nitrate sniffers and specialized X-ray machines at the airport, he simply blows himself up in a crowded part of the terminal. If the point is to protect airplanes, security may work.

If the point is to stop terrorism, it is useless.

There is no way to stop a guy with a backpack from getting on Metro at rush hour.

New York is set to spend $90 million on more cameras and license plate readers. What will this accomplish? A CNN story on the system quoted Steve Swain, a security specialist who spent years working with London’s net of cameras, who said, “I don’t know of a single incident where CCTV [closed-circuit television] has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act.”

Cameras aid in the investigation of a crime already committed, he said, and “you need to do this piece of theater so that if the terrorists are looking at you, they can see that you’ve got some measures in place.”

But catching the offender is of trivial importance compared with preventing the terrorism. Is the theater aimed at the terrorists, or at the public? Surveillance increases apace. From the Times Online of London, “An ‘intelligent’ CCTV camera designed to predict when a person may be about to commit a crime is being tested in high streets and shopping centres.” I have encountered brain-scan research endeavoring to determine moods thought to be associated with terrorists.

According to a recent ABC News poll, the public favors surveillance by almost 3 to 1. Governments from federal to local want to integrate cameras and similar devices.

Concern with terrorism makes it difficult to oppose new measures. And there is big money in making the equipment. All of this contributes to the acceptance of more and more surveillance, without anyone asking, “Wait, what are we really going to get out of this? Will it work?” In the words of Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York ACLU, “Technology is an unstoppable train. The question is whether we can maximize the benefits and minimize the harms.”

[…]

http://washingtontimes.com/

And there you have it; another Post Tipping Point Post^®

We have been saying this for years, as have many other people.

It must be pointed out that the ‘terrrorists using Steganography’ hysteria was just that hysteria. Not a single Steg image has ever been found in the wild by researchers and, certainly not a single image has ever been traced to a ‘terrorist’.

You can guarantee that if they ever found a ‘terrorist’s’ laptop with encrypted data on it, using any of the popular crypto wares like GPG/PGP that uncle sham would trumpet this from every one of their ‘news’ outlets and use it as an excuse to bring in some sort of ’90s style insane controls.

And then of course, if these people need to use telephones, all they need to do to have secure, untracable calls where NSA will not even know that a call is being made, is to use Asterisk in a private telephone network.

Finally ACLU Donna Lieberman is wrong to say that, “Technology is an unstoppable train.”. STUPIDITY is an unstoppable train, and as everyone knows, trains run on rails, and those rails eventually reach the ‘end of the line‘.

Stupidity (them/they) WILL come to an end, and reason (us/we) WILL prevail.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the modern home education movement was in its infancy. At that time, most Americans viewed home-styled education as a quaint tourist attraction or the lifestyle choice of those willing to endure more hardship than necessary.

What a difference a few decades makes.

Homeschooling has undergone an extreme makeover. From maverick to mainstream, the movement has acquired a glamorous, populist sheen.

Flip through a few issues of Sports Illustrated, circa 2007, and there’s no shortage of news about photogenic homeschoolers who make the athletic cut. Like Jessica Long who was born in Russia, resides in Baltimore, and is an accomplished swimmer. At 15, Jessica became the first paralympian to win the prestigious Sullivan Award, which honors the country’s top amateur athlete. Then there’s the dashing Joey Logano who, at 17, has already won a NASCAR race.

Even presidential hopefuls and their spouses have jumped on the school-thine-own bandwagon. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) has offered enthusiastic support for homeschooling families, and Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Senator John Edwards (D-North Carolina) told the Wall Street Journal that this fall she plans to home educate the couple’s two youngest children “with the help of a tutor.”

As for scholastic achievements, this national competition season was remarkable, seeing home scholars crowned as champs in three major events. A twelve-year-old New Mexican named Matthew Evans won the National Word Power competition, sponsored by Reader’s Digest. Thirteen-year-old Evan O’Dorney of California won the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and fourteen-year-old Caitlin Snaring of Washington was christened the National Geographic Bee champ.

Then there’s Micah Stanley of Minnesota who has yet to receive any lessons in a brick-and-mortar classroom building. For the past few years, he’s been enrolled in the Oak Brook College of Law, a distance learning law school headquartered in Sacramento. This past February, he took the grueling, three-day California general bar examination (California allows correspondence law students to sit for the bar), and he can now add “attorney” to his resume. In his spare time, he’s finishing up a book titled, How to Escape the Holding Tank: A Guide to Help You Get What You Want.

Micah is 19.

A teenage lawyer/budding author, however, wouldn’t surprise John Taylor Gatto, an outspoken critic of compulsory education laws and a former New York State Teacher of the Year. Writing in Harper’s Magazine, Gatto forthrightly argued that “genius is as common as dirt.”

Perhaps. But it’s also understandable that when everyday folks hear about the homeschooled Joeys and Caitlins and Micahs, they become a tad intimidated — as if this educational choice were the exclusive domain of obsessive-compulsive moms and dads with money to burn, time to spare, and a brood of driven, Type-A offspring.

Although it’s commendable when the young achieve Herculean goals, homeschooling has always been more about freedom and personal responsibility than winning an Ivy League scholarship or playing at Wimbledon. In general, it has attracted working-class families of all ethnicities and faiths, who have been eager to provide a nurturing, stimulating learning experience.

Of course, the unabashedly adventuresome are always an endearing staple of the movement. The Burns family, of Alaska, set out on a 36-foot sailboat this summer to travel the world for three years. Chris Burns (the dad) told the Juneau Empire he hopes “to connect with Juneau classrooms and host question-and-answer sessions while at sea,” as well as homeschool the two Burns children.

In a legal sense, homeschools serve as a glaring reminder of a complex issue that has become the stuff of landmark Supreme Court cases: does the state have the authority to coerce a youngster to attend school and sit at a desk for 12 years? Whether said child has the aptitude and maturity for such a long-term contract (or is it involuntary servitude?) remains an uncomfortable topic because, in the acceptable mantra of the day, “education is a right.”

Such a national conversation is long overdue, as there are plenty of signs — costly remedial education and rising dropout rates, to name two — to indicate that the status quo public school model isn’t kid-friendly.

Homeschooling, after all, began to catch on with the masses because a former US Department of Education employee argued that children, like delicate hothouse plants, required a certain type of environment to grow shoots and blossoms, and that loving parents, not institutions, could best create the greenhouses.

It was 1969 when the late Dr. Raymond Moore initiated an inquiry into previously neglected areas of educational research. Two of the questions that Moore and a team of like-minded colleagues set out to answer were (1) Is institutionalizing young children a sound, educational trend? and (2) What is the best timing for school entrance?

In the process of analyzing thousands of studies, twenty of which compared early school entrants with late starters, Moore concluded that developmental problems, such as hyperactivity, nearsightedness, and dyslexia, are often the result of prematurely taxing a child’s nervous system and mind with continuous academic tasks, like reading and writing.

The bulk of the research convinced Moore that formal schooling should be delayed until at least age 8 or 10, or even as late as 12. As he explained, “These findings sparked our concern and convinced us to focus our investigation on two primary areas: formal learning and socializing. Eventually, this work led to an unexpected interest in homeschools.”

“Above all, the merit of homeschooling is that it allows for experimentation, flexibility, and trial & error.”

Moore went on to write Home Grown Kids and Home-Spun Schools. The rest, as they say, is history. The books, published in the 1980s, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and offer practical advice to potential parent educators.

Nowadays, there’s a sea of such self-help material, scores of commercial products, and online opportunities solely dedicated to encouraging families to learn together in the convenience of their homes. Homeschooling has graduated into a time-tested choice that allows children to thrive, learn at their own pace, and which frequently inspires other success stories. As our nation is famous for encouraging immigrants to reinvent themselves and achieve the American Dream, so home education does for youngsters whether they are late bloomers or are candidates for Mensa.

Above all, the merit of homeschooling is that it allows for experimentation, flexibility, and trial and error. Here is the great contrast with state-provided education. As with all systems hammered out by bureaucracies, public schools get stuck in a rut, perpetuate failures, respond slowly to changing times, and resist all reforms. Errors are not localized and contained, but all consuming and system wide. It’s bad enough when such a system is used to govern labor contracts or postal service; it is a tragic loss when it is used to manage kids’ minds.

[…]

http://www.mises.org/story/2682

An email thread on BBQs latest 1 + 1 = 3 propaganda piece:

Have you see Twatchell’s piece in todays Grauniad?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/

Meanwhile the BBQ is continuing to toe the party line…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6987965.stm

The details of what happened on 9/11 may still be unclear and are important to some individuals. However, the truth of what happened is standing as tall and obvious as the twin towers themselves, and is all that should really matter to most people. It cannot be covered up, but if you are not awake you won’t be able to see it.

9/11 the big cover-up? Actually, 9/11 is still doing the job it was intended to do, 6 years down the line. It is making Twatchell and the 435 people who have posted comments on that piece look at the swinging necklace while their freedoms are stolen from under their noses. It’s good to know we have such focused and sharp-minded intelligentsia bringing our attention to these matters.

Everyone knows about the art of distraction. Including origamists…
http://www.origami-resource-center.com/paper-magic.html

Look at that Troublewit hat!

Now the troublewit (sic!) Twatchell is, he obviously did not put on his paper hat before writing!

Boom!

Did you know that the American Institute of Architects (a member thereof) has fallen on the side of controlled demolition?

http://tinyurl.com/2zv2fq

Twatchell is a classic ostrich posturer.

… and was this ‘study’ by a Cambridge University engineer peer reviewed?
hmmm how can we find out?

It’s in a peer-reviewed journal
http://scitation.aip.org/emo

But the journal has an impact factor of 0.7

This is very low.

Impact factors rate the importance of a journal based on it’s publications, how many times they are cited by others and for how long they continue to be cited. Most ‘average’ journals would be between 1-3. This would probably cover 90% of journals. Anything above three and you start to get good stuff. My latest publications are in journals of around 6-7, of international and broad worth. Above this are really only the truly world-class journals. Immunity, THE one for certain fields of immunology, rates about 18. Nature and science are 20-something. Maybe 30.

So 0.7 is just somewhere to stick a student’s data to get their first publication, basically. And not a very interesting student at that. How the hell this got picked up by BBQ… there we go with the PR people again! Or maybe with a more ‘sinister’ plant-er. Or perhaps I just don’t know the field, but that’s what it would be like in medical sciences.

Here is Keith Seffen
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~kas14/
And his publications
http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~kas14/publicationsChron.html

“My love/hate relationship with Bill Maher fluctuates wildly from episode to episode. Though I love his politically incorrect sense of humor and the fact that he provides a forum for people with differing views to debate, I do hate his scapegoat arguments and constant contradictions. Still, last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher was a classic episode, mostly due to the always charismatic Mos Def, whose off the cuff bluntness drew applause and laughter in juxtaposition to Maher’s counterproductive defense of the establishment.

I’m afraid of having my account deleted for posting the full episode, but Tullycast seems to have it all if you’re interested:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO1w1H3iZUU

This is a truly wonderful and vivid example of the slavery inured, corporate brainwashed, ostrich posturing american who despite everything, every piece of evidence, every vibration of common sense, still believe that 2 + 2 = 5.

This Bill Maher, who makes the right noises, appears to do so only because it is in vogue to be ‘alternative’, because there are ratings in it. This is why he believes Islam is a religion of violence above all others, and refers to some author to back up his nonsense. Bill Maher is part of the problem, not only because he has a popular TV programme and is himself asleep and therefore no threat, but because he is an ordinary citizen that cannot wake up, and it is people like him that keep the nightmare going, individuals believing the nightmare is reality, that day is night, that hot is cold, that water is dry…people like him who have their finger in the Dyke, believing that if they remove it thy will die and every thing will end when in fact, they are on the wet side drowning and taking their finger out will release and violently launch them them into dry land and the world of the waking.

Note Bill’s posture (leaning away from his guests like they are going to explode) as he speaks to these two men, and note also how his english deteriorates when he talks to them…I’m sure its all completely involuntary.

Europe to rule on whether police can keep DNA of innocent people
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 08 September 2007

Police could lose the power to keep DNA samples taken from suspects who have been cleared of any wrongdoing, in a landmark case which is to be decided by the highest court in Europe.

A ruling against the British Government could lead to the destruction of tens of thousands of DNA and fingerprint materials as well as deal a severe blow to any plans to create a universal genetic database.

The challenge at the European Court of Human Rights is being brought by a teenager, known as S, who was arrested and charged with attempted robbery aged 11 in 2001, and Michael Marper, from Sheffield, who was arrested on harassment charges, aged 38, in the same year. Both were cleared and have no criminal records.

But the Court of Appeal ruled in 2002 that they cannot ask for their DNA and fingerprint evidence to be destroyed. One of the judges hearing the appeal was Sir Stephen Sedley, who this week called for a national database to include DNA samples taken from every British citizen and any foreign visitors to this country. His comments provoked outrage from the human rights group Liberty, which called his proposal “chilling”.

European judges in Strasbourg believe the issue is so important that they have decided to fast-track the case to go before the grand chamber, where all the Strasbourg justices will sit to determine the matter.

The decision has been taken because the court decided that the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights or because its resolution might have a result inconsistent with a previous judgment of the court.

In both cases, the clients asked that their fingerprints and DNA samples be destroyed – but the requests were refused by South Yorkshire Police.

Mr Marper and the juvenile argued that keeping fingerprints and especially DNA samples was an unjustified breach of their right to respect for private life protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They are especially concerned about the future uses to which the DNA samples might be put, and the lack of independent oversight in the national DNA database.

They are represented by Peter Mahy, a civil liberties specialist at Sheffield-based Howells, and one the country’s most respected human rights barristers, Richard Gordon QC. Mr Mahy said:”This decision by the European Court of Human Rights gives us significant hope that these cases will finally result in a massive change in the law – providing protection for those acquitted of crimes against their fingerprints and DNA samples being kept, putting them on a level footing with those not previously accused of any crimes.”

He added: “We think this will be one of the most important human rights challenges the court has grappled with in recent years.”

This is all well and good, but there are problems with this.

Why should Britain be obeying this court, and why should people in the UK not be able to get justice from their own courts? Why is it that people in the UK are being criminally mistreated and abused in this way in the first place?

And should the court side with the keeping with DNA samples from the innocent, what then? Does this suddenly make it ‘all right’?

I don’t think so.

Britain should be the most just place, the most fair place, and the second you have to go to another court, in another country, something very important is lost; confidence in British Justice.

Open letter to the Generalbundesanwaltschaft against the criminalization of critical academic research and political engagement

On 31st July 2007 the flats and workplaces of Dr. Andrej Holm and Dr. Matthias B., as well as of two other persons, were searched by the police. Dr. Andrej Holm was arrested, flown by helicopter to the German Federal Court in Karlsruhe and brought before the custodial judge. Since then he has been held in pretrial confinement in a Berlin jail. All four people have been charged with “membership in a terrorist association according to § 129a StGB” (German Penal Code, section 7 on ‘Crimes against Public Order’). They are alleged to be members of a so-called ‘militante gruppe’ (mg). The text of the search warrant revealed that preliminary proceedings against these four people have been going on since September 2006 and that the four had since been under constant surveillance.

A few hours before the house searches, Florian L., Oliver R. und Axel H. were arrested in the Brandenburg region and accused of attempted arson on four vehicles of the German Federal Army. Andrej Holm is alleged to have met one of these three persons on two occasions in the first half of 2007 in supposedly “conspiratorial circumstances”. The Federal Prosecutor (Bundesanwaltschaft) therefore assumes that the four above mentioned persons as well as the three individuals arrested in Brandenburg are members of a “militant group,” and is thus investigating all seven on account of suspected “membership in a terrorist association” according to §129a StGB. According to the arrest warrant against Andrej Holm, the charge made against the above mentioned four individuals is presently justified on the following grounds, in the order that the federal prosecutor has listed them:

– Dr. Matthias B. is alleged to have used, in his academic publications, “phrases and key words” which are also used by the ‘militante gruppe’;

– As political scientist holding a PhD, Matthias B. is seen to be intellectually capable to “author the sophisticated texts of the ‘militante gruppe’ (mg)”. Additionally, “as employee in a research institute he has access to libraries which he can use inconspicuously in order to do the research necessary to the drafting of texts of the ‘militante gruppe’”;

– Another accused individual is said to have met with suspects in a conspiratorial manner: “meetings were regularly arranged without, however, mentioning place, time and content of the meetings”; furthermore, he is said to have been active in the “extreme left-wing scene”;

– In the case of a third accused individual, an address book was found which included the names and addresses of the other three accused;

– Dr. Andrej H., who works as urban sociologist, is claimed to have close contacts with all three individuals who have been charged but still remain free;

– Dr. Andrej H. is alleged to have been active in the “resistance mounted by the extreme left-wing scene against the World Economic Summit of 2007 in Heiligendamm”;

– The fact that he – allegedly intentionally — did not take his mobile phone with him to a meeting is considered as “conspiratorial behavior”.

Andrej H., as well as Florian L., Oliver R. und Axel H., are detained since 1st August 2007 in Berlin-Moabit under very strict conditions: they are locked in solitary confinement 23 hours a day and are allowed only one hour of courtyard walk. Visits are limited to a total of half an hour every two weeks. Contacts, including contacts with lawyers, are allowed only through separation panes, including contact with their lawyers. The mail of the defense is checked.

The charges described in the arrest warrants reveal a construct based on very dubious reasoning by analogy. The reasoning involves four basic hypotheses, none of which the Federal High Court could substantiate with any concrete evidence, but through their combination they are to leave the impression of a “terrorist association”. The social scientists, because of their academic research activity, their intellectual capacities and their access to libraries, are said to be the brains of the alleged “terrorist organization”. For, according to the Federal prosecutor, an association called “militante gruppe” is said to use the same concepts as the accused social scientists. As evidence for this reasoning, the concept of “gentrification” is named – one of the key research themes of Andrej Holm und Matthias B. in past years, about which they have published internationally. They have not limited their research findings to an ivory tower, but have made their expertise available to citizens’ initiatives and tenants’ organizations. This is how critical social scientists are constructed as intellectual gang leaders.

Since Andrej Holm has friends, relatives and colleagues, they now also are suspect to be “terrorists”, because they know Andrej. Another accused individual was blamed for having the names of Andrej Holm and of two others charged (but not jailed) in his address book. Since the latter are also deemed to be “terrorists” – this is how “guilt by association” is established.

Paragraph § 129a, introduced in Germany in 1976, makes it possible for our colleagues to be criminalized as “terrorists”. This is how, through § 129a, the existence of a “terrorist group” is claimed.

Through these constructs, every academic research activity and political work is presented as potentially criminal – in particular when politically engaged colleagues who intervene in social struggles are concerned. This is how critical research, in particular research linked with political engagement, is turned into ideological ring leadership and “terrorism”.

We demand that the Federal Prosecutor (Bundesanwaltschaft) immediately suspend the § 129a-proceedings against all parties concerned and to release Andrej Holm and the other imprisoned from jail at once. We strongly reject the outrageous accusation that the academic research activities and the political engagement of Andrej Holm are to be viewed as complicity in an alleged “terrorist association”. No arrest warrant can be deduced from the academic research and political work of Andrej Holm. The Federal Prosecutor, through applying Article § 129, is threatening the freedom of research and teaching as well as social-political engagement.

Initial signatures by:
Prof. Dr. Manuel Aalbers (Universiteit van Amsterdam), Prof. Dr. Rowland Atkinson (University of Tasmania, Australien), Prof. Dr. Lawrence D. Berg (Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Diversity & Identity, University of British Columbia), Prof. Dr. Neil Brenner (New York University, Sociology), Prof. Dr. Craig Calhoun (President, Social Science Research Council, and University Professor, Sociology, NYU), Prof. Dr. Mike Davis (Prof. of Urban History, Irvine/USA), Dr. Michael Dear (Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California/Los Angeles), Prof. Dr. Michael Edwards (The Bartlett Centre for Architecture and Planning, UCL, London), Prof. Dr. Geoff Ely (University of Michigan, Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor), Prof. Dr. John Friedmann (University of California, Los Angeles), Prof. Dr. Herbert Gans (Columbia University, New York), Prof. Dr. Alan Harding (University of Salford, UK), Prof. Dr. Michael Harloe (University of Salford, Vice-President), Prof. Dr. David Harvey (Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York), Prof. Dr. Andreas Huyssen (Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University), Prof. Dr. Martin Jay (Sidney Hellman Ehrman Professor of History, University of California Berkeley), Prof. Dr. Bob Jessop (Lancaster Universtiy), Prof. Dr. Roger Keil (York University, Toronto, Canada), Prof. Dr. Rianne Mahon (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada), Prof. Dr. Peter Marcuse (Columbia University, New York), Prof. Dr. Margit Mayer (Freie Universität Berlin), Prof. Dr. Frances Fox Piven (President of the American Sociological Association, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, City University New York), Prof. Dr. Andrew Ross (New York University, New York), Prof. Dr. Saskia Sassen (Columbia University, New York, and London School of Economics) Prof. Dr. Andrew Sayer (Lancaster University, Sociology), Prof. Dr. Richard Sennett (Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, Bemis Professor of Social Sciences at MIT, Professor of the Humanities at New York University), Prof. Dr. William Sewell (The Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and History Emeritus, University of Chicago), Prof. Dr. Neil Smith (Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, Director of the Center for Place Culture and Politics, Graduate Center of the City University of New York), Prof. Dr. Michael Storper (Centennial Professor of Economic Geography, London School of Economics, and Professor of Economic Sociology, Science Po, Paris), Prof. Dr. Erik Swyngedouw (University of Manchester, UK), , Prof. Dr. Peter J. Taylor (Loughborough University, UK), Prof. Dr. John Urry (Lancaster University, Sociology), Dr. Jennifer Wolch (Professor of Geography at the University of Southern California/Los Angeles).

Media contact to solidarity group in Berlin: einstellung@so36.net
German lawyer and media contact for Germany:
Wolfgang Kaleck
Immanuelkirchstrasse 3-4
D-10405 Berlin
Germany
fon: +49-(0)30-4467-9218
fax: +49-(0)30-4467-9220

Media contact for international affairs:
Prof. Dr. Neil Brenner (New York University, fon: USA-212-998 8349)
Prof. Dr. Margit Mayer (Freie Universität Berlin, fon: 030-8385-2875)

[…]

http://www.statewatch.org/swpubs.html

And these are the people that the UK wants to get into bed with.

These are the people who are in charge of the EU, whose arrest warrants are now good throughout the EU.

The fact of the matter is that this is only the beginning. If the signatories to this document and anyone else who values their freedom do not do something to stop the root cause of this, the war machine, then they might as well not bother doing anything. Certainly, petition signing will not help these people after they have been arrested.

I wonder just what has to happen before these people take anything seriously. Do people have to be kidnapped off of the street and tortured to outrage them into action? Obviously not since that is already happening. Of course, the people who are suffering rendition are not Germans, so they don’t count. Do people (specifically their German colleagues) have to be executed without trial just for doing the above? Will that be enough to spur them into action?

For a bunch of academics they are not very bright.

I sympathize with these people.

They want to believe that the world is still run by decent people. That despite the outrageous power grabs, insane laws, illegal wars and venal leaders, that in the end, everything is still essentially the same, and that decency will win out. They want desperately to believe that they merely have to point to injustice for it to dissolve under their righteous gaze.

I am sorry to report that the world is not like that anymore, because decent people are not behind the judges benches or the police uniforms or in the legislature. Those men could be arrested, imprisoned and executed and no amount of petition writing will save them. Indeed, no amount of pressure can even get them out of gaol.

It must be very startling and sad for these people to finally wake up to find that everything they counted on is gone, and their whole world is destroyed. How horrifying it must be to them as the realization that they may have to pull down everything that they depend upon and believe in in order to restore justice and freedom.

In the end, they are going to be forced to make a choice. They are going to be forced to choose a side. Outrage is just the very beginning, and their enemies are well advanced in their plans. They already have the camps ready to hold them all, and of course, none of these academics have guns, after having been brainwashed into thinking that guns and gun ownership are ‘a bad thing’.

If they ever decide that enough is enough, what are they going to do against a well equipped army?

You ‘demand’ that the “‘Bundesanwaltschaft’ immediately suspend the § 129a-proceedings against all parties concerned”. And if they say ‘no’ THEN WHAT ARE YOU GONG TO DO?

Maybe if there are some chemists amongst them they can fashion some home made weapons…but I digress, these people would rather die than defend themselves, their colleagues or their liberty.

And that is why all is lost.

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East” – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

“We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States,” wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday.

Plesch and Butcher examine “what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action” and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a “massive” attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

• Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact.
• US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.
• US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.
• Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.
• Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by the US, the UK and Israel. The human, political and environmental effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited.
• Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons yet has the conventional military capability only to wound Iran’s WMD programmes.
• The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown government and public opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, were Brown to support an attack he would probably carry a vote in Parliament. The UK is adamant that Iran must not acquire the bomb.
• The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

When asked why the paper seems to indicate a certainty of Iranian WMD, Plesch made clear that “our paper is not, repeat not, about what Iran actually has or not.”

[…]

Most significantly, Plesch and Butcher dispute conventional wisdom that any US attack on Iran would be confined to its nuclear sites. Instead, they foresee a “full-spectrum approach,” designed to either instigate an overthrow of the government or reduce Iran to the status of “a weak or failed state.” Although they acknowledge potential risks and impediments that might deter the Bush administration from carrying out such a massive attack, they also emphasize that the administration’s National Security Strategy includes as a major goal the elimination of Iran as a regional power. They suggest, therefore, that:

This wider form of air attack would be the most likely to delay the Iranian nuclear program for a sufficiently long period of time to meet the administration’s current counterproliferation goals. It would also be consistent with the possible goal of employing military action is to overthrow the current Iranian government, since it would severely degrade the capability of the Iranian military (in particular revolutionary guards units and other ultra-loyalists) to keep armed opposition and separatist movements under control. It would also achieve the US objective of neutralizing Iran as a power in the region for many years to come.

However, it is the option that contains the greatest risk of increased global tension and hatred of the United States. The US would have few, if any allies for such a mission beyond Israel (and possibly the UK). Once undertaken, the imperatives for success would be enormous.

Butcher says he does not believe the US would use nuclear weapons, with some exceptions.

“My opinion is that [nuclear weapons] wouldn’t be used unless there was definite evidence that Iran has them too or is about to acquire them in a matter of days/weeks,” notes Butcher. “However, the Natanz facility has been so hardened that to destroy it MAY require nuclear weapons, and once an attack had started it may simply be a matter of following military logic and doctrine to full extent, which would call for the use of nukes if all other means failed.”

[…]

Political Considerations

Plesch and Butcher write with concern about the political context within the United States:

This debate is bleeding over into the 2008 Presidential election, with evidence mounting that despite the public unpopularity of the war in Iraq, Iran is emerging as an issue over which Presidential candidates in both major American parties can show their strong national security bona fides. …

The debate on how to deal with Iran is thus occurring in a political context in the US that is hard for those in Europe or the Middle East to understand. A context that may seem to some to be divorced from reality, but with the US ability to project military power across the globe, the reality of Washington DC is one that matters perhaps above all else. …

We should not underestimate the Bush administration’s ability to convince itself that an “Iran of the regions” will emerge from a post-rubble Iran. So, do not be in the least surprised if the United States attacks Iran. Timing is an open question, but it is hard to find convincing arguments that war will be avoided, or at least ones that are convincing in Washington.

Plesch and Butcher are also interested in the attitudes of the current UK government, which has carefully avoided revealing what its position might be in the case of an attack. They point out, however, “One key caution is that regardless of the realities of Iran’s programme, the British public and elite may simply refuse to participate – almost out of bloody minded revenge for the Iraq deceit.”

And they conclude that even “if the attack is ‘successful’ and the US reasserts its global military dominance and reduces Iran to the status of an oil-rich failed state, then the risks to humanity in general and to the states of the Middle East are grave indeed.”

Raw Story

My emphasis.

Just read some of the comments on this story:

Well, if it happens, there’ll be violence here, guaranteed.
Igor | Email | Homepage | 08.28.07 – 11:40 am

Which ever dumb bastard gives the order for this, he should be shot dead on the spot.
The Lone Ranger | Email | Homepage | 08.28.07 – 11:47 am

How entertaining. Some of you idiots seem to think we live in a democracy. What you or I think doesn’t mean shit. They will first attack here, probably in September then say the “Database” opps I mean Al-CIAda hit us, then we can have a “justifiable” war with Iran. China and Russia, who have invested billions, will be less than over joyed and we will really be in deep shit. We will have martial law in this country which will lead to very serious infighting which will lead to a civil war. Most likely at least half of us will be dead by next year, with thousands starving as there is not currently enough food in this country to feed us all for any length of time and there will be no incoming shipments. There will be no food, water or electricity in the cities therefore you can elect to die there or in a camp, transportation will be provided. Those currently not in denial will have acquired the necessary supplies, literature, and so forth to begin an existance anew far from current population centers. The military will act much as they presently do but the areas they patrol will contain individuals that are well armed and very much accustomed to the use of such arms and that will eventually eliminate the relatively few and very worn out military we now have. Then my friends the few that are left may, if not poisoned by radiation sickness as our returning troups currently are, be able to pick up the pieces and start again.

Wake up and smell the roses for soon they will all be dead.
John | Email | Homepage | 08.28.07 – 10:02 pm

and so on…

if you had read the last comment twenty years ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were the words of a ‘nutcase’, but now, in 2007, with everything we know about the preparations in the USA for ‘something bad’ taking place they don’t seem so odd.

This is a strange situation. Everyone has advance warning of this attack. As we know, the people who could mobilize an army to prevent this, illegal, unprovoked, insane, criminal, attack from taking place are not intending to do anything that will be in any way effective.

One thing is for sure. If they do attack Iran and then try any sort of ground offensive, the Iranians will immediately go to guerilla warfare and the IEDs will start blasting the invaders from day one. They will also probably take this opportunity to eliminate anyone who is not ‘on side’ in their own country…though there will be few of them, because this outrage will most likely erase their differences in the short term. Or maybe not. Either way, an attack on Iran will be a disaster from every possible angle. It will be an act of absolutely pure evil, and no one who participates in it can claim that they ‘didn’t know’ they were being lied to about WMD or fall back on any other excuse, thanks to the debacle that is Iraq.

This time they will be guilty from the instant the order is given, and indeed, anyone who follows those orders should be shot, as the commenter says.

There is no excuse, no justification, no reason, no fact, no extrapolation of fact that a reasonable person could use to order this attack…but of course, we are not, and never have been dealing with reasonable people.

You know that.

Read this ‘we are doomed to live like animals’ screed from Anti-War. It is a complete lie of course and this ‘Norman Solomon’ needs to shit or get off of the pot. War is not inevitable, and neither is the so called ‘Warfare State’. Its imagination-less people like him that create, support and bolster the ‘Warfare State’ by their negativity, self-centeredness and lack of vision.

COUPEZ!

Let’s Face It: The Warfare State Is Part of Us
by Norman Solomon

There is no ‘us’. It is YOU that accepts the ‘Warfare State’, it is YOU that is defeated and resigned to murdering other people, not US.

The USA’s military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.

First of all, it is two billion a day of YOUR MONEY (or at least money from China that YOU will have to pay back). This fundamental misunderstanding about how war is funded and waged is a key reason why your illegitimate government is able to get away with waging it. YOU are the people who cannot see the wood for the trees; YOU are the people who fund this insanity, and you are the key to stopping it.

There can be no attack on Iran without money to do it. If you continue to pay for it, it will happen. You are personally responsible for this, and this article, by not focussing on the permanent solution to this problem is actually a call for the war that you claim that you do not want.

While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes – and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative – such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that “the people must take back the government,” but how can “the people” take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for “returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy,” we’re encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.

Actually, it is your generation that is the most dangerous in the lifetime of the republic. Your singular failure to assert yourself, protect your rights and stand up for the truth with action is the cause of all our problems, and this article is another pimple on the acne scarred face of your generation; it is the symptom of your failure, your lack of will and guts. Americans have always owned their government and to say this is not the case is just a lie. The ‘good old days’ that you talk about did exist, it is your failure to understand this that is the problem. Even if they never did exist, that time is an ideal that you should be striving for, and that actually, you have the power to achieve. It will not come to pass however, on the back of cowardice, retreat and ingrained weakness.

The warfare state didn’t suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won’t disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.

This is another lie. If the ‘current lunatic’, your lunatic, the one you deserve, is replaced by a sane man, then sanity will flow from the Oval office. That is a fact, wether you accept it or not.

Born 50 years before George W. Bush became president, I have always lived in a warfare state. Each man in the Oval Office has presided over an arsenal of weapons designed to destroy human life en masse. In recent decades, our self-proclaimed protectors have been able – and willing – to destroy all of humanity.

And of course, all time began when you were born, and there was nothing before that.

We’ve accommodated ourselves to this insanity. And I do mean “we” – including those of us who fret aloud that the impact of our peace-loving wisdom is circumscribed because our voices don’t carry much farther than the choir. We may carry around an inflated sense of our own resistance to a system that is poised to incinerate and irradiate the planet.

There is no ‘we’ in this instance. There are many people whose actions (or inactions) make a difference, and if people like you only followed, our problems would be over. As for an inflated sense of importance, each drop of rain in a downpour does its part in creating a landslide. Each one is as important as the next, and all of them, together can cause great devastation or crops to grow. Your imagination is broken. You have no grasp of scale. You have no concept of your place in that country and its singular importance. This is why you fail.

Maybe it’s too unpleasant to acknowledge that we’ve been living in a warfare state for so long. And maybe it’s even more unpleasant to acknowledge that the warfare state is not just “out there.” It’s also internalized; at least to the extent that we pass up countless opportunities to resist it.

It is not in any way internalized, and not everyone passes up opportunities to resist it. Two million people marched in London to resist it. They and the millions of others who are against this insanity are not defeated; they simply do not have the correct tactic to hand. Once they discover the correct, twenty-first century tactic to defeat the ‘Warfare State’ then it will all be over. You are not helping with your corrosive negativity which offers nothing but a belly ache.

Like millions of other young Americans, I grew into awakening as the Vietnam War escalated. Slogans like “make love, not war” – and, a bit later, “the personal is political” – really spoke to us. But over the decades we generally learned, or relearned, to compartmentalize: as if personal and national histories weren’t interwoven in our pasts, presents and futures.

What you should have learned and what many people today have learned is that your failure is the greatest instruction that we could receive. It means that we will not and should not repeat your mistakes and failures. It means specifically that Demonstrations are pointless and the other things that we have been talking about on BLOGDIAL for years.

One day in 1969, a biologist named George Wald, who had won a Nobel Prize, visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – the biggest military contractor in academia – and gave a speech. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” he said, “with the business of killing and being killed.”

That preoccupation has fluctuated, but in essence it has persisted. While speaking of a far-off war and a nuclear arsenal certain to remain in place after the war’s end, Wald pointed out: “We are under repeated pressure to accept things that are presented to us as settled – decisions that have been made.”

Today, in similar ways, our government is preoccupied and we are pressurized. The grisly commerce of killing thrives on aggressive war and on the perverse realpolitik of “national security” that brandishes the Pentagon’s weaponry against the world. At least tacitly, we accept so much that threatens to destroy anything and everything.

Only you accept this, there is no ‘we’ that accepts this. Stop pulling decent people into your personal nightmare of failure and despair.

We do not accept ‘the perverse realpolitik of “national security” ‘ we understand that this world view is totally false and engineered. We understand how governments are doing it, and how they are financing it. We understand what must be done to undo it.

WE are not like YOU.

As it happened, for reasons both “personal” and “political” – more accurately, for reasons indistinguishable between the two – my own life fell apart and began to reassemble itself during the same season of 1969 when George Wald gave his speech, which he called “A Generation in Search of a Future.”

Political and personal histories are usually kept separate – in how we’re taught, how we speak and even how we think. But I’ve become very skeptical of the categories. They may not be much more than illusions we’ve been conned into going through the motions of believing.

Learn to use the backspace key.

We actually live in concentric spheres, and “politics” suffuses households as well as what Martin Luther King Jr. called “The World House.” Under that heading, he wrote in 1967: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”

The facts of the matter are that on the one hand, there are an astonishingly small number of people who are responsible for our problems, an on the other, since we are responsible for allowing it all to happen, a huge number of people who are equally responsible. But I digress. The people who commission the making of weapons and who make the policy are very small in number, and they can be controlled and their power destroyed very easily. This is a fact. The first step is to define the problem and then design a solution. This article doesn’t do this. It doesn’t even give us the benefit of your precious experience from the 1960’s which would be invaluable to us so we do not end up like you.

This article doesn’t help, doesn’t educate, offers no solutions, no analysis and so it is literally pointless. At a time when we have, by your own words, an insane man in the Oval Office, this is not the time for pointless writing on AntiWar.

While trying to understand the essence of what so many Americans have witnessed over the last half century, I worked on a book (titled Made Love, Got War) that sifts through the last 50 years of the warfare state… and, in the process, through my own life. I haven’t learned as much as I would have liked, but some patterns emerged – persistent and pervasive since the middle of the 20th century.

Your logic is flawed. You are unable to put together the pieces to this puzzle because you have not defined the problem the way that weapons designers and scientists define problems. Once you do that, you can take it all to pieces with a few simple actions. None of this is going to be found in your navel.

The warfare state doesn’t come and go. It can’t be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it’s at the core of the United States – and it has infiltrated our very being.

Almost correct, save the nonsense about ‘our very being’. You are partially right that it cannot be defeated on Election Day, and you are completely correct that it is at the core of the USA. What you fail to offer is a way to ‘destroy the core‘.

What we’ve tolerated has become part of us.

Nonsense.

What we accept, however reluctantly, seeps inward.

Hippy talk.

In the long run, passivity can easily ratify even what we may condemn. And meanwhile, in the words of Thomas Merton, “It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.”

Meaningless, especially to people being murdered as bombs are dropping from YOUR government.

The triumph of the warfare state degrades and suppresses us all. Even before the weapons perform as guaranteed.

[…]

AntiWar

More twaddle.

What ‘The triumph of the warfare state’ ACTUALLY DOES is cause bridges to spontaneously collapse, causes your rights to be destroyed, causes you to be hated in the world, and causes MASS MURDER.

If you are not willing to address this problem, you should not be wasting electrons and time with stories on AntiWar that are nothing more than shoe gazing garbage.

AntiWar needs to tighten up its editorial policy…if it really exists to put an end to war. Its name however, might give a clue to its real function, to be anti-war it exists because this situation exists; it is not there to stop it, but thrives because of it. People are starving for the solution, the way out of this. They are desperate to be shown the light switch. AntiWar and StopWar drip feed them dead matches masquerading as light. Neither of these people really want to put a permanent end to the war machine. If they did, their actions would be completely different; they would actually be proposing and taking effective actions.

This has been another post tipping point post, typed out at an astonishing pace….

[…]

John Mueller suspects he might have become cable news programs’ go-to foil on terrorism. The author of Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (Free Press, 2006) thinks America has overreacted. The greatly exaggerated threat of terrorism, he says, has cost the country far more than terrorist attacks ever did.

Watching his Sept. 12, 2006, appearance on Fox & Friends is unintentionally hilarious. Mueller calmly and politely asks the hosts to at least consider his thesis. But filled with alarm and urgency, they appear bewildered and exasperated. They speak to Mueller as if he is from another planet and cannot be reasoned with.

That reaction is one measure of the contagion of alarmism. Mueller’s book is filled with statistics meant to put terrorism in context. For example, international terrorism annually causes the same number of deaths as drowning in bathtubs or bee stings. It would take a repeat of Sept. 11 every month of the year to make flying as dangerous as driving. Over a lifetime, the chance of being killed by a terrorist is about the same as being struck by a meteor. Mueller’s conclusions: An American’s risk of dying at the hands of a terrorist is microscopic. The likelihood of another Sept. 11-style attack is nearly nil because it would lack the element of surprise. America can easily absorb the damage from most conceivable attacks. And the suggestion that al Qaeda poses an existential threat to the United States is ridiculous. Mueller’s statistics and conclusions are jarring only because they so starkly contradict the widely disseminated and broadly accepted image of terrorism as an urgent and all-encompassing threat.

American reaction to two failed attacks in Britain in June further illustrates our national hysteria. British police found and defused two car bombs before they could be detonated, and two would-be bombers rammed their car into a terminal at Glasgow Airport. Even though no bystanders were hurt and British authorities labeled both episodes failures, the response on American cable television and Capitol Hill was frenzied, frequently emphasizing how many people could have been killed. “The discovery of a deadly car bomb in London today is another harsh reminder that we are in a war against an enemy that will target us anywhere and everywhere,” read an e-mailed statement from Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. “Terrorism is not just a threat. It is a reality, and we must confront and defeat it.” The bombs that never detonated were “deadly.” Terrorists are “anywhere and everywhere.” Even those who believe it is a threat are understating; it’s “more than a threat.”

Mueller, an Ohio State University political science professor, is more analytical than shrill. Politicians are being politicians, and security businesses are being security businesses, he says. “It’s just like selling insurance – you say, ‘Your house could burn down.’ You don’t have an incentive to say, ‘Your house will never burn down.’ And you’re not lying,” he says. Social science research suggests that humans tend to glom onto the most alarmist perspective even if they are told how unlikely it is, he adds. We inflate the danger of things we don’t control and exaggerate the risk of spectacular events while downplaying the likelihood of common ones. We are more afraid of terrorism than car accidents or street crime, even though the latter are far more common. Statistical outliers like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are viewed not as anomalies, but as harbingers of what’s to come.

Demystifying Security

Sept. 11 was so dramatic and scary that even suggesting that some of the resulting fear is unjustified seems blasphemous. Indeed, the release in July of a new National Intelligence Estimate and its reports of a resurgent al Qaeda served to renew and stoke those fears. But the point is not that terrorists don’t exist, or that terrorist attacks won’t happen. It’s that the pervasive alarm about terrorism obscures the most important question the nation must grapple with: “What level of protection is enough?” Seeking 100 percent security is quixotic. There always will be some risk, but how much can we live with?

This question remains unanswered because the political climate created by alarmists, however well-intentioned, prevents it from being raised. Those who try are quickly punished. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said in 2004 that the goal should be to reduce terrorism to the level of organized crime – a nuisance but not “the focus of our lives.” The Bush campaign immediately pounced, calling Kerry “unfit to lead,” and he never used such rhetoric again.

[…]

http://www.govexec.com/features/0807-01/0807-01s3.htm

More post tipping point stuff for you. The question after this is, “how are we going to dismantle the over-the-top systems once everyone has calmed down?” In other words, how are ID cards, and all the surveillance going to be dispensed with?

THAT is the question.

From Bruce Schneier’s Cryptgram:

In this otherwise lopsided article about security cameras, this one quote stands out:

“But Steve Swain, who served for years with the London Metropolitan Police and its counter-terror operations, doubts the power of cameras to deter crime.

“‘I don’t know of a single incident where CCTV has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act,’ he said, referring to the London system. Swain now works for Control Risk, an international security firm.

“Asked about their role in possibly stopping acts of terror, he said pointedly: ‘The presence of CCTV is irrelevant for those who want to sacrifice their lives to carry out a terrorist act.’ ”

And:

“Swain does believe the cameras have great value in investigation work. He also said they are necessary to reassure the public that law enforcement is being aggressive.

“‘You need to do this piece of theater so that if the terrorists are looking at you, they can see that you’ve got some measures in place,’ he said. ”

Did you get that? Swain doesn’t believe that cameras deter crime, but he wants cities to spend millions on them so that the terrorists “can see that you’ve got some measures in place.”

Anyone have any idea why we’re better off doing this than other things that may actually deter crime and terrorism?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/08/01/nyc.surveillance/index.html

And once again, for the thousandth time.

New immigration rules will force undocumented workers to be firedCarolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau(08-11) 04:00 PDT Washington – — People clamoring for a crackdown on illegal immigration got their wish with the Bush administration’s announcement Friday of sweeping new enforcement measures that will force employers to fire the millions of illegal workers they now employ.

“We strike at that magnet” of jobs, said Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, announcing a new rule holding employers liable for workers whose Social Security numbers do not match government records. The new rule takes effect in 30 days.

No state stands to feel the effects more than California, which has more illegal immigrants – an estimated 2.5 million – than any other state. California farmers are expected to be among the hardest hit with their heavy reliance on Mexican field hands, the vast majority of whom are undocumented. But service businesses will be heavily affected too, from hotels and restaurants to cleaning services and nursing homes.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein predicted a “catastrophe” in the state’s $32 billion agriculture industry as the new rules become effective with the fall harvest. But the proposal met no opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, who issued a statement saying, “Securing our border remains a top priority for the New Direction Congress.”

This sounds like a declaration of war against business. Uncla Sam (yes, ‘uncla’) let all these people flood into the country, and now they are penalizing business for their lapses of security and imagination.

The rule that will require employers to fire employees unable to clear up problems with their Social Security numbers 90 days after they’ve been notified or face sanctions and a fine of at least $2,200 for a first offense. Up until now, employers have routinely ignored what are called no-match letters.

And this behaviour is quite right; it is not the job of business to sort out illegal immigrants from legal immigrants. The border starts at mexico, not the front door of some firm.

“In certain industries and in certain states, there will be a very significant impact on the functioning of businesses or entire sectors,” said Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “Some employers are going to find themselves having to fire significant portions of their workforces, and I think there will be employees – some who are authorized and some who are not – who will find themselves out of a job.”

Meyers predicted the fallout to be quite visible within six months.

[…]

And then they are going to do what and go where? Has anyone actually THOUGHT about that?

Business groups pointed out that a significant fraction of no-match letters – including 11 percent for the work-authorized foreign born – are in error because of name changes and clerical mistakes, and could cause trouble for legal workers. Immigrant rights groups said the rule could drive millions of illegal immigrants who are now paying taxes underground and drive businesses who depend on them to relocate overseas.

Here it comes….

The system also has a big loophole that some experts warn could lead to more identity theft. Social Security does not catch numbers that are valid but have been stolen and used by another person, increasing the incentive to steal valid Social Security numbers.

Which is an argument for biometric REALID.

Hiring undocumented workers has been illegal for two decades, but until now, employers were not held liable for fraudulent documents.

And quite rightly.

“This is going to cause a lot of pain, but that pain I hope will be an impetus for our nation to get realistic and fix our broken immigration system,” said Larry Rohlfes, assistant executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association. “In the meantime, people are going to be hurt.”

That is an understatement, and what is broken is not the ‘imiigration system’ but border security in the south of the USA. That is where all of these illegal immigrants are coming from, not JFK.

Rohlfes predicted that many workers would not leave the country but go underground as unlicensed contractors, where they will not pay taxes. “It’s going to hurt our remaining workers because the underground economy competes with us and because they have much lower costs,” Rohlfes said.

That is exactly what (amongst other things) that they will do. There will be a huge parallel society where the suck law abiding pay the penalties of being law abiding and everyone else lives free.

Much will hinge on how effectively the administration enforces the new rules.

[…]

No, it will hinge on wether or not any business obeys this insanity. I suspect many will not.

About 12 million people are estimated to be in the country illegally, and about half a million more have been arriving each year. They have moved beyond traditional immigrant states like California and Texas and into the South and Midwest, where their presence has created a voter backlash and spawned state and local laws intended to make it difficult for illegal immigrants to work and even find housing.

Illegal immigrants make up about 5 percent of the civilian workforce, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Most have arrived since 1990. Many have children born in the United States who are citizens – which adds up to about 64 percent of the children in unauthorized families, or 3.1 million children, Pew estimates. Most illegal migrants crossed the border from Mexico and farther south, but about 40 percent arrived legally from all other parts of the world and overstayed their tourist or student visas.

And this is the big problem; what do you do with all the hate and resentment that is growing? What do you do with all the families where the children are citizens and the parents are illegal immigrants? Its a disaster. Some of the comments on this story have it just about right:

This could be the next tactic of the corrupt Bush administration in getting an Amnesty Bill passed. If they get a panic going in business and then get a panic going in the public, through the use of the media, they could appear to sway opinion in their favor. I already see a sort of panic on the rise anyway. The economy appears to be correcting itself to all of the scams and lawlessness. Weve run up the price of our homes just like we did stock in the thirties. We were willing to out-borrow the next. It works okay on the way up. Not so great on the way down. Then youve got the presses running full speed to finance all of the wars. I have seen this sort of article over and over recently. If this is a trick, I would expect a huge backlash to follow their actions.

and

I must say I’m shocked that Bush is actually doing something about this problem but I’m fairly sure that employers will just rehire the undocumented workers after the 90 days and start the process again. Currently employers have a year to figure out the status of their workers. The process is: hire, check their SS #, govt tells the employer the worker in illegal, employer has a year to check, at the year mark they realease the worker then rehire them and start the process all over again. The only thing that has teeth is if the govt actually enforces sanctions. I assure you employers are shaken up by these types of measures.

Talk about a work around!!!

and now we get to the meat in the hamburger:

As part of the stepped-up enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security said it would expand an electronic verification system called “Web Basic Pilot” to all federal contractors, as well as continue to train state and local law enforcement to help enforce immigration laws.

[…]

The number of Border Patrol agents is expected to rise to 18,300 by the end of the year; there will also be 370 miles of fencing along with other technology such as vehicle barriers and camera and radar towers that are now being constructed.

Also, the administration announced that it would implement a long-delayed exit verification system at border crossings to find out who is overstaying their visas. That program, called US-Visit, has been hampered by the cost and technological problems. The administration said it would plow ahead with plans to require all travelers to use passports, despite the enormous backlogs that delayed travel by U.S. citizens earlier this year.

[…]

SF Gate

And there you have it. We all knew in in advance that USVISIT was not about ‘terrorists’ but was instead designed to control genpop and that is exactly what they are going to do with it. Once they expand it to solve this ‘problem’ its effectiveness will appear to have greatly increased because instead of catching just 1500+ people in violation, they will be able to claim that they have caught millions of people, illegal immigrants, with the system.

In order to do it, they will have to get everyone into the system, the biometric net, so that they can scan people randomly, all the time and deny every sort of service to people who are not allowed to be in the USA.

All those ignorant hicks from the stix who deeply resent the Mexican invasion will line up to be fingerprinted, because it will force the invaders back to Mexico.

This is the cause they have been waiting for, sufficient reason to give up liberty that not only seems entirely reasonable, but which people will clamor for of their own free will….of which there will be nothing left after there is total compliance with the Quantized Human Pleb Grid.

This is the REALREASON™ why they left the borders open for so long; to create a crisis that would allow them to put everyone in this system under artificially created conditions where no decent person would object to being fingerprinted because the threat is real and obvious.

Maybe now we can see the purpose of all those concentration camps that are being manned right now; imagine all those hot blooded illegal immigrants getting mad about this and rioting in their millions. They will have to be rounded up and put somewhere.

Horrible!

Unpaid fines may stop people leaving UK

• Home Office plan outlined in ‘e-borders’ scheme
• Huge amounts of data likely to be produced

Alan Travis, home affairs editor

Tens of thousands of people who have failed to pay court fines amounting to more than £487m would be banned from leaving the country under new powers outlined by the Home Office. Ministers are also looking at ways of using the new £1.2bn “e-borders” programme to collect more than £9m owed in health treatment charges by foreign nationals who have left the country without paying.

The programme, to be phased in from October next year, will also allow the creation of a centralised “no-fly” list of air-rage or disruptive passengers which can be circulated to airlines.

The e-borders programme requires airlines and ferry companies to submit up to 50 items of data on each passenger between 24 and 48 hours before departure to and from the UK. With 200 million passenger movements in and out of the UK last year to and from 266 overseas airports on 169 airlines, an enormous amount of data is expected to be generated by the programme.

Passenger numbers are expected to rise to 305 million a year by 2015 and ministers claim the £1.2bn programme is the only way to provide a comprehensive record of all those seeking to enter and leave the UK. The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, claims that the programme will create a kind of border control, with information being passed to police and security services before passengers board a plane, boat or train: “It will create a new, offshore line of defence – helping genuine travellers, but stopping those who pose a risk before they travel.”

However, the long-term nature of the programme means that by 2009 only half the passenger movements in and out of Britain will be logged in the e-borders computers, and even by 2011 coverage will have reached only 95%.

A Home Office assessment of the secondary legislation that is being used to implement the programme gives some early indications of who, other than suspected terrorists and international criminals, will be on the British no-fly list and be banned from travelling to and from the country. It floats the idea that provisions should be introduced to ban travel overseas for the tens of thousands of offenders who have not paid outstanding court fines or failed to discharge confiscation orders made against them. Although no official estimate exists of the number of people who have to pay court fines the amount they owe has now reached a record £487m, with a further £300m in unpaid confiscation orders.

Passengers will be further encouraged in future to book their tickets and check in online. Other suggested benefits of the e-borders programme include easier identification of those who falsely claim non-domicile or non-resident status to avoid UK income tax, thought to be costing as much as £2bn a year, and those who wrongly claim social security benefits despite having left the country.

[…]

Guardian

Like we have said so many times before; none of this is about ‘terrorism’, the original reason they gave for proposing all of this in the first place. It is all being done to totally control everyone in the UK.

The nonsense of unpaid fines is just that, nonsense. If they succeed in putting all of this together, your fines will be withdrawn from your account automatically without your consent.

This piece in the guardian gives you the reader a false impression of what is being created. Once all the tools are in place, they will not only be able to control who can and cannot leave the UK, but they will also control all of your money and movements as you live in the UK. They will be used to control who can and cannot have a bank account, or credit card for example. Who can and cannot travel on the underground or a train. Who can or cannot buy alcohol. They will do all of this with the ID card / NIR / your thumb, which will be the talisman without which you will be able to live.

They will keep registers for everything. By getting yourself on the ‘no underground list’ when you try and tap in to board a train, the gate will not open. When you try and buy a pint of beer your thumb will tell the barmaid not to serve you, because you are on the ‘no alcohol’ register. When you go to withdraw money, you will find your account locked because you are on the ‘no financial transactions’ register. Since you will be compelled to swiped for just about anything you want to do, the government will have total control over the goods and services that you will and will not, by decree, be able to access.

If you do not believe this, then you are a fool.

And as for non-domicile or non-resident claims to avoid income tax, the people who are doing this will simply leave and not come back to the UK, and spend their trillions in less hostile countries.

‘e-borders’ like USVISIT is an affront to decent people, will cost billions of pounds netting only a few petty criminals while making some IT contractors very rich. The population of Britain, and now passengers traveling here, are to be reduced to cattle by this proposal, and it is pure evil, just like USVISIT is.

Use the google to see what we have written on this.

Alan Travis of course, has no idea about what he is writing, failed to connect the dots between the proposed e-borders and USVISIT and how the latter has cost billions and caught only 1500 ‘criminals’.

The Guardian fails again. No surprise there.

Update…

You will remember that in the Soviet era and till today, as is the case today in many undemocratic and unfree countries, you have to get what is called an ‘exit visa’ in your passport before you are allowed to travel. This is completely abhorrent to all decent people. Only in totalitarian states does the government have the power to stop you from traveling outside of your country, and guess what, this is precisely what the proposals above create; an exit visa system for the UK.

By creating a list of people who cannot travel and checking your name against it in realtime, the government is essentially granting you an exit visa at the time you are checked. The permission to leave is the visa. The way things work in a free country, you can come and go as you please; its your private business. Britain is like this now; when you turn up at the airport, you simply show your passport and get on the plane and that is it; this is certainly true for people with nationalities that do not require a visa for entry, and it should NEVER be the case that a BRITISH person should be checked to see if their exit visa is in order.

Read this list of countries and their exit visa requirements:

Afghanistan
“The Constitution provides for these rights; however, certain laws limited citizens’ movement. The passport law requires women to obtain permission from a male family member before having a passport application processed. In some areas of the country, women were forbidden by local custom or tradition to leave the home except in the company of a male relative. The law also prohibits women from traveling alone outside the country without a male relative, and male relatives must accompany women participating in Hajj.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41737.htm

Algeria
“The law provides for freedom of domestic and foreign travel, and freedom to emigrate; however, the Government sometimes restricted these rights in practice. The Government does not permit young men who are eligible for the draft and who have not yet completed their military service to leave the country if they do not have special authorization; however, such authorization may be granted to students and to those persons with special family circumstances.” (…) “The Family Code does not permit married females younger than 18 years of age to travel abroad without their guardian’s permission.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41718.htm

Armenia
“The law requires authorities to issue passports to all citizens, expect for convicted felons; however, an exit stamp may be denied to persons who possess state secrets, are subject to military service, are involved in pending court cases, or whose relatives have lodged financial claims against them. An exit stamp is valid for up to 5 years and may be used without limit. Men of military age must overcome substantial bureaucratic obstacles to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41668.htm

Bahrain
“The 1963 Citizenship Law provides that the Government may reject applications to obtain or renew passports for reasonable cause, but the applicant has the right to appeal such decisions before the High Civil Court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41719.htm

Belarus
“The Constitution provides for freedom of movement in and out of the country; however, this right was restricted at times. Official entry and exit regulations specify that citizens who wish to travel abroad must first obtain an exit stamp valid for 1 to 5 years. Once the traveler has a valid stamp, travel abroad is not restricted by further government requirements and formalities; however, the Government could intervene to invalidate stamps that had been issued.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41671.htm

Benin
“The Government maintained documentary requirements for minors traveling abroad as part of its continuing campaign against trafficking in persons.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41588.htm

Bhutan
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens traveling in border regions were required to show their citizenship identity cards at immigration check points, which in some cases were located a considerable distance from what is in effect an open border with India. By treaty, citizens may reside and work in India. In addition, ethnic Nepalese claimed that they were frequently denied security clearances, which is a prerequisite for obtaining a passport form. The ethnic Nepalese said that since the clearances were based on the security clearance of their parents, the clearances frequently excluded children of ethnic Nepalese. All citizens must have a security clearance from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41739.htm

Brunei
“The Government restricts the movement of former political prisoners during the first year of their release.” (…) “Government employees, both citizens and foreigners working on a contractual basis, must apply for approval to go abroad, which was granted routinely.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41636.htm

Burma
“An ordinary citizen needs three documents to travel outside the country: a passport from the Ministry of Home Affairs; revenue clearance from the Ministry of Finance and Revenue; and a departure form from the Ministry of Immigration and Population. In 2002, in response to the trafficking in persons problem, the Government tightened the documentation process in ways that hinder or restrict international travel for the majority of women.” (…0 “The Government carefully scrutinized prospective travel abroad for all passport holders. Rigorous control of passport and exit visa issuance perpetuated rampant corruption, as applicants were forced to pay bribes of roughly $300 (300,000 kyat), the equivalent of a yearly salary, to around $1,000 (1 million kyat) for a single woman under 25 years of age. The board that reviews passport applications denied passports on political grounds. College graduates who obtained a passport (except for certain official employees) were required to pay a fee to reimburse the Government for the cost of their education.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41637.htm

Congo, Democratic Republic of the “Married women were required by law to have their husband’s permission prior to traveling outside the country.” (…) “Local authorities in the Kivus routinely required Congolese citizens to show official travel orders from an employer or government official authorizing travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41597.htm

Cuba
“The Government severely restricted freedom of movement…” (…) “The Government imposed some restrictions on both emigration and temporary foreign travel. By year’s end, the Government had refused exit permits to 836 people, but allowed the majority of persons who qualified for immigrant or refugee status in other countries to depart.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41756.htm

Ecuador
“The Government requires all citizens to obtain permission to travel abroad, which was granted routinely. Military and minor applicants must comply with special requirements.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41759.htm

Egypt
“Males who have not completed compulsory military service may not travel abroad or emigrate, although this restriction may be deferred or bypassed under special circumstances. Unmarried women under the age of 21 must have permission from their fathers to obtain passports and travel.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41720.htm

Equatorial Guinea “All citizens were required to obtain permission to travel abroad from the local Police Commissioner, and some members of opposition parties were denied this permission. Those who did travel abroad sometimes were interrogated upon their return.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41601.htm

Eritrea
“Citizens and foreign nationals were required to obtain an exit visa to depart the country.” (…) “Citizens of national service age (men 18 to 45 years of age, and women 18 to 27 years of age), Jehovah’s Witnesses (see Section 2.c.), and others who were out of favor with or seen as critical of the Government were routinely denied exit visas. Students who wished to study abroad often were unable to obtain exit visas. In addition, the Government frequently refused to issue exit visas to adolescents and children as young as 5 years of age, either on the grounds that they were approaching the age of eligibility for national service or because their diasporal parents had not paid the 2 percent income tax required of all citizens residing abroad. Some citizens were given exit visas only after posting bonds of approximately $7,400 (100,000 nakfa).”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41602.htm

Gabon
“The Government intermittently enforced an internal regulation requiring married women to obtain their husbands’ permission to travel abroad. During the year, there were numerous reports that authorities refused to issue passports for travel abroad with no explanation. There also were reports of unreasonable delays in obtaining passports, despite a government promise in 2003 to process passports within 3 days.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41604.htm

India
“Under the Passports Act of 1967, the Government may deny a passport to any applicant who “may or is likely to engage outside India in activities prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India.” The Government used this provision to prohibit the foreign travel of some government critics, especially those advocating Sikh independence and members of the separatist movement in Jammu and Kashmir.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41740.htm

Indonesia
“The Constitution allows the Government to prevent persons from entering or leaving the country, and sometimes the Government restricted freedom of movement.” (…) “The Government prevented at least 412 persons from leaving the country during the year. The AGO and the High Prosecutor’s Office prevented most of these departures. Some of those barred from leaving were delinquent taxpayers, while others were involved in legal disputes.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41643.htm

Iran
“The Government required exit permits (a validation stamp in the passport) for foreign travel for draft-age men and citizens who were politically suspect. Some citizens, particularly those whose skills were in short supply and who were educated at government expense, must post bonds to obtain exit permits.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41721.htm

Israel
“Citizens generally were free to travel abroad and to emigrate, provided they had no outstanding military obligations and were not restricted by administrative order. Pursuant to the 1945 State of Emergency Regulations, the Government may bar citizens from leaving the country based on security considerations.” (…) “In addition, no citizen or passport holder is permitted to travel to countries officially at war with Israel without special permission from the Government.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41723.htm

Jordan
“The law requires that all women obtain written permission from a male guardian to apply for a passport; however, women do not need a male relative’s permission to renew their passports. In the past, there were several cases in which mothers reportedly were prevented from departing with their children because authorities enforced requests from fathers to prevent their children from leaving the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41724.htm

Kenya
“Civil servants and M.P.s must get government permission for international travel, which generally was granted.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41609.htm

Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of “The regime only issues exit visas for foreign travel to officials and trusted businessmen, artists, athletes, academics, and religious figures. Short-term exit papers were also available for residents on the Chinese border to enable visits with relatives in bordering regions of China.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41646.htm

Kuwait
“The Constitution does not provide for the rights of freedom of movement within the country, freedom of foreign travel, or freedom to emigrate. The Government placed some limits on freedom of movement in practice.” (…) “Unmarried women must be 21 years of age or older to obtain a passport and travel abroad without permission of a male relative. Married women must obtain their husbands’ permission to apply for a passport. A married woman with a passport does not need her husband’s permission to travel, but he may prevent her departure from the country by placing a 24-hour travel ban on her through immigration authorities. After this 24-hour period, a court order is required if the husband still wishes to prevent his wife from leaving the country. In practice, however, many travel bans were issued without court order, effectively preventing citizens (and foreigners) from departing. All minor children under 21 years of age require their father’s permission to travel outside the country. There were reports of citizen fathers and husbands confiscating their children’s and wives’ travel documents to prevent them from departing.” (…) “The law permits the Government to place a travel ban on any citizen or foreigner who has a legal case pending before the courts. The law also permits any citizen to petition authorities to place a travel ban against any other person suspected of violating local law. In practice, this has resulted in many citizens and foreigners being prevented from departing the country without investigation or a legal case being brought before a local court.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41725.htm

Laos
“Citizens who sought to travel abroad were required to apply for an exit visa. The Government usually granted such visas; however, officials at the local level have denied permission to apply for passports and exit visas to some persons seeking to emigrate.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41648.htm

Lebanon
“All men between 18 and 21 years of age are subject to compulsory military service and are required to register at a recruitment office and obtain a travel authorization document before leaving the country.” (…) “Spouses may obtain passports for their children who are less than 7 years of age after obtaining the approval of the other spouse. To obtain a passport for a minor child between 7 and 18 years, the father or legal guardian needs to sign the request to obtain a passport.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41726.htm

Libya
“The Government requires citizens to obtain exit permits for travel abroad…” (…) “A female citizen must have her husband’s permission and a male escort to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41727.htm

Morocco
“The Ministry of Interior restricted freedom to travel outside the country in certain circumstances. In addition, all civil servants and military personnel must obtain written permission from their ministries to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41728.htm

Oman
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, Repatriation, and Exile “The law does not provide for these rights; however, the Government generally respected these rights in practice.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41729.htm

Pakistan
“Government employees and students must obtain “no objection” certificates before traveling abroad, although this requirement rarely was enforced against students. Persons on the publicly available Exit Control List (ECL) are prohibited from foreign travel. There were approximately 2,153 names on the ECL. While the ECL was intended to prevent those with pending criminal cases from traveling abroad, no judicial action is required to add a name to the ECL.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41743.htm

Qatar
“In general, women over 30 years old did not require permission from male guardians to travel; however, men may prevent female relatives and children from leaving the country by providing their names to immigration officers at ports of departure. Technically, women employed by the Government must obtain official permission to travel abroad when requesting leave…”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41730.htm

Saudi Arabia “Citizen men have the freedom to travel within the country and abroad; however, the Government restricted these rights for women based on its interpretation of Islamic Law. All women in the country were prohibited from driving and were dependent upon males for transportation. Likewise, they must obtain written permission from a male relative or guardian before the authorities would allow them to travel abroad. The requirement to obtain permission from a male relative or guardian applied also to foreign women married to citizens or to the minor and single adult daughters of Saudi fathers.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41731.htm

Senegal
“Some public employees, including teachers, are required by law to obtain government approval before departing the country; however, human rights groups noted that this law was only enforced against teachers and not other public servants.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41623.htm

Seychelles
“Although it was not used during the year, the law allows the Government to deny passports to any citizen if the Minister of Defense finds that such denial is “in the national interest.””
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41624.htm

Singapore
“The Government may refuse to issue a passport and did so in the case of former ISA detainees. Under the ISA, a person’s movement may be restricted.” (…) “Male citizens with national service reserve obligations are required to advise the Ministry of Defense if they plan to travel abroad. Boys age 11 to 16½ years are issued passports that are valid for 2 years and are no longer required to obtain exit permits. From the age of 16½ until the age of enlistment, male citizens are granted 1-year passports and are required to apply for exit permits for travel that exceeds 3 months.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41659.htm

Sudan
“The Government denied exit visas to some categories of persons, including policemen and physicians, and maintained lists of political figures and other citizens who were not permitted to travel abroad.” (…) “Women cannot travel abroad without the permission of their husbands or male guardians; however, this prohibition was not enforced strictly, especially for NC members.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41628.htm

Swaziland
Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation, “The law does not provide for these rights, and the Government placed some limits on them in practice. Citizens may travel and work freely within the country; however, under traditional law, a married woman requires her husband’s permission to apply for a passport, and an unmarried woman requires the permission of a close male relative.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41629.htm

Syria
“Travel to Israel is illegal, and the Government restricted travel near the Golan Heights. The Government also denied human rights activists, leaders of opposition groups, and other individuals permission to travel abroad, although government officials continued to deny that this practice occurred. Government authorities could prosecute any person found attempting to emigrate or to travel abroad illegally, any person who was deported from another country, or anyone who was suspected of having visited Israel. Women over the age of 18 have the legal right to travel without the permission of male relatives; however, a husband or a father could file a request with the Ministry of Interior to prohibit his wife or daughter’s departure from the country”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41732.htm

Tunisia
“The law provides that the courts can cancel passports and contains broad provisions that both permit passport seizure on national security grounds, and deny citizens the right either to present their case against seizure or to appeal the judges’ decision. The Ministry of Interior is required to submit requests to seize or withhold a citizen’s passport through the public prosecutor to the courts; however, the Ministry of Interior routinely bypassed the public prosecutor with impunity. The public prosecutor deferred to the Ministry of Interior on such requests.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41733.htm

Turkmenistan
“The Constitution does not provide for full freedom of movement; although the Government took steps to ease restrictions on freedom of movement, restrictions remained.” (…) “In January, the Government eliminated the exit visa requirement, following international pressure from the diplomatic corps, the OSCE, and the U.N. The elimination of the exit visa regime allowed the majority of citizens to travel abroad; however, the Government maintained a “black list” of those not allowed to travel. Some members of minority religious groups, regime opponents, relatives of those implicated in the November 2002, and those suspected of having “state secrets” were not permitted to leave the country.” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41714.htm

Ukraine
“Exit visas were required for citizens who intended to take up permanent residence in another country…” http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41715.htm

United Arab Emirates “Custom dictates that a husband can bar his wife, minor children, and adult unmarried daughters from leaving the country by taking custody of their passports.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41734.htm

Uzbekistan
“The Government required citizens to obtain exit visas for foreign travel or emigration, and while it generally granted these routinely, local officials often demanded a small bribe.” (…) “Authorities did not require an exit visa for travel to most countries of the former Soviet Union; however, the Government severely restricted the ability of its citizens to travel overland to neighboring Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Turkmenistan and restricted and significantly delayed citizens attempting to cross the border to Tajikistan. Authorities closed the border with Afghanistan to ordinary citizens.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41717.htm

Vietnam
“Although the Government no longer required citizens traveling abroad to obtain exit or reentry visas, the Government sometimes refused to issue passports. The Government did not allow some persons who publicly or privately expressed critical opinions on religious or political issues to travel abroad.”
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41665.htm

ID cards – some of the main corporate beneficiaries so far

Some in the IT industry are concerned about facets of the ID cards programme: the costs, the lack of a robust business case, and uncertainties over how well the technologies will work when applied to millions of people.

But not everyone is complaining. Indeed a by-product of the government’s decision to award a plethora of contracts under the ID Card scheme is that parts of the IT industry have signed up to non-disclosure terms, which has reduced significantly the number of cognoscente who could speak openly about the scheme even if they wanted to.

These are some of the organisations and individuals that have won contracts so far under the Identity Cards scheme …

PA Consulting (in part including Electronic Commerce Associates Ltd.) Approx £29.5m to £33.5m
Capita Resourcing – up to £5m
Field Fisher Waterhouse Appox £1.1m
Atos Origin IT Services UK Ltd – £1m+
Parity Resources – up to £1m
Glotel Technology – up to £1m
Sirius consortium (Fujitsu Services Ltd and Global Crossing Ltd and PWC) – £184,000
CESG Communications Electronic Security Group – £140,000+
Veredus London — £135,000+
Ernst and Young – £111,000
Partnerships UK – £93,000+
KPMG – £90,000+
Cornwell Management Consultants – £48,000
Shreeveport Management Consultancy – £43,000+
Sigma – £37,000+
The Metropolitan Police – £35,000
Axon Group Plc – £29,000
Excel Recruitment – £20,000
Whitehead Mann Ltd – £17,000
Alan Hughes – £16,000+
Office of Government Commerce – £12,000
Abbey Consulting – £4,000
Interleader Ltd – £2,000

Contracts worth up to £500,000

Adecco UK Ltd
Allen Lane
ASE Consulting Ltd
Capita Interim Management
Chamberlain Beaumont
Computer People
Crystal UK Ltd
Elan Computing Ltd
Electronic Computer Associates (novated from PA Consulting contract)
Hays Accounting
Hedra Ltd
Hudson Global Resources Ltd
Kelly Services
Logica CMC
Methods Consulting
Montpelier Contracting and Consulting
Northern Recruitment Group plc
OGC Accounting Service
Pendragon Information Systems
Real-Time Consultants plc
Ruillion Computer
Sand Resources
Search Total Recruitment Solutions
Security Printing Systems Ltd
Spring Technology
TAG TPS Ltd
The Nesco Group

Contracts under £50,000:

Angela Mortimer plc
Anite Public Sector
Beamans Ltd
British Print Industries Federation
Brook Street
Buchanan and Darby Associates
Business in the Community
Callcredit plc
CE Williams
Central Office of Information
Centre for Accessibility
Diane Bailey Associates
Donaldson’s
Drivers Jonas
ER Consultants
Equifax Ltd
Excel Recruitment
Home Office Cashiers
Ian Farrand HR Management Consultants
Ideas UK
Identix Ltd
Insight Consulting
Josephine Sammons Ltd
Kingston Communications plc.
Lambert Smith Hampton
Manpower
Michael Page UK Ltd
Minority Matters Recruitment
McCrindle Associates Ltd
OCS
Officeforce Ltd
Parity Training Ltd
Partnerships UK
Plain English Campaign
PicnicBox
Procurement Services Ltd
QDOS Computer Consultants
Q1 Consulting
Reed Accounting Personnel
Resource Analysts Ltd
RNA Ltd
Robert Walters
Security Services Group
SGS UK Ltd
Siemens Business Services
St. John’s Ambulance Services
Step Ahead
Streamline Financial Solutions
Telelogic UK Ltd
TK Cobley
The Whelan Partnership
The Whitehall and Industry Group
Turner and Townsend Project Management Ltd
White Young
Yale Data Management Consultant Ltd

[…]

http://www.computerweekly.com/

It doesn’t matter how many people they corrupt and who have signed NDAs. It is the people who are going to suffer at the hands of these companies who matter. It is their rights that are central to this, and despite what anyone says, the answer to all of this is ‘NO’ and HMG is wasting your money because in the end, this scheme will be dismantled if it ever goes into production.

There are some other interesting aspects of this list; the potential points for leaks are high in number. It cannot be possible that every one of the thousands of people who are going to be working on this will keep quiet. We can expect some leaks, if anyone decent works in any of these companies.

And finally, all the talk about open government (not that anyone with a single brain cell believed it) is further put to rest by everyone in this list being held under an NDA.

If this ID card scheme is so secure, then, like peer reviewed crypto (GPG etc) it should be possible for everyone to know how it works without compromising security. Security through obscurity is no security at all.

But you know this…

And now you can read about why this scheme is doomed to failure:

BBC’s File on 4 reveals defects in ID Cards scheme – with wide implications for government IT

Analysis/comment

A BBC Radio Four “File on 4” programme on 31 July 2007 on ID cards gave a useful insight into how ministers approve a major new IT-based project, then leave the rest to committed civil servants who have no clear what they’re supposed to be doing.

The broadcast included an interview with Computer Weekly’s news editor and several experts from the identity and IT community. It was apparent from the interviews that co-ordination and genuine accountability were lacking, or even absent, from the ID cards scheme, and that civil servants were trying to implement something indefinable that their leaders had decided to implement, nobody having a clear idea of the task that lay ahead.

This was the government machine at its worst: working in secret, having meetings whose minutes were secret, keeping secret “gateway” reviews of the scheme, and nobody having to account to ministers, stakeholders, the public, Parliament or the public over any decisions taken or not taken.

Carl Jung said that in all disorder there’s a secret order. Not in the case of the ID cards scheme, I suspect. Listening to the experts interviewed by the BBC I began to visualise the ID cards scheme as clusters of arms convulsing on an empty floor, none of them attached to a torso.

Peter Tomlinson an IT consultant and specialist in smart card technology told File on 4 he had attended government meetings where the ID card programme was discussed.

He was puzzled when officials from the Home Office, which was the department in charge of ID cards, didn’t appear to be present. “The meetings were called by people in the Cabinet Office. There were topics on the agenda that were set by people in the Cabinet Office and we kept on thinking: why are we not seeing people from the Home Office. Why are we not seeing technical people from the Home Office, or people involved in technical management? Eventually they began to come along but they never produced anyone who had any technical understanding of large-scale systems. We were just completely puzzled.”

File on 4’s researcher asked Tomlinson what questions had been asked at the government meetings he’d attended.

“Other government departments were asking the basic question: how will we use this system, and never getting an answer. No answer at all. ..It was my first real introduction to silo government. Individual government departments were completely independent of each other and now they were going to have to start working together. But they just did not start to do it.”

One of the government’s business justifications for the ID card scheme is that departments will be able to link into the National Identity Register to verify that citizens are who they say they are. But File on 4 found that departments have not assessed the costs of providing systems or software upgrades that integrate with the register.

Neil Fisher, vice president of identity management at Unisys, was also interviewed for the broadcast. Unisys is one of the companies that hope to join consortia bidding for ID scheme contracts.

Fisher had been talking to the Home Office about other computer projects he was involved in. He believed that work on these projects should have fed into the identity scheme. He, too, criticised a lack of co-ordination. He said it was difficult to find out who was in charge.

“I think there has been a realisation, as they have gone through this, that there are a lot of projects, even within the Home Office, being run by awful lots of different and smaller divisions in perhaps immigration, in law enforcement, in passport, and in ID cards, all of whom have a sort of relationship which was ill-defined.

“So [when I went] into a meeting invariably the wrong person from the wrong department would be there who could not speak for their colleagues in some other silo.”

He added that suppliers liked to talk to those who work within a well-organised chain of command. “But it just isn’t like that. I am not giving away any secrets here. The Home Office is quite a difficult department to run. It is like a herd of cats and it’s very difficult to herd cats as you know.”

Tomlinson said that as he sat listening to officials discussing the ID project at Cabinet Office meetings, he began to wonder whether it had really been thought through.

“We were asking questions like: how does one government department that is not the Home Office connect up to the identity card system? Where are the specifications for the communications protocols? How does the equipment get to be security certified? There was no work going on any of these technical topics…

“If you are going to design a large-scale system like this you first go and look at the volumes of transactions that are going to take place, how often are they going to take place and then we would see roughly how big it was going to be. You can’t specify a system unless you have these figures. There were about four of us who used to go to those meetings and we were all very puzzled. We said that this project is empty. It has no content.”

None of this can be blamed on James Hall, the affable, experienced, open and business-minded Chief Executive of the Identity and Passport Service. James Hall did not join the ID cards scheme until last October – three years after its inception; and in any case no individual civil servant, however deft his skills, can resolve the deep-rooted problems on the ID cards scheme which are arguably more to do with the anachronistic, cosy, closed-door culture of government than the action or inaction of any one person.

Several times during the File on 4 programme, Hall ably defended the scheme saying that it would continue to evolve. But some of those listening to him could be forgiven for thinking that he was saying in essence: things are not clearly defined at the moment and we’re at least partially reliant on suppliers defining things for us.

It’s the salesmen and consultants from suppliers that have pushed for ID cards; and so it will be, it seems, the technical people from some of the same companies that will be largely responsible for setting the specifications they will contracted to deliver against.

Very odd.

James Hall told the BBC’s researchers: “We have published a plan laying out our approach to the national identity scheme last December. Since January we have been in continuous dialogue with the technology industry and we have taken on board some of their thinking about the shape of the scheme and that’ll be reflected in procurement activity. And I have no doubt that once we into the procurement process we will continue to get innovation and good ideas from the market which will continue to refine our thinking about the precise details of how we deliver this.”

Martyn Thomas, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and visiting professor of software engineering at Oxford University Computing Laboratory, said the requirements for the ID cards scheme “are still not being articulated”.

He added: “Without a very clear statement of what the requirements are it won’t be possible to build a system that meets those requirements cost effectively.”

File on 4’s programme was specific to ID cards, so it’s easy to forget that there are much wider implications of the disclosures made in the broadcast. The civil servants we have met have been bright and committed. But it’s not their fault if they work without clear tasks, without leadership and in secret – so mistakes and inefficiency are hidden.

If the machinery of government is in such poor condition – and some parts of it seem to be – how can it be exploited for the purposes of huge, complex, risky, costly and ambitious IT-projects such as ID cards?

[…]

http://www.computerweekly.com/

Tony Collins is really on the ball. Astonishing stuff.

New biometric technology means one in the eye for airport queues

Beat the crowds at UK airports this summer by taking advantage of the latest biometric technology, says Emma Hartley

It’s been a bad week for the British airport queue. First, MPs said that standing in one could make you a “sitting duck” target for terrorists.

Then Kitty Ussher, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, warned that “Heathrow hassle” and long queues, particularly at passport control, were deterring business people from flying to London for meetings, which could have a long-term impact on the national economy.

Never has air travel been less glamorous for the British holidaymaker. The recent beefing-up of airport security, while understood and accepted with typical stoicism, has none the less turned foreign sojourns into an epic and tiring series of queues and checks.

But it needn’t be that way: there is a recently installed digital solution to at least half of the problem – the part encountered at the arrivals hall in the UK – available to those travellers classified as “low security risk”.

IRIS, an acronym for Iris Recognition Immigration System, is a service provided free at the point of contact by the Immigration Service, in which eight British airport terminals – four at Heathrow, two at Gatwick plus Birmingham and Manchester – have the facility to scan a human iris. As with a fingerprint, every iris is unique, even for identical twins.

The iris-scanning process takes about two minutes and no appointment is necessary; you just need to clear security at a participating airport, keep hold of your boarding card, and ask to be directed to the IRIS suite.

The particular infrared camera system used to power IRIS was developed by Sagem Défense Sécurité, a French company that has also developed iris-scanning applications for military use, but the basic technique involves taking simultaneous pictures on two light frequencies – ambient light and that from a light-emitting diode in the infrared region.

Paul Stanborough, managing director of rival outfit Aditech, explains: “It’s the red light that makes the picture of the iris unique. That’s the clever bit that generates the algorithm, coding the image and allowing it to be stored and found again.”

With the images of your irises held on a database, when you return to the UK you can skip the long queue at passport control and instead head for the IRIS gate. The queue here, by comparison, is determined entirely by the scheme’s uptake – only around 100,000 have enrolled so far, very few of whom will be travelling at any given time, so there is rarely any queue at all.

Moreover, the day when that line will be the same length as the others is a long way off, not least because access to the scheme is restricted to those deemed “low risk”.

Passing through the IRIS system involves simply gazing into a mirrored box at the recognition technology, which should spring the gate open within seconds.

IRIS users are and will remain almost entirely UK passport holders, according to Brodie Clark, the Government’s strategic director for border control. “It is possible, though, that if [non-British passport-holders] fly to the UK often on business and are not on any police watch-list, you may also be eligible,” he said.

Because the data is not stored on your passport but on the Immigration Service’s database, the scheme is unaffected by passport expiry. However, IRIS must be activated within six months of enrolling and is valid unused for two years but renewed every time it is used.

It is designed for frequent flyers, most probably business and solo travellers. It’s not without its pitfalls: if, for instance, someone takes a small child into the IRIS gate the technology will not work since it is designed for one person at a time. Similarly, a person wearing backpack-style hand luggage might create the impression of two people in the booth and disrupt the process, so all baggage must be put on the ground.

Until now, the system’s existence at passport control has remained a rather well-kept secret. The three other people who presented themselves for enrolment at Gatwick South Terminal during the 15 minutes or so I was there this week all said that they had heard about it in a roundabout way, through random browsing on the internet or from friends.

However, it is understood that the Government is about to launch a promotional drive to encourage greater use of the IRIS technology.

And the benefits of IRIS will be felt elsewhere in the airport, too. Since the time-saving benefits of iris-scanning are wiped out if you speed through immigration just to hang around at the baggage carousel waiting for your suitcase, the scheme indirectly encourages people to take less luggage when they travel, leading in turn to shorter check-in times.

Balm to the soul for Britain’s weary travellers.

[…]

Telegraph

This is a piece of blatant propaganda, placed by a PR company in the Telegraph, for money.

SHAME.

Today we learn that the DNA database has been accumulating records at one per minute, and that the government wants to be able to take your DNA on the street for dropping litter or not wearing a seat belt.

by Steven LaTulippe

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further into the future.”

~ Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

Can Ron Paul really win? Does he have a snowball’s chance of becoming the next president, or are we all kidding ourselves?

At the moment, Rep. Paul’s quixotic campaign seems to be picking up steam. His recent fundraising statistics reveal a blossoming, internet-based movement that is uniting libertarians and other concerned citizens from across the political spectrum. His performance in the media has been sharp, and his organization seems to be honing its message.

While there are plenty of reasons for optimism, I think we need to be clear-eyed about the road ahead. If Rep. Paul somehow manages to remain a viable candidate and to seriously challenge his mainstream opponents, things will get extremely interesting. He faces a set of obstacles unlike any other candidate in my lifetime.

When evaluating his chances, it’s important to accept one fact about contemporary America: This is not a democracy, and certainly not a constitutional republic. America is actually a carefully concealed oligarchy. A few thousand people, mostly in government, finance, and the military-industrial complex, run this country for their own purposes. By manipulating the two-party system, influencing the mainstream media, and controlling the flow of campaign finance money, this oligarchy works to secure the nomination of its preferred candidates (Democratic and Republican alike), thus giving voters a “choice” between Puppet A and Marionette B.

Unlike the establishment’s candidates, Ron Paul is a freelancer running on three specific ideas:

• The federal government must function within the strict guidelines of the Constitution.
• America should deconstruct its empire, withdraw our troops from around the world and reestablish a foreign policy based on noninterventionism.
• America should abolish the Federal Reserve Bank, eliminate fiat currency and return to hard money.

This is not a political agenda. This is not a party platform. It is a revolution. The entire ruling oligarchy would be swept away if these ideas were ever implemented. Every sentence, every word, every jot and tittle of this agenda is unacceptable, repellent and hateful to America’s ruling elite.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious.

Through its control of the Federal Reserve, the banking elites make billions of dollars in unearned profits and exert enormous influence over the American economy. Countless industries and special interest groups (both foreign and domestic) have sprung up around our defense and national security budgets. The bureaucratic elites who dominate the federal government despise the Constitution’s limitations on their power and view the document as just an archaic “piece of paper.”

Anyone who believes these folks will simply “walk away” if Ron Paul is elected president obviously doesn’t understand with whom they are dealing.

When its authority over the Southern states was challenged in the 19th Century, the oligarchy suspended the Constitution and launched a bloody war that killed three quarters of a million people. They arrested newspaper editors, deported antiwar congressmen, and burned down several American cities.

A century later, the oligarchy nuked two Japanese cities, killing thousands of civilians in the twinkle of an eye.

When its marginal interests were threatened in Southeast Asia, the oligarchy launched a devastating war that killed over a million people and left the region marinating in toxic defoliating chemicals.

To further its interests in the Middle East, the oligarchy slapped horrific sanctions on Iraq that killed 250,000 children (and then trotted out Madeleine Albright – one of Clinton’s blood-stained trolls – to smugly declare that the deaths were “worth it”).

Keeping these facts in mind, we must ask ourselves a simple question: If the oligarchy was willing to behave this way to protect its often marginal interests, what would it do to stop a devastating assault on its very existence?

The attack on Ron Paul’s candidacy will begin in earnest when it appears he has an even remote possibility of winning. It will follow a fairly predictable path:

The first step is already in play. The establishment will start by simply ignoring him, by using its power in the mainstream media and their influence over campaign donors. If possible, they will find ways of excluding him from the debates.

This strategy is already failing. The internet and talk radio are outside the elite’s direct control and are being used effectively by Rep. Paul to “get the message out.” (And mark my words, sooner or later the oligarchy will come for the internet. This medium has been a royal pain in their derriere from day one).

If this strategy fizzles, the establishment will move on to ridicule and fear mongering. Ron’s ideas will be grotesquely distorted in establishment media “hit pieces.” They’ll say he wants to permit heroin use in public schools, or that he wants old people to die in the streets without their social security checks, or that he wants to allow greedy industrialists to dump toxic waste into our drinking water.

The next arrow in the oligarchy’s quiver will be scandal – real or fabricated. Usually, this takes the form of pictures, billing records, etc. involving financial or sexual hi-jinks. For folks with the right motivation and abilities, it would be child’s play to implicate him in some sort of phony ethical, moral, or financial skullduggery (e.g., doctored pictures, sordid media accounts from “eyewitnesses,” etc.).

If Ron somehow survives this assault, the oligarchy will move on to the criminal justice system. On some fine day, a stretch limo will pull up to the Capitol Building and one of the establishment’s consiglieres (Jim Baker…or maybe Vernon Jordan) will ooze into Ron’s office for a “chat.”

Maybe Rep. Paul forgot to fill out Form X109/23W on his 1997 income tax return?

Or maybe he drained a mud puddle when he built his new house…and maybe that puddle could theoretically be classified as a “wetland?”

Or, even better, maybe a close relative is in hot water with OSHA/FDA/IRS/you-name-it (federal prosecutors love to go after relatives in order to gain “leverage”).

Rep. Paul’s sentence could be lessened, of course…provided he agreed to drop his candidacy as part of a “plea bargain.”

Ayn Rand once stated that the hallmark of authoritarian systems is the creation of innumerable, indecipherable laws. Such systems make everyone an un-indicted felon and allow for the exercise of arbitrary government power via selective prosecution.

If this tactic somehow failed and it appeared that Rep. Paul was still a credible threat to win the presidency, then things could get dicey.

The establishment may decide to let him take office and then use their considerable influence to ensure his presidency ended in failure – mostly through their control of Congress, the federal bureaucracy, and the mainstream media.

The problem with this strategy (from the oligarchy’s perspective) is that it entails considerable risk. As president, Rep. Paul could use the substantial powers of the office to inflict untold damage to the imperial structure (especially if he chose to withdraw American troops stationed overseas). Worse, he could appoint anti-government “ideologues” to a variety of positions in the federal government.

The damage could take decades to undo.

If these options fail, the oligarchy could resort to various “extra-legal” strategies – anything from vote-rigging to trumped-up impeachment charges.

Either way, one thing is certain: The American establishment controls a world-wide empire, has the power to print the world’s reserve currency at will, and can enact virtually any law without constitutional constraint. Such power is rarely surrendered without a long, bitter struggle.

[…]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe80.html

And yet, the very fact that Ron Paul has a real chance of overthrowing the empire demonstrates what I have been saying for years; if any country can pull itself out of the sewer and return to its proper state it is the United States of America.

No other country has the political mechanism to do it, no other country has a population with the will to do it, and no other country has the ‘staff’ to pull it off. That is why, despite all of the manifest evil that The Great Satan has done I still believe (as do many people) that it is possible for a revolution to happen in the usa that will completely turn that country around and make it, once again, the greatest country on earth.

In the wake of such a turnaround, Britain will surely follow, and all of our troubles here will be over.

By Michael Hampton

As you are probably aware, the greatest threat to your privacy and well-being stems from the government, whether directly or indirectly. Even the “freest” or “most democratic” governments have committed their share of atrocities, and even if you think you’re safe today, if the political winds blow in a different direction tomorrow, you could be the next victim.

Today, governments use databases to track virtually everything, including their own people. So an important part of protecting yourself is to minimize the amount of information governments have about you.

Unlike businesses, which use databases to reduce the costs of the products and services they provide on a voluntary basis, governments of all stripes use databases of people in order to track, monitor, forcibly control and even kill them more efficiently. Indeed, for a government, this is the only purpose for a database of people.

The most important thing to remember is that being innocent will not protect you. It didn’t protect Japanese-Americans in the 1940s, it didn’t protect people falsely accused of being Communists in the 1950s, and it doesn’t protect innocent people who have had their property wrongly seized or been killed in botched drug raids today.

Staying out of government databases, to the maximum extent possible, is the best way to protect yourself from whatever dark fate your government has in store for you tomorrow. These tips will help those of you who want to protect your privacy to do so without unnecessarily sacrificing your quality of life.

Government gets most of its information about you from you, so limiting the amount of information you give the government is the easiest way to protect yourself.

If you can avoid it, do not obtain a driver license or state ID card. The driver license, despite its dubious legality and its utter irrelevance to the physical act of driving a vehicle, has become so pervasive that virtually everyone now has one. Whether by accident or design, it stands as the de facto ID through which you’re tracked, even without the REAL ID Act, by local, state and federal government alike. If you must obtain one, then you can ensure that the information on it is out of date the moment it’s issued, by obtaining the license and then immediately — the same day — moving to a new address. You can also provide an address you haven’t lived at for years, if ever. The same applies to vehicle registrations. Keep in mind that governments don’t like it when the information you’ve given them is inaccurate or outdated, and usually have laws against it; however, such laws are virtually unenforceable.

Obtain a “fake” ID and use it wherever possible, but never with the government. Many places which ask for a government-issued ID these days have no legitimate reason to ask, or their reason for asking could be satisfied through other means. For instance, hotels ask for ID not because they need to know who you are, but because they want to know that you can pay for your room and any damages you may cause. This need could be met through the use of a credit card or through other means, but the prevalence of government ID cards has caused people to rely on them when other solutions would work as well or better. Jim Harper from the Cato Institute addresses this issue in his book, Identity Crisis. Never use your real name or ID unless the government has actually required it, and be aware that many places will tell you the government requires it, when it does not, such as for air travel. In the U.S., under common law, you may use any name you like, as long as you aren’t trying to defraud.

Do not give out your Social Security number, if you have one, to anyone except the government. Do not give it to your bank, nor your credit card issuer, nor anyone else, who isn’t actually required by the government to collect it. (Your bank does not need a Social Security or tax ID number unless you have an interest-bearing account.) If you’ve already given it to your bank, for instance, change banks.

On that note, do not keep large amounts of money in banks. All fiat currencies depreciate much faster than any rate of interest you’ll ever be offered; even interest-bearing offerings will lose money over the long term, adjusted for inflation. True money of intrinsic value, such as gold, silver and platinum, is much more stable, holding its value over the long term, and should be a significant part of any respectable investment portfolio, if not under your pillow.

Do not participate in the census. Sure, your local bureaucrats will try to guilt trip you into filling it out, because they get more of your money if you do. But census data is among the most detailed information the government collects, it’s been abused before, and government has no legitimate purpose for collecting most of what they ask for these days. The most they need to know is the number of people in your house, not even who they are, and even that is probably too much to tell them.

Be aware of what data government collects and how it uses that data. Remember that the use that seems benign today may turn malevolent next year, and by then it’s too late. Evaluate a government data collection program not just on its merits but its potential for misuse in the future. Ask yourself, What could Hitler do with this database? That will tell you what its true potential is. Keep in mind nobody saw Hitler’s evil coming; he looked like a perfectly normal politician to almost everyone, putting Germany on the path to economic recovery, right up until he started exterminating people.

Always remember that government is evil. Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” (And a growing number of people believe that government is an unnecessary evil which should be dispensed with as soon as possible so that we can finally have a civilized society.) As we all know by now, the Constitution is no guarantee that our government will remain in “its best state;” indeed, the government violates it with impunity by having its own court redefine what “is” — or the inconvenient word of the day — is. It’s only a matter of time before government violates your rights, if it hasn’t already, and it probably has.

This is why we were admonished by the country’s founders to distrust government. And that is the best advice of all.

Homeland Stupidity